i haven't posted anything exactly like this in this space, and the reason is that it hasn't been entirely relevant. but, it's a thing that shows up from time to time, both in the united states and in canada - is there actually a power elite, who are they and what do they want?

you can't dismiss the issue out of hand; it's an empirical question, and an answer must be arrived at through the proper methods. the important thing is that you do use the right methods and be extra careful about documentation, because you're going to get piled on from every direction if you walk down this path - which is both proof of the depth of the conspiracy and of the deficit of conspiratorial logic.

there is also a difficulty inherent in the bias that exists in the research, as so much of it comes from the loony fringes on the right. the standard conspiracy theory - at least from the msm's perspective - is that the world is run by shadowy communist groups trying to take away your free market. i've never been able to take this analysis past the smell test; it strikes me as absurd on it's face, as the left represents the exploited by definition. you have to have a fundamental starting point in ignorance to even begin to take this hypothesis seriously. as it is, the issue has actually been explored in some detail from the right by a hoover institute academic named antony sutton, who examined the evidence very carefully and rather came to the opposite conclusion - that what we called "communism" in the mid 20th century was actually created by western capital as a means to monopolize eastern markets.

so, it is actually true that big american companies like ford and exxon (standard oil) signed very large contracts with communist regimes - we can prove this very clearly, these contracts happened, the money changed hands and etc. the typical right-wing conspiracy theory takes these contracts (and general cooperation) as evidence of collusion and deduces that the american elite are secretly a bunch of sickle-flag waving communists. but, sutton's academic analysis corrected this hypothesis, in rather clearly showing that the interest of these american industrialists was merely to further their own interests. sutton, a right-libertarian, may have actually predicted the neo-keynesian consensus in pointing out that no corporation wants a free market, if they can have a monopoly. so, when these companies had the opportunity to ensure unchallenged access to a market as large as eastern europe, china or even nazi germany, of course they jumped all over it. a key aspect of sutton's research was demonstrating that capital doesn't really have an ideological preference in ensuring monopoly access, either - it's just as happy to work with the despotic monarchy in saudi arabia, or the fascist regimes in spain or germany, as it is with the so-called communists in russia or china.

sutton was widely read in his time, too. brzezinski famously called him a "jerk".

and, he was even able to take the thing a step forward in demonstrating that these capitalists didn't just seek to monopolize these markets by cutting deals with the despots there, but would actually help them create the infrastructure necessary to create the markets by underwriting them through affiliated bank loans. it would have been nearly impossible for stalin or mao to get access to that kind of capital without cutting that kind of deal. is that communism? or does it sound more like typical capitalism?

sutton concludes that these industrialists were something that he called vulgar marxists, which means people that used marxist theory as a tool to achieve their own self-interest in a capitalist economy. so, in his view, marxism becomes just another tactic to advance one's own interests on the market. i do not know if he ever saw himself in the mirror; i do not know if he ever realize that the vulgar marxist was actually him, as his analysis really could have been written by anybody on the left - zinn, chomsky, bakunin or even marx himself.

so, we can see that when an actual academic on the right tried to rigorously demonstrate the truth of his right-wing conspiracy theories, he just ended up paraphrasing marx. funny, that.

and, is marxist history itself a conspiracy theory? i think it's hard to make the argument otherwise, the question is whether there's any evidence to uphold it or not. marxism does in truth argue that there is a conspiracy of capital seeking to steal surplus value from the proletariat, and willing to stop at nothing in order to do it. when you get deep into these theories, it eventually becomes obvious that there's really a fine line here between marxist theory and conspiracy theory, and that you need to be very careful in being rigorous about it.