What Does Keir Starmers Membership Of The Trilateral Commission Tell us?

The most likely candidate to win the next British general election is a horrifically bland individual known as Sir Keir Starmer. He has been a member an organisation known as the Trilateral Commission for several years and this has attracted a great deal of attention on social media platforms over the last few days. The Trilateral Commission stands alongside the Council on Foreign Relations, The World Economic Forum and the Bilderberg Group as an institution that attracts a lot of what are derisively referred to as “conspiracy theories”. What the Alex Jones type of “conspiracy theorist” usually says is that these organisations are composed of networks of influential people who form a shadowy cabal which wields power form behind the scenes and that this power is the true deciding force in society and that “democratic” governments are a farce as real power lies elsewhere. As is often the case with theories that are informed by a particularly American form of libertarianism they are off the mark because they are looking at these institutions as separate to and above the institutions of the bourgeois state. To properly understand the role of the Trilaterial Commission you need to apply the analysis that only Marxism-Leninism can provide.

So what is the proper way to analyse organisations such as the Trilateral Commission? These institutions (and many others like them) serve as production points of bourgeois ideology and as training schools for those who will make up the political cadre of the bourgeoisie. The purpose of membership of these institutions is to ensure that those who going to play leadership roles for the bourgeoisie are trained in all the latest political lines and how to deliver them effectively. This is why you’ll see high profile journalists, analysts and TV presenters on the membership list of these institutions together with politicians and academics. They’ll probably have a section of “influencers” pretty soon as well. They are all brought together to ensure that they achieve a consistency of messaging across every bourgeois state, media and academic institution. The Trilateral Commission is a relatively newer body, founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter the body in its early years was concerned with responding to the deep crisis which the imperialist nations had descended into at the end of the 1960s. The group employed the services of intellectuals such as Samuel P Huntington to create a now notorious report on this crisis entitled “The Crisis of Democracy” which outlined in blunt language how the bourgeoisie of the American led imperialist block saw the developing class war and why it entailed the need for them to change the way they were governing. This is just one example but the ideological production of these think tanks is constant as is the training delivered to bourgeois politicians like Keir Starmer and many others.

When it comes to the dissemination of ideas within capitalist societies we must always start our analysis by recalling Marx’s analysis on ruling ideas.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. 

Karl Marx – The German Ideology

Ruling any society in which you represent the interests of a tiny minority of property owners is a difficult task. Thus the bourgeoisie needs discipline, unanimity of messaging and control over the mediums through which this message is distributed. Bourgeois ideology reaches the masses via the medium of the capitalist media most of the time. This is frequently supported by reports picked out from favoured thinkers within academia and amplified by bourgeois politicians who are skilled at delivering such messages. All of this takes time to train and equid these personnel with the necessary skills at doing so. The think tank world is thus crucial in disseminating these messages and also in picking out promising bourgeois politicians (or aspiring politicians) and ensuring they linked into the right networks, kept up to date on the right messages and how to deliver them. The Trilateral Commission is an important part of this but it is by no means the only one. The US imperialist block is littered with these organisations but they are all funded by the capitalist class, sometimes with slightly different priorities but all unified in the purpose of being sources of ideological production and political training. The bourgeoisie as a class understand very well the importance of the organisation and discipline within their class and the political, cultural and media figures who work for them. That is part of the reason why they are so fanatically opposed to Marxist-Leninism, they know very well that should the proletariat achieve a level of politicisation and organisation that rivals their own then the capitalist system will be under severe threat. That is why they promote writers such as George Orwell (a British intelligence asset) who relentlessly attacked Marxist-Leninism from “the left” and thus played a valuable role for the bourgeoisie.

Returning to the role played for intellectuals it is also important here to note the work of the great Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci.

Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.

Antonio Gramsci – The Intellectuals

This is vital when looking at how the capitalist class maintains their grip on the realm of ideas and why trying to challenge them in this area alone is always doomed to failure. The intellectual layers of a society, as Gramsci states, grow out of the material base. That is what gives them their great strength, after all the capitalist class have spent large amounts of money creating and sustaining academic institutions. This is done in part so that the technical skills necessary for those in key positions of production can be disseminated more widely and efficiently but they also serve as part of the ideological production process. Bourgeois politics, media and academia form a self reinforcing circle by which the work of one institution is used to support the work of the others. Again, this is why the think tank world is so important for the capitalist class. It ensures that the personnel of these different institutions are kept up to date on the latest political lines and provides reinforcement of message discipline.

It is notable that the Trilateral Commission seeks to bring together all of the different areas of the American Imperialist block into its ranks. This is another important aspect of organisations like this. US Imperialism has sought to tighten its control over its European and Asian allies political systems since the 1970s in order to ensure that there can be no departure by anyone from absolute adherence to its priorities at any given moment. This is why you’ll see fanatical figures such as Carl Bildt on the membership list of the commission. Men such as Bildt and Starmer are picked out for key roles not just by the domestic ruling class but more widely as men who serve the interests of US imperialism when they do rise to high office within their home nation.

The world of think tanks is important to understand as this is where the politicians of the US imperialist block are trained and politically educated. This is the true significance of such institutions. The “conspiracy theorists” are right to see them as centres of power but wrong in thinking that these are circumventing the institutions of the state. These are absolutely vital support structures for US imperialism and the management of the various vassal states that it has within it’s block. For all their power and influence and the impressive display of unanimity such ideological training creates within the political, media and academic realms however they cannot defy the long term economic trends. US imperialism is still decaying and if its advocates appear increasingly ridiculous it is a reflection of this decay. Gramscis observation that the intellectual layers grow “organically” out of the material base still very much applies.

Thus when the economic base begins to decay so the intellectual expressions of bourgeois rule state to decline and fall along with it. As for Keir Starmer, unlike his idol Tony Blair he is not a particularly good actor. Whilst he embraces every bourgeois message, every nostrum of US imperialism with wild enthusiasm he does not appear convincing in doing so. It would take an actor of Obamas calibre to be able to sell the degenerated capitalism of our epoch now, which is the US ruling class is so desperate to find another performer of the the same ability. Keir Starmer has clearly been trained in all the skills required to be the leader of British imperialism and yet this cannot save him from being a representation of the decline of the system he has been a fanatical servant of for this entire career. The think tank world is impressive in the way it serves as ideological production and training centres for the different leaders and intellectuals of the US imperialist block but it cannot escape the fate of decaying imperialism. These institutions are an important expression of imperialisms ideological, political and cultural organisation but they still arise organically from it and thus cannot defy the laws of economic gravity which are slowing pulling down US imperialism.