[Marxism] Why Does Fahrenheit 9/11 Pursue Conspiracy Theory?

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Why did the chicken cross the road ? Yoshie wrote:

"Fahrenheit 9/11, a fascinating populist work of art, at times falls for
conspiracy theory, not because Moore doesn't know any better, but because he
has skeletons in the closet -- not his own skeletons, but the Democratic
Party's."

Quick observation in advance of seeing the film (it's not yet screening
here) - I think Michael Moore is quite correct in claiming that there really
are conspiracies. Adam Smith already noted that conspiracies were inherent
to capitalism, as monopolists colluded to rig the market in their favour.
The problem with conspiracy "theories" however is to know where the
conspiracies begin, and where they end. That is exactly why conspiracies get
to be "theorised" in the first place.

Conspiracy "theories" as explanation of political motive reduce everything
to personalities and actions of individuals. While this provides an easily
understood message, it abstracts from the force-field of power and the
conflicting social forces within which dastardly plots are contrived, and
which confer common interests, regardless of the attitudes particular
individuals may have. In turn, this easily results in a false explanation of
real motive, because part of that motive is ignored, while other motives are
falsely imputed. As Marx noted, people make their own history, but not under
conditions they have chosen. The puzzle that then remains is, how is it
possible that "stupid white men" can perpetrate such conspiracies as Michael
Moore describes ?

Normally I think you can say that in politics "the function gives rise to
the organ". There is a task that needs to be performed which corresponds to
class or group interests, and human material is selected of which the elite
has confidence that it can perform the task, and which contingently best
satisfies a set of criteria or prerequisites for the wielding of power.

I recall how, as a student, a sociologist showed me about "interlocking
boards of directors" of corporations and their ties to the polity. And it
was true, there really were all these connections, and you could trace them
all out in a sort of squiggly spiderweb diagram.

The point however was that if you systematically continued the exercise, and
traced out all the links between all the directors, all the politicians and
all the public servants, you just reached the conclusion that everybody was
connected to everybody else. In which case, by seeking to explain
everything, through tracing out all the links between individuals and their
actions, you ended up explaining nothing.

The utility of providing proof of a definite conspiracy is that it
highlights lack of integrity and hypocrisy in politics, and shows public
gullibility up for what it is. There may be no such thing as an honest
politician, but there is such a thing as a principled politician. The
conspiracy proves that he is not principled.

According to classic Kantian-type morality, a moral rule is supposed to
apply equally to all moral actors under the same conditions. But in a
class-divided society such a universal human morality flounders on the
shoals of sectional class interests and competition. Characteristic of
ideology is then, that it seeks to portray these sectional interests as
common human interests, but it is here that the war-mongers have recently
failed very disastrously.

The real problem of the military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq is that
they were not only conducted with the aid of political bribery and in
blatant violation of international law, but also on blatantly false
pretenses and with false justifications - marking another step in the moral
decline of the bourgeois classes and their crisis of political leadership.
Christianist verbiage increasingly substitutes for principles which are
rationally argued for. Nevertheless people still seek for an explanation,
and that is what Michael Moore taps into.

If "post-modernity" is the grand theory that there are no more grand
theories, this means effectively a denial of any objective basis for
ascertaining the relationship between individuals and society, an objective
causal relationship between the particular and the general. In addition, the
creative destruction wreaked by the Internet makes it seem as though much
depends on which individual said/did what to whom.

In which case, we can predict an increase of beliefs in conspiracy theories.
But that is just one step in a process whereby new realities force out old
political mentalities which can no longer reconcile the irreconcilable.

Jurriaan






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