David MacGregor

It ayn't rand

Abstract Chris Sdabarras Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical offers a novel view of the founder of Objectivism. Sciabarra contends that Rand was influenced by Hegelian and Marxist themes that dominated ...

The deep politics of September 11: Political economy of concrete evil

This paper offers a deep political analysis of September 11 drawing upon Peter Dale Scotts concept of deep politics and the Hegelian-Marxist political economy of evil. Concrete evil concerns outbreaks of malevolence in history and their connection with ruling social groups; deep politics extends this by investigating hidden forces lying beneath the surface of conventional political processes. The deep politics of September 11 and intervention in Afghanistan points to covert U.S. reliance on warlords, holy warriors and drug traffickers to secure American interests, including Caspian oil resources and the limitation of Russian influence over its former republics and satellites.

September 11 as “Machiavellian State Terror”

Pyrotechnic effects and spectacular death belong to the symbolism of terror and political assassination – bizarre techniques of miscommunication through fear practiced on the innocent and designed to effect social change. While focusing on the use of terror in 9-11, this article deals with both terror and political assassination as closely related communicative practices of death. It outlines a theory of terrorism that suggests September 11 may be an example of expedient terrorist destruction ordered from within the state, a macabre instance of a state protection racket. Commentators on the left tend to see terrorism as a blow extended by the oppressed against exploiters. However, terrorism is much less likely to be a manifestation of a revolt by – or on behalf of – the underprivileged than a demonstration of brute force by the state or its agents. Machiavellian state terrorism is terror/assassination performed for reasons different from the publicized ones; often initiated by persons or groups other than those suspected of the act; and – most important – secretly perpetrated by, or on behalf, of the violated state itself. Machiavellian state terror advances the ruling agenda, while disguising itself as the work of individuals or groups opposed to the states fundamental principles. As an example, the article reviews a mysterious 1971 assassination in Paris that obliquely foreshadows some critical elements of the official story of 9-11. The article underlines the importance of oppositional theorizing: questioning government and looking for connections between events are critical features of what it means to be vitally active in the political universe.

Marxism, Conspiracy, and 9–11

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of their labour . . .

Rejoinder to Sciabarra

Abstract Chris Sciabarras discussion of the dialectic and its uses in modern social science is most welcome. However, his account of Hegel, and his, and Ayn Rands, vision of an ideal society, are groundlessly antistatist.