Social Analysis David Icke or Karl Marx Style?

Dear A, As I said when we met at the Artisan's Fair last month, there is much in what David Icke says that I can agree with. He sees the injustice in the world, and the apparent mess that politicians always seem to make of it. I see it as evidence of the class distinctions we preserve in society, but he fantasises about a real and important social issue. I cannot see how these fantasies help the situation at all. When the ruling class were scared of the prospect of a communist revolution, they distracted large numbers of worthy people by inventing left wing communism. The actual communists working for the improvement of the oppressed and the poorest in society were classified as right wing communists. They were not communistic enough. So many young people who otherwise might have been active in opposing right wing policies were distracted into attacking those who opposed the right wing in practical ways. Fine. Perhaps the left wing communists were right. After all, the Soviet Union was a failure, and China seems more capitalist than the capitalists. So the ultra left were right. The future is theirs! Except that they disappeared as soon as communism collapsed. They no longer had a purpose in life because their purpose was not to oppose the right but to oppose the left! And what happened to them. Well, in the US, they emerged a few years later as the front runners of the neocon movement, the crypto fascist movement behind the Republicans and good ole President Bush. I see what Icke is doing as something similar. His fantasies distract people from the real issues which have been well demonstrated in recent weeks and months with the corruption in Parliament, all encouraged by Blair to keep his New Labourite yuppy types sweet, and voting for his vast fascistic enlargement of oppressive law (mentioned quite rightly by Icke), and indulging in the even vaster corruption of the financial system. I cannot see how a load of ignorant nonsense about words like courtship, citizenship and so on have anything to do with any supposed mystical maritime law, or anything else other than their origins in Old English and Anglo-Saxon. In any class society, the law is designed to favour the top class, not the hewers and heavers. Fantastic pseudology does not help anyone to understand it. We need people to teach that the recent troubles are classical examples of Marxian theory. Marx did not know everything any more than anyone else does, but he pointed us in the right direction, and that is why he is villified by the ruling class along with more down to earth lefties, commies, socialists and even some liberals who realise that we are social animals and cannot live without society. Icke, or his source, is right on this too. All our modern institutions have their origin in primitive human society, which was tribal, from religion through drama, sport, culture to lawcourts and king's courts -- all social variants on the meetings of the whole tribe for its purposes -- the preservation of the tribe -- of society -- being the main one. The chief was doubtless marginally better off than the rest of the tribe but from the honour he had as a man able to do what others could not. Any power he had was the power of the tribe, and if he abused it, he was out. The same applied to everyone. The cause of modern problems is not that we have been infiltrated by aliens, but society has grown too big to manage directly, and now we have a parasitic class of plain human beings trying to get more than their fair share out of society. Their aim is not to preserve society but themselves at the expense of others. Since the amalgamation of tribes into nations, it has always been so, and the result is always the eventual collapse of society -- "the mutual destruction of the contending classes". Society then has to rebuild itself somehow, usually by new people taking over without the same preconceptions of their predecessors. But they then build up a new class society, and the process repeats itself. We can try to stop it, and encourage our rulers not to be greedy, but it is hard, and facts not fantasy to back direct action are what is needed to succeed -- if we ever can. I have nothing against intelligent reptiles. I wrote a book about them (the anthroposaurs!). I would rather be ruled by just and fair reptiles than unjust and greedy human beings. Best wishes, AW!