Back to Conspiracy

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Jan 17 19:44:15 PST 2000


First: I think Doug should threaten with expulsion from the list anyone who continues to return to this subject. All the possible positions have been expressed over and over again -- and there is *no* empirical evidence that can be relevant, for if there were it would be widely known already.

Note Steve Grube's "I think his death can properly be called a conspiracy."

As I used to tell my freshman comp students (sometimes in language almost this crude), no one except your mother or your therapist gives a fuck about what you think. We are interested in what is.

Even knowing that a conspiracy was responsible for the death of King would not add *one single thing* to our knowledge of the nature of the U.S. ruling class -- and would in fact subtract from our knowledge of that ruling class. Now we know that it is utterly ruthless and willing and able to commit any crime to achieve its ends. The assertion that a conspiracy killed king is an assertion that the ruling class is not all that bad, that they could only get rid of a minor threat to their rule by dreaming up a conspiracy out of a third rate movie. So the reformists are right after all. All that it takes to make capitalism the best possible

system is to get rid of a few crooks -- a few rotten apples in the ruling class barrel -- and all will be well. Conspiracy theory represents ruling-class poisoning of leftist thought.

Carrol



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