Re: Kissinger, Bilderberg, and 1973 oil shock

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Daniel Davies wrote:
>
> I would suggest that it's in the nature of secret meetings that it's
> very difficult to find out what happened at them, and even more
> difficult to prove it.

Yes! The problem with conspiracy theories (EVEN when they are true) from
the viewpoint of building a mass left movement is that they introduce
into politics issues that could only be effectively argued in a
courtroom, a scholarly journal, or a Congressional Committee. The
capitalist system generates such larged horrors, horrors which may be
"demonstrated" even out of the front pages of the the capitalist press
itself, that it is seriously counter-productive to clutter political
agitation and propaganda with attempts to prove the unprovable.

Kissinger was a mass murderer! Why blur that really important fact with
abstruse, academic and/or legalistic arguments about his plotting to
raise oil prices. And even if one wants to talk about oil prices, it is
probably best to stay away from complex arguments about secret
negotiations or plots. At a general level (and assuming any degree at
all of inter-imperial competition), high oil prices probably hurt Japan
& the EU more than the US (which produces almost half of its own oil).
U.S. policy described at a very general level (without special 'inside'
revelations) can sometimes be seen as obviously leading to higher oil
prices. One could throw that in as part of a general (oral) agitational
discussion without either deflecting from other (and far more important)
issues or cluttering the discussion with the kind of argument that is
academic or legalistic, not political. Enron scandals only have
political impact on people who are already leftists in sympathy. The
same with almost all "conspiracies," actual or (usually) imaginary.
Arguing of them is counterproductive.

Carrol