[Peace-discuss] The World Liberal Opportunists Made
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Thu Oct 28 23:10:12 CDT 2010
[Hedges here uses "liberal class" to describe what I've been calling the
"political class" (traditional since G. Mosca a century ago). Of course neither
of us is using the word in Marx' sense, where class = roughly a group who have
the same role in the process of production. "Liberal class" here means a
privileged segment of the working class (= those who have to give up control
over their work of head and hands in order to eat regularly), almost an
"aristocracy of labor" as Lenin uses it in/Imperialism/.]
"...The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the
college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate
assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced
... The liberal class ... failed to defend traditional liberal values during the
long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and
comfort in the corporate state ... the disparity between the rhetoric of liberal
values and the rapacious system of inverted totalitarianism the liberal class
serves makes liberal elites, including Barack Obama, a legitimate source of
public ridicule ... the rising right-wing populists, correctly, ask why liberals
should be tolerated when their rhetoric bears no relation to reality and their
presence has no influence on power ... Liberals decry ... the refusal of the
Democratic Party to restore habeas corpus or halt the looting of the U.S.
Treasury on behalf of Wall Street speculators, but continue to support a
president who cravenly serves the interests of the corporate state ... But the
uselessness of the liberal class is not lost on the tens of millions of
Americans who suffer the awful indignities of the corporate state ... liberals
become as despised as the power elite they serve ... We have been robbed of a
vocabulary to describe reality. We decry the excesses of capitalism without
demanding a dismantling of the corporate state. Our pathetic response is to be
herded to political rallies by skillful publicists to shout inanities like "Yes
we can!' ... The liberal class now honors an unwritten quid pro quo, one set in
place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve corporate interests in exchange for
money, access and admittance into the halls of power. The press, the
universities, the labor movement, the arts, the church and the Democratic Party,
fearful of irrelevance and desperate to retain their positions within the
corporate state, will accelerate their purges of those who speak the
unspeakable, those who name what cannot be named. It is the gutless and bankrupt
liberal class, even more than the bizarre collection of moral and intellectual
trolls now running for office, who are our most perfidious opponents."
The World Liberal Opportunists Made
Posted on Oct 25, 2010
By Chris Hedges
The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which looks set to make sweeping
gains in the midterm elections, is the direct result of a collapse of
liberalism. It is the product of bankrupt liberal institutions, including the
press, the church, universities, labor unions, the arts and the Democratic
Party. The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the
college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate
assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not
misplaced. The liberal class is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to
speak in the prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to act.
It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the long night of
corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and comfort in the
corporate state. The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an
expression of the liberal class' flagrant betrayal of the citizenry.
The liberal class, which once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible,
functioned traditionally as a safety valve. During the Great Depression, with
the collapse of capitalism, it made possible the New Deal. During the turmoil of
the 1960s, it provided legitimate channels within the system to express the
discontent of African-Americans and the anti-war movement. But the liberal
class, in our age of neo-feudalism, is now powerless. It offers nothing but
empty rhetoric. It refuses to concede that power has been wrested so efficiently
from the hands of citizens by corporations that the Constitution and its
guarantees of personal liberty are irrelevant. It does not act to mitigate the
suffering of tens of millions of Americans who now make up a growing and
desperate permanent underclass. And the disparity between the rhetoric of
liberal values and the rapacious system of inverted totalitarianism the liberal
class serves makes liberal elites, including Barack Obama, a legitimate source
of public ridicule. The liberal class, whether in universities, the press or the
Democratic Party, insists on clinging to its privileges and comforts even if
this forces it to serve as an apologist for the expanding cruelty and
exploitation carried out by the corporate state.
Populations will endure repression from tyrants as long as these rulers continue
to effectively manage and wield power. But human history has amply demonstrated
that once those in positions of power become redundant and impotent, yet retain
the trappings and privileges of power, they are swiftly and brutally discarded.
Tocqueville observed that the French, on the eve of their revolution, hated the
aristocrats about to lose their power far more than they had ever hated them
before. The increased hatred directed at the aristocratic class occurred because
as the aristocracy lost real power there was no decline in their fortunes. As
long as the liberal class had even limited influence, whether through the press
or the legislative process, liberals were tolerated and even respected. But once
the liberal class lost all influence it became a class of parasites. The liberal
class, like the déclassé French aristocracy, has no real function within the
power elite. And the rising right-wing populists, correctly, ask why liberals
should be tolerated when their rhetoric bears no relation to reality and their
presence has no influence on power.
The death of the liberal class, however, is catastrophic for our democracy. It
means there is no longer any check to a corporate apparatus designed to further
enrich the power elite. It means we cannot halt the plundering of the nation by
Wall Street speculators and corporations. An ineffectual liberal class, in
short, means there is no hope, however remote, of a correction or a reversal
through the political system and electoral politics. The liberals'
disintegration ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and the
middle class will find expression in a rejection of traditional liberal
institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy. The very forces that
co-opted the liberal class and are responsible for the impoverishment of the
state will, ironically, reap benefits from the collapse. These corporate
manipulators are busy channeling rage away from the corporate and military
forces hollowing out the nation from the inside and are turning that anger
toward the weak remnants of liberalism. It does not help our cause that liberals
indeed turned their backs on the working and middle class.
The corporate state has failed to grasp the vital role the liberal class
traditionally plays in sustaining a stable power system. The corporate state, by
emasculating the liberal class, has opted for a closed system of polarization,
gridlock and political theater in the name of governance. It has ensured a
further destruction of state institutions so that government becomes even more
ineffectual and despised. The collapse of the constitutional state, presaged by
the death of the liberal class, has created a power vacuum that a new class of
speculators, war profiteers, gangsters and killers, historically led by
charismatic demagogues, will enthusiastically fill. It opens the door to overtly
authoritarian and fascist movements. These movements rise to prominence by
ridiculing and taunting the liberal class for its weakness, hypocrisy and
uselessness. The promises of these proto-fascist movements are fantastic and
unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.
The liberal class, despite becoming an object of public scorn, still prefers the
choreographed charade. Liberals decry, for example, the refusal of the
Democratic Party to restore habeas corpus or halt the looting of the U.S.
Treasury on behalf of Wall Street speculators, but continue to support a
president who cravenly serves the interests of the corporate state. As long as
the charade of democratic participation is played, the liberal class does not
have to act. It can maintain its privileged status. It can continue to live in a
fictional world where democratic reform and responsible government exist. It can
pretend it has a voice and influence in the corridors of power. But the
uselessness of the liberal class is not lost on the tens of millions of
Americans who suffer the awful indignities of the corporate state.
The death of the liberal class cuts citizens off from the mechanisms of power.
Liberal institutions such as the church, the press, the university, the
Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions once set the parameters for limited
self-criticism and small, incremental reforms and offered hope for piecemeal
justice and change. The liberal class could decry the excesses of the state,
work to mitigate them and champion basic human rights. It posited itself as the
conscience of the nation. It permitted the nation, through its appeal to public
virtues and the public good, to define itself as being composed of a virtuous
and even noble people. The liberal class was permitted a place within a
capitalist democracy because it also vigorously discredited radicals within
American society who openly defied the excesses of corporate capitalism and who
denounced a political system run by and on behalf of corporations. The real
enemy of the liberal class has never been Glenn Beck, but Noam Chomsky.
The purging and silencing of independent and radical thinkers as well as
iconoclasts have robbed the liberal class of vitality. The liberal class has cut
itself off from the roots of creative and bold thought, from those forces and
thinkers who could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with
the power elite. Liberals exude a tepid idealism utterly divorced from daily
life. And this is why every television clip of Barack Obama is so palpably pathetic.
Unions, organizations formerly steeped in the doctrine of class warfare and
filled with those who sought broad social and political rights for the working
class, have been transformed into domesticated junior partners of the capitalist
class. Cars rolling out of the Ford and GM plants in Michigan were said to have
been made by Ford-UAW. And where unions still exist, they have been reduced to
simple bartering tools, if that. The social demands of unions early in the 20th
century that gave the working class weekends off, the right to strike, the
eight-hour workday and Social Security have been abandoned. Universities,
especially in political science and economics departments, parrot the
discredited ideology of unregulated capitalism and globalization. They have no
new ideas. Artistic expression, along with most religious worship, is largely
self-absorbed narcissism meant to entertain without offense. The Democratic
Party and the press have become courtiers to the power elite and corporate servants.
Once the liberal class can no longer moderate the savage and greedy inclinations
of the capitalist class, once, for example, labor unions are reduced to the role
of bartering away wage increases and benefits, once public education is gutted
and the press no longer gives a voice to the poor and the working class,
liberals become as despised as the power elite they serve. The collapse of
liberal institutions means those outside the circles of power are trapped, with
no recourse, and this is why many Americans are turning in desperation toward
idiotic right-wing populists who at least understand the power of hatred as a
mobilizing force.
The liberal class no longer holds within its ranks those who have the moral
autonomy or physical courage to defy the power elite. The rebels, from Chomsky
to Sheldon Wolin to Ralph Nader, have been marginalized, shut out of the
national debate and expelled from liberal institutions. The liberal class lacks
members with the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market
ideologies. It offers no ideological alternatives. It remains bound to a
Democratic Party that has betrayed every basic liberal principle including
universal healthcare, an end to our permanent war economy, a robust system of
public education, a vigorous defense of civil liberties, job creation, the right
to unionize and welfare for the poor.
"The left once dismissed the market as exploitative," Russell Jacoby writes. "It
now honors the market as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass
culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once
honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as
elitist. The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as
profound. We are witnessing not simply a defeat of the left, but its conversion
and perhaps inversion."
Capitalism, and especially corporate capitalism, was once viewed as a system to
be fought. But capitalism is no longer challenged in public discourse.
Capitalist bosses, men such as Warren Buffett, George Soros and Donald Trump,
are treated bizarrely as sages and celebrities, as if greed and manipulation had
become the highest moral good. As Wall Street steals billions of taxpayer
dollars, as it perpetrates massive fraud to throw people out of their homes, as
the ecosystem that sustains the planet is polluted and destroyed, we do not know
what to do or say. We have been robbed of a vocabulary to describe reality. We
decry the excesses of capitalism without demanding a dismantling of the
corporate state. Our pathetic response is to be herded to political rallies by
skillful publicists to shout inanities like "Yes we can!"
The liberal class is finished. Neither it nor its representatives will provide
the leadership or resistance to halt our slide toward despotism. The liberal
class prefers comfort and privilege to confrontation. It will not halt the
corporate assault or thwart the ascendancy of the corporate state. It will
remain intolerant within its ranks of those who do. The liberal class now honors
an unwritten quid pro quo, one set in place by Bill Clinton, to cravenly serve
corporate interests in exchange for money, access and admittance into the halls
of power. The press, the universities, the labor movement, the arts, the church
and the Democratic Party, fearful of irrelevance and desperate to retain their
positions within the corporate state, will accelerate their purges of those who
speak the unspeakable, those who name what cannot be named. It is the gutless
and bankrupt liberal class, even more than the bizarre collection of moral and
intellectual trolls now running for office, who are our most perfidious opponents.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_liberal_opportunists_made_20101025/
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher,
Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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