Chris Hedges: Why We Need Professional Revolutionists

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Why We Need Professional Revolutionists

Posted on Nov 24, 2014
By Chris Hedges


No revolt can succeed without professional revolutionists. These revolutionists live outside the formal structures of society. They are financially insecure—Vladimir Lenin spent considerable time in exile appealing for money from disenchanted aristocrats he would later dispossess. They dedicate their lives to fomenting radical change. They do not invest energy in appealing to power to reform. They are prepared to break the law. They, more than others, recognize the fragility of the structures of authority. They are embraced by a vision that makes compromise impossible. Revolution is their full-time occupation. And no revolution is possible without them.

There are environmental, economic and political grass-roots movements, largely unseen by the wider society, that have severed themselves from the formal structures of power. They have formed collectives and nascent organizations dedicated to overthrowing the corporate state. They eschew the rigid hierarchical structures of past revolutionary movements—although this may change—for more amorphous collectives. Plato referred to professional revolutionists as his philosophers. John Calvin called them his saints. Machiavelli called them his Republican Conspirators. Lenin labeled them his Vanguard. All revolutionary upheavals are built by these entities.

The revolutionists call on us to ignore the political charades and spectacles orchestrated by our oligarchic masters around electoral politics. They tell us to dismiss the liberals who look to a political system that is dead. They expose the press as an echo chamber for the elites.

The revolutionist is a curious hybrid of the practical and the impractical. He or she is aware of facing nearly impossible odds. The revolutionist has at once a lucid understanding of power, along with the vagaries of human nature, and a commitment to overthrowing power. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_we_need_professional_revolutionists_20141123

[merrily]

3. Like the Founders we idolize?

[KingCharlemagne]

10. How is posting an op-ed piece (without comment) 'promoting violent

revolution on DU'?

As opposed to, say, simply informing DU about a different opinion?

Rec to counter your (semi-serious) threat to narc.

[RiverLover]

11. Read the frigging article before saying stupid stuff.

Geesh.

Wolin said that because the systems of indoctrination and propaganda within the corporate state are so sophisticated and pervasive, much of our initial revolutionary activity must be focused on political education

[merrily]

15. No sympathy with those who object to the article, but note the word "initial."

[Zorra]

4. ...

[marmar]

7. Who said anything about VIOLENT revolution?

[marmar]

9. NOWHERE does Chris Hedges call for violent revolution .....

...... what are you reading?

[RiverLover]

12. WRONG. You are being a fool. Read the article!!!

[merrily]

16. What if someone did say something about violent revolution?

The Founders sure did, yet we practically worship them.

[KingCharlemagne]

17. Here's what Mark Twain had to say about violence. Still bears reading

and thinking about today. GASP! Was Mark Twain 'promoting violent revolution'?:

THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

[merrily]

14. Definitely yes, but more active.

[merrily]

2. You don't have to be financially insecure. You can empathize with those who are.

[RiverLover]

13. +1 ~nt

[heaven05]

18. interesting

something's brewing, don't know what, but something for good or ill of us all.

[HoosierCowboy]

19. O'Brian on what the Inner Party fears the most

Last edited Mon Nov 24, 2014, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)

Somewhere in 1984 Smith's tormentor talks about what really brings down a power structure. not revolution, which merely replaces one despot with another, but the collective descent into corruption of the proletariat.

or to put it other terms

What happens when everyone becomes a pirate? What happens when everybody rips off the system? It is the honesty of the base that provides the continuity of a power structure, nothing else.

Hate Wally World? All the strikes and demonstrations won't bring it down.
What would bring it down?
Every day, every employee, every customer, steals an item worth one dollar, and Wally World goes out of business in a month.

The same applies to any human power structure

[Silent3]

20. Perhaps if I don't want a revolution that turns out like Lenin's, I don't want revolutionists...

...too much like Lenin.

There's a lot, a whole lot, I'd like to see changed. The success rate for revolution achieving changes that I'd like to see, rather than just producing a lot of bloodshed followed by a new (maybe worse, maybe not all that different) mess isn't all that high.

[BlindTiresias]

21. Actually, it is very high.

Even if the revolution fails it changes the whole power dynamic of society and forces the elite to change. You can't get caught up in the fact there is violence, as there was violence to begin with. Power itself it maintained by violence and, ultimately, only violence.

[Silent3]

23. I suppose it your main goal is revenge, not over all societal improvement...

...then knowing that one elite has been punished before the new elite comes in might be enough for you.

I don't see that as being worth all that bloodshed, however, which typical is way more suffering and violence than the status quo -- so, yes, I will indeed get "caught up" in concern over that.

[BlindTiresias]

24. Uh, but revolutions and upheavals did bring social/economic improvement.

What we take as the "big failure of revolution" in the French Revolution did much to ignite the desire for the then revolutionary concept of a Liberal Republic on the continent, which was also fueled by the only partially successful American War of Independence (an act of violence). Yeah, it was violent, but what do you think the French monarchy was founded upon? Good wishes and butterflies? Every society ever was founded on mythic violence, so unless you are saying that no society has ever improved at all or been even a moderately beneficial social arrangement then you aren't being consistent with your argumentation.

And no, the status quo in nearly any society is just as violent as the revolution it sows the seeds of. It just has the advantage of giving a formal veneer to its violence by wrapping it in structure and institutions.

[Silent3]

25. I'd like to see some stats, not just claims...

...that as many people were dying under the czars as the millions killed during the Russian Revolution.

That just as many people were dying under Batista as died when Castro took over, and that someone that was an overall improvement in how people were treated.

That just as much suffering and death occurred under the Nationalist Chinese government when that government wasn't at war than when the Communist revolution overthrew it?

How about Pol Pot's little revolution? Just an indistinguishable blip in the background noise of violence?

All of the revolutionary upheavals throughout Central and South America were really no more than a bit more of the same, status quo levels of violence, merely a change in who's hands were getting bloody, not how much blood was shed?

I'm hearing nothing so far but obnoxious armchair revolutionary BS.

[BlindTiresias]

27. Yeah

You are very much caught up in the subjective violent act, e.g. actually killing people. Structural violence entails much more than simple killing, such as structural starvation, imprisonment, and denying the ability of individuals to have political representation.

Your red baiting aside, what you are essentially denying is all violent upheaval ever, up to and including our own foundational violence of the American War of Independence. FYI, the British were actually rather benevolent rulers to the Colonials, so by your own standard we as a country shouldn't exist. If we are going to misattribute positions to each other I could easily say your ideal government would be an extremely stable and unjust dictatorship, whose overthrow would be unjust if even more than one person than that government killed was killed in an upheaval. But that would be an absurd position.

[Silent3]

29. Caring about the magnitude and number of violent acts is hard "caught up in the subjective".

You seem to think all you have to do is label something "violence" and suddenly who's doing what to whom and how much becomes a practically mute point. "Oh, well, there's always violence, so why not this other violence instead?"

As for the American revolution, the goals were a whole lot better, and the results a lot better, than Lenin's goals or Lenin's results. Of course, if a peaceful solution could have been found with the British that would have been even better. I'm certainly not saying there aren't political goals worth fighting for, and systems deserving overthrow. I'm going to, however, simply hand-wave all violence away with a convenient "violence, shmiolence, it's always there in a different form anyway."

Since the OP specifically mentions Lenin, it's hardly "red baiting" to bring up the many negative examples of Communist revolutions and their outcomes. Theocratic revolutions have turned out badly too. I can't think of an example of a right wing "revolution" off hand, since the right wing take overs I can think of have been more like military coups. What about ethic and nationalistic revolutions? Great outcomes there, huh?

The American Revolution was a rarity in being an improvement possible worth the price in blood, and hardly a pure success given how native Americans and blacks were treated in the aftermath. The French Revolution was a pretty fucked up mess that had to go through Napolean and a restoration of monarchy before eventually getting it somewhat right.

While I can't think of an historic example of a right wing revolution off hand, if you go cheering for a revolution in today's US, there's a damned good chance that that's what you'd get, rather than any liberal progressive pipe dream you might have. I'd sure rather work within even a badly broken system that roll the dice that a bloody, destructive second American civil war wouldn't put right wingers, and maybe even a lovely little fundamentalist Christian theocracy in power instead.

[socialist_n_TN]

31. Interesting take on the American revolution's goals and Lenin's revolution's goals......

The Bolsheviks instituted one of the more "liberal" personal libertarian agendas the world had ever seen at that time. No official sexism, no official racism, no official religious persecution, etc. Whereas the American Revolution wrought the rule of the bourgeoisie, only male landowners could vote, slaves could be held and actually counted as 3/5 of a person for representational purposes, although they had no representatives of course.

I'll take Lenin's goals over the American revolutionaries goals any day.

[Silent3]

37. For its time, however, the vision of the American revolutionaries was a remarkably progressive one.

What was bad about the fledgling US (slavery, treatment of native Americans, sexism, favoritism toward landowners) was bad before our revolution as well.

My attitude toward revolution is whether the end results are going to be worth the price in suffering and destruction. The number of deaths due to the American Revolution numbered in the tens of thousands. Deaths in communist revolutions have been in the tens of millions.

What we got for what we paid is a much, much better deal.

Further, I'm sure you like Lenin's goals much more than I do. But even where I'd agree with Lenin's goals regarding sexism, racism, religious freedom, etc., I'd have disagreed with other parts, and I'd have doubted that things would work out as he wanted them to ("dialectical materialism" and the notion of the historical inevitability of communism were bullshit).

[BlindTiresias]

44. You don't know what the end results are

You can't know because it is a future event you have no epistemological access to, and if your criteria is "could be worse" then you should be against all revolutions/rebellions/upheavals ever no matter what. You could at least have the courage to be a proper conservative and deny revolutionary possibility period, and extend that even to ventures like the United States but I suspect you will be in a minority there.

[Silent3]

46. There's a thing called "odds".

No, I don't know what the end results are going to be of any human action for sure, but some things are much likelier to work out better than others.

Since a mushy sort of of dimensionless, unscaled view of the world seems to be your thing, however, I wouldn't expect you to get that. Or maybe you'd kind of sort of get it, but then dismiss it with some more babble about epistemology and ontology.

[BlindTiresias]

47. What were the odds of the American War of Independance being successful?

"It was successful" is trivially true, but any number of things could have gone wrong and made it a failure. Even after the successful war there were many issues that could have been interpreted as failure by the conservatives of the time (and were, actually). So no, you don't know what the "odds" are of future events with any kind of certainty, many victories that were obvious on paper did not come to fruition in reality, and fortuitous events have brought other historical inevitabilities into question.

You may take umbrage with my use of the term epistemology but what else could I use? You really don't have sufficient access to that information; there is no way to know what you know until it has already transpired, and then you are just analyzing past events not looking into the future. This is why even with really robust statistical models in the social sciences there is always a good degree of uncertainty in terms of the predictive power of our models. And these are usually analyzing very narrow phenomenon that is dealing with but a minute fraction of the variables involved in massive historical movements like revolution and upheaval. You can't take it all into account and so your estimation of the odds is always uncertain. This is not even taking into account the fact that as the scenario matures you will be dealing with new information you have to take into account, so unless you are some post-singularity Bayesian megacomputer you are going to have a really hard time dynamically assessing the "odds" with the kind of certainty you seem to demand.

[Silent3]

48. I don't know how to figure exact odds of success... so fuck it! Let's revolt!

I don't know how to numerically compare the suffering that happens during peace time under various forms of repression that don't stand out as clearly as battlefield casualties and armed massacres and starvation -- so fuck it, it's all the same.

Sorry, but the answer to having a hard time estimating odds and measuring suffering is not "it's all the same".

[BlindTiresias]

39. Yep

I am saying there is a persistent background of violence in all institutions, but people like you handwave away that form of violence and instead focus only on violence that is acute and subjective in a manner that curiously only supports the status quo, even making special exceptions for your own favored state that makes their bloody beginnings somehow more moral. The self determination of a people is always moral, no matter how many faux objective modern liberal standards you want to impose on them. In this way your position is no different from a Roman of the late empire lamenting the violence of the Germanics against Rome when his comfort was literally based on the slavery and violence against millions. As a student of history I frankly do not care about the left or right paradigm in the context of self determination, as that is a modernistic post-enlightenment way of framing sides that, frankly, is already beginning to deteriorate. Was Lenin right? Absolutely. Were the colonials also right? Absolutely. The french before the revolution? Just as correct. The Parthians against Seleukid domination? Also equally right. Any people that asserts their own will towards their own destiny is correct in doing so, regardless of the outcome. This is deontological for me, and you appear to be a consequentialist, but there you go. If there was a region of the country that earnestly felt that far right politics was their best bet for self determination then I would disagree with them and would fight them if they encroached in my own territory, but they would be justified in making their will a reality.

[Silent3]

41. Why even bother arguing about anything then?

If consequences don't matter, everyone is right, all "violence" gets smeared into a indistinguishable mass?

Deontological, my ass. Talk about looking at the world from a position of comfort -- that's the only place this kind of faux intellectual BS can come from.

[BlindTiresias]

42. Violence does not matter (because it is everywhere)

Only the goals matter. To assess outcome as means for justification is also empirically bizarre as you never know what the outcome is. You are free to disregard this position but your view is extremely ahistorical and chronocentric, and in my estimation is simply wrong.

[AndyTiedye]

26. Nowadays, Revolutions Get Hijacked by Religious Fundamentalists

It wouldn't be Islamists here as it was in Egypt and Iran, it would be "Christian" Dominionists, but it would be a theocracy nonetheless.

[cali]

22. Hedges has been indulging himself in fantasy for far too long

you can't foment revolution with a passive citizenry, more interested in the latest apps than anything else.

[dembotoz]

38. so very sad, but so very true

[pothos]

45. unfortunately your critique rings true.

people that don't want a revolution aren't going to have one.

[DonCoquixote]

28. a great error

"There is nothing rational about rebellion. To rebel against insurmountable odds is an act of faith. And without this faith the rebel is doomed. This faith is intrinsic to the rebel the way caution and prudence are intrinsic to those who seek to fit into existing power structures. The rebel, possessed by inner demons and angels, is driven by visions familiar to religious mystics. And it is the rebel alone who can save us from corporate tyranny. I do not know if these rebels will succeed. But I do know that a world without them is hopeless."

Actually, there IS somethign rational about rebllion, it is the course you take when you have no where else to go, BUT, if you allow people who are "more like mystics" to take control, you have what happens in almost every revolution, violence and madness disguised as virtue. What we need ar epople who can apprack revolutions like a science, like medicine, knowing where to cut and where to stitch, when to does and how much to dose.

[joshcryer]

30. Bourgeoisie tripe from a 1%er who trashed Occupy.

[marmar]

32. huh?

Chris Hedges was a huge supporter of occupy.

[joshcryer]

33. His "Cancer of Occupy" article spelled the death of Occupy.

Because of petty infighting.

[Blue_Tires]

34. Some of the "professionals" came down to Ferguson from Chicago back in the summer

and their antics went over like a lead balloon...

[Eleanors38]

35. Some revs. "succeed" less by the power, numbers,

and military strength of the revolutionaries, and more by the collapse of a calcified, weak and incompetent existing order: Castro had a diddly military force, and faced a regular military force which had little interest in defending a corrupt regime; he just pushed a domino over. The Viet war, civil rights demos, ghetto riots didn't threaten the order 45-50 yrs ago because the system was viable, pay was good, and folks were vested (rationally) in that system. That system is gone.

I am amazed how some folks, so versed in spouting economic determinist slogans, fail to see that the existing order is far more vulnerable now than it was 50 yrs ago. Due to -- voila! -- economic breakdown. But hepcat chesnuts about "following the money" are cheap buy-ins to worldly status, not a real assessment of how things have changed. In any case, when revolutions occur, most people don't take sides; the strongest minority wins.

Some here don't want to concede an American exceptionalism, but there is a very plain one: The civilian population is and always has been Heavily armed. Most revs. pass out the guns at the last moment to certain groups or self-styled cadres. Ain't that way here.

[Recursion]

36. Not sure I'd put forward Lenin as a revolutionary we want to emulate

[xchrom]

40. Du rec

[seveneyes]

43. Is Hedges applying for the job?

A job unfulfilled is an opportunity.