At 11:46 30/10/99 -0700, you wrote: > The roots of British Labour's Atlanticism/NATOphilia go back a bit. >Looks like Tony Blair has some company.BTW this reminded me of a Verso book > entitled ,"The Making Of An Atlantic Ruling Class," Just did a search at >the Verso Books site, the book was published in '97 acccording to h (Ya >I know its an evil chain!!!) esp Chris Burford or James Heartfield?If so >can they give a precis? > Michael Pugliese >http://www.knowledge.co.uk/lobster/articles/rrtalk.htm Attachment >Converted: "c:\gnitools\eudora\attach\The influence of intelligence >services on the British left (2).url" I do not know "The Making Of An Atlantic Ruling Class," by Kees Van Der Pijl Paperback - 331 pages (February 1997) Verso; ISBN: 0860918017 I also see from Amazon he is author of Transnational Classes and International Relations (Ripe (Series), 1) Paperback (March 1999) Routledge; ISBN: 0415192013 The titles of these books seem much wider than the title of the thread. The book titles suggest a merging or overlapping of class interests. That could well be the case in a number of ways. However the thread title suggests a sort of conspiracy theory, which is how the accompanying article reads. It is really the counterpart of the recent revelations of spying and infiltration by Soviet- influenced people. While I am delighted to disappoint Jim Heartfield in his poorly targetted projections, and assure him I have no relation to Melita Norwood myself, I do know someone who is the spitting image of her and her cohort. I am not however myself an old member of the CPGB. Nor was I a fellow traveller. The appended article by Robin Ramsay is detailed but it is also one-sided. It overstates the case in arguing that the contradictions within UK social democracy were principally determined by the pull between the USA and the USSR. It is weak when it accuses people like Gordon Brown of careerism from his mid twenties. Surely anyone joining the Labour Party at university and achieving any prominence might reasonably be suspected of careerism of the left or the right from the first month. It does not consider other hypotheses, and the interpenetration of conspiratorial or clandestine manoeuvring. I think there is also reasonable circumstantial evidence that the present New Labour cabinet was significantly influenced by Marxism Today in the 1980's. Under Martin Jacques this was a banner of a radical Gramscian agenda to rewin ideological hegemony, even at the expense of thinking the unthinkable, including that there might be reasons for Mrs Thatcher's popularity. The theory that the intelligence services kept the CPGB in existence fails to understand the fact that this would have been quite normal. The USA funded many bodies in the Soviet sphere of influence. So did the USSR where it could in other countries. The problem with the CPGB was that it had got stuck in an economist rut in old sections of the trades union movement, and caught in the two party system merely trying to nudge Labour an inch or two to the left. Within the last couple of years under the Thirties Year rule, government documents were released about spying on the Central Committee of the CPGB which blanked out the name of their agent on that body. He or she is still unknown. Spying, intelligence gathering, and influence are all part of normal politics. No one who understands the relevance of the marxist concepts of the dictatorship of the proletariat should be surprised at what Ramsay describes. Only concerned that he reveals these features in a tone designed it seems to shock and stun the reader. This is another chapter in the left feeling sorry for itself instead of analysising the contradictions in civil society and winning hegmony. Here follows a passage about conspiracy theories from an article on the website of Ramsay's journal called "Lobster" (why? - something to do with being red and hard boiled perhaps?). Chris Burford London 'Conspiracy Theories' and Clandestine Politics by Jeffrey M. Bale From Lobster 29 Very few notions generate as much intellectual resistance, hostility, and derision within academic circles as a belief in the historical importance or efficacy of political conspiracies. Even when this belief is expressed in a very cautious manner, limited to specific and restricted contexts, supported by reliable evidence, and hedged about with all sort of qualifications, it still manages to transcend the boundaries of acceptable discourse and violate unspoken academic taboos. The idea that particular groups of people meet together secretly or in private to plan various courses of action, and that some of these plans actually exert a significant influence on particular historical developments, is typically rejected out of hand and assumed to be the figment of a paranoid imagination. The mere mention of the word 'conspiracy' seems to set off an internal alarm bell which causes scholars to close their minds in order to avoid cognitive dissonance and possible unpleasantness, since the popular image of conspiracy both fundamentally challenges the conception most educated, sophisticated people have about how the world operates and reminds them of the horrible persecutions that absurd and unfounded conspiracy theories have precipitated or sustained in the past. So strong is this prejudice among academics that even when clear evidence of a plot is inadvertently discovered in the course of their own research, they frequently feel compelled, either out of a sense of embarrassment or a desire to defuse anticipated criticism, to preface their account of it by ostentatiously disclaiming a belief in conspiracies. (1) They then often attempt to downplay the significance of the plotting they have uncovered. To do otherwise, that is, to make a serious effort to incorporate the documented activities of conspiratorial groups into their general political or historical analyses, would force them to stretch their mental horizons beyond customary bounds and, not infrequently, delve even further into certain sordid and politically sensitive topics. Most academic researchers clearly prefer to ignore the implications of conspiratorial politics altogether rather than deal directly with such controversial matters. A number of complex cultural and historical factors contribute to this reflexive and unwarranted reaction, but it is perhaps most often the direct result of a simple failure to distinguish between 'conspiracy theories' in the strict sense of the term, which are essentially elaborate fables even though they may well be based upon a kernel of truth, and the activities of actual clandestine and covert political groups, which are a common feature of modern politics. For this and other reasons, serious research into genuine conspiratorial networks has at worst been suppressed, as a rule been discouraged, and at best been looked upon with condescension by the academic community. (2) An entire dimension of political history and contemporary politics has thus been consistently neglected. (3) For decades scholars interested in politics have directed their attention toward explicating and evaluating the merits of various political theories, or toward analyzing the more conventional, formal, and overt aspects of practical politics. Even a cursory examination of standard social science bibliographies reveals that tens of thousands of books and articles have been written about staple subjects such as the structure and functioning of government bureaucracies, voting patterns and electoral results, parliamentary procedures and activities, party organizations and factions, the impact of constitutional provisions or laws, and the like. In marked contrast, only a handful of scholarly publications have been devoted to the general theme of political conspiracies--as opposed to popular anti-conspiracy treatises, which are very numerous, and specific case studies of events in which conspiratorial groups have played some role -- and virtually all of these concern themselves with the deleterious social impact of the 'paranoid style' of thought manifested in classic conspiracy theories rather than the characteristic features of real conspiratorial politics. ..... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
