Re: [Marxism] Pearl Harbor, etc.

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bob:
> The main thesis of Stinnett's book is that Roosevelt (and the sector of
> the ruling class he represented) wanted the US to get into WWII, while the
> people of the US opposed the war by a huge margin (roughly 90% to 10%), so
> he asked the navy for a plan to force the Japanese into a war. The plan
> was produced more than a year before Pearl Harbor in Oct. 1940.

I know that is the thesis but it is one that is not unique to Stinnett. You
get basically the same argument from Charles Beard and John Toland.
Stinnett's contribution is ostensibly new findings on how the USA cracked
the Japanese codes and as a result discovered secret plans about the attack
on Pearl Harbor. This is not accepted by other scholars. Stinnett's main
work prior to this, by the way, was a biography of George Bush the elder.

> There's a rather long history of the US ruling class using fabrications to
> try to enlist working class support for its wars. Is that not part of
> politics? Or do we acknowledge those actions in some wars and not in others?
> 'Remember the Maine' was a distortion but 'remember Pearl Harbor' wasn't?

It is also entirely possible that the Maine blew up because a coal fire got
out of control. In any case, the real job of Marxists is not uncovering
secret plots but the open causes of war. This involves the often less than
exciting job of explaining why the USA had material interests in acquiring
Spain's former colonial holdings rather than official explanations about
bringing democracy to the brown-skinned natives. In other words, the same
task existed in 1898 as exists today. While the radical press certainly
made the proper points about the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, its larger task
was to explain the long and sordid history of colonialism in Indochina.
From that perspective, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was no more of an
outrage than the 1954 peace treaty that divided the country.

> You wrote "After Archduke  Ferdinand was assassinated, Lenin became
> preoccupied with the betrayal of  socialist parliamentarians not uncovering
> Serb plots." But did he deny that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a
> Serbian?

What kind of silly question is that. My point is that Lenin was far less
interested in the excuses made to drag imperialist nations into war than he
was in why wars occur. This meant delving into  the open financial records
of banks and insurance companies. The problem with all the conspiracy
theorists who have cropped up since 9/11 is that they really have nothing
interesting to say about politics or economics. Secret plots become the
focus of investigation rather than the boring issues of political economy.
I direct comrades to www.rense.com, one of the higher-profile 9/11
conspiracy investigation websites. There you will discover other
interesting topics such as  "John Wayne 'Rio
Grande' Movie UFO Solved?" and "Velikovsky's Ghost Returns."

> Instead, we're actually faced with a working class that has been
> propagandized into
> believing a whole host of falsehoods which contribute to their political
> outlook. The consciousness of the working class would seem to be something
> worthwhile to deal with. Does a continued belief in America the fair and the
> brave or America the protector of the weak or America only acting to defend
> her people have anything to do with the political consciousness of the
> American workers? Do we look for ways to crack through those belief
> systems? Doesn't the development of an anti-imperialist consciousness
> depend on our success in doing so?

I think the way to crack through those belief systems is not by harping on
the size of the hole in the Pentagon building left by an airplane versus a
missile, but why Rumsfeld was seen shaking hands with Saddam in 1983.

> Or to relate it to the Vietnam era. Did the publication of the  Pentagon
> Papers or the publicity around My Lai help in any way in ending the war or
> help to explain the nature of US imperialism in its aftermath? Do
> the facts around the King Assassination help in any way for people to
> understand race and class in the US? Or do we simply dismiss all such talk
> out of hand because it's difficult to prove? Did his support for black
> workers organizing into unions and going on strike have anything to do
> with his being assassinated? Did his speeches against the Vietnam War and
> linking the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-War movement make him
> dangerous in the eyes of the bourgeoisie?

Of course his speeches made him dangerous. Marxists are better off focusing
on the *political* explanations of the long-standing campaign against MLK
Jr., which actually go back to JFK. The documentation for that is readily
available in books like Seymour Hersh's "Dark Side of Camelot".

> I'm sure that there are some of my co-workers in my union who would accuse
> me of being a conspiracy theorist when I've talked about the Social
> Security Report being a crock (accepted by the Democrats too) because its
> based on completely false parameters for economic growth, immigration and
> other numbers used in the formula used to supposedly predict the system's
> future failure. Now if a person accepts that using a figure of 1.8% for
> annual GDP growth (as the social security report does) is wrong given that
> the historical average is about 2/3 higher at 3%, the discussion can go in
> two ways: 1) a mistake was made or 2) the lower figure was purposefully
> used by the ruling class in order to justify the overall attack on the
> Social Security system. If one chooses explanation #2, one can easily be
> attacked for being a 'conspiracy theorist'. Does that mean that we don't
> say that?

I would encourage you to continue along these lines. This is called popular
economics, no matter what other people call it. Proving that the CIA
contracted Islamic radicals like Mohammad Atta will be less rewarding since
no such evidence will ever be forthcoming, while evidence as to Bush's
machinations around Social Security are like ripe low-hanging fruit ready
to be plucked.

> But, it appears to have taken almost a century for any sort of
> acknowledgement that 'Remember the Maine' was phony and that therefore,
> the Spanish American War was an imperialist attack by the US against Spain
> rather than a defensive war for the US. So maybe for Pearl Harbor we'll
> have to wait another 3 or 4 decades, and for 911 maybe a century. And then
> the words will change. Until then, I guess using 'conspiracy theorist'
> will be seen as a legitimate mode of argument.

Again, the real interest for Marxists in the war of 1898 is identifying the
material interests American imperialism had in acquiring Cuba and the
Philippines. Just a reminder of how Howard Zinn, our most respected radical
historian, deals with the sinking of the Battleship Maine:

"In February 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine, in Havana harbor as a symbol
of American interest in the Cuban events, was destroyed by a mysterious
explosion and sank, with the loss of 268 men. There was no evidence ever
produced on the cause of the explosion, but excitement grew swiftly in the
United States, and McKinley began to move in the direction of war."

That's one sentence in a 14 page chapter on the emergence of imperialism.

Here's how he deals with Pearl Harbor:

"Putting aside the wild accusations against Roosevelt (that he knew about
Pearl Harbor and didn't tell, or that he deliberately provoked the Pearl
Harbor raid--these are without evidence), it does seem clear that he did as
James Polk had done before him in the Mexican war and Lyndon Johnson after
him in the Vietnam war--he lied to the public for what he thought was a
right cause."


Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org


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