Wages of Rebellion
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy movement. In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges -- who has chronicled the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class -- investigates what social and psychological factors cause revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges' message is clear: popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth polarization.
Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels as "sublime madness" -- the state of passion that causes the rebel to engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this "sublime madness."
From South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency, Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable guide to rebellion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's time to eradicate "the pestilence of corporate totalitarianism," according to this lurid anticapitalist manifesto. Likening global capitalism to the Beast of the book of Revelation, Pulitzer Prize winning ex-New York Times correspondent Hedges (War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning) anticipates a nigh-apocalyptic future of deepening poverty and exploitation, ecological destruction, omnipresent surveillance, "looting, pillaging, and killing," and perhaps even a reprise of the Black Death. Our only hope, he maintains, is to revive a revolutionary tradition that he omnidirectionally yokes to such diverse figures as Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, and Julian Assange. The latter-day rebels that he profiles are a tamer collection of Occupiers and hacktivists who mainly espouse Hedges' own preference for non-violence. Hedges's usual acute (if one-sided) reportage is on display lengthy sections on unfairly prosecuted activists and the harshness of America's penal system hit hard but is ill-served by his lack of perspective and exaggeration of every injustice into unreformable tyranny. He suggests no substantive alternative beyond an undefined "socialism," nor any coherent politics besides a "sublime madness" of imaginative zealotry. Hedges's jeremiad will please left-wing romantics, but other readers may find it less inspiring.
