[D66] Northites vallen Chris Hedges af

[René Oudeweg]

[Hedges heeft gelijk, er is geen morele vooruitgang en het is hopeloos.]

wsws.org
The demoralized pessimism of Chris Hedges’ “New Dark Age”
5–6 minutes

This article is an edited version of a tweet that was initially posted on X.

Last year, Chris Hedges advocated self-immolation as a way to protest 
the Gaza genocide. In his latest demoralized screed, he transfers blame 
for the crimes of the Israeli-Zionist state and capitalist imperialism 
to the entire human race. Gaza, he proclaims, proves the futility of any 
belief in the possibility of human progress.

In support of his insistence of the hopeless state of humanity, he 
counterpoises what Hedges claims were the pessimistic views of Auguste 
Blanqui to those of Hegel and Marx.

Hedges writes: “The 19th century socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, unlike 
nearly all of his contemporaries, dismissed the belief central to Georg 
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, that human history is a linear 
progression toward equality and greater morality.”

As so often in his previous writings, Hedges demonstrates once again 
that he understands nothing of the philosophical foundations of Marxism 
and the materialist conception of history. Neither Hegel or Marx claimed 
that history is “a linear progression” toward paradise.

Hegel (1770-1831), who witnessed the complex and tragic fate of the 
French Revolution, famously described history as a “slaughter bench at 
which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of 
individuals have been victimized.” He explained, albeit in an idealist 
manner, that the historic development of humanity proceeds through 
contradiction and conflict.

As for Marx and Engels, they wrote in the Communist Manifesto (1847) 
that the class struggle leads to “the revolutionary reconstitution of 
society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” They 
rejected any form of simplistic determinism. Marx and Engels explained 
that the contradictions of the capitalist system created the objective 
possibility of socialism. But its realization and the fate of humanity 
would be decided in struggle.
Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881)

August Blanqui did not reject the possibility of progress and devoted 
his entire life to the cause of revolution. But this great fighter had 
no understanding of the socioeconomic basis of revolution and the 
objectively revolutionary role of the working class. Blanqui conceived 
of the overthrow of capitalism as the outcome of a coup d’état organized 
by a small group of conspirators.

Engels wrote in 1874 that Blanqui 'has neither a socialist theory nor 
any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political 
activity he was mainly a 'man of action'...” Three years earlier, in 
1871, the Marxist conception of revolution as a mass movement of the 
working class had been substantiated in the uprising of the Parisian 
working class and the creation of the Commune.

All the great Marxists of the 20th century warned that the crisis of 
capitalism led to one of two outcomes. They were, as stated by Rosa 
Luxemburg, “socialism or barbarism.” The scientifically grounded 
understanding of the nature of the capitalist epoch underlay Lenin’s 
conception of the decisive role of the revolutionary party.

In 1938, responding to the rise of fascism, the defeats of the European 
working class as a consequence of the betrayals of Stalinism and Social 
Democracy, Trotsky wrote in the founding document of the Fourth 
International, the crisis of mankind is the crisis of revolutionary 
leadership.

Hedges writes: “Campaigns of mass killing unleash the feral qualities 
that lie latent in all humans ... It is a testament to our hypocrisy, 
cruelty and racism.” This is a libel against humanity. To blame humanity 
in general for the genocide is to obfuscate the specific responsibility 
of the imperialist leaders and the system they represent for the crimes 
committed against the people of Gaza. However incorrect his politics, 
Chris Hedges himself bears no responsibility whatsoever for the 
genocide. He is a politically disoriented journalist who is overwhelmed 
by the ongoing atrocities. But Netanyahu and his cohorts, and their 
imperialist enablers, are mass murderers. This is not a minor difference.

Hedges claims that mankind is entering a “New Dark Age,” from which 
there is no escape. In reality, mankind is entering a new era of 
revolutionary struggle. The imperialist-backed Gaza genocide has been 
met by protests involving millions across the globe. The crimes of 
imperialism—the desperate attempt of the ruling class to resolve its 
crisis through fascism and war—is setting into motion a mass movement 
against capitalism. The historic task of this era is to resolve the 
crisis of revolutionary leadership by building the World Party of 
Socialist Revolution.