After reading the comments by Ray F and C Derick Varn, I wanted to share some thoughts on the topic of conspiracy theories.

First, it is regrettable that what Varn calls structuralism, “arguing that capitalism is a self-driving system of incentives where ‘bad actors’ only matter on the margin,” does not preclude conspiratorial thinking. The first generation of ‘anti-Revisionist’ Communists that emerged in 1956 following the Khrushchev Secret Speech were armed with completely absurd propositions and claims about how Stalin was being falsely slandered and libeled by a cabal of various disreputable personalities. Things got to the point where certain Comrades were claiming in their published writings that Stalin’s final book on linguistics was in fact a coded political testament about the impending Khrushchevite revisionist attack on his legacy. In a certain sense, Trotskyist sects have on occasion (but likewise not consistently) proven themselves to be cults that place a tremendous amount of emphasis on their own political demonology about Leon’s fate. The most obvious marker of whether or not a Trotskyist group is a cult is whether they claim that the collapse of the Soviet Union proved Trotsky had been correct. In fact, the USSR was brought down by a petit bourgeois element that was opposed by the very ‘Stalinists’ that Trotsky had labeled as the eventual executioners of the revolution as opposed to its defenders. But there remain multiple Trotskyist groups that fail to mention this point.

Second, the Left habitually refuses to accept alternative explanations to particular conspiracy theories. The most famous instance to my mind is Noam Chomsky’s dismissive view of the John F Kennedy assassination as anything except a Mafia hit, most likely an act of revenge after Attorney General Bobby Kennedy had prosecuted the mob and Jimmy Hoffa. Chomsky likewise rejected the altogether unwarranted and uncritical approach that many Comrades still have regarding claims that Kennedy was planning to make a radical pivot on the Vietnam War after his 1964 reelection victory, pointing out with painstaking detail that absolutely nothing in the documentary record warrants such a bizarre conclusion. As further verification, Gore Vidal (a Kennedy confidant and step-brother-in-law by marriage with Jackie Kennedy) never had any compunction about emphasizing that President Kennedy bore the lion’s share of responsibility for the quagmire in ways that only truly became apparent long after his death. 

Being on the Left doesn’t mean that you are precluded from conspiracy theory thought. For those with a deep understanding of Marxist esoterica, Hegelian Marxism’s rejection of the Second International’s Orthodox Marxism and its mechanistic comprehension of class struggle as the engine of history is only one of many historical examples where a radical thinker broke with the norm in order to redefine Marxism in new ways. Marxism has repeatedly been compelled to correct itself precisely when it transformed from a political discourse into a political ritual. 

This season, the Left is scandalized by Gabriel Rockhill’s latest polemic about the Frankfurt School. Whether or not you buy the argument, the fact is that this does return to an earlier, conspiratorial form of discourse during Stalin’s final days when all the doctors were supposedly plotting against him. Is this book’s popularity perhaps no better barometer of our lack of immunity to nonsense conspiracy theories?

Best regards,

Andie Stewart 
(She/they, AMAB)
“Be as radical as reality itself.” -Ilyitch