Wages of Rebellion
-
-
5.0 • 5 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
A bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner offers a compelling case for the necessity of resistance in our turbulent times, and shows how rebellions—however quixotic or irrational they seem—are key to realizing a more ideal world
A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller
In the face of modern conditions, revolution is inevitable. The social inequality, political stagnation, devastation of our environment by corporations, stripping away of our civil liberties, and creation of a monstrous surveillance system—all of these have combined to spark a profound revolutionary moment.
In Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges explores what it takes to be a rebel and why rebellion has become a moral imperative. He tells the stories of radicals and dissenters from around the world and throughout history, from South African activists who dedicated their lives to ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protestors in Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency. Along the way, Hedges is unflinching in showing the cost of a life dedicated to truth and justice.
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.
