>>> Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> 01/14/00 02:20AM >>>
Scott's comments ring true to me. Of course there are conspiracies. They are a fact of life and they happen in all social situations. Soap operas are absorbed with domestic conspiracies. Marxism space is not immune from its little conspiracies.
But the term conspiracy theory in the singular seems to me to be a healthy warning that at least from a marxist point of view there may well be a deeper explanation.
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Charles: Yes, I think Chris knows me to be a historical materialist. I am not , of course, saying that we can transform the capitalist system to socialism by rooting out and rubbing out capitalist conspiracists. The capitalists are a class and can only be defeated by the working class and working masses in the methods that historical materialism suggests. But, part of the process of convincing the working class to carryout this historic mission is to demonstrate to the working class how rotten the bourgeois politicians and secret officials are. This must be done with reference to the real actions of this power structure, real "current events" in which most people are interested and familiar. The spate of assassinations of major political leaders and political activists in the 60's and 70's is an important real example of this rottenness of the American political system.
So, I am not proposing a conspiracist theory of history, but a theory of persuasion of masses which includes , but is not at all confined to, reportage of the actual heinous political crimes which the ruling class and its agents and minions perpetrate as part of their secret and concealed dictatorship, that wolf in the sheeps skin of demockracy.
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To take the situation described by Scott above, the question that comes to my mind is why was the US ruling class so divided in its different interest groups for contradictions to surface in this crude way. It implies either a degree of inefficiency in the way it reconciles its common class interests or a streak of fascism in American civil society.
[I do not want to imply there are not fascist tendencies in the UK but they are of a different nature.]
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Charles: Yes. It is very important to regularly demonstrate that capitalist demockracy is this contradictory combination of actual bourgeois freedoms and illegal terrorist method. It is exactly because it is not open that we are not in fascism. Fascism is open terrorist rule. But demockracy has a big dose of secret terrorist rule. This is important for agitation. People should not be comfortable with their government , but agitated.
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Charles
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Without knowing the US culture really and deeply, I do get the impression that fascism is a continuing feature of US political life, and that people like Scott and Charles are right to warn against it.
After all it is only a matter of a few decades that there was apartheid in many of the states of the south. Certainly a documentary presented recently on UK television about the death of Martin Luther King makes it pretty obvious in a quiet way that the state was involved at least on the local level. His son seemed to me totally credible in his public comments.
Chris Burford
London