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Book Review - The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective
Sunday, Aug 21, 2005
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By: David Raby - Hands Off Venezuela

The Venezuelan Revolution: a Marxist Perspective
By Alan Woods
Wellred Publications, 2005
178 pages

Review by David Raby

Although many Marxists and progressive activists in general are still reluctant to recognise it, a real social revolution is under way in Venezuela, and this places the country at the centre of the international political struggle between capitalist globalisation (or imperialism, as it used to be called) and popular movements throughout the world. Moreover, the unquestioned leader of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian revolution”, President Hugo Chavez, is already (and deservedly) an international figure of comparable stature to Fidel Castro or Che Guevara.

The great virtue of this book, and of Alan Woods as a leader of the Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, is to have recognised this fact at an early stage and to have acted accordingly by promoting the Hands Off Venezuela campaign. Like this reviewer, but unlike legions of sectarian dogmatists and wishful idealists, Woods understood that revolutions do not develop according to a preconceived formula, and that the people (or the working class) cannot sit around forever waiting for a perfect Marxist-Leninist party to appear, any more than they can make revolution as a spontaneous and unorganised mass (as some dreamers in the international anti-globalisation movement seem to believe). From my perspective, Woods is still hampered by a somewhat doctrinaire view of the revolutionary party and the nature of revolution and socialism in our times, but any deficiencies in this respect are more than compensated for by his understanding of and support for the Venezuelan revolution.

In Venezuela, at least since the time of Chavez’s first election in December 1998, and especially since the failed coup of April 2002, the masses have burst onto the scene and become leading protagonists of the political process. Indeed, as argued by retired general Jacinto Perez Arcay, in a sense the people took to the streets during the Caracazo riots of February 27 to March 5, 1989 (against an International Monetary Fund deflationary package imposed by the social- democratic President Carlos Andres Perez), and have never looked back.

But the people involved in this spontaneous and directionless popular revolt (brutally put down on orders from Perez with hundreds, indeed possibly thousands, dead) found the leadership they lacked with the unsuccessful military-civilian uprising led by Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Chavez on February 4, 1992. In the absence of an effective revolutionary party, it was Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement (MBR-200) who became in effect the vanguard of a popular revolutionary process that is still continuing, and the crucial point is that this vanguard role is recognised and accepted by the masses.

It is no use lamenting that this is not the type of vanguard party conceived by Marx, Lenin or Trotsky; as Woods points out, what many self-proclaimed Marxists have failed to understand is “the dialectical relation between Chavez and the masses”. They mumble about “populism”, but “show their complete inability to connect with the real movement of the masses”.

It is this same blindness to the real dynamics of popular movements that leads many sectarians to condemn participation in the Bolivarian movement and call for building a revolutionary party outside it; as Woods comments ironically, “So three men and a dog (or a drunken parrot) gather in a cafe in Caracas and proclaim the Revolutionary Party”. This is precisely what many dogmatists in Venezuela were doing for years before the Bolivarian Movement developed, and some of them like Bandera Roja (Red Flag) have ended up as counter-revolutionary provocateurs, which is the logical conclusion of such arrogance.

Woods and the Revolutionary Marxist Tendency are taken seriously in Venezuela, including by President Chavez himself, precisely because they have shown an understanding of the real situation in the country and of the practical leadership provided by Chavez and the Bolivarian Movement. Woods also correctly stresses throughout the need for the revolution to be further radicalised and to take more decisive measures against the bourgeois oligarchy and imperialism.

But where I part company with Woods is in his assessment of Chavez as a representative of “petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy” who, while being supported in his progressive actions, must be pushed to the left by building “an independent revolutionary proletarian current”. This in my view is to underestimate the political capacity of Chavez and his intimate bond with the popular classes; it is this bond that is the real motive force of the Venezuelan revolution and which is driving it forward to take ever more radical actions.

Just as with Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement in Cuba in 1959-61, so in Venezuela it is Chavez and the Bolivarian Movement who are leading the process forward together with the people. It was, after all, Chavez who surprised everyone in December 2004 by declaring, in his closing speech at the World Congress of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity, that “we have to reclaim the legacy of socialism” and “find the way forward to build the socialism of the 21st century”.

Since then he has repeatedly returned to the theme of socialism, while taking measures such as the expropriation of the Venepal and National Valve factories and their conversion to a combination of state management and workers’ control, the acceleration of the agrarian reform and the signing of the ALBA agreement with Cuba, which strengthens ties between the public sectors of the two economies. Of course popular pressure was also involved in these decisions — Chavez cannot do things alone — but this popular pressure takes place primarily within and through the Bolivarian Movement, which is, as Chavez has explained, nothing else than the organised expression of the social movements themselves: the Circles, the Urban Land Committees, the Local Public Planning Committees, the UBEs (Units of Electoral Battle, now converted into Units of Endogenous Battle, i.e. grassroots committees for the promotion of self-sufficient development).

The people in the barrios have made it abundantly clear that they believe in Chavez and the MBR-200, but not in political parties of any kind. In Cuba, the old Communist Party and the Directorio Revolucionario ended up uniting with the July 26 Movement under the leadership of Fidel Castro, and other parties and organisations disappeared or became irrelevant; I predict that something similar will happen in Venezuela. Unlike Cuba, however, Venezuela will not be subject to the geopolitical pressures that led Cuba to adopt the Soviet model of socialism, leading to distortions of the Cuban process.

But these disagreements are part of the ongoing debate in Venezuela and outside about the future path of the first triumphant revolution of the 21st century. What is most important about this book is its contribution to the understanding and defence of the Bolivarian revolution. As Woods himself recognises, “The greatest danger for the Venezuelan Marxists is impatience, sectarian and ultraleft moods. The revolutionary Marxist current is at present a minority of the mass movement. We cannot impose our solutions on it ...”

And outside Venezuela, while being analytical and critical, our main duty is to build solidarity with the process through Hands Off Venezuela and other organisations.

[David Raby is an honorary research fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool. Reprinted from < http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org >.

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[ 25 August 2005: Message edited by: Burns ]

It seems clear to me that anyone thinking about an alternative to globalization has to support Chavez and the Venezuelan process.

Still, I am sceptical of comments such as "the people in the barrios have made it abundantly clear that they believe in Chavez and the MBR-200, but not in political parties of any kind."

Latin America has a rich tradition of "caudillismo", or blindly following a designated leader. Sometimes, the results aren't too bad. But sometimes they are terrible, as when revolutionary leader Peron destroyed the socialist party of Argentina and instituted a fairly mindless populism.

So I think that political parties, with their already-articulated programmes, and their mostly-joint decisionmaking, may be more important than "the people in the barrios" may know.

I have not been to Venezuela for about ten years; so I haven't seen Chavez and his movement up close. So I can't be too critical.

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Jeff:
It seems clear to me that anyone thinking about an alternative to globalization has to support Chavez and the Venezuelan process.

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Speak for yourself. When it comes right down to it, all Chavez is doing(however noble), is repackaging a sytem that really needs to be destroyed all together. Besides the inherent captalist nature of the state, it brings the whole aspect of governmentality to the table.

Here's one group of people who aren't to happy with Chavez.

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When it comes right down to it, all Chavez is doing(however noble), is repackaging a sytem that really needs to be destroyed all together.

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No, no, you don't understand. Chavez lives in the real world, and his policies are helping real human beings mired in poverty. Formulations like yours belong in high school debating clubs in suburbia, where they sound profound. But aren't.

As for the people who aren't too happy with Chavez, they do say:

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“It pains us that the government of [President] Hugo Chávez, for whom we have much sympathy and for whom all the indigenous people voted, as we did for the other candidates on his ticket, would accept this,”

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Anyway I have no doubt people are mobalized, but it need not have a centralised face. Saying that the results in Venezuela are all Chavez is tantamount to spectacular thinking. It ignores the everyday struggles on the ground such as what happened in Agentina. The most you can say about Chavez is that he hasn't shut them down. What you certainly can't say is that he was the imperative for the struggles your seeing right now. The fact remains when you set up a state there comes imperatives. Being steeped in capitalism is one of them. The coal mine issue is a good example. The idea that Chavez is not a US puppet really doesn't fly. And being doing things from a statist position is hardly changing things in any meaningfull sense.

[ 27 August 2005: Message edited by: Vigilante ]

Your dream of overthrowing capitalism and abolishing the state at the same instant is the most un-historical utopianism. It's never happened and it never will. The power of the state is necessary in order to carry out any kind of revolutionary social change and to defend those changes against the powerful capitalist forces that would overturn them if given half a chance.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:

Speak for yourself. When it comes right down to it, all Chavez is doing(however noble), is repackaging a sytem that really needs to be destroyed all together. Besides the inherent captalist nature of the state, it brings the whole aspect of governmentality to the table.

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You must mean that they're not happy with Carbones de Perijá, a multi-national coal company. And unlike the Zapatistas, these indigenous people have someone listening as they make their case. This is typical of the struggle between indigenous peoples of Latin America and foreign-based corporations that have seized control of mineral, oil and timber rights when weak and corrupt governments friendly to US and other interests cave in to big money demands. In fact, leftist government in Venezuela was responsible for nationalising the oil when Occidental Petroleum was accused of securing oil contracts in an illegal manner(bribes). They were shown the door by socialists while others were told to assess the gross worth of the oil operations. Suspecting a tax grab by the socialists, the big multi-nats low balled their corporate worth and assumed they had out-foxed the lefties. The socialists promptly nationalised Venezuela's oil on behalf of taxpayers and did it as cheaply as possible. To be a decent anarchist, I suggest you learn something about the indigenous peoples struggles in Latin America. Read about the US-backed coupe and general rios montt in Guatemala, perhaps the greatest right-wing mass murderer of indigenous people of all time in the last century. He was a corporate stooge, too.

The Venezuelan story has been one of strong leadership backed by majority consensus, and it's the kind of shrewd gamemanship needed when dealing with corrupt capitalists and their conniving ways, Vigilante. Your sophomoric rants against socialism, which are about 95% of what you post here at rabble, read like Hitler on valium. He hated socialists, too. Mein Kamf and his squawking oratories were full of hatred for the socialists and certain ethnics who were ruining his beloved Germany. As a general rule, getting rid of socialist political opposition and labour leaders paves the way for fascism. We've mentioned this before that fascism was initially conceived to counter strong socialist tendencies in Europe and Asia, and that it continues to be a dominant political theme now and threatening the world - fascism that is. But you didn't seem to appreciate unbridled corporatism being trumped in that manner of chicken and egg, typical of the bland pap regurgitated from the muddled right. Your purpose here seems to be an attempt to counter socialist thought. This site gives you purpose and is perhaps a good thing for you, yes ?.

How are your and Morpheus' plans for that scooter trip to El Salvador and Honduras coming along, btw?.

[ 28 August 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Still, I am sceptical of comments such as "the people in the barrios have made it abundantly clear that they believe in Chavez and the MBR-200, but not in political parties of any kind."

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[ 28 August 2005: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Anyway I have no doubt people are mobalized, but it need not have a centralised face. Saying that the results in Venezuela are all Chavez is tantamount to spectacular thinking. It ignores the everyday struggles on the ground such as what happened in Agentina. The most you can say about Chavez is that he hasn't shut them down. What you certainly can't say is that he was the imperative for the struggles your seeing right now. The fact remains when you set up a state there comes imperatives. Being steeped in capitalism is one of them. The coal mine issue is a good example. The idea that Chavez is not a US puppet really doesn't fly. And being doing things from a statist position is hardly changing things in any meaningfull sense.

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I think you are only partially right. You are right that the results in Venezuela are not all Chavez. The social movmenets in Venezuela have played a significant role in pushing Chavez to the point where he is now taliking about the need to reclaim socialism. Where you are wrong is your assertion that Hugo Chavez is a US Puppet. Hugo Chavez is nothing of the sort. Lest we forget that the 2002 coup against Chavez was US backed, and that elements of the Bush adminsitration are now talking about assasinating Chavez.

[edited to add]
And as for your claim that it need not have a centralized face. If the left is not trying to achieve state power, then what is the point of mobilising the left anyways? Taking state power inherently implies a centralized face capable of assuming the leadership of the state. Is Chavez perfect? No, not by any strech of the imagination. But compared to most other current world leaders, Chavez is damn good. Chavez has shown that he can be pushed in the right direction. The Chavez presidency has opened up the space in which the working class can and is discussing workers control.

One more thing. In the current climate of neo-liberal globalisation and neo-imperial warm/occupation, radical social-democracy of the sort implmented by Chavez in Venezuela presents a direct challenge to the capitalists. Is it the entire ansdwer? No, but it is significant.

[ 28 August 2005: Message edited by: Left Turn ]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Your dream of overthrowing capitalism and abolishing the state at the same instant is the most un-historical utopianism. It's never happened and it never will. The power of the state is necessary in order to carry out any kind of revolutionary social change and to defend those changes against the powerful capitalist forces that would overturn them if given half a chance.

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1) Who decides in what circumstances and for how long the power of the state is "necessary"? And which state powers are included? If it's the state itself which gets to decide all this, how do you guard against the definition of "necessary" gradually expanding as the state seeks to expand its power?

2) Even if there were an objective way to prove that a powerful state really were "necessary," do you think that would automatically justify it? Do you think there's anything which could ever be necessary but nevertheless unjustified? Start with the big stuff like genocide and nuclear war, then go all the way down through banning political parties, censorship, etc... where do you draw the line above which necessity alone is not a justification?

Tell the Chinese whose grandparents were born in the rice paddies and lived to the ripe old ages of 30 and 34 that US-Anglo backed Chiang Kai Shek would have been a better choice after him murdering 10 million Maoists before fleeing to Taiwan with the bank of China's wealth.

Tell the French that it wasn't worth it. And the American's as the Brits cocked their hind legs up in India after getting their arses kicked in America.

Tell the Russian's whose old and war veterans survived the corporate-sponsored Russian Front dance of ideologies that they should have knuckled under to Hitler.

Socialism is not capitalism. In fact, socialism was the cause for some large changes in the last century. And more will come as the world revolutions continue to unfold. The fascists are holed-up in America and having to resort to stealing elections as they feign democracy. The right is the world's foremost cause of terrorism in the world today, and fear of socialism and of change is their personal terror.

Unfortunately, that's also where a majority of indigenous people live.

There's been word that if things get tense then Zulia would attempt for autonomy, as what is going on in Bolivia with the city of Santa Cruz.

There was an anarchist group in Venezuela, but it seemed this current was definitely a middle class phenonenon, something that afflicts ultra-leftists here too. Nobody is pure enough for them.

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Originally posted by Carter:
Just a few questions...

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1. Who decides? In the case of Venezuela and Cuba, certainly not a bunch of self-styled "progressives" living comfortable lives far away in the heartland of imperialist North America. In the present circumstances of hostile imperialist subversion against both of those countries, why would it surprise anyone if their socialist leaders consider a strong, centralized state with a full range of powers to be "necessary"? And why would anyone who opposes the imperialist counter-revolution demand that those states make themselves any less powerful?

Who decides in the United States today? A capitalist oligarchy. The state always serves the interests of the class that controls it. That's its function.

2. Genocide and nuclear war aren't necessary. Banning counter-revolutionary subversion may very well be necessary. Talking about justification makes no sense in the context of necessity. If something is necessary, that means you have to do it, end of story. Only things that aren't necessary need to be justified.

You seem to be suggesting that state power in Venezuela (for example) may be necessary but not justifiable. Good luck with that.

3. Suddenly we're talking about tactics? OK, but to compare the "tactics" of the Chavez or Castro regimes to the tactics of Machado, Batista, Bush, or Jiménez is ludicrous. To compare their historic social roles is even dumber.

I reject your terminology. "Statist socialism" suggests that there is another kind of socialism that doesn't involve taking state power. No capitalist state in history has ever been overthrown without someone taking state power away from them and using it against the capitalists.

You say that revolutionary social change is impossible without abolishing the state. Then you know nothing about the revolutionary changes that have taken place in Cuba in the past 45 years, and you know nothing about the necessity of revolutionary leadership.

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But people are mobilized AS a result of the Bolivarian revolution, and do not fear to fight for their rights as they did before Chavez. That's why this slur of "caudilloism" is a bit off.

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I said I support Chavez, but that "caudillismo" is a DANGER.

That's not a slur, that's a rejection of romanticism.

There are lots of Latin American revolutions that have, in my opinion, mobilized masses under a revolutionary leader, only to come to grief when the leader turned out to be human. The examples which come readily to mind are Peron, "Marcial" (Cayetano Carpio) in El Salvador, and Abimael Guzman for Sendero Luminoso.

In my humble opinion, each of these revolutions placed far too much faith in an individual, and not enough attention to programmes. "We have faith in X" is a recipe for failure.

However, I will note an irony. I can recall around 2000 or 2001 - Chavez was still early in his Presidency, and Lula and the PT were gearing up for election in Brazil. Chavez was looked upon somewhat favorably but with skepticism - was he really a socialist? what about the caudillisimo? is he too "top down"?

At the time, most Lefties (certainly the ones who post here) were confident that the PT - with it's roots in a wide array of "popular movements" -would not only win the election but make Brazil the continental leader of a progressive revolution.

Three years later Lula's lustre is diminished and Chavez is providing the bold leadership and garnering mass support.

I'll note again that I see Jeff's point. I'll also note, however, that many people of the New Left school of politics have a pathological aversion to the concept of Leadership - and it does matter.

[ 28 August 2005: Message edited by: Burns ]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
2. Genocide and nuclear war aren't necessary. Banning counter-revolutionary subversion may very well be necessary. Talking about justification makes no sense in the context of necessity. If something is necessary, that means you have to do it, end of story. Only things that aren't necessary need to be justified.

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One problem with the concept of "necessity" is that anything can be necessary, depending on what your ultimate goal is. Genocide was obviously "necessary" to achieve the Nazis' goals; but that doesn't matter, since we all know that their goals were evil. The question, then, is how sure you have to be of the justness of your desired outcome in order that everything necessary to bring it about becomes morally acceptable.

Most people would agree that the defeat of the Axis powers in WWII was a good thing, a worthy goal. So then, who gets to decide which measures are "necessary" to bring that about? Surprise, surprise, it's the Allied governments who decide, and all of the sudden "necessary" expands to include Hiroshima, Dresden, and the internment of the Japanese. We know today that those measures were wrong; the interesting question is, why were they wrong? Is it solely because they didn't turn out to be "necessary," and the war could have been won without them? If that's the reason, it would imply that if the war had not been going as well and there were a real risk of Allied defeat, those measures would have become justified. I would submit instead that they were wrong regardless of whether they were necessary or not. After all, governments can always easily phrase their goals (as "unconditional surrender" rather than simply "surrender," for instance) in such a way as to suddenly make what they want to do anyway (Hiroshima, Nagasaki), "necessary."

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OK, but to compare the "tactics" of the Chavez or Castro regimes to the tactics of Machado, Batista, Bush, or Jiménez is ludicrous.

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The state always serves the interests of the class that controls it. That's its function.

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You like to talk about how the word "necessary" is misused to justify atrocities, like genocide and nuclear warfare.

But when I said:

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The power of the state is necessary in order to carry out any kind of revolutionary social change and to defend those changes against the powerful capitalist forces that would overturn them if given half a chance.

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If you disagree with that, fine. But don't try to suggest that I'm using "necessary" in some kind of moral sense to describe something that isn't really necessary at all.

You ask, "how sure you have to be of the justness of your desired outcome in order that everything necessary to bring it about becomes morally acceptable." What you are implying is that some desired outcomes are not worth the morally unacceptable means that are necessary to achieve them. More specifically, you say it's not "self-evidently worthwhile" to replace capitalist exploitation with revolutionary change, and therefore taking state power to that end is not justifiable or a "desired outcome". How can I argue with that? You prefer imperialist exploitation and I prefer to support an anti-imperialist government. So you're essentially in the same camp as our friend Vigilante, George Bush, Batista, and all the other capitalist oppressors.

You admit you have no confidence in the forces of revolution to use state power for good rather than evil. And yet, you have confidence in their ability to effect revolutionary change without having any coherent leadership, or national defence of their revolution, or centralized planning, or legal and legislative institutions, or even a program of any kind. Just turn the mobs loose and let everyone do their thing, unmolested by the nasty government, and presto - a stateless paradise in a country of limited resources, in the the middle of a hostile world that wants to return it to the slavery of international market capital!

Your idiotic attempt to equate Bush with Castro shows how very little you understand about the nature of capitalism, and betrays an acute inability to see beyond the superficial. As does your tripe about how lawyers and academics - not the capitalist class - control the capitalist United States of America, and how socialism increases, rather than reduces, injustice.

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Originally posted by Carter:
Then add the whole gulag thing into the mix, and you can perhaps understand why Leninism does not enjoy particularly widespread support among most progressives today.

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The ultra-right are not to be outdone with regard to warehousing the poor in your country, Carter. It's the new social contract on America. Observe fascism baring its teeth.

Dickensian Poor Houses in America - 2004

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In 1998 the US surpassed the former Soviet Union and won the crown as the globe's foremost jailer with an incarceration rate of approximately 690 prisoners per 100,000 citizens [his numbers differ just slightly from the ones I used]. By comparison, that is almost 6 times Canada's incarceration rate (115), over 12 times Greece's rate (55), 19 times Japan's rate (37) and 29 times India's rate of 24 prisoners per 100,000 citizens.

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The World's Largest Gulag Population Continues to Rise and Undermining American Labour

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Originally posted by Carter:
But what you don't seem to realize is that in your system, the state is controlled by a class of bureaucrats and civil servants, and it therefore serves their interests, not those of the workers. And is that really all that different from capitalism?... Given all of this, one can be forgiven for wondering whether you support socialism not as a means of combatting injustice, but rather as a goal which is worthwhile in and of itself, regardless of whether it ends up reducing injustice or increasing it. Everybody knows the old joke, but it bears repeating: "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Communism is precisely the opposite."

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
I meant really necessary, in the sense that, without taking state power, lasting revolutionary change is impossible. I wasn't using necessity to cover up some kind of state-fetish; I honestly believe that taking state power is literally necessary - a sine qua non - before revolutionary change can be effected.

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Originally posted by Burns:
I love it when we argue about what happens after the revolution. It's quite productive.

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That noted, in the very near future the rhetoric about Chavez's "democratic deficit" will increase. His most minute disrespect to his opponents will be treated as callous disrespect to democracy. An arrest of activists openly plotting another coup will be treated as a Human Rights travesty. When that shit hits the fan the Left in this country needs to have the intestinal fortitude to stand with Chavez and not climb on the fence as we so often do when both sides are not utterly totally "pure".

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Originally posted by Left Turn:
You are right that the results in Venezuela are not all Chavez. The social movmenets in Venezuela have played a significant role in pushing Chavez to the point where he is now talking about the need to reclaim socialism.

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I don't think it's as simple as that, either, though. An awful lot of people think of Chavez as fundamentally about being forceful and charismatic, and a fairly nice guy, and otherwise pretty much a standard political nullity. But if you look at more in depth articles, one thing you come away with is an impression of a man who is deeply intelligent and obsessed with reading and learning. He is self-educated, but quite erudite. I think he's a very smart man, on both a booklearning and a street-smart political level. And I think the interaction between Chavez and the social movements has involved both push and pull--in part, it's been about Chavez pulling the social movements, nurturing them to the point where they become a strong enough and radical enough force that he gains political room to start talking about socialism. If he'd been talking openly about socialism in 1998, he probably would not have been elected, and he knew it damn well. Doesn't mean he didn't believe in socialism at the time; interviews I've seen indicate that he was already well read in quite radical politics.

Chavez seems to have a very good sense of timing--he seems to have planned out fairly carefully a sequence of steps for getting somewhere fairly radical, with reforming the army and bringing in a people's constitution coming first as enablers. People talk about the stuff he's buying with the oil money as "just" social programs, but neglect the contents of those social programs. They aren't simply making people's lives slightly less miserable. I strongly suspect, again, that he's carefully thought about the impacts he's looking for. I think the objective of these programs is nothing less than the transformation of the traditional dependent impoverished class in Venezuela into a class much more capable of struggle, by educating them, making them more autonomous (the property titles, for e.g.), creating community ties (with the "Bolivarian circles", co-ops, small media co-ops etc.), and taking off them pressures which tended to narrow their vision down to the hand-to-mouth pressures of day-to-day existence (the cheap food, easily accessed medical care etc.)
It's not just making the people better off. It's giving them a platform from which to be effectively political. Which, in the medium term, he is likely to be the beneficiary of, but in general should make it way tougher for the oligarchs to take it all away again.

Chavez is a strategic thinker, and I'd be surprised if his vision wasn't always more radical than he let on early on, and perhaps more radical than he's let on to this day. A lot of what we've seen since seems to be prefigured by the principles of participation and conceptions of things like positive rights that went into the constitution. Again, it's no accident that he had millions and millions of cheapo copies of that thing run off--that constitution, and people's awareness of it, its principles and the rights they had under it, was a very important catalyst for the broadening of the social movements.

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Spector:
Your knee-jerk opposition to all progresive and anti-imperialist governments, puts you objectively into the same camp as the counter-revolutionary and pro-imperialist forces who are trying to turn the clock back on Venezuela, Cuba, and every other country whose government stands up to the "globalization" bullies.

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Bla bla black and white, I've heard it before. Cuba and other countries are simply creating there own form of capitalism which is perpetuating ecocide and sending us to a probable extinction this century.

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Your dream of overthrowing capitalism and abolishing the state at the same instant is the most un-historical utopianism. It's never happened and it never will. The power of the state is necessary in order to carry out any kind of revolutionary social change and to defend those changes against the powerful capitalist forces that would overturn them if given half a chance.

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The so-called deam you speak of has happened on a number of occations, Ukrain, Spain, and most recently chiapas. The Ukrainian and Mayan peasants of past and present didn't need no friggin state kick of the rich guys.

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Anyone who doesn't share your delusional fantasies is apparently a capitalist stooge. This kind of sectarianism guarantees that, fortunately, you will remain isolated from any chance to have an impact on real mass social struggles. Just try going to Caracas and telling the poor people of the barrios that Chavez is a "US puppet" and see what they say and do to you.

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Well as various ultraleftists and postleftists of today point out, there is not a great enought understanding of what capital is. I wouldn't call these people stooges nessarily, however I will call them out on their deficiancies. The enlightenment,modernity,capitalism, and the left our all actually the samething. I becomes pretty self evident if you strip away the ideological bineries and look honestly out there and within yourself.

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The state always serves the interests of the class that controls it. That's its function.

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Here is a little story for those who hate the state. In several countries a squatters movement developed, taking over unused urban lands for self-constructed homes.

The absentee owners then hired gunmen to oust the squatters at night, shooting a few, and terrorizing the others.

Enter the state. A police force is created and armed, and paid a salary to insure that no one is run off the land.

But the anarchist who comes from the capital (or more likely, the university) tells you that you have to organize YOURSELVES! No one else should be involved!

Now, you might want to do this. But, as it happens, squatters' communities in 'Latin America often have a large majority of female-run homes. If they fight it out with the gunmen, they will lose. On the other hand, the creation of a police force may be enough to settle the issue in your favour.

So, Vigilante tells us that Baudrillard would not approve, and neither would Jacques Cammate.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:
It misses the fact that this tactic is a mirror of capitalist production as Baudrillard would say.

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Ya well, wasn't Baudrillard one of those guys who claimed Gulf War I didn't really happen because there's no longer any such thing as reality in a postmodern era of media-created "reality"? The French have a bit more than their share of bonny intellectuals who are totally disconnected from the facts on the ground, to the extent sometimes of denying that the ground is there at all.

In the end, the fact is that some things are relatively centralized by nature--like oil companies. Venezuela is dominated by the question "Who gets the money and power that comes from the oil?" Going with a completely decentralized politics concedes that field to the elites, who will then use that money and power to whup your ass. In such a situation, insisting on virtuously ignoring the state is just dumb stupid, and the bad guys would just looove to have opponents like you instead of opponents like Chavez.

I am all for decentralized co-operative labour as a general rule. But some things, some infrastructures, key economic components and such, represent concentrations of power, the "commanding heights" of the economy, and are of major concern to a lot more people than just the ones working at them. That needs to be acknowledged and dealt with, not ignored. For one thing, if you just ignore it, the people running those bits of stuff will become a new elite. So even in an endgame, near-utopian society you'll need broader social oversight over and participation in such stuff which will have statelike features.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:
Bla bla black and white, I've heard it before. Cuba and other countries are simply creating there own form of capitalism which is perpetuating ecocide and sending us to a probable extinction this century ... BLA BLA BLA ... Cuba!

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The truth is, the island of Cuba was nearly 90 percent covered with trees before the sixteenth
century Spanish conquests of Latin America. Colonialists and their lust for slave sugar cane profits, mining and American fruit companies destroyed a great deal of green in the Carribe and Latin America. If anything, Castro has adhered to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit more than any other Latin American country.

If Cuba was still a bastion for rich people and organized crime today, then Veradaro Beach would still be private property of the Dupont family instead of being open for all the world to enjoy.

So ... when will you and Morpheus be doing that road trip to Honduras and Guatemala ?. Haiti's not so far and said to be the freest trading nation in the Carribe, Vigilante. Observe the bustling state of capitalism in El Salvador, only a short drive from Texas.

[ 30 August 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

New Book from MRP - Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution

See also

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
Ya well, wasn't Baudrillard one of those guys who claimed Gulf War I didn't really happen because there's no longer any such thing as reality in a postmodern era of media-created "reality"? The French have a bit more than their share of bonny intellectuals who are totally disconnected from the facts on the ground, to the extent sometimes of denying that the ground is there at all. ....

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Jeff:
Back at ground level in Latin America, the poor would generally love to have the state interfere on their behalf. That's why people like Chavez and the Sandinistas have had some success.

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Well not all of the poor feel that way.The Mapuche indians, the outlaws of equador, the cochabamba peasants, and of course the piquateros of Argentina certainly don't share the view that nationalising is any good. And if this did happen it would not be the first or last time the poor would be dissapointed.

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Here is a little story for those who hate the state. In several countries a squatters movement developed, taking over unused urban lands for self-constructed homes.

The absentee owners then hired gunmen to oust the squatters at night, shooting a few, and terrorizing the others.

Enter the state. A police force is created and armed, and paid a salary to insure that no one is run off the land.

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I should not have to remind you that the state throughout history has also ousted squaters everybit as much as the ownners. Thus both these aspects of power must be destroyed. Oh and squaters have fought back without a police force.

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But the anarchist who comes from the capital (or more likely, the university) tells you that you have to organize YOURSELVES! No one else should be involved!

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Well being that I'm for the destruction of class I really don't care for the baiting, however since your playing that game, I will simply say that Marxists greatly outnumber anarchists when it comes to hugging academic ivory tower. Anarchists along with the masses have always defined what action is. And this self organization has been done during the revolutions in Ukrain and Kronstadt without the moronic intellectual vanguards who squeched those movements.

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Now, you might want to do this. But, as it happens, squatters' communities in 'Latin America often have a large majority of female-run homes. If they fight it out with the gunmen, they will lose. On the other hand, the creation of a police force may be enough to settle the issue in your favour.

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And when the imperatives of the state changes the police force will do the exact opposite. Kina like what Kirchner doing right now with the piquateros. And when the power of individual and social insurection spreads, even the gunmen die, as happened in Chiapas WITHOUT A POLICE FORCE!

Rufus

When it comes to that Baudrillard quote, I don't really see what's so controversial about it once you understand it within it's context. The CNNization of the war was close to a video game and gave people a feel that they were 'in it' when they weren't at all. I think that's what he was basically arguing. I havn't fully swallowed his simularca views admittedly.

As for "The Mirror of Production", that arguement is quite distinct from his simularca epoch. What he's basically arguing is that Marx uses the same concepts that were developed from classical liberal thought and just seeks to arrange them differntly. "Fulfilling the productive forces" for example. It's a painfully obvious point to see in retrospect.

And you seem to think that reorganizing capital is the only way to go. In the case of oil you'd like to see it done differently, me I would like to see oil production as such come to an end all together. And the idea that you need a significant structure to answer another one is a view I find outdated. Look at the insurgents in Iraq(not people I nessarily support)their torching the oilfields. They're answering the US war machines structure with significantly less structure and as a result it's the US that's getting its 'ass whupped'. Various military personel are realizing that net wars are the future in the post-fordist world, as busniness 2.0 told the US capitalists,"no military on earth can go toe-to-toe with the US armed forces, but no heirarchy on earth can keep up with a well-functioning network"
Thus the Pentagon's transformation which is largely being overseen by Ronald Dumsfeld who wants the US military broken down to smaller more efficiant battalion units. In the case of Iraq it's yet to work. It's all part of the information age.

Spector lets take a look at the two of the 3 countries you mentioned. In the case of Ukrain and Spain, the insurrections in that part of the world were certainly short lived, however 70 days of real communism is better then 70 years of state capitalist,red fascist slavery. Capitalist rule did bring those two counries down, however in the case of Ukrain it was of the state capitalist variety.

Spec Chiapas is an area of the world with over a hundred municipalites and over a thousands different groupings of peoples. One of the things that makes communism possible is multiplicity and Chiapas definately has that down. Cuba is a centralised, beauracratic,fascist hellhole in comparison.

Now to Rufus

I'll start off by saying that your idea of anarchism is a bit dated. The views you aspouse might have been more legitimate in the 19th and early 20th century when the enlightenment aspect of the movement was giving similar views. However the past 40 or so years has done well to critique those positions.

It's ironic that you accuse me of having a "vision for society" What I seek is a form of social organization that limits power and domination as much as possible. What you are seeking requires more beaurocracy, more division of labour and ultimately a continuation of governmentality, a mere collectivisation of the alienation that has been affecting us for over 10 000 years.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:
Cuba is a centralised, beauracratic,fascist hellhole in comparison.

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Vig' and Morph should apply for jobs with Reporters w/o borders.

And don't forget, everyone, El Morpheus can vouch for Vigilante. In fact, the two of them are planning a scooter trip to El Salvador and Guatemala and will be reporting back to us on the state of capitalism(or communism, because we ca never be sure with Viglante) in those free trading nations off Uncle Sam's back door steps.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:
And I'm interested in anarchy not anarchism. Something like it existed for over a hundred thousand years. While primitive society will never come back, something like it could be replicated in a post-civilized postmodern world.

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And I've said on a number of occations, I do not think a hunter gatherer society is possible or should be put out in a blue print for society.

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Originally posted by Vigilante:

It's ironic that you accuse me of having a "vision for society"

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So I see. I won't accuse you of having any such vision in the future.
Don't think I'll bother discussing with you either. You've made it quite clear that you're not a serious political thinker, you're just one of those dorks who think they look cool wearing black at demonstrations.

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And I'm interested in anarchy not anarchism. Something like it existed for over a hundred thousand years. While primitive society will never come back, something like it could be replicated in a post-civilized postmodern world.

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Excerpts:

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Alan Woods' main point, reflected in each of his articles, is that the Venezuelan revolution cannot stop half way, leaving the U.S.-backed right-wing oligarchy in control of decisive sectors of the economy and state apparatus. "The counterrevolutionary forces are not reconciled to defeat," Woods states. "They are increasingly desperate ... determined and violent."

Venezuelan working people must expropriate capitalist property and lay the basis for socialism, he argues. "Either the greatest of victories or the most terrible of defeats." (Pages 110, 133)

This basic premise of Marxism, confirmed at each stage of the Venezuelan struggle, has won an increasing hearing among the Bolivarians. Chávez now ridicules the notion that Venezuela can find liberation within capitalism.

[snip]

Woods does not take up the ongoing democratic tasks of the Venezuelan process. Such struggles as that of Venezuela's people of color for equality; that of women pressing into political life and demanding their rights; that of workers in the "informal sector" striving for a secure livelihood; that of the oppressed indigenous peoples to which the Bolivarians have given such close attention — all are neglected. Nor does Woods acknowledge Chávez's role as a defender of the world's ecology against capitalist devastation.

Woods also fails to give clear support to the struggles of peasants who wish to divide up the great estates, arguing instead that the estates should operate as collective farms. (Page 172)
All these questions are crucial to forging the revolutionary alliance necessary to overturning capitalism in Venezuela. By omitting them, the book displays a limited understanding of the complex dynamics of the Venezuelan revolution.

[snip]

There is a sameness in The Venezuelan Revolution: the articles span three years but advocate an identical course of action — immediate expropriation — at every turn. The book displays no sense of tactics, no sense of when to advance, when to pause, when to sound out the enemy's willingness to compromise, when to form alliances.

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[ 11 November 2005: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

Here's an excerpt from an astonishing interview with Venezuela's new Minister of Planning, Haiman El Troudi. The appointment was made just a few days ago, but this interview was given last summer:

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We cannot repeat the [previous] format of central planning. On the one hand capitalism says that the invisible hand of the market self-regulates the market. The counter-position of socialism states that the economy needs to be planned nationally. However, we don’t believe in any particular formula, such as that the economy necessarily needs to be planned in a vertical manner, where everything is determined by a group of technicians or scientists from the state [who] decide what will happen in the economy, in production or in the development of a particular locality etc. That is to say, we believe in planning but not in planning that is necessarily and absolutely centralised and vertical. It is better to create a system of socialist planning that gives the possibility to the people to diagnose their own reality at the same time as making the plans for their own locality. In reality, these plans will then be more closely linked to the real world.

I want to emphasise this phrase: “The people are better planners than the best planner of the government or academia”. The people know their reality. There is no need to simply diagnose or study the world in which they live. An intellectual, an academic, a planner, a theorist needs to go and observe reality in order to understand. The people know their own reality and can better plan their own reality.

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