Understanding how capitalism in its latest stage shapes and distorts our world can offer some stability. It does not, however, preclude the presence of real-world, provable conspiracies. If we define “conspiracy” as an agreement among members of a group to pull off some kind of nefarious plot in the shadows, then representatives of capital—in government and the corporate sector—engage in conspiracies as a matter of course. There most certainly was a CIA-backed conspiracy in the early 1970s to overthrow the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, after he nationalized the copper mines, as there was in 1953 to overthrow Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, after he moved to nationalize the oil company that would become British Petroleum.

XREF: Connects to the broader framing about capitalism's distorting effects, and these coups are textbook examples cited across political economy and history.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 772