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Chris Hedges lectures on inverted totalitarianism, fall of capitalism

The world is spiraling into a inverted totalitarian political system in which the anonymity and the assault by the corporate state will bring about the fall of capitalism, Chris Hedges, prominent socialist, best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize journalist, said at a lecture on Tuesday.

Inverted totalitarianism, Hedges explained, describes a form of social organization in which corporations have purported to pay fidelity to the common people but silently possess agendas that are against them. The fundamental pillars that make capitalism possible are pillaged by the wealthiest one percent of the world, who would own more than half of the world’s wealth by next year, he said.

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He added that revolutionary socialist Karl Marx had foreseen this in his works, claiming that late stages of capitalism would involve corporate monopoly over the global market and the obliteration of free market competition.

Hedges referenced a May 22 New York Timeseditorial, titled “Banks as Felons, or Criminality Lite” to suggest that the two stock market crashes in the 21stcentury are living fulfillment of what socialist philosophers warned against years ago. The 2008 economic crisis was the enactment of a welfare state for the rich, Hedges said, and the volatile cycle of boom and bust will result in “fictitious capital” and the “vaporization of money.”

“The banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry, with almost $9 trillion in assets and more than half the size of the U.S. economy, would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare,” he said. “The idea of capitalism, free trade, free markets, individualism, innovation, self-development works only in the utopian mind of a true believer like Alan Greenspan, never in reality.”

He maintained that the poor and middle classes in the United States are subjected to destruction by corporate whim, as jobs are outsourced to countries like Bangladesh and China, where people or “serfs” earn 22 cents an hour.

Hedges drew several comparisons between Herman Melville’s masterwork “Moby Dick” and the U.S. capitalist state. The novel, which involves a crew’s self-destructive quest to capture a white whale, highlights murderous obsessions, violent impulses and moral weakness, which Hedges said are features of the corporate state.

“Those on the ship on some level knew they were doomed, just as many of us know that a consumer culture based on corporate profit, limitless exploitation and continued extraction of fossil fuels is doomed,” he said.

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Those that are aware of these insights and are aware of the dangers of corporate control are subjected to corporate assault and ignored, accused of purporting oppressively apocalyptic rhetoric, he added.

In discussing climate change, Hedges said he recognized the difficulty of accepting the truth behind the destruction of the ecosystem. He explained that because addressing climate change requires both emotional and intellectual acceptance, the corporate rhetoric assuring people that everything is fine is more appealing and persuasive.

The lecture, titled “The Wages of Rebellion,” was sponsored by the Wilson College Signature Lecture Series, Council for the Humanities and the Wilson School and took place in McCormick Hall 101 at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

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