RadioRaheem84
26th February 2010, 04:33
http://monthlyreview.org/100201lebowitz.php
Great article in the new edition of Monthly Review where Michael Lebowitz dissects the situation in Venezuela and how the new economy built up by Chavez is clashing with the old apparatus of the former regimes.
Significant obstacles, including private ownership, a dysfunctional legal system, an old bureaucracy, a new bureaucracy, disinterested and uncommitted Chavist officials, inefficiency, and enemies within. We hear about these obstacles in the initial accounts of the protagonists in 2004, but their existence is undeniable from the reports Bruce hears upon his return, two years later. Nowhere was there a defeat more obvious than in the case of ALCASA. Describing the end to co-management in this state company, the workers attributed much of the reversal to the opposition of the managers. The mafia of the old management, said one, try their hardest to keep as much as possible for their mates in the private sector. But the problem was also that ALCASA had been left alone to make itrather than being given attention and encouragement at the beginning of the process, which would have then spread to other state sectors. Instead, it was treated as an orphan. We were left on our own, commented another worker, isolated and blockaded like Cuba, except our gusanos [worms] were still on the inside, not outside. Although not as dramatic, Bruce discovers similar setbacks elsewhere: agricultural cooperatives that did not survive because of lack of support, land titles not delivered, legislation not forthcoming (as well as inadequacies of the actors themselvese.g., deeply rooted individualist habits and prejudices within peasant cooperatives). He highlights a mix of advances and retreats.
Is it possible, he asks, to envision the emergence of new state structures defending a new set of social interests, alongside or even within the old state which defends the old class interests?
It's only a matter of time before the Bolivarian Revolution will have to take a stand against the old apparatus and continue forward to make the state meet the needs of the new economy growing alongside the old.
Here is one of the central dilemmas posed by the Bolivarian experience in Venezuela, and potentially by almost any other imaginable transition towards socialism in the twenty-first century. Should the emerging forms of popular power, communal councils and workers councils, the seeds of a different kind of statebe regulated, institutionalised, even initiated by laws and regulations emanating from the old state machine? The answers to this question go to the heart of what any socialist democracy worth the name might really look like.2 (http://monthlyreview.org/100201lebowitz.php#en5)
According to the author, the Chavez administration is merely "renting" the State to fund an alternative economy and furthering social progress but this grace period the bourgeoisie have allowed will soon run its course. The implementation of the Bolivarian Revolution was a success, but the sustainability of the revolution is questionable unless a decision is made to take the revolution all the way.
Your thoughts?
Great article in the new edition of Monthly Review where Michael Lebowitz dissects the situation in Venezuela and how the new economy built up by Chavez is clashing with the old apparatus of the former regimes.
Significant obstacles, including private ownership, a dysfunctional legal system, an old bureaucracy, a new bureaucracy, disinterested and uncommitted Chavist officials, inefficiency, and enemies within. We hear about these obstacles in the initial accounts of the protagonists in 2004, but their existence is undeniable from the reports Bruce hears upon his return, two years later. Nowhere was there a defeat more obvious than in the case of ALCASA. Describing the end to co-management in this state company, the workers attributed much of the reversal to the opposition of the managers. The mafia of the old management, said one, try their hardest to keep as much as possible for their mates in the private sector. But the problem was also that ALCASA had been left alone to make itrather than being given attention and encouragement at the beginning of the process, which would have then spread to other state sectors. Instead, it was treated as an orphan. We were left on our own, commented another worker, isolated and blockaded like Cuba, except our gusanos [worms] were still on the inside, not outside. Although not as dramatic, Bruce discovers similar setbacks elsewhere: agricultural cooperatives that did not survive because of lack of support, land titles not delivered, legislation not forthcoming (as well as inadequacies of the actors themselvese.g., deeply rooted individualist habits and prejudices within peasant cooperatives). He highlights a mix of advances and retreats.
Is it possible, he asks, to envision the emergence of new state structures defending a new set of social interests, alongside or even within the old state which defends the old class interests?
It's only a matter of time before the Bolivarian Revolution will have to take a stand against the old apparatus and continue forward to make the state meet the needs of the new economy growing alongside the old.
Here is one of the central dilemmas posed by the Bolivarian experience in Venezuela, and potentially by almost any other imaginable transition towards socialism in the twenty-first century. Should the emerging forms of popular power, communal councils and workers councils, the seeds of a different kind of statebe regulated, institutionalised, even initiated by laws and regulations emanating from the old state machine? The answers to this question go to the heart of what any socialist democracy worth the name might really look like.2 (http://monthlyreview.org/100201lebowitz.php#en5)
According to the author, the Chavez administration is merely "renting" the State to fund an alternative economy and furthering social progress but this grace period the bourgeoisie have allowed will soon run its course. The implementation of the Bolivarian Revolution was a success, but the sustainability of the revolution is questionable unless a decision is made to take the revolution all the way.
Your thoughts?