• Spiked

For getting some dialogue and development going, debate with spiked might be useful.

They are still stuck with their opposition to the war on Iraq while everything about their world view makes them despise the pseudo-left opposition to it.

Here's some classic twisting in the breeze of this dilemma

The article ends with this:

vvvvvv

The proliferation of conspiracy theories, and the inability of the authorities to cover anything up, both spring from the same underlying cause. It is the problem of power without purpose in the Western world today, which we have recently discussed at length on spiked (see Blair, Bush, Chirac: in power, but in paralysis, by Mick Hume; French lessons for us all, by Frank Furedi). The absence of a clear sense of mission and certainty within the elite about how to defend class or national interests makes it difficult to act decisively or to provide a coherent message about what it is doing and why. That, for instance, helps to explain why they have never been able to offer a good case for the Iraq adventure, shifting the arguments from WMD to liberation to terrorism to whatever. Indeed, the neo-conservatives have often had to resort to conspiracy theories of their own, claiming that they are up against an Islamic plot to conquer the West.

As a consequence of this incoherence, everybody else feels able to write their own script for these events, however outlandish. Conspiracy theories rush in to fill the vacuum at the heart of our political system. Yet the same problem of power without purpose also ensures that the political elite is pretty much incapable of organising an effective conspiracy. Personal cliques and factions can certainly plot against one another in the court politics of Whitehall or Washington, often by leaking secrets to the media. But when it comes to anything bigger than protecting themselves and their egos, they seem unable to get - and certainly to keep - things together.

It is high time that those who want an alternative stopped scratching around for evidence of conspiracies, and started working out a political case of their own. Instead, conspiracy-mongering often serves as an excuse to avoid that difficult task. After all, we don't have to confront the arguments over Iraq or anything else if we know that it's all just a cover for a secret agenda, right?

^^^^^

Curiously when analysing current events like the shouting about Iran spiked resorts to the most pathetic "analysis" that US policy is to be explained by simple incoherence and irrationality.

The key to "power without purpose" is of course that "our political system" is no longer a factor for progress but a decaying shell reacting to events with no aim but to keep going for as long as possible until some other class is ready willing and able to take over. This does not mean, as spiked concludes that governments no longer formulate both actual and declaratory policies consciously or that it is acceptable for analysts of incoherent declaratory policies to simply assume there is no coherent actual policy.

Spiked doesn't understand why the US and Iran need to shout at each other at the moment for the same reason it never understood what was happening in Iraq. It is trapped at the level of analysing declarations.

Unfortunately spiked is unable to come up with an "alternative" themselves despite having grasped that imperialism really is moribund and decaying. Instead of looking for an "alternative" to half-hearted and incompetent Bismarckian imposition of modernity from the Bushies in a revolutionary democratic way they still seek to preserve "national sovereignty" but are embarassed at their reactionary allies.

Having started from a wrong stand on the Balkans and "naturally" taken a wrong stand on Iraq themselves, spiked now finds itself feeling exactly the same Iraq fatigue as both the Bushies and the collapsed anti-war movement.

Worse still, neither are we able to come up with an alternative, so end up just passively supporting the Bushies without independence and initiative. We have been stuck now for several decades at much the same level of understanding of the bankruptcy of what passes for "left" politics that we had already reached at the end of the 1970s.

Without development of a positive alternative the inevitable path is towards disillusionment and cynicism resulting in either dropping out of politics entirely or capitulating to the bourgeoisie.