WikiLeaks & Marxism

I can’t understand all the Sturm und Drang about the sensational WikiLeaks stuff taking up page after page in the NY Times. The Pentagon papers it ain’t. Should I say, the stuff that is called, “the great secret Government documents” that whip across the cable and wireless networks of our Government is really just bloody boring.

Is it really a great discovery that Berlosconi is a playboy trying to act like a Prime Minister should. Or that President Sarcozy worries more about his suits and neckties than he does about the French Muslim problem? Or that Hillary is really losing her patience with Prime Minister, Netanyahu who, as any informed person knows is a prisoner of his extreme right coalition. I’m sure he thinks that Hillary is a pain in the ass and so on and so forth. And who cares?

(Yes of course Senator Lieberman thinks Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, should be tried as a terrorist.)

(Assange is wanted in Sweden for sexual misconduct. Holy Cow Sweden is the most tolerant sex State in the world. How’d they ever come up with that one?)

Our Attorney General is trying to figure out exactly under what law they could prosecute Assange? Surely not The First Amendment. The US Supreme Court recently ruled that spending money in political campaigns is free speech. What WikiLeaks does is kindergarten stuff compared to what that court decision, “Citizens United” does to our electoral process.

I was trying to figure out why none of these “secret cable” made much of an impression. I realized it was my years as a student of Marxism. What has one to do with the other? Once you get a Marxist understanding as to how Capitalism operates you can begin to see what is going on in the WikiLeaks stuff.

All of those documents confirm the power struggle going among the competing capitalist countries for dominance in the various spheres of influence. Marxism described this power struggle as the reason for armies navies, spy systems, military buildups including colonial adventures. The latest addition to this roster of international struggle for economic dominance is Globalization. Source of cheap labor for outsourced manufacture. Best way to get out from under unionized workers in the home country.

It has been very useful for me to hang on to many of the things I learned growing up in a world of intelligent radical ideologues. Upon entering college in my late forties I did have to make a very important adjustment. I realized that my old ideologies were barriers blocking any new ideas. As I drove to school I began to think of my brain as a blackboard. To learn I had to wash it clean as Miss freemen did in my fifth grade class at PS 34. Wow was that ever right. A blank blackboard for new learning.

Yes, college in my forties was a great learning experience. Yet it was within that learning environment I began to incorporate some of the old things I learned with the new. That's why keeping the good stuff I learned from Karl Marx sure helps in understanding how capitalist society functions. Yupp, WikiLeaks is just another side show that is given us courtesy the “Press” that reflects the hopes of the ruling class that we don’t think of anything more serious than the fact that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can get mad. No kidding!?