Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The conspiracy against conspiracy. posted by Richard Seymour
Dead Men Left has provided some sensible comments in response to David Aaronovitch's column attacking wierdo lefty conspiracy nuts, which I mentioned below. He says:The Left doesn't need a theory of conspiracies to explain Iraq, it needs a theory of imperialism; as Tim of HUH? remarked, following Jameson, the fact capitalism has a tendency to look like a conspiracy does not mean that it is one. "After all, when you actually do control the world, you don't need shady conspiracies." We need analytical tools that can deal with structure and agency in capitalism, that can cope with ideology, and that can allow political conclusions to be drawn. Theories of all-powerful cabals manipulating the world do not merely miss the point - they are debilitating.
I profoundly agree. Those who resort to conspiracy to explain structure typically lack cognitive mapping skills. There must be someone at the centre of a web, pulling strings, yanking cords, tugging ropes and generally causing all their misery and pain or lulling them into dry boredom. This isn't a healthy outlook, nor is it particularly helpful. With that in mind, I want to add a few stipulations to my earlier post on conspiracy and theory.
Take the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Most of the British public appear to agree with the suggestion that Bush knew in advance of the attacks planned on 9/11, and did nothing to stop them because they saw political advantage in it. Barmy stuff says Marc Mulholland in his laconic way. I don't think it's so barmy, at least in the sense that I think the American state is morally capable of such a thing, evidence of which abounds. Nevertheless, even if there were solid proof rather than suggestive details pointing to the conclusion that Bush or his administration was complicit in the attacks, this still wouldn't get us very far.
After all, present US foreign policy is not altogether a million miles away from where it was under Clinton. The apparently extremist pronouncements of the neoconservative right are one thing, but terminating the Iraqi regime was a Clinton policy. Bush's controversial nuclear posture was tacitly adopted by Clinton. The decision to bomb Kosovo was a realist policy decision (I mean 'realist' in the sense that the term is used in International Relations theory), but the ideological legitimisation for it was impeccably commensurable with neoconservative prerogatives.
The question that would have to be answered, therefore, would still be why it was perceived as a necessity to launch a series of aggressive wars, and why it was necessary to resort to such a risky, potentially suicidal strategy in order to obtain some rather shaky consent for such a venture (as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, discovery of Republican involvement in the 9/11 attacks, however mediated, would destroy the party for generations if not for good and land many of its leading figures in jail for treason). But we do not have evidence of the sort that invites compulsory or even compelling conclusions. What we have is an imbrication of detail and speculation. So when John Pilger insinuates the possibility that Dick Cheney allowed the twin towers to be attacked before he acted, he asks for scepticism.
What I don't think we should accept is that all 'conspiracy theories' are invariably wrong, barking, so soft and woolly that you could knit a jumper from them. I'm with Robin Ramsay on this: sometimes states and organisations do conspire, and sometimes they succeed in their aims. I wouldn't call this a conspiracy, but I am deeply suspicious of any gesture which seeks to limit one's political imagination with 'common sense'.