Chris Hedges: As a Socialist, I Have No Voice in the Mainstream

[marmar]

Published on Jul 24, 2013

On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges says an effective movement that defies power will have to be disciplined and articulate what a vision of socialism might look like

To see all 7 parts of this interview as they are released please go to http://therealnews.com

[Overseas]

1. K&R.

[socialist_n_TN]

2. Pretty interesting. I don't know if Hedges is becoming more radicalized.....

or if he's just coming more out of the closet with the radicalization, but he's sounding more and more like a commie. His talk about discipline in the movement is an example. Democratic-centralism (which is what he was hinting at IMO. I mean how else are you going to expropriate Exxon for the people?) IS the way to go. Of course, there's always a balance that has to be struck between the democratic part and the centralist part.

I agree wholeheartedly about the next stage of the movement post Occupy. We will NOT know what shape that next stage will take, we won't know where it will begin (Has it already begun in NC?), we don't know what will be the flash point. We just know that it WILL happen. And I'll add a prediction to what Hedges is saying. I believe that it WILL be more (maybe MUCH more) militant than Occupy.

[TBF]

3. Hedges is right on about the bourgeoisie feel of Occupy -

Protesting will be much more effective if organized and disciplined. Folks need to think in terms of owners vs. workers rather than political parties. The "ownership society" that Reagan sold them needs to be completely obliterated in their minds. My guess is that circumstances with dictate when that happens - something like losing the minimum wage (which the Koch Bros. are now pushing) may be the type of tipping point needed to get serious activity going.

[socialist_n_TN]

4. Oh yes. Occupy was definitely a left reformist type of social movement....

It sort of identified the class enemy (although even there they didn't have the balls to call it capitalism), but it never really identified the enemy of capitalism. IOW, workers. They kept it pretty nebulous on both sides actually. Which is one reason why it fizzled out. Of course, there was also active suppression OF Occupy too. But the lack of discipline was one of the prime causes of, not only fizzling out, but the lack of overall accomplishment too. It was a baby step IMO. The next step will be a stride.

As to what sets it off, I figure it'll be something personalized. Somebody getting killed or seriously injured in a very public fashion because of the greed of the owners. I would HOPE that something political like losing the minimum wage would do it, but I'm not sure consciousness has become that refined. Most people who aren't working FOR the minimum wage (and that's most people) won't make the connection to their own wages and the minimum wage. They won't realize that if the minimum wage goes down, (guaranteed) THEIR wages will quickly come down too. At least they won't realize it until it's too late.

Edited to add that last sentence.

[Starry Messenger]

6. At a panel at Netroots, the president of CFT pointed out this poll from 2011--

Latinos heavily favor socialism in higher numbers than Occupy. http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publics-response-to-capitalism-socialism/

[joshcryer]

8. The issue is Occupy's gift economy relies on the owner/worker mentality.

They wouldn't have been able to survive if people weren't donating stuff, spending capital to make stuff happen, even a capitalist owner allowing them to use their privatized park, as well as a sense of self-reliance.

Occupy simply had no ability to break free of this. Just look at the sanitation propaganda. It's a trick method to get a group of people to stop protesting because 1) shit needs to be dispensed somewhere and 2) garbage needs to be removed. Except you can't "build a structure" so porta potties and trash bins are a big no no.

Occupy did have the class message, just go back and watch almost any large assembly. It was fully understood and appreciated by most actors. They, however, are mostly a bunch of kids, and yes while a chunk of them are and were yuppies, that doesn't detract that they wanted to help and that they understood the basic ideas behind the possessive property concept of socialism. There was also an element of street people who wound up making Occupy look bad (the drug use and sexual assaults were real, this is not right wing propaganda, that stuff happened; I've seen that stuff happen in safe places where you'd never expect it to happen; in my experience alcohol has always been the primary factor but I'm not calling for a ban of it, just moderation; sorry, rambling, really disruptive how it's been in groups I've been around).

[joshcryer]

7. The next stage will be tangible.

Occupy, sadly, was intangible. Not because it was "bourgeoisie" (it actually, in reality, wound up being a way for the homeless to be fed and sheltered, which many people don't realize). But because it didn't have a specific goal and it wound up being a helper of the poor and downtrodden (their efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy were impossible to know, that they took over churches and became the best help distribution network the country has ever seen).

The next stage is taking that sort of help redistribution and making it self-reliant and not reliant on the Red Cross or the government to provide the essentials. It will ultimately be open source, open hardware, and open media (open music, video, games).

Occupy was merely a testing ground, a proving ground, for the gift economy.

I think Hedges is somewhat out of touch with how that will go down because he's not really an activist. He is more bourgeoisie than those in Occupy in the end.

[LooseWilly]

9. Occupy was a "proving ground" ("proof of concept"?) of a "gift economy" alternative to capitalism?

How is it going to become "self-reliant"... except by acquisition of resources? And, how is "it" going to acquire those resources exactly... by means of "open source, open hardware, and open media (open music, video, games)"?

What is open source food? What is open source medicine? What is open hardware shelter?

I don't think ubuntu makes a very good domicile (and its utility as an operating system is becoming increasingly questionable as well).

A gift economy requires... a gift-giver component. If you aren't getting your gift makings from the government or Red Cross... where? Charity?

Are you sure you're not thinking about this from a pre-eminently bourgeoisie point of view in the first place?

[joshcryer]

10. What about a gift economy is a "bourgeoisie point of view"?

What about open hardware, open source, open media are "bourgeoisie"?

Does bourgeoisie necessarily mean, as Bookchin argued in Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, anyone who replaces labor with machinery?

That is, you cannot fathom a socialist environment where the robots do all the work? Because that's what open hardware necessarily means. The means to make food easily, the means to make medicine easily, the means to build homes easily, without relying on the overarching capitalist mode of industrial production.

[LooseWilly]

11. I can "fathom a socialist environment where robots do all the work"- I saw "the Matrix"

Robots do all the work. Food, medicine and "homes" were all easily available, and indeed provided both virtually and intravenously to all in a completely equal basis.

I suppose you could even call it "open hardware", both in the universal access to the hardware and in the sense that everyone in "society" is "adorned" with open faced hardware.

I'm sorry though... I keep forgetting that you are arguing for a science fiction solution to our current noir set of social problems. My mistake...

As for your weird assertion that I'm using "bourgeoisie" in the Bookchin context of the word (quite the strawman, but I'll play along for fun)... I can only assume you're referring to the passage in the very arcane and rather boring text to which you linked that says:

Stated bluntly: 'downsizing' today is not being done by machines but by avaricious bourgeois who use machines to replace labor or exploit it more intensively. Indeed, the very machines that the bourgeois employs to reduce 'labor costs' could, in a rational society, free human beings from mindless toil for more creative and personally rewarding activities.

The notion that that, the replacing of labor with machinery, is the entirety of what one might be referring to as bourgeoisie, is a staggeringly strawman-esque game of intellectual dishonesty and convenience.

I would call your argument in favor of open source software, hardware, etc., a bourgeois one in that it takes for granted the existence of the hardware, software, etc. as an available given which doesn't require any labor to produce it in the first place.

If you are trying to redefine all resources as "hardware", however, in order to be able to apply the feel good term "open hardware" to it... then all you are doing is creating a new lexicon of slang... without actually addressing the basic details of how those resources are going to be produced/worked/distributed... and simply invoking the mantra "open source" does not address the full scope of an economic system that can actually be implemented... unless you're just going to invoke "free cooperation" as a sort of science-fiction magic hopefulness while pretending that conflicts won't develop between those who object to the uses others are putting these "open resources" to.

Indeed, quoting from your own source, the idea of free cooperation among utilizers of open source stuff is essentially a doomed idea from the start:

If anything, functioning on the basis of consensus assures that important decision-making will be either manipulated by a minority or collapse completely. And the decisions that are made will embody the lowest common denominator of views and constitute the least creative level of agreement. I speak, here, from painful, years-long experience with the use of consensus in the Clamshell Alliance of the 1970s. Just at the moment when this quasi-anarchic antinuclear-power movement was at the peak of its struggle, with thousands of activists, it was destroyed through the manipulation of the consensus process by a minority. The 'tyranny of structurelessness' that consensus decision-making produced permitted a well-organized few to control the unwieldy, deinstitutionalized, and largely disorganized many within the movement.

I'm still unclear on how an economy based on gifts is going to develop out of open source stuffs... are we maybe going to revert to some sort of Tlingit matrilineal open source potlatch-economy tribe?

[joshcryer]

12. The hardware and code can be copied.

It doesn't require labor after the first copy is made. Therefore open source hardware and software objectively replaces labor. I only mentioned Bookchin because clearly your ideas behind open source hardware and software lack imagination.

Open source hardware and software does not rely on a consensus system, therefore your Clamshell Alliance quote is irrelevant.

[limpyhobbler]

5. K/R. This was a good interview series.

Seen I think 4 of them.