So Ive been watching a documentary series on the 60s and an episode is devoted to the JFK assassination and goes a bit into Lee Harvey Oswald's possible motivations. It was mentioned that he defected to the Soviet Union for awhile but then moved back to the US denouncing marxist-lenninism. It also brought up how he previously tried to assassinate Edwin Walker (a retired far right general actively fighting civil rights), and before the attempt had this picture taken http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sites/default/files/imagecache/300_pixels_wide/Oswald.jpg
the papers he's holding being The Worker and The Militant, with "hunter of fascists" inscribed on the back of the photo.
So I looked into him a bit more, not knowing really anything other than he assassinated JFK beforehand and found this piece he wrote found by the Warren Commision.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/undeliveredspeechnotes.htm
The whole thing expresses ideas pretty much in line with, and some specific to, anarchist analysis. Though he denounces anarchism, seeming to confuse them with hippies or something, perhaps he has a more in depth explanation somewhere or the anarchists of the day were really weak sauce.
"The first mistake is fairly well known even at this state in the communist development, the "withering away of the state," as it was called Marx envisualized that the aboliation of classes would lead to the gradual reduction of state apparatus. However, this is not the case and is better observed than contemplated. The state rather becomes more extensive in that while the powers of central ministries or delegated they are not reduced in the dividing of an organ of state power into smaller units at lower levels so although the some ministers have actually disappeared to Moscow they have become more entrenched than ever at lower levels, thus in dividing power, you multiply units and in everyday life you become more and more dependent on those organs of state power."
Mostly i'm just kind of blown away that I didnt know anything about Oswald and that JFK was killed by, essentially, an anarchist. (Not trying to go all Black Flame calling him an anarchist when he wasnt exactly, but probobly close enough)
Interesting, I actually
Interesting, I actually didn't know anything about him, other than that he shot JFK. However, there's nothing in that which makes him look like a libertarian communist. He slags off anarchism in particular a couple of times. And pointing out that the state wouldn't wither away isn't something exclusive to libertarian communist analysis, basically everyone who is not a Stalinist/Trot would recognise this.
I think the main thing which comes through in that article is confusion, and that it is basically all over the place, which suggests something similar about the author's thought processes
Quote: I actually didn't know
Sheeple ;-)
Although I do love that bit from Bill Hicks.
"Ya know there was rumors of anti-Castro pigeons seen drinking in bars. Someone overheard them saying, coo, coo...."
His political motives are
His political motives are very much under-played and when combined with the psychological influences, we have an archetype irrational, delusional lone wolf with a grudge against the world.
Steven, do you mean my article or LHO's jottings who certainly had no clear thought out political position or McAdams who is an American right-wing professor and has little understanding of the nuances of left-wing politics.
See Oswald explaining he is not a Communist but a Marxist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP4qwrniKt0
And on the radio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se7zCbPDZ9U
Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. The trouble starts when people think they are also entitled to their own facts. The bigger the claims of "facts" gets, the more an Alice-in-Wonderland logic behind them takes hold. I weary of the times i end up in arguments with people who persist in believing such things as the magic bullet and rely upon the Oliver Stone's JFK as their proof.
I once read there were 26 groups who had a motive in seeing JFK dead. In some conspiracies it seems they all played a part and he died in a hail of bullets from all directions - from behind, from the side, from the front, from below, from his bodyguard, from his driver...the only person never blamed is Jackie Kennedy...and she had the strongest motive, revenge for his serial philandering, and she had just had a cruise by herself with her future husband Aristotle Onassis, who was well capable of financing a hit using Greek Cypriot EOKA contacts...and i am sure i read some place that Jack Ruby was very distantly related to Jackie's family....
Some insist that LHO was "patsy" and not involved at all but was framed by whoever. I simply say...hmmm...didn't any of the real assassins say..."if we are going to plant all the evidence on this guy in the Book Depository Store, won't someone think it strange our target was shot from the front from the Grassy Knoll...[or drain railway sidings or whatever]..shouldn't we shoot him from near where our patsy will be"
Or did the head honcho explain "Its ok, we fixed the ballistics and medical evidence. We have all the Dallas police and FBI in our pockets...We have the emergency-room doctors at Parklands sown up and we have the autopsy doctors at Bethseda under control. Even if someone happens to incidentally film the assassination we can tamper with their cameras and film. We aren't at all worried that with such a massive web of conspirators that someone over the next 50 years might go rogue and leak we really did it" [shame they couldn't hide the Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy very long, or the USS Liberty sinking by the Israelis, and others] Hmmmm..this shadow government that could bring down the Twin Towers on 9/11 in a false flag black-ops, couldn't seem able to arrange the very simple task of finding some fake WMDs in Iraq...
Enough of my early morning ramblings...
And just to return to my
And just to return to my theme of common sense, considering the conspiratorial claims of Jack Ruby's killing of Oswald, would the shadow government entrust the task to a person who takes along his favourite pet dog and leaves it in his car? (Or is this a sign that it was a crime of opportunity and not premeditated.)
Would they meticulously plan the killing of LHO in a way that if the line in the post office where Ruby was wiring money to one of his strippers was longer or the clerk serving slower, or if the traffic lights were at red (or green, i forget now) it would have meant a policeman would be manning the unguarded ramp that Ruby entered?
And if LHO himself had not decided he wanted to wear a different sweater and returned to his cell to change would have actually changed the course of history. If he had not done so, his transfer would have been minutes earlier, before Ruby had arrived to shoot him.
Do assassinations get planned to depend entirely upon a sequence of accidental fortunate and unforeseen coincidences? JFK Conspiracy theorists face that conclusion.
Another morning meandering
Steven. wrote: ... And
Steven.
Are you claiming that there will still be a state after classes no longer exist?
How?
slothjabber wrote: Steven.
slothjabber
No, my point is that states do not "wither away", they self perpetuate and protect themselves. For the state to no longer exist, it must be destroyed. (My general view is expanded in our intro to the state: https://libcom.org/library/state-introduction)
From what I knew about Oswald
From what I knew about Oswald he was a big admirer of Castro's Cuba, I remember a documentary about JFK that said he was known to have made pamphlet about Cuba and arguing that a big motivator for him to kill JFK was US policies regarding Cuba.
Steven. wrote: ... my point
Steven.
The state cannot be 'destroyed' unless the social basis of the state is destroyed. If you don't destroy property (and therefore classes) and successfully fight off the capitalist restorationists eventually overthrowing the capitalist world-order completely, then the state will keep coming back, because the working class will need to organise itself to do these things and ultimately the power that compels workers to work for 'the military success of the revolution against the capitalists, here have these rations and work longer hours to make weapons' is a state.
If the social basis of the state is destroyed, then the state can't come back. But the social basis of the state is the division of society into classes. It's property that determines the existence of classes and thus the state. Once everything is under the (really) democratic control of all the working people (ie, everyone) - in other words, there is no 'property' - then there are no classes and no state either.
slothjabber: Once the state
slothjabber:
Once the state is in position, it is strong enough to generate artificial classes (read: statesmen/politicians vs the people), thus if you remove capitalism with the state apparatus you will not have abolished the class divided society but just have substituted one with another.
Reddebrek wrote: From what I
Reddebrek
I'm no 'expert' on the matter and you probably know more about me on this but didn't Oswald collude with anti-castro, basically fascists? People who were in cahoots with Cuban exiles? Thats pretty much just based on me seeing some of the film, JFK, though.
potrokin wrote: Reddebrek
potrokin
No, the Oliver Stone film is conspiratorial nonsense. Lee Harvey made and passed out Pro Castro leaflets and tried to kill an anti Castro general before he shot and killed JFK. He tried to get information on anti Castro groups to trade information to Havana for citizenship, he did the same with the Soviet Union tried to exchange marine training and knowledge for citizenship. But apparently it didn't work because he had been too publicly pro Cuba for him to get anywhere.
This has more biographical information http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/organ1.htm
He did try to pose as an
He did try to pose as an anti-Castroite to infiltrate them. But trying to claim that he was not pro-Castro goes against all the known facts. But he also hyped up the size and strength and influence of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Many will see in LHO the psychological signs of a fantasist.
Be wary of Oliver Stone's JFK unless you are also willing to accept Errol Flyn's version of the Battle of Little Big Horn or the Charge of the Light Brigade
ajjohnstone wrote: He did try
ajjohnstone
Haha! interesting stuff, thanks for clearing that up.
Reddebrek wrote: potrokin
Reddebrek
I see, I did find Stones' film suspect as he seemed to think that JFK was some kind of hero, which he certainly was not, far from it. Thanks for the feedback.
Oliver Stone's agenda for JFK
Oliver Stone's agenda for JFK was part of his Vietnam War experience which he sought to make sense of. He presents an image of a president who had discarded his war hawk credentials and who was intent upon travelling the road of peace and reconciliation. That was the motive for his assassination by a conspiracy within what Eisenhower termed the so-called "military-industrial complex".
Much ado is made of a Memorandum 263 which proposed a limited withdrawal of American forces from the war, part of the "vietnamisation" of the war, if future progress against the NLF justified it. Events on the ground, however, would not have permitted it whether he lived or died. No way was Kennedy going to run with his tail between his legs and offer victory to Ho Chi Minh. Stone's interpretation is merely wishful thinking on his part and his conspiracy a mish-mash of contradictory theories and mistaken "facts". One of LBJ earliest acts was to endorse the continuance of the Memorandam 263 policy - so much for shooting someone to change policy.
Strangely something LHO recognised.