To clear up a point about what Chris Hedges writes in The Death of the Liberal class, go here for his book talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCvSntOI5s
Or a PDF copy:
http://espectroalejandria.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/death-of-the-liberal-class-2010.pdf
Since the list seems notoriously lazy about listening to videos, I'll summarize with some notes. I find videos much more convienent than books. Once I listen I usually get the basic idea. If I am really interested, I'll buy the book
Okay, by the death of the liberal class, Hedges identifies the traditional pillors of the liberal class to be: 1) the liberal church, 2) universities, 3) the press, 4) labor, 5) culture, 6) the Democratic party. Over the course of the 20thC in the US each of these pillors has been attacked. They have collaborated with the state and corporate forces that have made war on liberal values. In other words they crumbled.
Hedges identifies the beginning of decline on or about WWI and cites Dwight McDonald (haven't read him). For a picture of labor conditions of that era, google Lewis Hine and then click Images.
My references to Labor were only part of a larger system of attack.
Hedges identifies the classic liberal era in the US:
``The liberal era, which flourished in the later part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, was characterized by the growth of mass movements and social reforms that addressed working conditions in factories, the organizing of labor unions, women's rights, universal education, housing for the poor, public health campaigns, and socialism. This liberal era effectively ended with World War I. The war, which shattered liberal optimism about the inevitability of human progress, also consolidated state and corporate control over economic, political, cultural, and social affairs. It created mass culture, fostered through the consumer society the cult of the self, led the nation into an era of permanent war, and used fear and mass propaganda to cow citizens and silence independent and radical voices within the liberal class. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, put in place only when the capitalist system collapsed, was the final political gasp of classical liberalism in the United States. The New Deal reforms, however, were systematically dismantled in the years after World War II, often with the assistance of the liberal class.
A mutant outgrowth of the liberal class, one that embraced a fervent anticommunism and saw national security as the highest priority, emerged after World War I in the United States. It was characterized by a deep pessimism about human nature and found its ideological roots in moral philosophers such as the Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr, although Niebuhr was frequently misinterpreted and oversimplified by those seeking to justify political passivity and imperial adventurism. This brand of liberalism, fearful of being seen as soft on communism, struggled to find its place in contemporary culture as its stated value systems became increasingly at odds with increased state control, the disempowerment of workers, and the growth of a massive military-industrial complex. By the time Cold War liberalism shifted into a liberal embrace of globalization, imperial expansion, and unfettered capitalism, the ideals that were part of classical liberalism no longer characterized the liberal class.'' (13-4p)
In the later section Hedges asks, what were the consequences? He says with only some irony that Nixon was the last liberal president. I don't buy that for a minute. Nevermined. Hedges notes the distruction of the Democratic party as a liberal institution also has consequences and offers the cynicism of defeat and the nilistic corrosion of any moral outlook at all. Hedges cites the work of Dostoyevsky, Notes from The Underground Man and The Possessed (also called The Demons).
I like the references, but I think the Russian case was much more extreme. After Alexander II's quasi liberal reign, his successors, son and grandson really crack down. Alexander III and Nicholas II had seen the anarchist assassination
CG