If you're looking for progressive films to download, check out www.chomskytorrents.org. Documentaries, movies, even 3 hours of Maoist Bob Avakian lecturing you on revolution. What's not to love?

However, if you're looking for documentaries on the oil war or American power, you'll soon find websites & films blaming all these things on bankers, secret societies or aliens. I won't dignify these arguments with weblinks, but type 'Illuminati' into Google and you'll find dozens.

Wisconsin Freemasons, taking a short break from ruling the world

The logic of these arguments goes thusly: Tiny, unaccountable Group X (Freemasons, Illuminati, Jews) has been conspiring in secret for centuries. They have a special advantage Y to control things (control of the money supply, members in high political office, secret bunkers). This allows them to dupe the public and do Z (accumulate wealth, buy elections, start wars.)

Conspiracies - secret acts by government or small groups - do exist. But for conspiracies theorists, this logic gets systematized. Now, these secret acts aren't tools for the ruling class to rule: they're the point of ruling itself.

For example, it's a fact that most American Presidents have been Freemasons. To me, this shows how the Masons are a social club for the American ruling class, much like fraternities. To conspiracy theorists, this shows how the Masons control the country.

It's all the Rastafar - I mean, the aliens' fault!

Conspiracy theorists confuse the means - deceit & subterfuge - with the end: power. They don't understand power as a social force, with material roots in private property. Once power is just something our rulers 'have', it goes no further than those Great Men. History becomes a matter of meetings & cabals.

Right-wing conspiracies

The Right loves these - obviously, given their obsession with capitalist individualism. And, since the Right has no clue how history works or social events happen, this allows them to pick their monsters - Jews, Communists, gays or Muslims, depending on their mood - to explain when things go wrong.

For example, the Russian Revolution becomes a grab for power by Jewish bankers, rather than a social revolution involving millions of people, Jews and non-Jews.

Trotsky, lovingly depicted by our allies against Soviet Russia, the White Army

Conspiracy theorists point to Jewish Bolshevik sympathisers who donated money to the Party, while forgetting the social history that led to those donations. Jews suffered from centuries of discrimination. Bolshevism held out the promise of a non-racial society in which the powerful who had oppressed Jews - the church and landowners - would be driven from office. The vast majority of Jews were workers, and they'd be be liberated along with everyone else. And indeed, this is what happened, at least before the rise of Stalinism. The Bolsheviks fought the White Armies that led pogroms against Jews.

Another theory talks about an American who gave $20 million to the Bolsheviks, as if that explained everything. There are dozens, and they all share the same logic. We're duped, misled, playthings of the powerful (except for the theorists, of course.)

"What's he saying?"
"Who cares, as long as we get our money!"

A revolution becomes millions of stupid people being manipulated by secret societies. Workers don't create wealth; Jewish bankers shaving strips off bars of gold bullion do. In every scenario, ordinary people have no agency of their own.

But working people do have power. Every day, we shape the world through our work. When groups of workers become conscious of this, they try to change it, as the recent solidarity strike that shut down Heathrow shows illustrates.

Left-wing conspiracies

The pre-planning of 9/11 is the most dramatic left-wing conspiracy theory, but there are more banal ones; check out Abuse Your Illusions, which argues:

- The US military faces a huge a rape crisis.
- The most popular kind of antidepressants can cause suicide.
- The nation of Panama was created as a get-rich scheme by Wall Street.

Unlike the Right's versions, I don't doubt these facts. But so what? Are people supposed to 'rise up' because they learn them?

Class struggle is not just about having the correct info. It's about connecting with the knowledge people already have. Working people know they're exploited, even if they can't articulate it. And when they act, they do so without all the facts. Those Gate Gourmet workers at Heathrow didn't see themselves as a vanguard of the proletariat. But they acted like one.

"I thought I was here as part of the self-organized working class vanguard!"
"Really? I'm here for Sear's Summer Sale!"
- Winnipeg General Strike, 1919

Power can be secret. But what conspiracy theorists, both Left & Right, miss is that power is already visible, all around us. When someone gets evicted, the state is enforcing property rights. When a stockbroker trades stock, he's buying future profits made off workers. Capitalist power relations are everywhere for us to see.

Being secret is inefficient: all those false companies to set up, those unchartered planes to fly. If our rulers had to do everything in secret, capitalism would quickly grind to a halt. They have a much better idea: operate openly, but convince us it's normal. War isn't mass slaughter, the system expressing its property relations in the most brutal manner imaginable. It's democratic, a tool for freedom. Work isn't the chronic destruction of the soul, it's what you gotta do, a fair day's work for a fair day's wages.

If this was a conspiracy, maybe just the rich & powerful would do it - a sweatshop in Mumbai

Conspiracies exist when the ruling class has to do something particularly horrific, and doesn't have the time or public support to justify it. But they're not the only way power works, nor the most important way.

The job of genuine progressives is not to dig up Great Truths. It's to explain the facts already in full view. Why do the rich get richer while the poor starve? Why is the U.S. occupying Iraq? Why does Celine Dion have a career? We don't need more secrets revealed; we need people to act on what they see around them.

Free gift for the 1000th customer!

There have now been over 1000 visitors to my blog. This makes me very happy. I would never get the chance to talk to 1000 people otherwise. For everyone who's clicked through, read casually or posted a comment, thank you. And to show my gratitude, here's a link to Yugoslavian-Mexican record covers, courtesy of the comrades at Leftist Trainspotters.


After Yugoslavia split from the Soviet bloc in the 40s, they needed more culture to import - fast. They picked a few Mexican revolutionary films, and thus began a country-wide love affair with all things Mexican (christened Yu-Mex by the web author). Check out the Slavs singing ballads to their colt pistols, and dour beauties garbed in western wear. Also worth a look is the author's collection of Love Sex & Rock 'n Roll album covers.