sillypunk's review
4.0
Well, that was relentlessly depressing. It was good but I felt the polemic sometimes edged into hyperbole.
Excellent line though: I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists
Excellent line though: I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists
eleanorvacant's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
secret_daydreamer's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
jakeyjake's review
Eugene B. Debs: "Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said it then as I said it now, that while there is a lower-class, I am in it. And while there is a criminal element, I am of it. And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
I stumbled on this thinking it was more about literal 'wages' and labor strikes. Instead, it is about the way that rebels and revolutionaries have endured in spite of attacks from the state, the corporate oligarchy, and even left-leaning liberals. Hedges talks to and about revolutionaries who challenge power in radical ways, with subjects from Thomas Payne, Louis Auguste Blanqui, Bryan Stevenson, Edward Snowden, Jeremy Hammond, Václav Havel, Prison Watch, Eugene Debs, and others. This was published in 2015 so I'd have loved Hedges to include more from the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests and how that rebellion has taken a toll on some of its founders.
This book has some powerful ideas with quotes and stories that reiterate the need to challenge power aggressively by coming together to organize with solidarity and mutual aid at the forefront of movements.
"The rebel shows us that there is no hope for correction or reversal by appealing to power. The rebel makes it clear that it is only by overthrowing traditional systems of power that we can be liberated. The denunciation of the rebel is a matter of self-preservation for the liberal class."
------Notes--------
"The idea that the very oppressed and poor are important as initiating and maintaining revolutions is a bourgeois one... No government has ever fallen before its attackers until it has lost control over its armed forces."
-I believe this is a quote by Britton in the introduction
"Louis Auguste Blanqui dismissed the idea, central to Marx, that human history is a linear progression towards equality and greater morality. He warned that this absurd positivism is the lie perpetuated by oppressors...I am not amongst those that say progress can be taken for granted, that humanity cannot go backwards."
-I should read more Blanqui!
"As a species, we're doomed by hope. Reality is dismissed when it is unpleasant."
-Margaret Atwood
re the supreme court refusing to hear certain cases of government imprisoning based on "If we do not rapidly build militant, mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose what remains of our liberty."
It was only after Snowden leaked the documents that the conversation about the problems actually started. Others had tried working within the system, but it all failed and often led to the people trying to work within channels getting in trouble too.
Rebellion against oligarchal elite is percolating. Thousands of factory strikes have happened in China in 2011-2013 (Pepsi, Nike, Adidas).
Legal system is almost always on the state side... so Václav Havel says utter and complete transparency and rigid adherence to non-violence, including not damaging property.
Occupy activists argued for non-violence and no property damage so that masses are more likely to join in. Violent and property damaging tactics privilege those with privilege under the law. People of color more likely to be arrested for property damage than white people (we saw this play out in 2020 protests).
We call for accountability and transparency!
On Obama, "it exposes him for what he is: the ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist, whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. DuBois, of adjustment and submission. Obama's message to the black underclass in the midst of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T. Washington playbook. He tells them to work harder (as if anyone in the country works harder than the working poor) to get an education, and to obey the law."
"40% of our babies are living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and says quit whining. He doesn't say that to the corporate elites!"
Prison Watch letters that describe how prisoners are being abused and sexually abused by prison workers as well as psychological torture like sensory and sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement.
Eugene B. Debs: "Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said it then as I said it now, that while there is a lower-class, I am in it. And while there is a criminal element, I am of it. And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." ********
"Thomas Payne is America's single great revolutionary theorist."
-Go read Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason. Calle for Civil society to be separated from the state.
"Do you think we should rape people who rape? We don't rape rapists because we think about the people who would have to commit the rape... We can't imagine replicating a rape and holding onto our dignity, but because we think we've found a way to kill people that is civilized and decent, we are comfortable." Bryan Stevenson
Jeremy Hammond. Activist and hacker. Goal is to build leaderless collectives based on free association, consensus, mutual aid, self-sufficiency and harmony with the environment. "It's essential that we all work to cut our ties with capitalism and engage in resistance that includes mass organizing of protest."
"The rebel shows us that there is no hope for correction or reversal by appealing to power. The rebel makes it clear that it is only by overthrowing traditional systems of power that we can be liberated. The denunciation of the rebel is a matter of self-preservation for the liberal class."
I stumbled on this thinking it was more about literal 'wages' and labor strikes. Instead, it is about the way that rebels and revolutionaries have endured in spite of attacks from the state, the corporate oligarchy, and even left-leaning liberals. Hedges talks to and about revolutionaries who challenge power in radical ways, with subjects from Thomas Payne, Louis Auguste Blanqui, Bryan Stevenson, Edward Snowden, Jeremy Hammond, Václav Havel, Prison Watch, Eugene Debs, and others. This was published in 2015 so I'd have loved Hedges to include more from the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests and how that rebellion has taken a toll on some of its founders.
This book has some powerful ideas with quotes and stories that reiterate the need to challenge power aggressively by coming together to organize with solidarity and mutual aid at the forefront of movements.
"The rebel shows us that there is no hope for correction or reversal by appealing to power. The rebel makes it clear that it is only by overthrowing traditional systems of power that we can be liberated. The denunciation of the rebel is a matter of self-preservation for the liberal class."
------Notes--------
"The idea that the very oppressed and poor are important as initiating and maintaining revolutions is a bourgeois one... No government has ever fallen before its attackers until it has lost control over its armed forces."
-I believe this is a quote by Britton in the introduction
"Louis Auguste Blanqui dismissed the idea, central to Marx, that human history is a linear progression towards equality and greater morality. He warned that this absurd positivism is the lie perpetuated by oppressors...I am not amongst those that say progress can be taken for granted, that humanity cannot go backwards."
-I should read more Blanqui!
"As a species, we're doomed by hope. Reality is dismissed when it is unpleasant."
-Margaret Atwood
re the supreme court refusing to hear certain cases of government imprisoning based on "If we do not rapidly build militant, mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose what remains of our liberty."
It was only after Snowden leaked the documents that the conversation about the problems actually started. Others had tried working within the system, but it all failed and often led to the people trying to work within channels getting in trouble too.
Rebellion against oligarchal elite is percolating. Thousands of factory strikes have happened in China in 2011-2013 (Pepsi, Nike, Adidas).
Legal system is almost always on the state side... so Václav Havel says utter and complete transparency and rigid adherence to non-violence, including not damaging property.
Occupy activists argued for non-violence and no property damage so that masses are more likely to join in. Violent and property damaging tactics privilege those with privilege under the law. People of color more likely to be arrested for property damage than white people (we saw this play out in 2020 protests).
We call for accountability and transparency!
On Obama, "it exposes him for what he is: the ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist, whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. DuBois, of adjustment and submission. Obama's message to the black underclass in the midst of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T. Washington playbook. He tells them to work harder (as if anyone in the country works harder than the working poor) to get an education, and to obey the law."
"40% of our babies are living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and says quit whining. He doesn't say that to the corporate elites!"
Prison Watch letters that describe how prisoners are being abused and sexually abused by prison workers as well as psychological torture like sensory and sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement.
Eugene B. Debs: "Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said it then as I said it now, that while there is a lower-class, I am in it. And while there is a criminal element, I am of it. And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." ********
"Thomas Payne is America's single great revolutionary theorist."
-Go read Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason. Calle for Civil society to be separated from the state.
"Do you think we should rape people who rape? We don't rape rapists because we think about the people who would have to commit the rape... We can't imagine replicating a rape and holding onto our dignity, but because we think we've found a way to kill people that is civilized and decent, we are comfortable." Bryan Stevenson
Jeremy Hammond. Activist and hacker. Goal is to build leaderless collectives based on free association, consensus, mutual aid, self-sufficiency and harmony with the environment. "It's essential that we all work to cut our ties with capitalism and engage in resistance that includes mass organizing of protest."
"The rebel shows us that there is no hope for correction or reversal by appealing to power. The rebel makes it clear that it is only by overthrowing traditional systems of power that we can be liberated. The denunciation of the rebel is a matter of self-preservation for the liberal class."
j_ess_reads's review
5.0
This book feels incredibly timely given today's political climate, and given the gravity of the topic, I needed to take it in small doses (I also admit that I'm not the most focused of audiobook listeners, which was the format I used). I found it fascinating and frightening at the same time. I will probably try to find a physical copy for a closer reread.
cpa85's review
5.0
This is a must-read for anyone looking for insight into the current state of civilization and the work that must be done to establish justice.
yowlyy's review
5.0
"There is no free press without a willingness to define law and expose the abuses and lies carried out by the powerful."
donifaber's review
4.0
Wages of Rebellion is muck-raking at its finest. But muck-raking is not enough.
Read full review here:
http://www.foldedpagesdistillery.com/2016/08/wages-of-rebellion-review.html
Read full review here:
http://www.foldedpagesdistillery.com/2016/08/wages-of-rebellion-review.html
nnecatrix's review
5.0
Book #42 for 2016
Read Harder Challenge Task: Read a book about politics, in your country or another
OFB Summer Bingo Square: A book you heard about on the radio
I had been planning to review this after the election, but the more I think about it, the more important I feel it is to state my opinions before it's too late. Not that anybody really cares about my opinions on economics and politics, but still, there are big changes on the horizon, and I don't want to be one of those who stand silently by while the world goes completely to shit.
Because that's what is happening, I'm pretty sure of it. Hedges gets called "alarmist" and "hyperbolic" a lot, and I have tried to read this book through that lens, but I have to say that I think he is spot-on in his assessments as well as his clear disappointment in this nation's populace, with its ability to distract itself so easily from issues that really matter in a very real sense. He is absolutely right that revolution is not part of our intellectual history. It's something I have been struggling with in my research of the 18th and 19th centuries, so I was glad for him to articulate that so clearly for me, that we went straight from a monarchy to an an oligarchy and have been kidding ourselves ever since.
This book deals with the wage-slavery we are seeing as a result of the current corporatocracy, but it goes so much broader and deeper than that. We have now reached the point of no return on so many levels, and at the risk of sounding like an anarchist (which I am SO not), I contend that the United States of America is an idea that had its chance. It had its day in the sun, and now it is going to fall -- very noisily, very messily, and very painfully. And not just for us. We're taking a lot of innocent bystanders with us. Hedges wrote this before Trump's POTUS candidacy, but he predicted the demagogue's ascendancy perfectly. He anticipated the racial and environmental battles with eerie prescience. And he pointed out (not by name, of course) that it would take a Bernie Sanders to inspire us to revolution.
And then, everything started going to shit. We had our Bernie Sanders. And then, suddenly, we didn't. I try to convince myself that Bernie's popularity and his willingness to bring socialism to the table, that he's taking the fight back to Congress, that this all means that we aren't doomed as a nation. But I just don't know.
This book forced me to ask myself how much of a rebel I am. And I'm sad to report that the answer is "not very." Part of me would like to see this country dismantled so we can start from scratch. It's this mode of thinking, in fact, that got me Fs in Administrative Law in grad school two semesters in a row. But part of me is too complacent, too firmly ensconced in my white-privileged, middle-class existence to take those risks. That I worry about what would happen to the disenfranchised if we were to have a full-on revolution -- does that make me a thoughtful ally? Or does it make me a privileged asshole who's really good at justifying my cowardice?
I need to remind myself that Thomas Paine is evidently my historical soulmate. And I need to study him and his world. I need to dig deeper than the PC soundbites we got in school. I think that's one thing that this book got me good and pissed-off about: public school propaganda. (And any private school I could have attended would have been so much worse!) So much of the history recounted in this book was never even mentioned, and what was mentioned was presented as a) anomalous, and b) ancient history. There was no sense that we were still on the continuum that has stolen so much from so many.
But what can I do? I am not Thomas Paine. I am not running for political office (and wouldn't stand a chance of winning if I were). I don't even have money to put towards causes. But I am a writer. Genre stuff, to be sure, but who says it cannot be of literary and social merit? So I am signing on as one of the dreaded Social Justice Warriors.
Read Harder Challenge Task: Read a book about politics, in your country or another
OFB Summer Bingo Square: A book you heard about on the radio
I had been planning to review this after the election, but the more I think about it, the more important I feel it is to state my opinions before it's too late. Not that anybody really cares about my opinions on economics and politics, but still, there are big changes on the horizon, and I don't want to be one of those who stand silently by while the world goes completely to shit.
Because that's what is happening, I'm pretty sure of it. Hedges gets called "alarmist" and "hyperbolic" a lot, and I have tried to read this book through that lens, but I have to say that I think he is spot-on in his assessments as well as his clear disappointment in this nation's populace, with its ability to distract itself so easily from issues that really matter in a very real sense. He is absolutely right that revolution is not part of our intellectual history. It's something I have been struggling with in my research of the 18th and 19th centuries, so I was glad for him to articulate that so clearly for me, that we went straight from a monarchy to an an oligarchy and have been kidding ourselves ever since.
This book deals with the wage-slavery we are seeing as a result of the current corporatocracy, but it goes so much broader and deeper than that. We have now reached the point of no return on so many levels, and at the risk of sounding like an anarchist (which I am SO not), I contend that the United States of America is an idea that had its chance. It had its day in the sun, and now it is going to fall -- very noisily, very messily, and very painfully. And not just for us. We're taking a lot of innocent bystanders with us. Hedges wrote this before Trump's POTUS candidacy, but he predicted the demagogue's ascendancy perfectly. He anticipated the racial and environmental battles with eerie prescience. And he pointed out (not by name, of course) that it would take a Bernie Sanders to inspire us to revolution.
And then, everything started going to shit. We had our Bernie Sanders. And then, suddenly, we didn't. I try to convince myself that Bernie's popularity and his willingness to bring socialism to the table, that he's taking the fight back to Congress, that this all means that we aren't doomed as a nation. But I just don't know.
This book forced me to ask myself how much of a rebel I am. And I'm sad to report that the answer is "not very." Part of me would like to see this country dismantled so we can start from scratch. It's this mode of thinking, in fact, that got me Fs in Administrative Law in grad school two semesters in a row. But part of me is too complacent, too firmly ensconced in my white-privileged, middle-class existence to take those risks. That I worry about what would happen to the disenfranchised if we were to have a full-on revolution -- does that make me a thoughtful ally? Or does it make me a privileged asshole who's really good at justifying my cowardice?
I need to remind myself that Thomas Paine is evidently my historical soulmate. And I need to study him and his world. I need to dig deeper than the PC soundbites we got in school. I think that's one thing that this book got me good and pissed-off about: public school propaganda. (And any private school I could have attended would have been so much worse!) So much of the history recounted in this book was never even mentioned, and what was mentioned was presented as a) anomalous, and b) ancient history. There was no sense that we were still on the continuum that has stolen so much from so many.
But what can I do? I am not Thomas Paine. I am not running for political office (and wouldn't stand a chance of winning if I were). I don't even have money to put towards causes. But I am a writer. Genre stuff, to be sure, but who says it cannot be of literary and social merit? So I am signing on as one of the dreaded Social Justice Warriors.