Jim D. initially suggested integrating psychological into conspiracy issues, then, when questioned, thought it not the best choice.
How about 'deep politics' of Peter Dale Scott? It is a quite well developed opposition to mainstream political science. For example, writing of 'irrationalities, Scott says, "These indeterminacies multiply when we look at the deep political economy of multinational corporations in this century [the 20th]. Corporations, like mobsters, find it profitable to corrupt those who are supposed to keep their behavior within legal limits" (Deep Politics, p. xiii). In other words, the extra-legal is as much a part of the social system as the legal (legal ownership of means of production, as conventional marxists might say). Scott is not a marxist. But he is right to call attention to the fact that, while laws are built by ruling classes, so are acts otherwise lawless. (The enclosure movement was typically 'lawless' until the bourgeoisie could get the "law" on its side.) In any case, what Scott does, he does very thoroughly. And, for that matter, he doesn't like the term conspiracy theory, because the image is of central control room of men, a la a James Bond film. Rather, he sees "conspiracies as operative [as] part of our political structure, not exceptions to it" (p. 11). His problem is to integrate this knowledge into a theoretical structure. He has spent a professional lifetime attempting and I for one respect him for that. I would not so much mind people dumping on those of us who think Bush's conspiracy of 9/11 is ridiculous, EXCEPT that the attacks against us have a consequence of letting Bush much more easily justify attacking the Middle East. You cannot get away from that implication. If you want to fight the war machine, undermining the ideological support structure for war is progressive. (Of course, there are people in the 9/11 movement whom I don't respect and government operatives, etc., but they are not the deep message.) Or, let me put it another way. Around 3000 people were murdered. Is marxism unconcerned with WHO did the murdering. The answer MUST BE that we oppose such murder as happened on 9/11. Given that, we MUST BE part of the movement which brings the murderers to justice. I hope we can all agree on that! If so, then the question becomes WHO is responsible for the murders. It doesn't mean each and every one of us should focus on this issue, but rather that we should be supportive of those who decide to make this their (partial) focus, same as we support those who focus on, say, murders of union leaders in Colombia. Paul Z. ************************************************************************** THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11-2001 --"a benchmark in 9/11 research", review Volume 23 (2006), RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, P. Zarembka, ed, Elsevier *********************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
