Jumping up and squawking "conspiracy theory ! conspiracy theory !" everytime
somebody speculates about plots by ruling class agents tends to make the
squawker sound naïve and ivory towerish, like they have their head in the
clouds,and thereby less credible on other issues.
We are in a class war. Know thy class enemy.
Charles
I don't mind exposing conspiracies. In fact when you do it effectively, the
results can be devastating. I think that revelations about the Gulf of
Tonkin helped raise awareness that decision to go to war in Vietnam was
facilitated by a lie, just as revelations about the lack of WMD's in Iraq
today has produced a similar "credibility gap". What I do object to is
unproven speculation of the sort that surrounded the attack on 9/11 or more
recent allegations that the levees in New Orleans were dynamited as part of
some kind of gentrification scheme. The left has to be seen as
authoritative. Here's something that I picked up on Gerry Levy's list that
shows how Lenin stressed the importance of fact-based research:
Facts are stubborn things, runs the English saying. It comes to mind, in
particular, when a certain author waxes enthusiastic about the greatness of
the nationality principle in its different implications and
relationships. What is more, in most cases the principle is applied Just
as aptly, and is just as much in place, as the exclamation many happy
returns of the day by a certain folk-tale character at the sight of a
funeral.
Precise facts, indisputable factsthey are especially abhorrent to this
type of author, but are especially necessary if we want to form a proper
understanding of this complicated, difficult and often deliberately
confused question. But how to gather the facts? How to establish their
connection and interdependence?
The most widely used, and most fallacious, method in the realm of social
phenomena is to tear out individual minor facts and juggle with examples.
Selecting chance examples presents no difficulty at all, but is of no
value, or of purely negative value, for in each individual case everything
hinges on the historically concrete situation. Facts, if we take them in
their entirety, in their interconnection, are not only stub born things,
but undoubtedly proof-bearing things. Minor facts, if taken out of their
entirety, out of their interconnection, if they are arbitrarily selected
and torn out of context, are merely things for juggling, or even worse. For
instance, when an author who was once a serious author and wishes to be
regarded as such now too takes the fact of the Mongolian yoke and presents
it as an example that explains certain events in twentieth-century Europe,
can this be considered merely juggling, or would it not be more correct to
consider it political chicanery? The Mongolian yoke is a fact of history,
and one doubtlessly connected with the national question, just as in
twentieth-century Europe we observe a number of facts likewise doubtlessly
connected with this question. But you will find few peopleof the type the
French describe as national clownswho would venture, while claiming to
be serious, to use this fact of the Mongolian yoke as an illustration of
events in twentieth-century Europe.
full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jan/00d.htm
