>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 12/17/99 02:13PM >>>
bill fancher wrote:
> ADM wasn't very successful in this instance. But what does it matter
> that the case at hand disproves the charge. Conspiracies MUST NOT exist.
> This is axiomatic on the left.
That certain axioms are involved is correct, but Bill does not grasp the important axiom: that it *works* to assume that conspiracies do not exist, while the assumption that they do exist does paralyze thought. The Kennedy Assassination is archetypal here: If Kennedy was assassinated by a lone kook, Vietnam is an open conspiracy of the U.S. ruling class against the people of the third world. If Kennedy was assassinated by CIA in cahoots with the House of Windsor, Vietnam is an open conspiracy of the U.S. ruling class against the people of the third world.
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CB: Most Americans then and now don't much care about an open conspiracy against the third world. Many of would care more if they were forced to face the lie about the U.S. as a basically non-violent ,honest and fair system of governance.
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It makes *no* difference in our understanding of the world whether such grand conspiracies exist or not. The positing of conspiracies has the same distorting effect on rational analysis of history as the positing of The Unconscious has on the rational analysis of individual behavior.
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Charles: The ignoring of conspiracies has the same effect on rational analysis as going to church.
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This is true even with the ADM case. There is no difference between a world in which ADM "conspired" and a world in which ADM did not conspire -- in both cases it is tautological that ADM conspired, and the attempt to prove (or to give significance to) the contingent (non- tautological) conspiracy blurs the validity of the tautology. And grasping the tautology is crucial to understanding capitalism.
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Charles: It is not just conspiracies , but a whole range of dishonest and dirty practices which regularly broadcast can move toward crisis the comfort a huge fraction of the working class and petit bourgeoisie have with "freedom and democracy". Faith in the system must be undermined by use first of numerous concrete examples, not abstract phrases.
CB