>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 12/07/99 07:07PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> I think the short answer is that from our perspective Kennedy was a bourgeois politician and certainly a representative of the bourgeoisie, but within the bourgeoisie a sharp enough conflict developed that the most reactionary sector decided he had to go.
As much common ground as I share with Charles, on this I have to admit he is (in addition to being just plain dippy) wrong politically.
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Charles: I have to admit that I have the similar feeling of "what are these naive people talking about when they don't think it was the CIA that killed Kennedy ?" I sure wouldn't want to be in a street fight with you on my side. They would trick you in a second. That means you are stuck with the crazy-lone gunman theory. Obviously, those who buy this government version of what happened have had no experience with con-artists and liars. 'Fraid it is the conspiracy deniers who are like children on this issue.
And the labelling "dippy" of conspiracy exposers is exactly what the coverup artists want. In fact, they are probably the source of it.
And was it a lone gunman who killed King, B. Kennedy , et al. too ? I don' t think so. (((((((((
There has never been since WW 2 the kind of deep split in the ruling class which would make this kind of conspiracy likely.
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Charles: But you have no evidence for that. You just assert it. And my evidence for my position is that Kennedy was assassinated.
There was a split in the ruling class on Viet Nam. There was a split in the ruling class on the nuclear arms race. In fact , it was the split on the nuclear arms race that got Kennedy killed. Kennedy had just signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with the Soviets. You see, some bourgeoisie realized that they would likely be exterminated too if there was a nuc war. Then there were the "rather be dead than red " crowd.
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In fact the actual political effect (for most people -- e.g., Oliver Stone) of believing in a Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy is to build up the notion that there exists a liberalism which can be distinguished from the liberalism that lay waste to Vietnam.
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Charles: Not really. They just think that there is a profound evil in their system and government. Something we want to be aware of.
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Kennedy was every bit as much a war criminal as Johnson, Nixon, etc. -- and his fellow war criminals appreciated that fact. After all, his inaugural address remains the controlling position paper or manifesto of U.S. imperialism, including the use of humanitarian bombing.
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Charles: This is an error of ultraleftism. I see now. It's "the Dems are even worse than the Repubs " line. What you underestimate is how dangerous the most reactionary wing of the bourgeoisie is . By this analysis , you underestimate the true threat of fascism from the most reactionary sector of the bourgeoisie. Marxists have a much more differentiated analysis of the bourgeoisie than this, Dimitrov being a prime example. When he referred to the most reactionary sector of capital , he meant there was a non-reactionary sector too. In fact, the Communists allied with the anti-fascist sector of the bourgeoisie in WWII. The notion of a simple, monolithic U.S. bourgeoisie in 1963 is exactly simplistic. Eisenhower had already named the military-industrial complex.
Failure to see significant contradictions within the ruling class will be a very important error when the working class is unified and consciously back in the class struggle ballgame again. Divide and conquer must be our tactic too.
Back to the whodunnit. The opponents of the "the reactionary sector killed Kennedy theory" never are quite able to fix their mouths to say "it was a lone gunman" , because that's exactly what the lying monopoly media says. But then there stuck with no explanation of who killed Kennedy. A big gap in their argument. In other words, you lose on Sherlock Holmes grounds.
On one of the critical facts of the actual murder, nobody (except the Warren Commission) thinks Oswald was the lone gunman. The Sepruder film shows Kennedy was shot from the front.
It is truly bizarre for radicals to deny that the CIA killed Kennedy. I think a few leftists are the only ones in the country who think this. "Anti-conspiracy theory is becoming one of the most rapidly growing forms of "left"conservativism.
CB