Some thoughts on Chris Hedges and liberalism’s (even well-intentioned) blind spots

ANNOTATED
Chris Hedges on Christopher Hitchens (radio interview)

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Commentary by Patrice Greanville

Feudalism and capitalism have much more in common than the latter cares to admit. After a process that lasted centuries, an emergent capitalist class replaced the old, literally rotten and obsolete regime with the new class, but both retained their respect for and allegiance to class divisions. Put another way, one class (capitalist) displaced another (feudal), but social parasitism lived on, actually strengthened and amplified by the vigor of the younger system. In the case of socialism, there can be no point of convergence or reconciliation. Socialism and communism do not just aim to replace the capitalists with another class; they aim to finish social parasitism off once and for all. No wonder, then, that they meet with such fierce opposition. 

The totalitarian equation revisited

So, recapitulating: Are socialism and fascism totalitarian twins to be shunned and resisted at all costs? We won’t waste time here wondering why so many liberals, including a man as gifted as Chris Hedges, embrace such half-truths.  We’ll leave that for another article. Suffice it to say that many, perhaps most, have simply absorbed and regurgitate without realizing the fuller implications, the crude, Cold War invidious cartoon images of the Soviet Union (or China, Cuba, etc.), a fervid cottage industry among intellectuals in the United States and “the West” now for almost a century.  Still, while, as some say, we’re all entitled to our opinions, we’re certainly not entitled to our facts. The record is clear in this regard. 

Despite elaborate attempts at concealment, and while paying plenty of lip service to the higher virtues, capitalism and fascism (its brutal bastard child), are inherently antisocial, and most definitely the wrong road toward a social peace based on social justice.  Just consider a few of this hypocritical duo’s “non-negotiable, defining” traits:

• Capitalism worships and depends on constant economic expansion, a belief that threatens all planetary life.