ANUS HORRIBILIS

But EAB, be careful with Hedges, who alternatively amazes and disappoints.The man is at heart a liberal, with all the limits and vices of liberalism, including knee-jerk anticommunism. As an ethnocentrist believing that “American democracy”, though never practiced, is a good mould for all nations and cultures, he has no problem calling leaders of anti-imperialist nations, such as Xi, Putin, Maduro, etc., “authoritarians”. This is not to denigrate his work, which, overall,is often remarkable. In an editorial deck I wrote for this article, DEBATE Chris Hedges on CHINA, COMMUNISM, FREEDOM & ANARCHISM, I said:

EDITOR’S NOTE:
This is an interesting exchange and one difficult to categorise. For one thing, it is (as some would expect), Chris Hedges who pushes the notion of “eternal anarchism” for intellectuals like him, suspicious of centralised power in any form. He’s quick to clarify that while admiring of anarchism at the personal level, he does not see it as applicable as a system any time soon, or ever, due to the complexities of a large industrial society. Except in cases where this anarchism is implemented in “worker co-ops”. In this regard, his old anti-Sovietism crops up again, when he says that Chomsky thought the communists had betrayed the anarchists in Spain—an old bourgeois shibboleth. Kropotkin he notes, believed that the limit for an anarchist “democratic group” was 150 people. Hedges and Jyotishman seem in agreement that anarchism is the “natural posture” of “free men”, visualising a society of great abundance where anarchism can be finally put into practice. The irony here is that what they are visualising is the realisation of communism, the stage where, according to Engels, the state’s coercive functions simply wither away. The problem here, then, is how does humanity reach this exalted state? Obviously, anarchism has not ever worked as a method to overthrow the capitalist dictatorship (hating the Leninist notion of the vanguard party, their preference is the spontaneous insurrection) and conquer the state. Nor, once the oppressor class has been defeated and disempowered, does it work as a system of governance (a flaw which both admit), and yet this is the system that we must assume will be directing a complex and embattled society for an indefinite period of construction of the new order visualised.

These are major contradictions that the bourgeois mind is liable to disregard. Perhaps, owing to their sympathies for the ideals of anarchism, the speakers grossly underestimate the dangers of counter-revolution and myriad other obstacles (for which you need a state to organise efficiently and defend against!), during the period of, let’s call it, “new order construction”. Apparently, both Hedges and Jyotishman seem to envision a far shorter period of transition than it usually turns out to be, as history abundantly demonstrates. In this regard, they should put their prejudices aside and read a bit more about the practice of democratic centralism. They would see that it allows for much more free discussion than they expected, albeit bracketed by the exigencies of being implemented in a period of internal social war.

This conversation should have been evaluated by a person like Michael Parenti, but unfortunately, he is not available anymore. And while we understand why Jyotishman was impeccably polite and actually even conciliatory toward Hedges, we feel he conceded too much. In doing so, he failed to probe Hedges by now well-established anti-communism, nor the proper role of revolutionary intellectuals during social transformations. Finally, I should think that people on the left should not use cavalierly the term “repressive” or “unfree” to describe nations such as China, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, the USSR, etc.—while in the midst of a painful and complex process of socialist construction, constantly aggravated by the pressures of imperialism. —PG

And see this one too: Chris Hedges – Who is He, and What is His Purpose?