>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/14/06 11:56 AM >>> I think we should be clearer about what kind of conspiracies we are talking about. They all involve cabals within the government that carry out some monstrous attack that are made to appear as if they were perpetrated by sworn enemies of the country. The assassination of JFK, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the Battleship Maine all fall into this category. In addition, you get conspiracy theories about "secret teams" that are operating without the knowledge and or approval of elected officials. That's where the Christic Institute and Oliver North come into play. Generally speaking, all this involves a non-Marxist understanding of how history takes place. Instead of class forces in conflict, you have a variant on the "great man" theory of history. If any major Marxist thinker of the past 150 years ever got involved in this kind of thing, I am not aware of that. I am rather fond of Michael Parenti's writings, but don't consider him a major Marxist theoretician. His obsession with the JFK assassination always took him down a notch in my estimation. <<<<<>>>>>
most specifically conspiracy is a legal term involving two or more people secretly agreeing to commit a crime (one can be charged with conspiracy without actually commiting the illegal act)...more generally, conspiracy involves two or more people involved in secret activities to do something *bad* (depending upon one's perspective about what it is they do)... possible for one to recognize that conspiracies exist without falling into *conspiracism* trap...marx uses term conspiracy with respect to goings on in post-1848 france and in references to likes of babeuf, bakunin, blanqui... let's see, there were these guys who met in philly in the summer of 1787, they'd been authorized to *fix* a constitution but they never even discussed doing so, rather they set out to write a new constitution, they kept official record of their debates, their meetings were closed to the press and the public and the delegates were sworn to secrecy, at the close of their meeting they empowered the presiding officer to collect the notes taken by individual delegates and burn them, one craft little guy held on to his notes although he prevented them from being published until after his death... the guys who attended this meeting came from 12 jurisdictions, one jurisidiction, however, refused to send any delegates, rather its governing body sent a communique to philly condemning what it called a 'conspiracy of the rich'... mh Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
