Why Is America in Decline? Chris Hedges on the U.S. Empire & Death of the Liberal Class (2012) - YouTube
Death of the Liberal Class is a non-fiction book by American author and
journalist Chris Hedges published in October 2010 by Nation Books. It
falls into the literary genre of the jeremiad, which has a long
tradition in the United States. According to Hedges, it is a book that
chronicles the destruction of populist and radical movements within
society, particularly in the United States.[1] Since these movements are
the principal force by which democratic societies "open up", Death of
the Liberal Class argues that social movements, which provided "all the
true correctives to American democracy", have been undercut by corporate
co-opting of the traditional liberal forces of the USA, notably the
labor unions, press, churches, universities and the Democratic Party.
The "liberal class" consists of the people who fill the ranks of these
institutions, ie., journalists, clergy, teachers, and politicians.
Falling
into the long American tradition of the jeremiad, Death of the Liberal
Class makes a number of sustained arguments. As a critique of the
so-called "liberal class", its main argument is that a breach has now
occurred between the liberal class and the radical social and political
movements it once supported or sympathized with. This rupture is a fatal
wound from which the liberal class cannot recover because these
movements are the repository of new ideas. The "death" of the liberal
class follows from this dearth of new ideas, because the "liberal class"
is cut-off from the sustained energy and life that new ideas provide.
Hedges goes on to show in the book how, in the United States, movements
such as the anti-slavery movement, the suffrage and Civil Rights
movement were able to have a significant influence on the historical,
political, and social landscape. This influence continues to resonate to
this day.
This central argument is sustained by various
secondary arguments and themes in the book. One of these themes is an
examination of how it is even possible (in the first place) for popular
movements to have real and lasting influence. Death of the Liberal Class
argues that such movements must start from the "bottom" of any social
structure. It is here at the "bottom" that a populist spirit can take
hold and begin to have a grass roots appeal before its dynamic moves on
to having mainstream appeal. Therefore, real changes for a society do
not (and cannot) start at the top where the Power Elite resides (a
concept Hedges borrows from C. Wright Mills and whose ideas he makes
ample use of in this book). Since they do not start at the top, the most
significant populist and social movements never achieve "formal
positions of power".[1] However, this is crucial to any movement having
long term viability. A movement has the ability to both sustain itself
and have real influence because it avoids bowing to the dictates of what
Hedges calls statecraft, which are the formal mechanisms that any state
uses to manage power while maintaining the support of the masses.
Instead,
popular movements (or any movement for social and political change)
embrace what Hedges calls "nonhistorical values", a term he borrows from
Dwight Macdonald. According to Macdonald, nonhistorical values include
ideas such as truth, justice, and love and it is to these values that
real social and political movements must "pay fealty". Instead, a
movement's influence erodes when it jettisons these "nonhistoric" values
in favor of "historical values." Historical values are defined as a
belief that human progress comes through science, technology, and mass
production. This is another theme examined by Hedges in the sustained
polemic of Death of the Liberal Class, that embracing this kind of
belief in human progress has eroded these other nonhistorical values.
Finally, the "liberal class" is always faced with a choice, Hedges
argues, and that choice was between serving human beings and serving
history, between thinking ethically and thinking strategically.[2]
By
serving history and power, the "liberal class" surrendered their power
and moral authority to the state. It's an authority they cannot get
back, because when the State holds these powers, it will not give them
up without a mass movement making such demands. This restates an
overarching theme of Death of the Liberal Class. According to Hedges,
capitulation by the "liberal class" has allowed the takeover of
"statecraft" by corporations who, now unchecked by an independent
intellectual class and the popular movements that gave them viability,
wield enormous influence in the legal, legislative, and financial
centers of power. This corporate coup d'etat was accomplished in the
United States, says Hedges, because corporations have no loyalty to a
nation-state, especially those corporations that are multinational or
transnational.
