[Marxism] Marxism and Conspiracy

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect 


Well, the controversy is not over there was foreknowledge.

^^^^^
CB: I'm not sure what you are talking about. Are you saying that it's
non-controversial that the U.S. had foreknowledge ?! One of the main
questions raised by questioners of the official story is whether the U.S.
spook system had foreknowledge. 

This sort of gets at the nuttiness of those who go around yelling that
anybody who questions the official story is should be shouted down as a nut.
You all are so hyped up about denouncing the notion that the U.S. did the
whole thing, you are blocking attention to the idea that the U.S. might have
had foreknowledge.

And all this in the weekend when there is lots of public attention to it
because of the "anniversary".  You guys are acting like the leftwing of the
Bush administration propaganda offensive on this "anniversary".

^^^^^^^




 It is 
whether the American government, or some cabal within it, 
orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. If we can get past the idiocy of the 
"controlled demolitions" crowd and agree that our differences are 
over that, we would be making progress as the psychiatrists say. 
Personally, I find such questions much less interesting than those 
that involve political economy. For example, I have a book on my 
shelf titled "To Have and Have Not: Southeast Asian Raw Materials and the
Origins of the Pacific War" by Jonathan Marshall. It is all about the fight
over oil, etc.

Uncovering conspiracies certainly is an important job. I think that 
the people who, for example, investigate the Martin Luther King Jr. 
assassination are doing important work. After Malcolm X was killed, 
the Militant newspaper wrote articles highlighting inconsistencies in 
the government account and suggested a conspiracy to kill Malcolm.

However, this discipline has very little to do with the Marxist 
project which is mainly involved in understanding the class struggle. 

^^^^^
CB: This is the interesting , more general point of this discussion.
Understanding the class struggle is not confined to general and abstract
political economy. It also involves examining specific events.

 For example, during the U.S. Civil War , Marx wrote on the Trent case. He
wrote on it precisely because the rightwing was trying to use the incident
as a provocation to get the British to join the Confederacy in the war.


"The wildest rumours circulated in London. The American Ambassador, Adams,
was said to have been given his passport, an embargo to have been imposed on
all American ships in the Thames, etc
At the same time a protest meeting of merchants was held at the Stock
Exchange in Liverpool, to demand measures from the British Government for
the satisfaction of the violated honour of the British flag. Every
sound-minded Englishman went to bed with the conviction that he would go to
sleep in a state of peace but wake up in a state of war."

The Trent Case

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London, November 28, 1861
The conflict of the English mail ship Trent with the North American warship
San Jacinto in the narrow passage of the Old Bahama Channel is the lion
among the events of the day. In the afternoon of November 27 the mail ship
La Plata brought the news of the incident to Southampton, where the electric
telegraph at once flashed it to all parts of Great Britain. The same evening
the London Stock Exchange was the stage of stormy scenes similar to those at
the time of the announcement of the Italian war. Quotations for government
stock sank three-quarters to one per cent. The wildest rumours circulated in
London. The American Ambassador, Adams, was said to have been given his
passport, an embargo to have been imposed on all American ships in the
Thames, etc. At the same time a protest meeting of merchants was held at the
Stock Exchange in Liverpool, to demand measures from the British Government
for the satisfaction of the violated honour of the British flag. Every
sound-minded Englishman went to bed with the conviction that he would go to
sleep in a state of peace but wake up in a state of war.

Nevertheless, the fact is well-nigh categorically established that the
conflict between the Trent and the San Jacinto brings no war in its train.
The semi-official press, like The Times and The Morning Post, strikes a
peaceful note and pours juridically cool deductions on the flickerings of
passion. Papers like the Daily Telegraph, which at the faintest mot d'ordre
roar for the British lion, are true models of moderation. Only the Tory
opposition press, The Morning Herald and The Standard, hits out. These facts
force every expert to conclude that the ministry has already decided not to
make a casus belli out of the untoward event.

It must be added that the event, if not the details of its enactment, was
anticipated. On October 12, Messrs. Slidell, Confederacy emissary to France,
and Mason, Confederacy emissary to England, together with their secretaries
Eustis and MacFarland, had run the blockade of Charleston on the steamship
Theodora and sailed for Havana, there to seek the opportunity of a passage
under the British flag. In England their arrival was expected daily. North
American warships had set out from Liverpool to intercept the gentlemen,
with their dispatches, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. The British
ministry had already submitted the question whether the North Americans were
entitled to take such a step to its official jurisconsults for their
opinion. Their answer is said to have been in the affirmative.

The legal question turns in a narrow circle. Since the foundation of the
United States, North America has adopted British maritime law in all its
rigour. A major principle of this maritime law is that all neutral
merchantmen are subject to search by the belligerent parties.

"This right, " said Lord Stowell in a judgment which has become famous,
"offers the sole security that no contraband is carried on neutral ships." 

The greatest American authority, Kent, states in the same sense:

"The right of self-preservation gives belligerent nations this right. The
doctrine of the British admiralty on the right of visitation and search ...
has been recognised in its fullest extent by the courts of justice in our
country." 

It was not opposition to the right of search, as is sometimes erroneously
suggested, that brought about the Anglo-American War of 1812 to 1814.
Rather, America declared war because England unlawfully presumed to search
even American warships, on the pretext of catching deserters from the
British Navy.

The San Jacinto, therefore, had the right to search the Trent and to
confiscate any contraband stowed aboard her. That dispatches in the
possession of Mason, Slidell and Co. come under the category of contraband
even The Times, The Morning Post, etc., admit. There remains the question
whether Messrs. Mason, Slidell and Co. were themselves contraband and might
consequently be confiscated! The point is a ticklish one and differences of
opinion prevail among the doctors of law. Pratt, the most distinguished
British authority on "Contraband", in the section on "Quasi-Contraband,
Dispatches, Passengers" specifically refers to "communication of information
and orders from a belligerent government to its officers abroad, or the
conveyance of military passengers". Messrs. Mason and Slidell, if not
officers, were just as little ambassadors, since their governments are
recognised neither by Britain nor by France. What are they, then? In
justification of the very broad conceptions of contraband asserted by
Britain in the Anglo-French wars, Jefferson already remarks in his memoirs
that contraband, by its nature, precludes any exhaustive definition and
necessarily leaves great scope for arbitrariness. In any event, however, one
sees that from the standpoint of English law the legal question dwindles to
a Duns Scotus controversy, the explosive force of which will not go beyond
exchange of diplomatic notes.

The political aspect of the North American procedure was estimated quite
correctly by The Times in these words:

"Even Mr. Seward himself must know that the voices of the Southern
commissioners, sounding from their captivity, are a thousand times more
eloquent in London and in Paris than they would have been if they had been
heard in St. James's and the Tuileries." 

And is not the Confederacy already represented in London by Messrs. Yancey
and Mann?

We regard this latest operation of Mr. Seward as a characteristic act of
tactlessnesses by self-conscious weakness simulating strength. If the naval
incident hastens Seward's removal from the Washington Cabinet, the United
States will have no reason to record it as an "untoward event" in the annals
of its Civil War.

 

Written: November, 1861;
Source: Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 19;
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964;
First Published: Die Presse No. 331, December 2, 1861;
Online Version: Marxists.org, 1999;
Transcribed: S. Ryan;
HTML Markup: Tim Delaney 1999.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/12/02.htm
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