Image by Roisin Dubh via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
Left Forum 2014
June 1, 2014
Christopher Hedges, Cornel West, and Richard D. Wolff: Laura Flanders, Moderator
Chris Hedges, Cornel West and Richard Wolff begin a ten part series at the Left Form that will focus on the great modern revolutionary theorists. They begin with perhaps America’s only real revolutionist, Thomas Paine, who in his three great works Common Sense, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason laid down the foundations by which rebellion is morally and legally permissible. They look at whether the conditions set by Paine have been met with the rise of the corporate state and ask whether Paine’s call for the overthrow of British tyranny should become our own.
watch via http://new.livestream.com/accounts/6754733/events/3047872
[Scroll down to 4th video. Hedges begins at 17:53.]
Thomas Paine 1776 & NOW ! – Flanders-West-Hedges-Wolff-Left Forum 2014
collectivistparty on Jun 2, 2014
[Hedges begins at 9 minutes into the video.]
***
Please see Jill Dalton’s write-up for this talk: Chris Hedges, Cornel West, Richard D. Wolff Respond to Thomas Paine’s Question: What Is To Be Done? by Jill Dalton
Why Thomas Paine’s Common Sense Is Important: Chris Hedges & Cornel West & Richard Wolff (2014)
Way Back on Dec 12, 2014
From the archives:
Cornel West: We are Calling for Fundamental Transformation of U.S. Capitalist Society (Must-see)
Thoreau Is Still Relevant by Henry Pelifian
We Are a Movement of Movements by Rivera Sun
The Man From the North: What Are We Waiting For? by Rivera Sun
Left Forum (archive of posts)
Dandelion Salad 
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Good points donw…I agree but it is so difficult these days to have a comprehensive understanding when so many countries differ so much, in so many different ways ~ as Cornel pointed out, it depends which “Third World” we are talking about…or even “First World” for that matter.
Also there is the not insignificant question of gender relations (& species relations) to factor ~ although maybe Laura Flanders does elsewhere…
It seems to me the global system (Richard Wolff’s key focus) is dependent on two principal “linchpins” ~ the first is technology; and the other is the deployment of the financial lubricant that greases the wheels of commerce, the “patrinomial” capital that Thomas Piketty has allegedly delineated so forensically.
Personally, I think Paul Hawken’s ecological theory of Natural Capital was an urgent insight that should now be taken far more seriously; in a proper grown up way ~ in a world that desperately needs to grow up. That, by my lights, is a truly revolutionary idea in a natural nutshell.
Once (in 1996) I conversed at some length with a former senior Japanese businessman, who was then a research fellow in the Arabic Dept at Exeter U. The way he explained it was that business is war, not “like” war, but actual war.
Once you take that notion on board, then the “business” of revolution becomes potentially, even more precisely defined.
I don’t think we’ll ever convince present humanity that war is meaningless (as Chris Hedges might even concur…) but I think we could and should radically reinterpret or reconceptualize what we ought to mean by war in a spiritual sense, and further, how we might conduct our own business and therefore regulate our affairs in a dutifully honourable, inspired, intelligent and virtuous manner.
A truly exceptional interview with Dr Paul Craig Roberts on USAWatchdog here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1vndEG1Za4
It’ll help to follow the whole discussion ~ some draw-dropping information comes later in the final segment, absolutely essential listening…highly recommended. I’d not heard this quality of analysis anywhere else.
Thanks, David. Roberts tells it like it is.
But there is hope. See: https://feature.waveofaction.org/worldwide-wave-of-action-progress-report-part-1/
Social network: https://waveofaction.org/ Dandelion Salad on WoA: https://waveofaction.org/index.php?do=/profile-318/
With regard to Paines, work, ” The Rights of Man” if part of the meaning of this work is pro working mans rights, I suggest the working man has now been so eroded as to his integrity and ability to have clear thought as a result of damage over centuries of calculated harm perpetrated by the controlling elites, that few working class intellectuals left having the ability and energy, now in such short supply as being almost non existent, and the workers being so damaged are now a serious casualty or a right off, the onslaught of hedonistic consumption has now dominated the psyche to such a extent that the issues are now so blurred as to no longer being able to define what is needed for man to begin healing of the self and planet.