On 6/14/06, Dan Scanlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> First of all, this was _not_ a conspiracy. To be a conspiracy, it has
> to be secret rather than given as part of an "Orientation Kit" openly
> distributed by the SS.
The document was squirreled away when people like me (and the
Catholic Worker at least a year ahead of Ramparts) got ahold of it.
It was an administrative oversight. I don't think it was intended to
be seen (and wasn't) by the general public until the SDS discovered it.
the fact that it was distributed in the first place indicates the
fallibility of the SS conspirators, while the SDS' revealing of it
indicates the power of resistance. This doesn't fit with the top-down
nature of conspiracy theories, in which the secret elite gets what it
wants.
Is there a possibility that class itself exists as a result of
conspiracy and that conspiracies of the upper class are floated to
maintain a beneficial (to them) class structure?
"conspiracies" are floated to maintain the class structure, but
there's a lot of overt efforts to maintain that structure: as Sweezy
said a long time ago, the "normal" business of the state is to protect
"private property," which is central to the class system.
There are lots of "conspiracies" of individuals trying to make
themselves rich and/or powerful. Among other things, they have to
compete with other "conspiracies." They can't always get what they
want, to paraphrase that great economist Mick Jagger.
In addition, it's the class structure that makes the people (at the
same time that the structure we see now was created by people in the
past). It's the system that makes the elite extremely rich in
financial terms, whereas in other eras, being a member of the elite
might mean having a strong feudal army. This affects individual
attitudes, wishes, and values.
A problem with the
lower classes is, it seems to me, that they rarely engage in
effective conspiracies of their own, or when they do, the underlying
class conspiracy bubbles up as police and military violence directed
at them. ...
gosh, I think it's a bad thing to think of resistance from below as
involving "conspiracies." It reminds me of the 19th century socialist
Auguste Blanqui, who several times organized conspiracies to overthrow
the French government.
--
Jim Devine / "Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also
mortis" -- Robert Heilbroner.
