From: Doug Henwood
Carrol Cox wrote:
>What makes me sad is that conspiracy theories such as Joseph Wanzala's
>_lead away_ from awareness of the centers of power. They delude people
>into thinking that evil exists solely in the machinations of particular
>people rather than in the capitalist system. Joseph's arguments, that
>is, add up to an apology for capitalism and for u.s. imperialism. His
>theories also support racism, for the major form racist ideology takes
>today is the view that racist institutions are caused by the actions of
>racist individuals, making it more difficult to combat its structural
>sources.
I agree up to a point, but your language ("system," "structural sources") makes it difficult to locate human agency. It makes us all look like pawns, puppets on strings operated by no one identifiable. THe trick is to analyze the institutions of class power - the state, Wall Street, the Council on Foreign Relations - in all their complexity and imperfections, identifying interests and actors without descending to the twelve guys in a room version of conspiracism.
Doug
^^^^^
CB: Leftists who use the terminology "conspiracy theory" should have their mouths washed out with soap. Take 9/11. Does anybody doubt that it was a "conspiracy", if not by U.S. spooks , then by 20 or 30 Al Q. members ? How stupid to go around discouraging people from acknowledging that it was a plot by a small number of people , one way or the other, for fear that people will get confused that capitalism is a policy, not a system. How foolish to discourage people from believing that the U.S. national security state is capable of such evil deception and has committed such before , even if in fact it didn't happen in this particular case. The investigation of that possibility shouldn't be badgered as "conspiracy theory" ( sound of me spitting in disgust).
The ruling class is very class conscious, which is to say that there are individuals, whether 12 or more who consciously plan many, many things from the general to specific plots to sustain bourgeois rule. No way the working class is going to defeat same without mass consciousness of this fact, both to disillusion with the status quo and prepare them for the viciousness and cunning of their adversaries. Part of working class and socialist consciousness is awareness of the depths of the depravity of the bourgeoisie, contra the image of them one gets from television and newspapers.
Convincing people that the U.S. government was even capable of something so deceptive and heinous as killing Americans in order to whip up support for war is a giant step toward creating disillusion in the whole _system_.
Regularly "correcting" people who investigate plot hypotheses makes leftists sound like naive , intellectual elitists, since in the real world there are lots of plots. "Oh , but don't get into that. It's the "system" that is important". Yea , but the system is defended by planning and plots. Unfortunately, to defeat capitalism, you have to get your mind dirty.
So, clean your mouth and dirty your mind. :>)
This is an example of cultivating the ability to keep two contradictory thoughts in mind at once. It is a system that expresses itself through a plethora of conscious and purposeful policies, sort of like a determining law that asserts itself through a welter of chance events. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20040531/1a36f130/attachment.htm>