The Great Conspiracy, (plus Postmodernity).

Lenin's Tomb offers an insightful look on the problems of conspiracy theories. The following quote illuminates the main point:

I tried, then, to see if historical examples could illuminate the matter: for instance, the iconoclasm during the Dutch Revolt being put down to a tiny conspiracy; the French Revolution being described by Burke and others as a conspiracy of Freemasons and secret revolutionary organisations; anti-Jesuit myths in 19th Century France. In fact, early-modern Europe contains dozens of such examples, and usually they are a form of elite thought when faced with revolt. in other words, there can be nothing fundamentally wrong with the system, so a small group of conspirators must be behind it.

Conspiracy theories appear when there is no ideological critique in a society that exists in more than sects. The problem of, for example, 9/11 conspiracy theories like Loose Change is that they are pointless, and even worse - it suggests, as lenin does say, that the system actually works. Conspiracy theories are what makes the system fail, nothing else.

The reason why I would like to say that they are pointless is that even if it was an inside job, and even if there were bombs in the aircraft, and even if the Bin Laden's were flown out of the USA the very evening of the attack it doesn't change the fact that the United States is an imperialist nation with heavy repression in every boundary of life. Class, ethnicity and sex is more prevalent systems of oppressions in the US than it is in almost any other nation in the Western world, and certainly earning a high ranking in a completely international respect as well. No secretive cabal can change the fact that such conspiracies are - if they even exist - the result of the structure and not it's cause. It is the structure that must change, small groups are unimportant.

Lenin goes on to make a few other remarks that I think are important for a philosophical discussion, however:

...postmodernism, if it has any meaning, is an attempt to account for the breakdown in confidence in the forms of knowledge associated with modernity, whose calamities – genocide, colonialism, racism, enslavement programmes, eugenics, gender repression – clearly called them into question.

I am incredibly uncertain if we should truly talk about a metanarrative of modernism and postmodernism. Certainly, there are always (instabile) cultural means of praxis and currents in thought which together founds traditions, culture, etc. The struggles of the last few centuries have not been one of modernity with different "wings" of modernity battling out. Ie, socialism vs. liberalism, sometimes together against conservatives. I believe that this is what Immanuel Wallerstein tries to say a couple of times when he describes socialism as the left wing of liberalism and conservatism as it's right wing. Though all these groups are influenced from time to time by "modernism" and now, by "postmodernism", they are not purely ideological differences within the same belief system. Rather, they are formed by the economical base and political subjects that created them which is a world of difference.

Postmodernism is a difficult phenomenon, particularly as zealots such as Zygmunt Bauman have in recent years backed off from it, instead speaking about hypermodernity and whatnot which has perhaps held back the ideological wave some. There are many condemnations of it, from analytical philosophers who froth around the mouth when they so much as hear a mention of it, to Marxists who claim that postmodernism is the superstructure of neoliberal economics, to excited '68's who claim that it is the salvation of us all.

Politically, I believe that postmodernism is a disaster. It diverts the political power of the masses to individualistic, rather than collective projects. It dismantles all belief in change and disassembles political organization. There are, of course, powerful things to learn from postmodernism however. From the very concept of narratives, deconstruction we can go quite far.