about conspiracy by Devine, James 07 January 2002 I agree with Jim D's thesis below. Capitalism is a system, not a policy or a conspiracy. However, there are many conspiracies hatched by the bourgeois state and economic administrators as the repressive apparatus which has a primary purpose of perpetuating the rule of the capitalists as a class.
I do think that the bourgeoisie have "private" or secret executive/central committees ( a super-NGO) other than the bourgeois state as its "executive committee" , as Engels and Marx put it in the Manifesto. I don't think the operations of the bourgeois states just neatly fall into place without much class conscious communication among leading sectors and leading people of the bourgeoisie. Through history ruling classes rule by being more conscious than the classes they rule. The bourgeoisie is no exception. Being bourgeois class conscious means their leaders have committees, meetings, communications, resolutions, email lists in which they discuss the class struggle as consciously and explicitly as we discuss it here or on another radical list, but from the other side of the class line. Myself, I use "politically correct" as a straight forward compliment or approval, not a sarcastic pejorative. The war on Afghanistan is politically incorrect. %%%%%%% Accusations that someone has embraced conspiracy theory may or may not be a form of political correctness (i.e., an illegitimate form of argumentation). There are two general types of conspiracy theories: 1) a "conspiracy theory" (small c, small t) which helps explain some specific event(s) by reference to covert political forces. For example, there was a conspiracy by the US CIA to overthrow Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, etc., etc. This kind of conspiracy theory has often been validated by documentary evidence (often revealed long after the event). There are some cases where the evidence isn't in (yet), but it seems likely that conspiracy played a major role, based on historical precedent and other signs. This kind of theory makes sense. In fact, I'd say that the CIA is conspiratorial _by definition_. 2) a "Conspiracy Theory" (large C, large T), which is a theory of history. There is a small elite of conspirators (the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, the Trilateral Commission, the CIA, the Big Oil Companies, the clique of Communist Jewish bankers in Zurich, etc.) which is the major force behind a large number of events, in fact behind the general drift of history. All -- or almost all -- world-historical events can be explained by reference to the Conspiracy. Though there may be evidence for some of this elite's actions, a Conspiracy Theory is often unconstrained by the need to provide evidence. Instead, what we see is a net of different facts -- and "facts" -- that are interpreted (often by stretching logic) to "prove" the power and influence of the Conspiracy. This method might be called "interpretive journalism." One major difference between the two types of theories is that a "CT" rejects alternative theories of history, including the Marxian emphasis on social structures, the development of the forces of production, and class struggle. If there's any struggle in the CT, it's of the conspiracy theorists trying to convince the ignorant masses that "we're all being duped and manipulated." (It has the feeling of being at the end of the movie "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers," where our hero vainly tries to convince people that individuals are being replaced by alien pods.) On the other hand, a "ct" can be seen as just a part of a larger theory of history. The idea that the CIA conspires against democratic or nationalist upsurges that don't fit with the foreign policy needs of the US and the profit needs of US corporations (in general) hardly contradicts the idea that we live in a capitalist exploitative system that's typically riven with conflict and /or crisis. The CIA is clearly on one specific side of the class struggle, but it's not the only force and there's another side. And it can't always get what it wants. In fact, one of its conspiracies can easily "blow back," as with the CIA fostering of ObL. One big problem with CT is that it assumes that the Conspirators have tremendous amounts of information about what's going on, even at a local level. It also assumes that it can motivate and control its agents to act totally in the interest of the Conspiracy rather than seeking profits for themselves. It ignores the fact that sometimes resistance to the Conspiracy actually wins, shaping the historical process. It also ignores the competition among conspiratorial elites. (The CIA faced competition from the KGB for quite some time, while the interests of French intelligence are not the same as the CIA's.) It assumes that the elite has a unified interest, ignoring competition within the elite. (Don't different Big Oil Companies have different interests, sometimes conflicting?) In general, a CT doesn't try to analyze the world in a social-scientific way. Instead, it's simply a matter of interpretive journalism. In this view, the accusation that someone is engaging in conspiracy theory is only valid if it refers to a big-C, big-T type theory. This kind of accusation must be backed up by criticizing the alleged proponent of the CT for presenting an argument that's illogical, theoretically incoherent or incomplete, not fitting known facts, etc. BTW, sometimes political correctness is correct. But that's another story.
