zein al-abdeen
23rd November 2009, 13:21
Translated to English from Arabic
From the Chavez Lines: they replaced their alliance against the specter of communism with the specter of Chavism.
In his lines, in an article entitled "The Simon of storms", President Chavez wrote Karl Marx's phrase is not exempt of an elegant irony in the famous Manifesto of 1848: 'A specter is haunting Europethe specter of Communism'; one hundred and sixty years later, the bourgeoisies of this continent, using their institutions, their immoral media outlets, their centers of study, their inorganic soulless intellectuals, have created a new specter and now have made it haunt this continent. They do not call it communism anymore, not even socialism; they have called it Chavism; and the new 'holy pack of hounds' has united in order to finish the threat. The Chavism is condemned by the catholic leaders and it is used as weapon in electoral campaigns, it is accused of being the reason to block trade integration processes; it is also used to frighten small bourgeois societies and to blackmail governments; but behind all this great operation there is the hand of the Yankee empire and its huge legion of bourgeois sects.
President Chavez wrote those lines before a while from the launch of a campaign called "no more Chavez"; the campaign's organizers are 'individuals' who have used the social websites on the internet to coordinate with a large number of 'other people' in several Latin American, North American and European countries in order to organize mass protests to confront the monster that they have invented themselves. The mass was not at all as they have expected and promoted which made them justify afterwards that 'the quality is more important than the quantity.'
The new coalition to confront the revolutionary rise in Latin America is not only a coalition to confront liberal feelings spreading strongly and calling for independence and for ending the full dependency on others; the situation IS all that but its base, which does not depend on moods and emotional blaze, is as President Chavez describes in an article entitled "Inexorable Laws ... Revolutionary Laws!" that the course of class struggling is unstoppable, and if in France, in 1789, it was the time of the commercial bourgeoisie, now it is the time of the barefoot people of Our America to put its print. So they would succeed in obstructing the process of revolutionary transmission as they succeeded in previous decades in Latin America; however, the process returns back each and every time, because it is a necessity that continues with the continuation of history, and it is stronger at each time, due to the accumulated experiences that, even though they are still a few in a way that they do not form enough consciousness to reach the point of no return, at least we know that consciousness is formed by experience that is derived from practice, and that we experience practice on an unconscious basis. Lenin says the Spontaneous element in its essence is not but the fetal form of consciousness.
The base of this spontaneous element-spontaneous motive-is mostly a living-social base; and it's more likely that it will be exploited by a class other than the one that has spontaneously moved, a class that can take advantage of the ignorance in the other class spreading some kind of overhead cover either a religious, national or other sort of covers, in order to achieve its personal interests at the expense of others. This means that the incompletion of the consciousness would mislay the opportunity at each time history comes back to present a possibility of building a new society.
Since the idea of waiting until other practices take place again and again, on the hope that the accumulation of practice would increase in order to support consciousness, will mean waiting for a very long while, knowing that the process of consciousness accumulation is confronted by a counter-process represented by destroying, ruining, and surrounding this consciousness using media in order to approve certain ideas or dilute others, as an example presented by President Chavez in an article entitled "Like Sucre in Ayacucho!", After many failed attempts in the human history, people use to insist that sheltering the socialism dream means to play a bet to utopia.
So each time we take one step forward, they return us back one step behind; and because history does not turn around itself, and does not stand still in its place, the accumulation continues, however, its kind and therefore its effectiveness and importance are subject to manipulation which facilitates and gives success to the delay of the march towards the new society, the socialist society which President Chavez, in this context, sees that it needs responses to 5 main questions.
The first question is who, meaning who are the people who own enough factors for completing both spontaneous and conscious elements, no matter how different the quantity of those elements was, in order for them to move towards the process of building the socialist society?
He says in the same article It is vital to first state..who will make socialism possible..the cultural and spiritual composition of men and women assuming the historical challenge of going making the sovereign exercise of People's Power. This is critical for the human being..
This was one of the bases of the priority which Karl Marx has granted to industrial Europe or to North America in terms of witnessing the launch of the socialist revolution; the development of the relations of production was necessarily accompanied with an increase in the cultural structure of the proletariat along with comprehension of what is happening and what should be done. The answer of the question who, who will make the socialist revolution, according to Marx, was the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries depending on many factors of which the most important is its level of knowledge; and if this did not happen-as Marx himself warned in a letter he sent to Engels in 1858 in which he said:"The revolution on this continent is imminent and its character will be at once socialist; will it not be necessarily crushed in this little corner of the world, since on a much larger terrain in the development of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant.
Those who will be depending on the completion of consciousness will not make a revolution-at least until now-and if we took the completion of consciousness as an indispensable component for the launching and continuation of the revolution, it is as if we are saying there will be no revolution!
President Chavez adds In this connection we count on a huge advantage: the liberator heritage of our founders containing the strength and the ethics as foundations not only of being Venezuelan, but also the spirit that transforms History.
The modern history of the Venezuelan people is full of struggles on all liberal levels starting from sacrifices for the sake of independence and then democracy, reaching the Caracaso whose events have formed an expression of the social demand that has taken shape to become socialist, not only by virtue of consciousness, which has accumulated largely and significantly among Venezuelans in particular-but remained not enough-but also by virtue of the cultural structure of the Venezuelan people who had been lucky for the nature and form of their various struggles which rarely exist in the history of other nations, which made them able to rush with their demands-spontaneously in previous stages due to the autonomous, democratic and social tendency in order for them to march on the socialist path spontaneously and to form, in spite of the very short period of this march, more consciousness so that this historical opportunity would not be missed; and even if it was missed, in order for them to be immeasurably better in the next stage enough to confront the destruction that is targeting the accumulated consciousness of these peoples struggles and sacrifices.
As for the second question related to socialism, it is where, where does socialism exist? This does not mean the region or society-the response to the who question will determine this issue, so the society and country would have been already determined-but where means: which places? President Chavez replies No place must be stranger in this sense. Every place likely to be elevated in terms of socialist principles must be populated and embodied by the actual socialist exercise. We have to irrigate with the fairness spirit and practice the factories, fields, fishing centers, industries, universities and schools, the street, the barrios, there must be no place where the socialist initiative is not working. Everyone who is totally committed to necessarily bequeath his heirs a truly socialist homeland must become an tireless fighter in this battle for life.
How, meaning what are the necessary tools ..to conceive the power in the hands of the people. Justice will be reached only by giving power to the people. President Chavez says in his lines determining the tools which ..we have been advancing with the consolidation of communal councils and the birth of the socialist communes; we have to concentrate on these organization strategies to the point it crosses the cultural changes towards a socialist horizon.
The tools of the capitalist state in their old form cannot be useful towards the socialist change; using the organs of the old state in a number of fields is a thing, and depending on them completely and then claiming that it has become a useful socialist state that is enough to move forward in achieving the tasks is totally something else that will not lead except to the return to capitalism sooner or later just like what happened in the former Soviet Union.
..it is necessary to have in mind what really has to be transformed in this transition to socialism.. President Chavez assures that there is no doubt that we have to move forward to a definite dismantling of all the forms of oppression that are still present in the traditions of capitalist order surrounding us and therefore, President Chavez replies to the question of what, what should witness the process of socialist transmission and transformation? saying in the possession of the means of production and in the criminal management of the ways of work relations in the prevalent productive structure.
Any elevation of the cultural and educational level will not be useful, and will also not be possible in a real scientific and effective way, if it was not based on a material basis that can demand it as material historical necessity.
As President Chavez had indicated and warned many times, changing the possession of the means of production does not mean a socialist change if it was not accompanied by a revolutionary change in the relations of production and a disposal of the capitalist remnants that are planted inside each governmental room staining each wall; this is why the focus was on the form of property, by making the possession of the means of production a social one, in order to get rid of the burdens of the past and what the present can produce of more burdens for the future; so To advance in socialism means to take off the burden of domination from upon all human spaces so the complete autonomy and real independence can reign.
Finally, President Chavez wonders How much time will it take to create the conditions for a socialist living' And I answer with no doubt: It will take us the whole life to complete this sublime work.
So no abstain from answering a question whose answer would seem so utopian; there is no utopianism in the whole life, as long as we have not reached the socialist society, the struggle continues until further notice, and in order for us not to delude ourselves actually, we have to be aware that the journey will be long, and what we are doing now is just a preface and a preparation for the conditions which the upcoming generations can continue their struggle relying on.
He warned at the same time from delay and pointed out the importance of distinction between the necessary and the urgent President Chavez calls together we have to boost the changes and we have to have in mind that the conquers our people sacredly demands do not stand more delays.
Therefore, the process of socialist construction requires answers to 5 questions, as mentioned in President Chavezs article "Like Sucre in Ayacucho!":
1. Who: who are the people which own enough cultural structure, due to its historical accumulation, to move within objective circumstances that enabled them to advance although their consciousness has not yet completed?
In this historical humanitarian stage, the answer is the Venezuelan people.
2. Where: where can socialism exist and elevate through the places of its existence, which shall also elevate through this existing socialism?
The answer, according to President Chavez, is each and every place, starting from home, passing through university and school, and reaching work places.
3. How: how will we walk into the process of socialist transformation, using which tools?
Using the social and popular organizations that emerge and develop and activate in every society depending on the special conditions of that society in particular; these organizations are able to do what the traditional state bodies fail to.
4. What? What will we transfer during the process of socialist transformation?
Here too, the case is general and is not related to one single society; there is no socialist transformation without changing the form of the possession of the means of production into the social way, and therefore replacing the predominant relations of production.
5. When? When will we reach the socialist society?
The answer is clear, he who struggles for the sake of accomplishing the socialist society must be aware that the journey will last his whole life, so he will bequeath to his children a life for which they deserve to live.
President Chavez concludes his article as he usually concludes his articles homeland, socialism, or death."
From the Chavez Lines: they replaced their alliance against the specter of communism with the specter of Chavism.
In his lines, in an article entitled "The Simon of storms", President Chavez wrote Karl Marx's phrase is not exempt of an elegant irony in the famous Manifesto of 1848: 'A specter is haunting Europethe specter of Communism'; one hundred and sixty years later, the bourgeoisies of this continent, using their institutions, their immoral media outlets, their centers of study, their inorganic soulless intellectuals, have created a new specter and now have made it haunt this continent. They do not call it communism anymore, not even socialism; they have called it Chavism; and the new 'holy pack of hounds' has united in order to finish the threat. The Chavism is condemned by the catholic leaders and it is used as weapon in electoral campaigns, it is accused of being the reason to block trade integration processes; it is also used to frighten small bourgeois societies and to blackmail governments; but behind all this great operation there is the hand of the Yankee empire and its huge legion of bourgeois sects.
President Chavez wrote those lines before a while from the launch of a campaign called "no more Chavez"; the campaign's organizers are 'individuals' who have used the social websites on the internet to coordinate with a large number of 'other people' in several Latin American, North American and European countries in order to organize mass protests to confront the monster that they have invented themselves. The mass was not at all as they have expected and promoted which made them justify afterwards that 'the quality is more important than the quantity.'
The new coalition to confront the revolutionary rise in Latin America is not only a coalition to confront liberal feelings spreading strongly and calling for independence and for ending the full dependency on others; the situation IS all that but its base, which does not depend on moods and emotional blaze, is as President Chavez describes in an article entitled "Inexorable Laws ... Revolutionary Laws!" that the course of class struggling is unstoppable, and if in France, in 1789, it was the time of the commercial bourgeoisie, now it is the time of the barefoot people of Our America to put its print. So they would succeed in obstructing the process of revolutionary transmission as they succeeded in previous decades in Latin America; however, the process returns back each and every time, because it is a necessity that continues with the continuation of history, and it is stronger at each time, due to the accumulated experiences that, even though they are still a few in a way that they do not form enough consciousness to reach the point of no return, at least we know that consciousness is formed by experience that is derived from practice, and that we experience practice on an unconscious basis. Lenin says the Spontaneous element in its essence is not but the fetal form of consciousness.
The base of this spontaneous element-spontaneous motive-is mostly a living-social base; and it's more likely that it will be exploited by a class other than the one that has spontaneously moved, a class that can take advantage of the ignorance in the other class spreading some kind of overhead cover either a religious, national or other sort of covers, in order to achieve its personal interests at the expense of others. This means that the incompletion of the consciousness would mislay the opportunity at each time history comes back to present a possibility of building a new society.
Since the idea of waiting until other practices take place again and again, on the hope that the accumulation of practice would increase in order to support consciousness, will mean waiting for a very long while, knowing that the process of consciousness accumulation is confronted by a counter-process represented by destroying, ruining, and surrounding this consciousness using media in order to approve certain ideas or dilute others, as an example presented by President Chavez in an article entitled "Like Sucre in Ayacucho!", After many failed attempts in the human history, people use to insist that sheltering the socialism dream means to play a bet to utopia.
So each time we take one step forward, they return us back one step behind; and because history does not turn around itself, and does not stand still in its place, the accumulation continues, however, its kind and therefore its effectiveness and importance are subject to manipulation which facilitates and gives success to the delay of the march towards the new society, the socialist society which President Chavez, in this context, sees that it needs responses to 5 main questions.
The first question is who, meaning who are the people who own enough factors for completing both spontaneous and conscious elements, no matter how different the quantity of those elements was, in order for them to move towards the process of building the socialist society?
He says in the same article It is vital to first state..who will make socialism possible..the cultural and spiritual composition of men and women assuming the historical challenge of going making the sovereign exercise of People's Power. This is critical for the human being..
This was one of the bases of the priority which Karl Marx has granted to industrial Europe or to North America in terms of witnessing the launch of the socialist revolution; the development of the relations of production was necessarily accompanied with an increase in the cultural structure of the proletariat along with comprehension of what is happening and what should be done. The answer of the question who, who will make the socialist revolution, according to Marx, was the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries depending on many factors of which the most important is its level of knowledge; and if this did not happen-as Marx himself warned in a letter he sent to Engels in 1858 in which he said:"The revolution on this continent is imminent and its character will be at once socialist; will it not be necessarily crushed in this little corner of the world, since on a much larger terrain in the development of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant.
Those who will be depending on the completion of consciousness will not make a revolution-at least until now-and if we took the completion of consciousness as an indispensable component for the launching and continuation of the revolution, it is as if we are saying there will be no revolution!
President Chavez adds In this connection we count on a huge advantage: the liberator heritage of our founders containing the strength and the ethics as foundations not only of being Venezuelan, but also the spirit that transforms History.
The modern history of the Venezuelan people is full of struggles on all liberal levels starting from sacrifices for the sake of independence and then democracy, reaching the Caracaso whose events have formed an expression of the social demand that has taken shape to become socialist, not only by virtue of consciousness, which has accumulated largely and significantly among Venezuelans in particular-but remained not enough-but also by virtue of the cultural structure of the Venezuelan people who had been lucky for the nature and form of their various struggles which rarely exist in the history of other nations, which made them able to rush with their demands-spontaneously in previous stages due to the autonomous, democratic and social tendency in order for them to march on the socialist path spontaneously and to form, in spite of the very short period of this march, more consciousness so that this historical opportunity would not be missed; and even if it was missed, in order for them to be immeasurably better in the next stage enough to confront the destruction that is targeting the accumulated consciousness of these peoples struggles and sacrifices.
As for the second question related to socialism, it is where, where does socialism exist? This does not mean the region or society-the response to the who question will determine this issue, so the society and country would have been already determined-but where means: which places? President Chavez replies No place must be stranger in this sense. Every place likely to be elevated in terms of socialist principles must be populated and embodied by the actual socialist exercise. We have to irrigate with the fairness spirit and practice the factories, fields, fishing centers, industries, universities and schools, the street, the barrios, there must be no place where the socialist initiative is not working. Everyone who is totally committed to necessarily bequeath his heirs a truly socialist homeland must become an tireless fighter in this battle for life.
How, meaning what are the necessary tools ..to conceive the power in the hands of the people. Justice will be reached only by giving power to the people. President Chavez says in his lines determining the tools which ..we have been advancing with the consolidation of communal councils and the birth of the socialist communes; we have to concentrate on these organization strategies to the point it crosses the cultural changes towards a socialist horizon.
The tools of the capitalist state in their old form cannot be useful towards the socialist change; using the organs of the old state in a number of fields is a thing, and depending on them completely and then claiming that it has become a useful socialist state that is enough to move forward in achieving the tasks is totally something else that will not lead except to the return to capitalism sooner or later just like what happened in the former Soviet Union.
..it is necessary to have in mind what really has to be transformed in this transition to socialism.. President Chavez assures that there is no doubt that we have to move forward to a definite dismantling of all the forms of oppression that are still present in the traditions of capitalist order surrounding us and therefore, President Chavez replies to the question of what, what should witness the process of socialist transmission and transformation? saying in the possession of the means of production and in the criminal management of the ways of work relations in the prevalent productive structure.
Any elevation of the cultural and educational level will not be useful, and will also not be possible in a real scientific and effective way, if it was not based on a material basis that can demand it as material historical necessity.
As President Chavez had indicated and warned many times, changing the possession of the means of production does not mean a socialist change if it was not accompanied by a revolutionary change in the relations of production and a disposal of the capitalist remnants that are planted inside each governmental room staining each wall; this is why the focus was on the form of property, by making the possession of the means of production a social one, in order to get rid of the burdens of the past and what the present can produce of more burdens for the future; so To advance in socialism means to take off the burden of domination from upon all human spaces so the complete autonomy and real independence can reign.
Finally, President Chavez wonders How much time will it take to create the conditions for a socialist living' And I answer with no doubt: It will take us the whole life to complete this sublime work.
So no abstain from answering a question whose answer would seem so utopian; there is no utopianism in the whole life, as long as we have not reached the socialist society, the struggle continues until further notice, and in order for us not to delude ourselves actually, we have to be aware that the journey will be long, and what we are doing now is just a preface and a preparation for the conditions which the upcoming generations can continue their struggle relying on.
He warned at the same time from delay and pointed out the importance of distinction between the necessary and the urgent President Chavez calls together we have to boost the changes and we have to have in mind that the conquers our people sacredly demands do not stand more delays.
Therefore, the process of socialist construction requires answers to 5 questions, as mentioned in President Chavezs article "Like Sucre in Ayacucho!":
1. Who: who are the people which own enough cultural structure, due to its historical accumulation, to move within objective circumstances that enabled them to advance although their consciousness has not yet completed?
In this historical humanitarian stage, the answer is the Venezuelan people.
2. Where: where can socialism exist and elevate through the places of its existence, which shall also elevate through this existing socialism?
The answer, according to President Chavez, is each and every place, starting from home, passing through university and school, and reaching work places.
3. How: how will we walk into the process of socialist transformation, using which tools?
Using the social and popular organizations that emerge and develop and activate in every society depending on the special conditions of that society in particular; these organizations are able to do what the traditional state bodies fail to.
4. What? What will we transfer during the process of socialist transformation?
Here too, the case is general and is not related to one single society; there is no socialist transformation without changing the form of the possession of the means of production into the social way, and therefore replacing the predominant relations of production.
5. When? When will we reach the socialist society?
The answer is clear, he who struggles for the sake of accomplishing the socialist society must be aware that the journey will last his whole life, so he will bequeath to his children a life for which they deserve to live.
President Chavez concludes his article as he usually concludes his articles homeland, socialism, or death."