Chavez expropriates Island land for tourism

[Robespierres Neck]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGkEl2p_bog

[RedHammer]

If I understand this correctly, he is nationalizing private tourist resorts. This is a positive step, in my opinion, for Venezuela. I hope more people around the world follow his example.

[Positivist]

Yes comrades we are one step closer to full classless,stateless communism in Venezuela now!

[Robespierres Neck]

Yes comrades we are one step closer to full classless,stateless communism in Venezuela now!

Are you being sarcastic or... ?

[RedHammer]

Even if he is being sarcastic, I still think this is a good thing. Will it achieve "real" socialism? No. But it's a material gain for Venezuelan workers.

[Robespierres Neck]

Even if he is being sarcastic, I still think this is a good thing. Will it achieve "real" socialism? No. But it's a material gain for Venezuelan workers.

I agree. It will hopefully give new jobs to workers, and nationalize a once-private island that was only for the wealthy. The move itself is socialistic/left.

[cynicles]

So long as Venezuelan workers can take permanent control of the resources over and it doesn't just return back to the capitalists hands when some rightwingers gets elected to the presidency. Even then its questionable how much this helps.

[Art Vandelay]

Wage slavery is wage slavery; I don't give a shit if the capitalists are in the government or the workplace.

[RadioRaheem84]

That's a bit harsh. A nationalized island for tourism will bring in more revenue for the state to use on social programs.

I mean before the island was exclusively for the wealthy.

[JPSartre12]

I agree with the previous two posts.

I'd rather have it nationalized than have it under the thumb of the for-profit bourgeoisie. That being said, turning private property into public property doesn't change the fact that it's still capitalist property.

[Positivist]

Yes I was joking.

[eyeheartlenin]

The youtube clip indicates that great leader Chávez "plans" to expropriate "some" of the now privately-owned area, "wants" to nationalize it, and his government has "its sites [sic] set" on one island, Los Roques, all of which means that Chávez has not actually expropriated anything yet. The story is astonishingly superficial, even for Chávez, who is being praised for one small nationalization that might happen, at some undetermined time in the future. What difference in the lives of Venezuelan workers will a single expropriation make? None whatsoever. It's all typically flatulent chavista rhetoric, much ado about nothing, concerning the "leader" who has had state power in his grasp for the last 13 years, while bourgeois rule and a market economy remain unscathed in Venezuela. For nearly a decade and a half, Chávez has failed to attack the rule of capital in Venezuela, and, undoubtedly, he certainly is not going to start now. Like everything else in chavismo, this "news" about a "nationalization" is all just b.s.

[RedHammer]

I don't think anybody here seriously considers Chavez a revolutionary, but Venezuela has made material gains for the working people and the peasants since his ascension to leadership. Venezuela is wholly better off under Chavez than before Chavez.

It's a step in the right direction, but I agree, it's not abolishing capitalism.

[KurtFF8]

It's a step in the right direction, but I agree, it's not abolishing capitalism.

No, but when in history has a single act of expropriation by workers or a state every lead directly to the abolishing of capitalism? It's an overall process made up of thousands of acts. So to say that "well this particular thing won't abolish capitalism, so let's mock it!" doesn't make much sense to me.

I see folks champion things that have much less to do with directly abolishing capitalism than this, and that's because there's a recognition that it is a long complex process.

The new plan for socialist development ought to contain some interesting bits that could contribute to this conversation: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7091

[Leftsolidarity]

Yeah, it's not socialism we get it. Now stfu. It's better for the conditions of the working class of Venezula instead of being just for the private capitalist class. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

The new plan for socialist development ought to contain some interesting bits that could contribute to this conversation: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7091

I have been planning on reading that for a while. Someone should make a thread on that.

[agnixie]

Long life Hugo Roosevelt. Or was it Franklin Delano Chavez I forget. Seriously, this "first step" is still in the same liberal reformist vein as Lincoln (who he even openly referenced with the land reform) and FDR's New Deal. Yeah it's a small improvement, especially considering Venezuela couldn't even feed itself before the land reforms, but it's still empty propaganda to think it will do a damn thing to move shit towards socialism.

[eyeheartlenin]

I agree with Positivist, agnixie and the other comrades who are not Chávez worshippers; piecemeal nationalizations, over more than a decade, have not resulted in socialism in Venezuela, and only socialism provides a solution for working people. For socialism to exist, bourgeois rule has to be smashed, and Venezuela is not headed in that direction, obviously, since, over some 13 years, Chávez has demonstrated great respect for the sanctity of bourgeois ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Even the Grantist IMT, the most fervent Chávez worshippers on earth, have recognized that. Chávez is, after all, the gentleman who once told large landowners in Venezuela, "If it is yours, it is yours."

To argue for the opposite position, that "socialism" is merely the accumulation of a myriad of small acts, like piecemeal nationalizations, is to accept the idea that the bourgeois state, which is alive and well after more than a decade of chavista rule in Venezuela, can, in fact, be wielded by the workers for the workers' benefit, a notion that Marx and Engels, and Lenin and Trotsky, and Che, all rejected. Those estimable revolutionaries were right, and the reformist Chávez is mistaken.

[Ocean Seal]

Long life Hugo Roosevelt. Or was it Franklin Delano Chavez I forget. Seriously, this "first step" is still in the same liberal reformist vein as Lincoln (who he even openly referenced with the land reform) and FDR's New Deal. Yeah it's a small improvement, especially considering Venezuela couldn't even feed itself before the land reforms, but it's still empty propaganda to think it will do a damn thing to move shit towards socialism.
Did you not read the thread or do you like to just post what others have been saying? I'm pretty sure no one here is convinced that Chavez has socialist intentions.

[Tim Finnegan]

Yeah, it's not socialism we get it. Now stfu. It's better for the conditions of the working class of Venezula instead of being just for the private capitalist class. Nothing more, nothing less.
The benefits provided by Chavismo come like all social democratic projects at the expense of working class political organisation. Is that a trade-off we should be supporting?

[Leftsolidarity]

The benefits provided by Chavismo come like all social democratic projects at the expense of working class political organisation. Is that a trade-off we should be supporting?

I'm not saying that it's some amazing thing but I would say that I'd prefer to have to deal with social-democratic capitalism instead of more privatized and harsher capitalism. It's still capitalism and it still sucks but it gives slightly better conditions to live with than not having welfare/nationalization/etc.

[Tim Finnegan]

It's not a question of whether or not it's amazing, it's a question of class lines. Chavismo comes at the price of sacrificing working class self-organisation in favour of organisation around and through a bourgeois party; it represents, for all its progressive posture, the dismantling of the independent working class movement and the integration of organised workers into capital. Is that something that we, as communists, should be supporting?

[Arlekino]

Just a thought would be ok if I claim asylum in Venesuala.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I have read about more radical successes in Venezuela's "revolution", but they usually come from organized workers confronting the State and the party and demanding that it live up to its rhetoric. Other than that the government seems to just be a particularly active social democracy. I suppose one good thing about the Leftist propaganda and posturing by the regime that the workers get sick of the difference between rhetoric and reality and demand real change, and it shows the need to act autonomously of the Capitalist state. At least when the PSUV capitulates to workers, it sets a good precedent in that respect.

Also, it's funny how we talk about "Chavez" expropriating these islands, as if one man were the state. The state is expropriating the islands under the leadership of Chavez, but surely the state mechanism at play is much bigger than one man. I suppose it is in the regime's interest to spread the great man narrative.

[maskerade]

The worker's movement in Venezuela is very active and quite radical, and the Chavez state is just a mediating factor on it. The movement itself hasn't, perhaps, developed to full 'revolutionary potential' or what not, but it has made tremendous progress since Chavez's election. Shouldn't we be looking at the activism and demands of the workers rather than Chavez's actions? I'd say things like this are mostly symbolic and part of the ongoing ideological construction between the state and the worker's movement.

also, most of this cynicism is unnecessary.

[Robocommie]

That's a bit harsh. A nationalized island for tourism will bring in more revenue for the state to use on social programs.

I mean before the island was exclusively for the wealthy.

Even more importantly than revenue; it will bring in more foreign currency.

[MarxSchmarx]

I agree with Positivist, agnixie and the other comrades who are not Chávez worshippers; piecemeal nationalizations, over more than a decade, have not resulted in socialism in Venezuela, and only socialism provides a solution for working people. For socialism to exist, bourgeois rule has to be smashed, and Venezuela is not headed in that direction, obviously, since, over some 13 years, Chávez has demonstrated great respect for the sanctity of bourgeois ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. Even the Grantist IMT, the most fervent Chávez worshippers on earth, have recognized that. Chávez is, after all, the gentleman who once told large landowners in Venezuela, "If it is yours, it is yours."

To argue for the opposite position, that "socialism" is merely the accumulation of a myriad of small acts, like piecemeal nationalizations, is to accept the idea that the bourgeois state, which is alive and well after more than a decade of chavista rule in Venezuela, can, in fact, be wielded by the workers for the workers' benefit, a notion that Marx and Engels, and Lenin and Trotsky, and Che, all rejected. Those estimable revolutionaries were right, and the reformist Chávez is mistaken.

I'm vaguely sympathetic to this analysis, but at the same time Chavez and his team aren't stupid. THey know that venezuela exists in a capitalist world and is basically condemned to function as a capitalist state unless/until most of the world manages to catch up and then exceed their changes.

The fact is venezuela cannot divorce itself from capitalism any more than the soviet union could. It can seek to export it's vision - in fact, it has to some degree succeeded moderately in this, probably more than the USSR did 13 years into it's existence. but even if all of latin america say were to be run by morales or correa clones, you will still have the capitalists firmly in control of latin america's main trading partners - East Asia, America and the EU.

I think that your criticisms are fair, but at the same time, one has to be realistic about what they can accomplish within their framework of top-down (albeit parliamentary) socialism in one country. There is a lot that Chavez does wrong, but what can one realistically expect from a single ruler of a capitalist country?