Image by Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Oct 2, 2021
On the show Chris Hedges discusses with the economist Richard Wolff how capitalism works under an autocracy or an oligarchy, the only two political systems left in the United States of America.
The competing systems of power in the United States are divided between oligarchy and autocracy. There are no other alternatives. Neither are pleasant. Each have peculiar and distasteful characteristics. Each pays lip service to the fictions of democracy and constitutional rights. And each exacerbates the widening social and political divide and the potential for violent conflict.
The oligarchs from the establishment Republican Party, figures such as Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, George and Jeb Bush and Bill Kristol, have joined forces with the oligarchs in the Democratic Party to defy the autocrats in the new Republican Party who have coalesced in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump or, if he does not run again for president, his inevitable Frankensteinian doppelgänger.
The alliance of Republican and Democratic oligarchs exposes the burlesque that characterized the old two-party system, where the ruling parties fought over what Sigmund Freud called the “narcissism of minor differences” but were united on all the major structural issues including massive defense spending, free trade deals, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the endless wars, government surveillance, the money-saturated election process, neoliberalism, austerity, deindustrialization, militarized police and the world’s largest prison system.
The liberal class, fearing autocracy, has thrown in its lot with the oligarchs, discrediting and rendering impotent the causes and issues it claims to champion. The bankruptcy of the liberal class is important, for it effectively turns liberal democratic values into the empty platitudes those who embrace autocracy condemn and despise.
The economist Richard Wolff is a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York City. He previous taught economics at Yale University, where he received his PhD in economics, the City University of New York, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Sorbonne.
Wolff’s new book is The Sickness is the System – When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.
See also:
America’s Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy, by Chris Hedges
From the archives:
Chris Hedges: The Legacy of the Obama-Biden Administration
Chris Hedges and David Harvey: The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, Part 2
Chris Hedges and David Harvey: The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles, Part 1
Working Conditions are Getting Worse in the US, by Pete Dolack
The Outlook for the US is Uniquely Bleak, by Finian Cunningham
Joe Biden’s Hollow Resistance: Words vs. Deeds, by Paul Street
Capitalism and Alienation, by Yanis Iqbal
Chris Hedges and Richard D. Wolff: American Economic Illusions
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In this interview, Hedges is continuing with the (apparently new) model that he introduced in his essay “America’s Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy” a few days ago (https://scheerpost.com/2021/09/27/americas-fate-oligarchy-or-autocracy/). I’m glad to see it. Like all models, it is simpler than reality; but like all good models, it does contain some truth and insight.
Yes, and I added the link to his essay in the blog post.