The Student Movement in Venezuela

[Leo]

The Student Movement in Venezuela:

The young try to break free from the false alternative between Chavism and the opposition

http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2...tests-venezuela (http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/student-protests-venezuela)

In Caracas on the 28th May student demonstrations began, which rapidly spread to various cities across the country[1]; the apparent motive was the decision of the government to close the television channel Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which until now has been the main media outlet for the sectors of the national capital that oppose the government of Chávez. This served to ignite the social discontent that had been incubating within the working masses and the population as a whole, this time expressing itself through the student demonstrations.

Faced with these protests, on the 29th Chávez himself called upon the inhabitants of the shanty towns to "defend the revolution"; a little later, the "radical" deputies of the National Assembly (formed totally of deputies who support the so-called "Bolivarian revolution"), gave their full support to their leader's call for the inhabitants of the barrios to demonstrate against student movements. However the inhabitants of the shanty towns and the poor barrios - where Chavism is meant to dominate - did not mobilise and have not done so since. This shows a certain sympathy with the slogans of the movement which the media have treated as something secondary, such as the necessity to confront the problems of unemployment, delinquency, health and general poverty[2]. More than this, the lack of mobilisation by these sectors following the bellicose calls of the "Comandante" could express the fact that that the lying discourse of Chávez as the "defender of the poor" is not having the same hearing as he used to get with this sector of the population, which had placed its hopes in him as having a solution to increasing pauperisation. In the meantime, the President, his family and acolytes live the life of the real rich beneficences of power, just as the governments in the past have done[3].

As for Chávez and his followers who made this call, they mobilised the forces of repression and the armed gangs in order to intimidate and repress the students and those who came out of their houses and apartments to show their support. In the initial assault 200 students were arrested and various injured, many of these were young. While this pack of dogs attacked the protest, criminalising it and calling the students "lackeys of imperialism", "traitors to the fatherland", "well off children", etc, Daniel Ortega, the mandatory Nicaraguan "revolutionary", joined in these attacks whilst on a visit to the National Assembly, accusing the protesting students of coming from the richest classes of Venezuela and serving their "dream of stirring up the streets".

However, the repression and denigration aimed at intimidating the students only served to radicalise and spread the movement.
How to understand this student movement?

In order to characterise this movement, we must pose the following questions: are these demonstrations another expression of the confrontation between the bourgeoisie fractions of Chavism and the opposition, which have dominated the political scene over the course of 8 years of Chávez government? Do they represent merely student protests about their own concerns?

We think that we have to answer both of these in the negative. This movement by an important part of the students, to the surprise both of the government and the opposition, has taken on a character that is tending to break with the sterile circle of the political polarisation induced by the struggle between bourgeois fractions, and is expressed in a social discontent that until now has been caught up in this polarisation. It is therefore transcending a merely student framework. We can see that:

* It is undeniable that political forces of the government and the opposition have tried to use the movement to their on ends: the first pose it as a mere manipulation by the political forces opposed to the government, including North American imperialism; the second say it is a political movement of the opposition, since they share slogans such as the struggle for "free expression" and against "state totalitarianism", bourgeois slogans defended by the opposition which is trying to remove Chávez from power. However, the movement has tried to distance itself from political leaders and forces, as much the government as the opposition. The students have not hidden the political character of the protest, but they have made it clear that they owe no political obedience to the leader of the government or opposition. The statements by the spontaneous leaders of the movement have been clear on this aspect: "The politicians have their agenda, we have ours".
* With this aim, the movement has given itself organisational forms such as assembles, where they can discuss, elect commissions and decide upon what actions to carry out: this has taken place at the local and national level. It was in these assembles, formed in several universities, where they discussed the aim of the movement and prepared the first actions, which were transmitted to the rest of the students. For their part, the students have organised to cover the costs of the mobilisations through their own means, through collections amongst the students and the public.
* Another important character of this movement since its beginning has been that it has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors. To this end the students have called upon all of the students and the population as a whole, Chavistas or not, to take part in an open dialogue in the universities, the barrios and the street, outside of the institutions and organs controlled by the government, as well as those dominated by the opposition. In this sense, the students understood the need to avoid the trap set by the government, when the government proposed to discuss with the student adepts of Chavism in the National Assembly. The scheme backfired: other students mobilised, and, in a creative and audacious action, read out a document accusing the deputies of the Assembly of criminalising the movement, denouncing the Assembly for not being an impartial place for debate and posing their demands, abandoning the building, faced with the ire and astonishment of the deputies and Chavist students[4]
* The slogans of the movement have taken on an increasingly political character. although the media, mainly the parts controlled by the opposition, have made the central slogans of the movement the "struggle for freedom of expression" and "stopping the closure of RCTV" or the "defence of the autonomy of the universities", the students since the beginning of the movement have defended openly political slogans: the end of repression, the freeing of the detained students and those having to report to police stations daily, solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV, against criminality, against poverty and for the need to "create a better world" etc.

In this sense the student movement that is unfolding is in a "latent" state, due in part to the actions of the government and opposition to control and constrain it. But it did seek to break with the schemas of the past student movements and expressed a social content, influenced by tendencies within it to express the interests of wage labourers.
Where did these characteristics of the new student movement come from?

The genesis of this movement is in the worsening of the economic and political crisis that is taking place in the country. An economic crisis that Chavism has tired to hide behind the enormous resources of the oil manna, which has only served to strengthen the new "revolutionary" elite's hold on power., whilst the rest of the population is progressively becoming poorer, despite the crumbs distributed by the state through the "missions". One of the main expressions of this crisis is seen in the incessant growth of inflation, which according to the untrustworthy official figures has averaged 17% over the last three years (the highest level in Latin America). In fact the increases in the minimum wage directed by the government are essentially due to the incessant increases in the prices of food, goods and services. The much publicised economic growth which has averaged a 10% increase in GDP in the same period is fundamentally based upon the increase in exploitation, a growth of precarious and informal employment (camouflaged under the guise of cooperatives and the government "missions"), which affects about 70% of the economically active population including the unemployed. All of this means that the great majority of wage labourers receive no legal social benefits and a high percentage do not even earn the official minimum wage. This economic crisis, the product of the crisis that is affecting the whole capitalist system, existed long before the Chávez government but it has been exacerbated over the 8 years of this government, leading to the progressive pauperisation of society[5].

Along with the constant increase in the cost of living and growth of precarious employment, we have seen the scarcity of food, lack of housing, an increased criminality which in 2006 cost the lives of 1700 Venezuelans, mainly young people from the poorest sectors, the re-emergence of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, which are the products of ill health and the deterioration of public services. We could go on and on.

This situation is nothing but the expression of the Chavist model of state capitalism, which has no other course than to continue attacking the living conditions of the working class and the whole population, just as previous governments did, accentuating precarious work and pauperisation, but this time in the name of "socialism".

Clearly the students are not ignorant of this situation, since the majority of them are from proletarian families or those pauperised by the crisis. Many students in public and private universities experience exploitation because they have to work formally or informally in order to meet the costs of their studies or part of them, or to help their family's income. Nor are the students ignorant of the fact that their hopes will not be realised in the future: the majority of small professionals that have come out of the universities in recent decades have been increasing proletarianised, as thousands of health and education professionals, engineers etc can testify. They have difficulty in earning more than two times the official minimum wage[6], while the deterioration of the social wage (social security benefits, etc) undermines the possibility of having a dignified life, even it you are one of the "privileged" that the government mouthpieces talk about.

Likewise, a good part of the youth protesting in the streets have seen the ravages inflicted upon their families and society, by the political polarisation introduced by the Chavist and opposition leaderships in their struggle for the control of power. They have been victims of the division of society and a weakening of ties of solidarity; many of them and their parents have been caught up in the networks of political polarisation, even becoming fanatics for one fraction or the other, losing all perspective. They have also witnessed the struggle of the ruling class and its use of the motto of "the ends justify the means", its unscrupulous lying and manipulating, the result of the decay of bourgeois morals.

Thus, the student movement, although arising spontaneously, it is not result of an "infantile disease", nor has it been created by hidden leaders; much less is it something arising out of the heads of the leaders of the opposition or the CIA, as Chávez and his followers have endlessly repeated. It is the product of a process of reflection that has been under way for several years within society, and particularly amongst the new generations faced with living in a society where there will be no chance of living a dignified life. Hence, it is no accident that the student protests have raised slogans with a clearly social content: the struggle against unemployment, criminality, abandoned children and mothers, poverty, but also against the lying, intolerance, immorality and inhumanity that are eating away at society.

These characteristics show that this movement has transcended the conflict between opposition and government and contains the seeds of putting the whole of the capitalist system of exploitation into question; thus it has unquestionably inscribed itself in the struggle of the wage labourers, of the proletariat. The means and methods that it has given to the struggle (assembles, the election delegates answerable to it, the tendency to unite, the call for discussion outside of the universities etc) are those of the proletariat in its struggles for the defence of its interests. Although in a minor and unconscious way, there is the tendency in this movement to express the interests of the working class, and this has pushed it forward.

Over the last few years there have been student movements in other parts of the world, such as Brazil, Chile, France, which have had more or less the same characteristics. In France there were protests and demonstrations led by the students in May 2006, against the government efforts to impose precarious work, which mobilised millions of people across France[7]. The student movement in Venezuela has many similarities with these movements. These movements show that the students in Venezuela are not isolated, but rather are expressing a process of reflection that is taking place within the new generations who are searching for a perspective, faced with a society that offers no future.
Dangers facing the movement

The student movement has unfolded in a fragile and uncertain situation. The pressures exerted by the bourgeoisie in order to control and put an end to it are very strong. Both the government and opposition are making full use of their party machines, material means and the media to do this. There is also the polarisation and division of society brought about by the government and opposition, which has an importance that cannot be underestimated. Nor can the intimidation and repression carried out by not only the official repressive apparatus but also that of the gangs formed by Chavism.

However, one of the most important dangers for this movement is democratic illusions. Slogans such as the struggle for "freedom of expression" or "civil rights", amongst others, even if by these the students mean the necessity to confront the institutions of the state that stand in the way of the struggle, are fundamentally expressions of illusions about the possibility of being able to have freedom and "rights" under capitalism; that it is possible (perhaps with another government) to improve democracy in order to be able to really transform it into something that would allow the overcoming of the problems gripping society. Democracy, with its institutions, parties, mechanisms (mainly elections) is the system that the bourgeoisie has perfected in order to maintain the system of domination by a minority over the majority of society. "Freedom of expression" is part of the totality of "democratic freedoms" that the bourgeoisie has proclaimed since the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, which have only served to mystify the exploited mass in order to maintain its class rule. All of these "rights" are nothing by the codification of these illusions. All bourgeois regimes can recognise "freedom" and "rights" as long as the capitalist order and the state that maintains it are not threatened. Thus, it is no accident that in the confrontation between the government and opposition gangsters, each of them claims to be the true defenders of the democratic order.

The struggle for the "autonomy of the universities" is another expression of these democratic illusions. It is an old demand of the university milieu which defends the idea that these institutions can be free of state intervention, ignoring the fact that universities and educational institutions are the main means for transmitting the ideology of the ruling class (whether of the left or right) to new generations and for training cadre for the maintaining of this order. This slogan, mainly put forward by the student federations and university authorities, tries to imprison the emerging struggle within the four walls of the universities, isolating it from the whole of society.[8]

Another danger facing the movement is the similarity between its slogans and those of the opposition, which unite the interests of those forces seeking to penetrate and control it, and enables the government to try and identify the movement with the opposition. The movement needs to delineate itself from and confront the opposition forces with the same clarity and vehemence as it has the government. If it does not do this it could be submerged into movements that in other countries[9] have been used to bring the opposition forces to power, whilst the fundamental situation (the system of capitalist exploitation) remained intact. The students need to understand that the opposition as much as the government is responsible for the situation we are living in, that the opposition acted as the stepping stone for Chávez to come to power, and that if they return to power they will attack the living conditions of the working class as much as Chavism does today, and that they are both bourgeois forces trying to defend the existing order.
Perspectives

This student movement, which we salute and support, has the great virtue of trying to break with the vicious and poisonous circle of polarisation, through putting forward dialogue and discussion through assemblies that decide what to discussion and in what conditions. This is a gain for the students, for the workers and for society as a whole, since it strengthens the real ties of social solidarity.

However it would be illusory to think that the students' struggle, no matter how brave and courageous it has been, is going to change the present state of things. This movement will truly bear fruit if it can lead to the spreading of the proletarian elements that it contains not only to the barrios, but even more importantly to the workers in the factories and in the private and public enterprises. This cannot be done through the unions and political parties, but only by inviting workers from all sectors and the unemployed to participate in the assemblies. In this way workers will be able to see the proletarian vein running through the movement. At the same time this will stimulate reflection and also the struggle of the proletariat, whose actions are indispensable for confronting the state and being able to attack the root causes of the barbarity in which we live - the capitalist system of exploitation - and to implement real socialism based on the power of the workers' councils. However, if it were to stay an ephemeral movement, subsumed in the inter-bourgeois struggle, it will be crushed.

The most advanced participants in the movement need to try to regroup in discussion circles, in order to be able to draw a balance sheet of the movement up to now and search for ways to strengthen the proletarian elements of the movement which though still at an embryonic state, are being deepened because they arise from the worsening of the economic and social crisis.

Independently of the future of this movement, something very important for the future of the class struggle has occurred: the opening up of a process of reflection and discussion.

The ICC,

July 2007.

[1] According to the Minister of the Interior Pedro Carreňo, on the first day there were 94 demonstrations throughout the country.

[2] "We do not want to struggle against our brothers", so declared a member of the communal council of the barrio of Patarse, to the East of Caracas, referring to the call of President Chávez to mobilise the barrios against the students.

[3] "Being rich is bad" Chávez endlessly repeats in his frequent media presentations, whilst the proletariat and his followers (in the majority the poorest sections of the population) are accustomed to living a precarious existence, the real aim of "21st century socialism". However, he and his family, along with the top level state bureaucrats, do not follow this motto. To illustrate this the French newspaper, Le Monde in June published a series of articles on Chávez and his government, under the title of "Les bonnes affaires de la famille chavez" (‘The business affairs of the Chávez family'), where they described the way in which the new rich of the so-called "boliburguesia" (Bolivarian bourgeoisie) live. These articles showed that Chávez has become an object of interest to part of the French bourgeoisie, who want to use the "Bolivarian revolution" and its fanatical "anti-Americanism" to its advantage.

[4] The students had to be escorted by police when they entered and left the Assembly, since the Chavist gangs were surrounding the building.

[5] According to official figures the government has reduced poverty from 54% in 2003 to 32% in 2006. However behind these figures there is state manipulation (principally though the prices of the basket of food), to make sure that the government's talk about putting an end to poverty by 2001 corresponds to the "reality" of the figures. Nevertheless at the same time there has been the increase in the number of "buhoneros" (street vendors). The increase in consumption registered in 2006 was due to the increase in public spending leading up to the elections, and not because of a decrease in poverty. The Andrés Bello Catholic University which has been tracing the levels of poverty for years says that it increased to 58% in 2005.

[6] About $300 according to the official exchange rate of 2150 Bolivars to the $, which amounts to less than $150 at the black market exchange rate.

[7] see "Theses on the spring student movements in France" http://en.internationalism.org/ir/125_france_students

[8] A demonstration of this was the "assembly" held on the 22nd June in the basket ball stadium of the Universidad Central de Venezuela by the Federation of Centros Universitarios, with the support of the university authorities and opposition. This was a show in order to divert attention away from the real assemblies. Faced with this some students shouted the slogan "we do not want shows, we want assemblies".

[9] see amongst other articles, ‘Ukraine: the authoritarian prison and the trap of democracy' http://en.internationalism.org/ir/126_auth...arian_democracy (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/126_authoritarian_democracy)

[bolshevik butcher]

This so called student movement amounts to little more than the sons and daughters of the ruling class and the petty bourgoirse defending their interests. For the ultra left to champion them over the venezuelan revolution shows just how warped and twisted they become when push comes to shove.

This movement refused all offers of debates from socialist youth oragnisations and then declared them all undemocratic. It is uninterested in socialism or building a mass movement of youth. The only aim it has is to disrupt the genuine movement of Venezuelan youth, workers and peasants.

On top of this the closure of RCTV was a good thing. RCTV was an ever present danger to the revolutionary proccess in Venezuela.

[Luís Henrique]

The young try to break free from the false alternative between Chavism and the opposition

That "false" alternative only can exist under the present regime.

Under the dictatorship of the "opposition", the alternative will be much worse.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 06, 2007 05:44 pm

The young try to break free from the false alternative between Chavism and the opposition

That "false" alternative only can exist under the present regime.

Under the dictatorship of the "opposition", the alternative will be much worse.

Luís Henrique
But, in fact, this isn't even an honest attempt to oppose both Chavez and the escuálidos. It's Venezolan jeunesse dorée flexing its muscles.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

This so called student movement amounts to little more than the sons and daughters of the ruling class and the petty bourgoirse defending their interests.

So you haven't read the article. Very convenient.


For the ultra left to champion them over the venezuelan revolution

No matter what you want to believe, there is no Venezuelan Revolution.


This movement refused all offers of debates from socialist youth oragnisations and then declared them all undemocratic.

I think you mean the Chavist students here, again demonstrating that you haven't read the article: "Another important character of this movement since its beginning has been that it has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors. To this end the students have called upon all of the students and the population as a whole, Chavistas or not, to take part in an open dialogue in the universities, the barrios and the street, outside of the institutions and organs controlled by the government, as well as those dominated by the opposition." So they have not refused to debate with anyone, they have simply refused to support the bourgeois government and the bourgeois opposition.


It is uninterested in socialism or building a mass movement of youth.

Those students certainly have democratic illusions, no one is claiming that they are communists, but the movement as a whole is interested in it's living standards, unemployment, poverty etc. Oh, and if you think that a couple of rich kids can create a mass movement you are delusional. And of course quite obviously you can't explain why the alleged "children of rich oppositionists" are trying so hard to stay away from the opposition.


On top of this the closure of RCTV was a good thing. RCTV was an ever present danger to the revolutionary proccess in Venezuela.

Of course no one cares about the workers in the RCTV. You pick Chavez' bourgeois governments interests over the interests of the Venezuelan workers, very convenient.


That "false" alternative only can exist under the present regime.

Under the dictatorship of the "opposition", the alternative will be much worse.

This doesn't make any sense. I don't think the bourgeois opposition would be less oppressive had it been in power but what makes you think it would be more oppressive? A bourgeois government acts according to its interests.


But, in fact, this isn't even an honest attempt to oppose both Chavez and the escuálidos. It's Venezolan jeunesse dorée flexing its muscles.

:rolleyes:

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 06:31 pm
This doesn't make any sense. I don't think the bourgeois opposition would be less oppressive had it been in power but what makes you think it would be more oppressive?
Practical experience.


:rolleyes:

You can roll your eyes until they fall away. The truth is in here, in the very article you posted:

Another danger facing the movement is the similarity between its slogans and those of the opposition

The slogans are similar, because, surprise surprise, they express exactly the same class interests: those of the Venezolan compradora bourgeoisie. The rest are fairy tales to make pseudo-leftists fall asleep while actively supporting an anti-worker coup-d'état in Venezuela.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Practical experience.

Practical experience is good, however without materialist analysis it is pretty much worthless: the fact that you experienced something doesn't mean it will always happen exactly the same way.


The slogans are similar, because, surprise surprise, they express exactly the same class interests: those of the Venezolan compradora bourgeoisie.

So you think students are a part of the bourgeoisie now?

It is very simple: when the bourgeois leaders of the opposition put forward those "democratic" slogans, it is in their class interests. When the Chavez government put forward the slogans of "socialism" which respects private property, it is in their class interests. When the students and workers have such slogans it is bad. Would say that just because some parts of the Venezuelan working class has the slogans of the Chavez government, they express exactly the same class interests: those of the Venezulan nationalist bourgeoisie or do you consider Chavez and his rich friends up in the government as true heroes defending the interests of the proletariat?

However despite the fact that some of those students have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the opposition, they have refused to work with the opposition. Despite the fact that people on the barrios have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the government, they have refused to work with the government and said "we do not want to struggle against our brothers". Even when proletarians are struggling against the bourgeoisie, bourgeois ideology can be strong within the proletariat. This student movement seems to me as something which has to do with living standards rather than ideology.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 07:03 pm

Practical experience.

Practical experience is good, however without materialist analysis it is pretty much worthless: the fact that you experienced something doesn't mean it will always happen exactly the same way.
The history of Latin America is full of examples that prove you wrong. Those bourgeois "democratic" and/or "nationalist" regimes have always been followed by stupidly repressive dictatorships. Even in Venezuela, the 2002 coup started immediately a crackdown on popular organisation.



The slogans are similar, because, surprise surprise, they express exactly the same class interests: those of the Venezolan compradora bourgeoisie.

So you think students are a part of the bourgeoisie now?

Some are, and some are not. The point is, the movement described in the OP defends the interests of a faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie, and to deny it is utterly foolish.

But I could throw the question back at you: do you think slum dwellers are part of the bourgeoisie now?


However despite the fact that some of those students have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the opposition, they have refused to work with the opposition.

Yeah? Says who? Themselves?

I don't believe it. They are more or less autonomous puppets at the hands of the "opposition".


This student movement seems to me as something which has to do with living standards rather than ideology.

This is patently false; just look at the slogans, and realise it.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

The history of Latin America is full of examples that prove you wrong. Those bourgeois "democratic" and/or "nationalist" regimes have always been followed by stupidly repressive dictatorships. Even in Venezuela, the 2002 coup started immediately a crackdown on popular organisation.

This was exactly why the coup failed. The situation is different now: I think that if there is a coup in Venezuela under the current the new regime will have to be as "democratic" as the Chavez regime and most importantly it will have to be "bloodless" otherwise it won't have a chance. I know the history of Latin American coups, we've had quite a lot of coups here so I too know a few things about coups. Coups simply don't always happen in the same way. I don't see any analysis in what you are saying, you simply saying that because it has always been one way, it will always be like that.


Some are, and some are not.

Most are, and few are not.


The point is, the movement described in the OP defends the interests of a faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie, and to deny it is utterly foolish.

The only reason why you say this is because they are opposed to the Chavez government.


But I could throw the question back at you: do you think slum dwellers are part of the bourgeoisie now?

Obviously not.


Yeah? Says who? Themselves?

Yes.


I don't believe it. They are more or less autonomous puppets at the hands of the "opposition".

We are talking about students here, not politicians or a political organization.


This is patently false; just look at the slogans, and realise it.

I don't deny that some of their slogans show a clear influence of the bourgeois ideology. However I don't think the students are acting this way because of the influence of the bourgeois ideology.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 07:32 pm
This was exactly why the coup failed. The situation is different now: I think that if there is a coup in Venezuela under the current the new regime will have to be as "democratic" as the Chavez regime and most importantly it will have to be "bloodless" otherwise it won't have a chance. I know the history of Latin American coups, we've had quite a lot of coups here so I too know a few things about coups. Coups simply don't always happen in the same way. I don't see any analysis in what you are saying, you simply saying that because it has always been one way, it will always be like that.
Pardon me if I am not willing to take a chance. I am not going to toy with the idea that the rule of the "oppositionist" faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie isn't going to be murderous. Sorry.



Some are, and some are not.

Most are, and few are not.

You mean the opposite, of course. Most students are not a part of the bourgeoisie.

It doesn't mean they can't play a bourgeois role in class struggle. Which is what those Venezolan students are doing at the moment.



The point is, the movement described in the OP defends the interests of a faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie, and to deny it is utterly foolish.

The only reason why you say this is because they are opposed to the Chavez government.

Leo, you were never good in the art of mind reading, and you don't seem to be getting any better.

The reason I say this is what is transparent from their slogans and demands:


although the media, mainly the parts controlled by the opposition, have made the central slogans of the movement the "struggle for freedom of expression" and "stopping the closure of RCTV" or the "defence of the autonomy of the universities", the students since the beginning of the movement have defended openly political slogans: the end of repression, the freeing of the detained students and those having to report to police stations daily, solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV, against criminality, against poverty and for the need to "create a better world" etc.

You can see with your own eyes, if you haven't lost them in the process of rolling them:

freedom of expression - in a context in which it means freedom for the lies of RCTV;

stopping the closure of RCTV - See?

defence of the autonomy of the universities

Autonomy from what, and to do what? Autonomy so that the old cliques of reactionary professors don't lose their jobs?

the end of repression - which in this context can only mean end of repression either against themselves, as in the freeing of the detained students and those having to report to police stations daily - politically meaningless - or end of "repression" against the opposition, ie, end of the quite mild measures the government has taken against those fashos.

solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV - what a laugh.

against criminality - a must among any list of reactionary demands.

against poverty - yeah, much like here in Brazil the right used to demand an end to inflation in order to agitate the toppling of João Goulart. It soon turns into "against the poor".

and for the need to "create a better world" etc. - because they don't take the Gomez & Morticia Addams line that a worse world could be appealing to the masses? Oh please.



But I could throw the question back at you: do you think slum dwellers are part of the bourgeoisie now?

Obviously not.


But you understand, nevermind, that they are being used by the "Chavista faction of the Venezolan bourgeosie", don't you? And how comes you cannot understand that those students are pawns of the bourgeois opposition?

You are crossing the line between refusing to defend a democratic bourgeois government against an opposition further to the right, and actively supporting such right wing opposition.



Yeah? Says who? Themselves?

Yes.


I don't believe it. They are more or less autonomous puppets at the hands of the "opposition".

We are talking about students here, not politicians or a political organization.

Don't be so foolishly stupid, Leo. Students lie as anybody else.

The rank and file wouldn't know if their leaders have deals with the escuálidos; the leaders will never admit it.



This is patently false; just look at the slogans, and realise it.

I don't deny that some of their slogans show a clear influence of the bourgeois ideology. However I don't think the students are acting this way because of the influence of the bourgeois ideology.

They are acting this way because the social stratum to which they belong - a layer of upper middle class that monopolised the good jobs in the old order - is being harmed by Chavez policies - democratisation of PDVSA, closing of RCTV, a benign handling of farm and factory ocupations.

Good grief, some leftists!

Luís Henrique

[Dimentio]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 06:31 pm

This so called student movement amounts to little more than the sons and daughters of the ruling class and the petty bourgoirse defending their interests.

So you haven't read the article. Very convenient.


For the ultra left to champion them over the venezuelan revolution

No matter what you want to believe, there is no Venezuelan Revolution.


This movement refused all offers of debates from socialist youth oragnisations and then declared them all undemocratic.

I think you mean the Chavist students here, again demonstrating that you haven't read the article: "Another important character of this movement since its beginning has been that it has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors. To this end the students have called upon all of the students and the population as a whole, Chavistas or not, to take part in an open dialogue in the universities, the barrios and the street, outside of the institutions and organs controlled by the government, as well as those dominated by the opposition." So they have not refused to debate with anyone, they have simply refused to support the bourgeois government and the bourgeois opposition.


It is uninterested in socialism or building a mass movement of youth.

Those students certainly have democratic illusions, no one is claiming that they are communists, but the movement as a whole is interested in it's living standards, unemployment, poverty etc. Oh, and if you think that a couple of rich kids can create a mass movement you are delusional. And of course quite obviously you can't explain why the alleged "children of rich oppositionists" are trying so hard to stay away from the opposition.


On top of this the closure of RCTV was a good thing. RCTV was an ever present danger to the revolutionary proccess in Venezuela.

Of course no one cares about the workers in the RCTV. You pick Chavez' bourgeois governments interests over the interests of the Venezuelan workers, very convenient.


That "false" alternative only can exist under the present regime.

Under the dictatorship of the "opposition", the alternative will be much worse.

This doesn't make any sense. I don't think the bourgeois opposition would be less oppressive had it been in power but what makes you think it would be more oppressive? A bourgeois government acts according to its interests.


But, in fact, this isn't even an honest attempt to oppose both Chavez and the escuálidos. It's Venezolan jeunesse dorée flexing its muscles.

:rolleyes:
One word.

RCTV is online again.

It was never outlawed! It's license was removed! Hello! Earth calling! It is on cable now.

[Andy Bowden]

Of course no one cares about the workers in the RCTV. You pick Chavez' bourgeois governments interests over the interests of the Venezuelan workers, very convenient.

Er, how does the removing of RCTV's license to broadcast affect the workers there? RCTV continues to broadcast using cable, while the equipment that RCTV used to use has been taken for TVes.

Put simply do not most workers for RCTV now either continue to work for RCTV, which broadcasts through cable, or for TVes?

Regarding the student movement, you can make nice sounding claims about the struggle for a better world all you like; backing the right of the mass media to help military coups puts you against the democratic rights of the working class and trade unions in Venezuela, both supportive and critical of Chavez.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 07:32 pm
This was exactly why the coup failed.
The coup failed because workers went to the street to fight against it.


The situation is different now: I think that if there is a coup in Venezuela under the current the new regime will have to be as "democratic" as the Chavez regime and most importantly it will have to be "bloodless" otherwise it won't have a chance.

I hope we never discover, Leo. I hope we never discover. :angry:

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Pardon me if I am not willing to take a chance. I am not going to toy with the idea that the rule of the "oppositionist" faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie isn't going to be murderous.

All factions of the bourgeoisie are murderous.


You mean the opposite, of course. Most students are not a part of the bourgeoisie.

Yeah.


Leo, you were never good in the art of mind reading, and you don't seem to be getting any better.

The reason I say this is what is transparent from their slogans and demands:

But you haven't replied me when I said: However despite the fact that some of those students have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the opposition, they have refused to work with the opposition. Despite the fact that people on the barrios have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the government, they have refused to work with the government and said "we do not want to struggle against our brothers". Even when proletarians are struggling against the bourgeoisie, bourgeois ideology can be strong within the proletariat. This student movement seems to me as something which has to do with living standards rather than ideology.


solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV - what a laugh.

<_< Yeah, right.


freedom of expression - in a context in which it means freedom for the lies of RCTV;

stopping the closure of RCTV - See?

defence of the autonomy of the universities

Autonomy from what, and to do what? Autonomy so that the old cliques of reactionary professors don&#39;t lose their jobs?

the end of repression - which in this context can only mean end of repression either against themselves, as in the freeing of the detained students and those having to report to police stations daily - politically meaningless - or end of "repression" against the opposition, ie, end of the quite mild measures the government has taken against those fashos.

solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV - what a laugh.

against criminality - a must among any list of reactionary demands.

against poverty - yeah, much like here in Brazil the right used to demand an end to inflation in order to agitate the toppling of João Goulart. It soon turns into "against the poor".

and for the need to "create a better world" etc. - because they don&#39;t take the Gomez & Morticia Addams line that a worse world could be appealing to the masses? Oh please.


against poverty - yeah, much like here in Brazil the right used to demand an end to inflation in order to agitate the toppling of João Goulart. It soon turns into "against the poor".

What makes you think the students rightists? All those slogans can and have been used by leftists as well. All those are "democratic" slogans, most of the leftists do like them. Obviously I think that some of those slogans do demonstrate nothing but democratic illusions but you accusing those students of wanting to gain support with slogans against poverty in order to turn it against them ludicrous. We are talking about the students, not the opposition.


But you understand, nevermind, that they are being used by the "Chavista faction of the Venezolan bourgeosie", don&#39;t you?

Yes, unfortunately.


And how comes you cannot understand that those students are pawns of the bourgeois opposition?

Because they have actively refused to be involved with the bourgeois opposition.


the line between refusing to defend a democratic bourgeois government against an opposition further to the right

I would never politically support any bourgeois government and movement.


and actively supporting such right wing opposition.

I am not supporting the right wing opposition, I am completely opposed to it. Also it is impossible for me to support it actively anyway as there are continents and oceans in between.


Don&#39;t be so foolishly stupid, Leo. Students lie as anybody else.

Do you think that those students are evil little liars?

I am sure most of them do lie in their personal lives, lying is a pretty common thing to do. I don&#39;t think what they are doing is a conspiracy of the opposition, neither do I think that the opposition has programmed those students to lie for their interests.


They are acting this way because the social stratum to which they belong - a layer of upper middle class

So either you think that only the students who are in a layer of upper middle class are acting like this or you think that students in general are a layer of upper middle class.

[Leo]

I hope we never discover, Leo. I hope we never discover.

This is not about hoping or wanting, this is about analysis. I hope and want to wake up to a communist world tomorrow. I am sure you would like that too. We all hope there aren&#39;t wars and coups and such anymore. I am talking about materialist analysis here however, not what you or I hope or want. However if it will comfort you, from the outside I don&#39;t expect a coup in Venezuela in the short term.


The coup failed because workers went to the street to fight against it.

This isn&#39;t materialist analysis. Coups don&#39;t fail because workers go to street to fight against them unless the workers are defending their own dictatorship which the Venezuela government certainly wasn&#39;t one. Had the situation been different, had it been like it was in the past, the leaders of the coup would have machine gunned all who went to street. The material conditions did not allow them to do so. This kind of a coup was a mistake for the bourgeois opposition.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 08:28 pm
But you haven&#39;t replied me when I said: However despite the fact that some of those students have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the opposition, they have refused to work with the opposition. Despite the fact that people on the barrios have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the government, they have refused to work with the government and said "we do not want to struggle against our brothers". Even when proletarians are struggling against the bourgeoisie, bourgeois ideology can be strong within the proletariat. This student movement seems to me as something which has to do with living standards rather than ideology.
Whatever they say or believe, they are working <s>with</s> for the opposition. They are giving legitimacy and a mass base to the escuálidos. Maybe it is not their intention - in the case of their leaders, I doubt it, but maybe. But intentions apart, that&#39;s what they are doing.



solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV - what a laugh.

<_< Yeah, right.

What workers, Leo?


What makes you think the students rightists?

I can&#39;t possibly know if they are rightists. They are playing the right&#39;s game, though.


All those slogans can and have been used by leftists as well.

They are used by whomever is in the opposition. Which in Venezuela, today, is the right.


All those are "democratic" slogans, most of the leftists do like them.

Nah, they look like "democratic slogans", but they are an ill disguised falsification.

Not "freedom of expression" which is a democratic slogan; but "freedom of expression - against the shutdown of RCTV", which is not a democratic slogan, but support for an specific organ, one that is firmly in the hands of the compradora bourgeoisie. Not "solidarity with unemployed workers" which is a democratic slogan; but "solidarity with the workers of RCTV" - ie, solidarity with the corporation that so kindly "provided" them jobs.


Obviously I think that some of those slogans do demonstrate nothing but democratic illusions but you accusing those students of wanting to gain support with slogans against poverty in order to turn it against them ludicrous. We are talking about the students, not the opposition.

This is a dellusion. They are not students without a political organisation and political aims. The aims are clear; the destabilisation of the government, under pseudo-democratic pretences. The organisation is not, but I am pretty sure the protests are not only stirred and politically supported, but also funded by the opposition.



But you understand, nevermind, that they are being used by the "Chavista faction of the Venezolan bourgeosie", don&#39;t you?

Yes, unfortunately.


And how comes you cannot understand that those students are pawns of the bourgeois opposition?

Because they have actively refused to be involved with the bourgeois opposition.

You are being naive beyond plausibility. They can deny whatever, they are politically involved with the opposition. They march under the opposition&#39;s slogans, their demands meet the oppositions aims.


I would never politically support any bourgeois government and movement.


You are doing so now.



and actively supporting such right wing opposition.

I am not supporting the right wing opposition, I am completely opposed to it. Also it is impossible for me to support it actively anyway as there are continents and oceans in between.

You are spreading the idea that those students should be supported. You are spreading dellusions about the nature of that movement.


Do you think that those students are evil little liars?

Their leaders undoubtedly are. The rank and file I have already characterised. They aren&#39;t liars, they express politically the ideology of their social group.


I don&#39;t think what they are doing is a conspiracy of the opposition, neither do I think that the opposition has programmed those students to lie for their interests.

No, but it has certainly contacted the leaders, and made unrefusable proposals, which have certainly not been refused.

Or why do you think their slogans are the same as the opposition&#39;s?


So either you think that only the students who are in a layer of upper middle class are acting like this or you think that students in general are a layer of upper middle class.

Obviously those students are, for the most part, members of that layer. That&#39;s what move them - the loss of their privileges. Most students don&#39;t support them - there are many chavistas students organisations, as well as some that aren&#39;t chavistas, but do not go to the street happily waving the opposition&#39;s banners.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Whatever they say or believe, they are working with the opposition.

Why? What makes you think that?


I can&#39;t possibly know if they are rightists. They are playing the right&#39;s game, though.

They are actually refusing to play the right&#39;s game, they are refusing to be involved with the opposition.


This is a dellusion. They are not students without a political organisation and political aims.

I am not saying that they are apolitical. I am simply saying that they are not oppositionists. I think saying that they are oppositionists is delusional.


I am pretty sure the protests are not only stirred and politically supported, but also funded by the opposition.

This seems to me as completely baseless. Here we have a movement which is clearly refusing the opposition, and you are saying that the "protests are not only stirred and politically supported, but also funded by the opposition." Of course you will say all this nonsense about not taking their word, however I do think that whenever the opposition actually did something, they did it under their own name. This is clearly very different in the sense that the protesters are rejecting the opposition as well as the government yet you see all this as a conspiracy of the opposition.

You are doing so now.


You are being naive beyond plausibility. They can deny whatever, they are politically involved with the opposition.

How can they be politically involved with opposition when they are saying that they are not politically involved with the opposition and they are refusing all the efforts by the opposition to actually turn this into a movement of theirs?


They march under the opposition&#39;s slogans

They march under democratic illusions, lots of people do.


their demands meet the oppositions aims.

Hardly demands about ending poverty meet the oppositions aim.


You are doing so now.

No, I am not - you are simply putting words into my mouth.


You are spreading dellusions about the nature of that movement.

I am simply trying to discuss what they are saying, although I am being amused by all those baseless accusations - when will you say that I am a police spy in the service of the secret Jewish conspiracy which rules the world?


Their leaders undoubtedly are.

What makes you think that? What makes you think that they have "leaders" even? How come you are so convinced that this is a conspiracy?


No, but it has certainly contacted the leaders, and made unrefusable proposals, which have certainly not been refused.

What makes you think that? I mean you haven&#39;t provided a singe source on all these things you have been saying. "Their leaders have been contracted"? This is insane, this is simply a conspiracy theory and it doesn&#39;t even make sense they are not acting as if they were contracted - they would have definately declared support to the opposition had this been the case.


Or why do you think their slogans are the same as the opposition&#39;s?

Because they are influence by the bourgeois ideology. Simple? There doesn&#39;t have to be a conspiracy behind every slogan, Luis.


Obviously those students are, for the most part, members of that layer.

I don&#39;t think middle class students can make so much noise. By the way why is it so obvious, it is not obvious to me.


Most students don&#39;t support them - there are many chavistas students organisations, as well as some that aren&#39;t chavistas, but do not go to the street happily waving the opposition&#39;s banners.

First of all, those students are not waving the opposition&#39;s banners, I mean this is an objective fact, they are not waving the oppositions banners. I will repeat this which you have not answered yet: Despite the fact that people on the barrios have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the government, they have refused to work with the government and said "we do not want to struggle against our brothers". Why do you think that is like that?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 08:40 pm
This is not about hoping or wanting, this is about analysis. I hope and want to wake up to a communist world tomorrow. I am sure you would like that too. We all hope there aren&#39;t wars and coups and such anymore. I am talking about materialist analysis here however, not what you or I hope or want. However if it will comfort you, from the outside I don&#39;t expect a coup in Venezuela in the short term.
Oh, this is about wanting and hoping and lying to ourselves. Your "analysis" is, "students are marching against the shutdown of RCTV under the opposition&#39;s slogans, but, hey, they say they are not working for the opposition, so it must be true".



The coup failed because workers went to the street to fight against it.

This isn&#39;t materialist analysis. Coups don&#39;t fail because workers go to street to fight against them unless the workers are defending their own dictatorship which the Venezuela government certainly wasn&#39;t one.

:lol:

Do you call this "analysis"?

Why did Kornilov fail? Kapp?


Had the situation been different, had it been like it was in the past, the leaders of the coup would have machine gunned all who went to street. The material conditions did not allow them to do so.

What "material conditions" unless class struggle? Imperialism is now tame, and would have frown upon the coup leaders if they killed demonstrators?

Please.


This kind of a coup was a mistake for the bourgeois opposition.

Maybe. But the mistake was to underestimate the popular resistance.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 09:30 pm
This seems to me as completely baseless. Here we have a movement which is clearly refusing the opposition, and you are saying that the "protests are not only stirred and politically supported, but also funded by the opposition." Of course you will say all this nonsense about not taking their word, however I do think that whenever the opposition actually did something, they did it under their own name. This is clearly very different in the sense that the protesters are rejecting the opposition as well as the government yet you see all this as a conspiracy of the opposition.
They are not clearly refusing the opposition. They are struggling for the opposition&#39;s aims, under the opposition&#39;s banners and slogans.

Where have they "refused" the opposition? Where have they made clear that they don&#39;t support the opposition? Where have they raised a single concern that the opposition cannot agree with?


How can they be politically involved with opposition when they are saying that they are not politically involved with the opposition and they are refusing all the efforts by the opposition to actually turn this into a movement of theirs?

Are they? How do you know? All you have is their word. And the fact that they haven&#39;t any political demand that doesn&#39;t match those of the opposition - but this you refuse to take into account.


Hardly demands about ending poverty meet the oppositions aim.

Oh they do.

No government can end "poverty" out of an act of will - even if it is earnestly compromised in doing it. What they are doing is accusing the government of not putting a magical end to poverty, which plays magnifically into the opposition&#39;s ends.


I am simply trying to discuss what they are saying, although I am being amused by all those baseless accusations - when will you say that I am a police spy in the service of the secret Jewish conspiracy which rules the world?

There&#39;s not Jewish conspiracy which rules the world. There is a students movement in Venezuela that supports the opposition&#39;s demands, has not one demand that is in conflict with the opposition&#39;s aims, and there are "lefitists" who delude themselves that this students movement is independent from both government and opposition.


What makes you think that? What makes you think that they have "leaders" even? How come you are so convinced that this is a conspiracy?

Of course they have leaders.

And it is not a conspiracy. They agree politically - and ideologically - with the opposition; they are not different from the opposition; they are part of the opposition. What conspiracy?



No, but it has certainly contacted the leaders, and made unrefusable proposals, which have certainly not been refused.

What makes you think that?

You see. The Venezolan opposition has money. Lots of money. Insane lots of money. They can use this money to buy people, and they do that. Now there is a movement that has not one ideological divergence with them - why wouldn&#39;t they offer money, jobs, opportunities, to those people? And why would those people refuse that money, those jobs, those opportunities?


I mean you haven&#39;t provided a singe source on all these things you have been saying. "Their leaders have been contracted"? This is insane, this is simply a conspiracy theory and it doesn&#39;t even make sense they are not acting as if they were contracted - they would have definately declared support to the opposition had this been the case.

Of course not, mon petit. The last thing the opposition needs is that they confess their links to them&#33; They must pretend they are independent, if they are to fool anyone.

Or would you be spreading the idea that they are independent if they had said they are not?


Because they are influence by the bourgeois ideology. Simple? There doesn&#39;t have to be a conspiracy behind every slogan, Luis.

That&#39;s not conspiracy, that&#39;s organisation.


I don&#39;t think middle class students can make so much noise. By the way why is it so obvious, it is not obvious to me.

You must be kidding, middle class students make a lot of noise. Sometimes leftist noise, sometimes rightist noise, but noise they do.


First of all, those students are not waving the opposition&#39;s banners, I mean this is an objective fact, they are not waving the oppositions banners.

Of course they are, as your own text made clear. There is not a single word there in contradiction with the opposition.


I will repeat this which you have not answered yet: Despite the fact that people on the barrios have some slogans which are dangerously close to those of the government, they have refused to work with the government and said "we do not want to struggle against our brothers".

What "brothers" would they struggle against, Leo?

Luís Henrique

[al-Ibadani]

The article seems to suggest that the masses seem to be losing faith in Chavez. The fact that Chavism&#39;s base of support didn&#39;t mobilize is telling. His "revolution" seems to have changed nothing in their lives.

The movement is somewhat reminiscent of the anti-CPE movement in France. The students methods, in the creation of general assemblies, and opening up to workers are also reminiscent of May &#39;06.

Luis Henrique, why do you support one bourgeois clique over another? Is it because of Chavez&#39;s anti-Americanism? If the Venezualan ICC is correct that the movement is an attempt to break free of the false choice of Cahavismo vs. opposition, it is a positive development. I&#39;m hoping the Venezuelan ICC comrades will be able to intervene in the way that their French counterparts did.

[Dimentio]

As far as I&#39;ll know, even liberal media have recognised that there was hundreds of thousands of pro-government demonstrators who rallied against the RCTV demonstrations in different parts of Caracas.

How would Venezuela look after the "democratic" coup?

[VukBZ2005]

The article that has been released by the ICC only proves that the ICC is out of touch with reality. It fails to take into account the current situation of Venezuela and because it has failed to take into account the current situation of Venezuela, it has proven itself to be of the same position as that so-called revolutionary organization that is located in Venezuela, Bandera Roja.

Let me de-fang the ICC&#39;s accusations by first dealing with the nature of the "student movement" that has supposedly emerged in Venezuela.

Anyone who has taken into account the evidence about the events surrounding the situation which developed after RCTV&#39;s license was non-renewed, knows that it was not shut down, that it had a public frequency taken away from them due their consistent threats against the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela and their participation in the 11-13 April 2002 Coup and that in fact, it just came back on the television screens of subscribers to Venezuela&#39;s Cable and Satellite services nearly two weeks ago. That means that this "student movement" that supposedly emerged out of President Chavez&#39;s intent to suppress the "freedom of expression" has no material basis at all.

The only possible way that this "student movement" can have any kind of material basis is if that student movement is aligned with the opposition and is aligned with the agenda of the most influential parts of the opposition and the international spectacle to create a situation that would activate counter-revolutionary forces that happen to exist in Venezuela and that would result in the overthrow of President Chavez. Pro-U.S forces in every country that was against the interests of the United States tried the same strategy and they succeeded. The reason why they failed in Venezuela is because there is no real basis for the opposition to launch credible attacks against the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela anymore. That is why they are reduced to using simple, stupid, illogical and amazingly irrational events to try to achieve their objectives. This situation has proven to everyone that has a grip on the situation in Venezuela that not even this they can use to initiate a situation that would benefit their interests.

If these students are in cahoots in the opposition, then it would be obvious that these students are not working class people, but are the youth of the Venezuelan Capitalist and small Capitalist classes, whom feel threaten by the developments taking place in their country and whom feel threatened by the increasing empowerment of working class Venezuelans.

As ultimate proof that my assertions are indeed the case, please take a look at this picture;

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/sambil4.jpg

This is a "student protest" that took place in a mall that is a part of a upscale Capitalist class neighborhood in Caracas. If these were working class people, do you not think that they would be protesting in the barrios as they did during the Caracazo of 1989? If some people are denying this, they are also denying the real situations that are taking place in Venezuela.

Moreover, there were two forms of student demonstrations that were taking place in Venezuela; the ICC&#39;s much beloved "student movement" and the working class student supporters of the non-renewal of RCTV&#39;s license. To the dismay of the ICC, Bandera Roja and the "non-Bolivarian" left, the working class student supporters came out in greater numbers, overwhelming and invalidating the claim that this student movement applied to the entire spectrum of Venezuelan students. The "student movement" does not speak for all students.

Oh yeah, massive numbers of Venezuelan working class people also came out and mobilized in support of Chavez when he called for a march to prove to the world that the Venezuelan people do not support the attempts of the opposition to cause trouble nearly a week after the license was non-renewed and was replaced by TVes.

Now, on the much asserted ranting of the ICC on the rate of poverty levels increasing, the rate of unemployment increasing and the lack of popular power persisting in Venezuelan communities, let me prove to all that are reading that the ICC is also fabricating claims that have no basis in reality.

Let us start with unemployment; before President Chavez came to power, as much as 15% of the population was unemployed. Since he came to power, the rate of unemployment has dropped to 8%.

It does not look that much to your normal person in terms of gains, but that is massive and the rate of unemployment continues to fall as Venezuela becomes more of an industrialized country. So this claim that unemployment is increasing is just insane. Just insane.

As I have mentioned on another thread, the amount of poverty has fallen from 85% to 33% within the space of eight years.

It may not seem as much to someone that happens to be typical, but when you look at what is actually happening and when you see them collaborating with the facts, it is massive and it continues to fall as Venezuela becomes more of a country that is industrialized. So the ICC&#39;s claim that poverty is increasing has no common sense behind it. It&#39;s just insane to continue to assert the same things over and over.

And, when it comes to popular empowerment, the Chavez government has established workers&#39; councils that put control of the means of production in the hands of the working class in various state industries; he has been behind the creation of worker-controlled cooperatives; he has not directly interfered with the massive factory occupations movement that has been in activity in Venezuela since the "oil strike" of 2002-2003 and he has been behind the creation of Communal Councils, whose eventual intention is to take over state and municipal functions. If the ICC denies this shit, then it is safe to say that the ICC is a reactionary organization that pretends to be revolutionary.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 10:28 pm
Luis Henrique, why do you support one bourgeois clique over another? Is it because of Chavez&#39;s anti-Americanism?
I don&#39;t support Chavez.


If the Venezualan ICC is correct that the movement is an attempt to break free of the false choice of Cahavismo vs. opposition, it is a positive development.

Unhappily they are not correct. They are completely wrong. The movement is ideologically and politically under the hegemony of the Venezolan "opposition". They are not much different from the truckdrivers who went on strike just before the coup against Allende.

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

Wow, that article is a total political car crash.

It demonstrates the problem of typifying Chavez as merely another wing of Venezuelan capital, of no real difference to the opposite wing of Venezuelan capital. This is what happens when you apply a kind of communist purity law to real life struggle and then refuse support when the "left" don&#39;t fulfill your dogma:

You either retreat into sectarianism, abstentionism, or you end up grasping at straws and supporting a rightist student demonstration and making yourself look stupid.

Leo&#39;s so-called "materialist" analysis is nothing but some crude class identification theory applied to individual leaders. A real materialist analysis would examine the social composition of the movements, the political demands they were making and how they locate within the particular struggle. Further, the struggle should be located within the wider material reality of capitalism and imperialism within the region and globally.

The ICC analysis either doesn&#39;t do this or it gets it badly wrong.

It&#39;s been instructive reading how devastatingly Luis has demolished the premises of Leo&#39;s position.

I&#39;m left with one question, though: Does the ICC want to see the overthrow of Chavez by the opposition? Because that&#39;s what it sound like.

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by Citizen [email protected] 06, 2007 06:13 pm
Does the ICC want to see the overthrow of Chavez by the opposition? Because that&#39;s what it sound like.
Yes, they do. That&#39;s why I think that they are reactionaries in disguise.

[grove street]

Originally posted by Communist [email protected] 06, 2007 10:53 pm



As ultimate proof that my assertions are indeed the case, please take a look at this picture;

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/sambil4.jpg


They&#39;re all fucking white for God&#39;s sake. If that&#39;s not enough proof that this so called student&#39;s movement is nothing but a bunch of rich white kids who can&#39;t bare to accept the fact that more brown/black faces will be sitting next to them in class thanks to Hugo Chavez then I don&#39;t know what is.

It&#39;s amazing how people on this site are flagging one of the only few leaders in the world that is atleast trying to help the poor, only because he doesn&#39;t fit into their perfect opinion of what a leftisist is suppose to be.

For crying out loud, Leo might as well of posted a picture of white kids from the 60&#39;s in Alabama protesting against racial intergration in schools.

[al-Ibadani]

First of all the skepticism and apparent bewilderment of some of the posters comes as no surprise to me. I do think that some of you should take a step back and maybe examine a few of your assumptions first. If you are caught up in the left vs. right trap, then of course the ICC are loons.

There has been a long history of bourgeois movements claiming to be socialist, revolutionary etc. Many of these movements have been supported by leftists. Usually if industry is nationalized, if the movement is opposed to some big imperialist state, and especially if the "people" support it, leftists flock to the movement.

Our point is that bourgeois regimes aren&#39;t just right-wing regimes. Leftist regimes are bourgeois as well. In fact it is the leftist ones which are often the best suited to defend national capital. After all, if workers are led to believe that the leftist regimes are on their side, they are less prone to resist. History is replete with examples of workers supporting and even dying for the left against the right, only to remain in chains.

Before you make sweeping claims against the ICC, I suggest you read some articles about the situation in Venezuela. I think they destroy so many myths about the supposed decrease in poverty, about the factory occupations, about the communal councils etc.

some links

Chevez defends capitalism, not socialism (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/295_chavez)

Venezuela: the Fraud of Chavist "socialism" (http://en.internationalism.org/ICConline/2006/march/chavism_fraud.html)

Re-election of Chavez: Worsening poverty in the name of socialism (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/303/chavez)

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 11:48 pm
First of all the skepticism and apparent bewilderment of some of the posters comes as no surprise to me. I do think that some of you should take a step back and maybe examine a few of your assumptions first. If you are caught up in the left vs. right trap, then of course the ICC are loons.

There has been a long history of bourgeois movements claiming to be socialist, revolutionary etc. Many of these movements have been supported by leftists. Usually if industry is nationalized, if the movement is opposed to some big imperialist state, and especially if the "people" support it, leftists flock to the movement.

Our point is that bourgeois regimes aren&#39;t just right-wing regimes. Leftist regimes are bourgeois as well. In fact it is the leftist ones which are often the best suited to defend national capital. After all, if workers are led to believe that the leftist regimes are on their side, they are less prone to resist. History is replete with examples of workers supporting and even dying for the left against the right, only to remain in chains.

Before you make sweeping claims against the ICC, I suggest you read some articles about the situation in Venezuela. I think they destroy so many myths about the supposed decrease in poverty, about the factory occupations, about the communal councils etc.

some links

Chevez defends capitalism, not socialism (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/295_chavez)

Venezuela: the Fraud of Chavist "socialism" (http://en.internationalism.org/ICConline/2006/march/chavism_fraud.html)

Re-election of Chavez: Worsening poverty in the name of socialism (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/303/chavez)
And then, after having so cunningly proved us that Chavez is bourgeois just like Carmona, they discover a college students movement whose banners are all bourgeois, who has no freaking ties to the working class, who are evidently making the right&#39;s game - and want to sell it to us as something breaking the false alternative between
Chavez and the opposition... <_<

To be as bluntly materialist as Leo... students don&#39;t have a politics of their own; they either tail the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. But if the argument is that the Venezolan proletariat has no independent expression, that it has been completely fooled by Chavez&#39;s faction of the bourgeoisie, what else can these students be doing besides tailing the bourgeois?

Or does the ICC want us also to believe there is, somewhere hidden in Venezuela, an independent proletariat, standing by its own aims? Where? Where? Where? Or perhaps they are exercising their class independence by demanding "freedom of expression" (for the bourgeois RCTV, no less&#33;), "autonomy of the university", "end of poverty", "end of crime", and, gem of gems of proletarian autonomous thought, "a better world" (for everybody, of course, like those students endlessly repeat, "Venezuela ahora sí es de todos")?

If Leo and his organisation have the right to lie to themselves that such bourgeois scum "confronts both Chavez and the opposition", then how can they deny other leftists the right to idolise the nonsence of their preference, Chávez, Lula, the Hizballah, Ras Tafari?

I would laugh, but perhaps it is more proper to weep. :(

Luís Henrique

[CornetJoyce]

The picture says it all. It isn&#39;t grassroots opposition: it&#39;s astroturf.

[Hit The North]

Re. the social composition of the Venezuelan students:

I know it&#39;s far from authoritative but Wikipedia claims:


More than 70% of higher-education students come from the wealthiest quintile of the population.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Venezuela

Unsurprising in a country which excelled in inequality in the past.

But the students are not even acting independently of their own university bosses, all of whom are fighting to preserve their independent right to foster elitism and plutocracy by opposing Chavez&#39;s reforms to the higher education sector:
Mission Sucre which establishes as a strategy the mass education and graduation of university professionals in three years, as opposed to the traditionally mandated five or more years. The mission is an attempt to popularize, reform, and expand Venezuelan higher education beyond its traditional role of mainly educating the children of élite and middle class Venezuelans. The program is geared especially towards the poorest and most marginalized segments of society.Cited (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Sucre)

This is the state control which the universities and their student demonstrators wish to remain autonomous from. <_<

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 08:40 pm
However if it will comfort you, from the outside I don&#39;t expect a coup in Venezuela in the short term.
No, it doesn&#39;t comfort me. On the contrary, considering the politically analitical skills you have been displaying, I&#39;m coming to fear that it will happen this night.

But the real problem is that the attitudes of your organisation are making such coup more, not less, probable.

Luís Henrique

[which doctor]

Originally posted by Communist FireFox+August 06, 2007 06:20 pm--> (Communist FireFox @ August 06, 2007 06:20 pm)
Citizen [email protected] 06, 2007 06:13 pm
Does the ICC want to see the overthrow of Chavez by the opposition? Because that&#39;s what it sound like.
Yes, they do. That&#39;s why I think that they are reactionaries in disguise. [/b]
Define "opposition."

[black magick hustla]

Holy hell all the students in the píc are white.

[Dominicana_1965]

Whats funny is that this "Student movement" actually debated with another Student Movement (Pro-Chavez) in the National Assembly and lost it...afterwards they left the National Assembly pissed off. So what censorship is this reactionary rich bunch talking about it? I also doubt that the Student Movement this article is talking about is anything but rejection by the working class students of Venezuela in that statistics show that since the Bolivarian Revolution took off there has been 6.3 million individuals that have registered for school, and they surely aren&#39;t rich students.

[metalero]

I&#39;m glad LuisH and others clearly expoused ICC, a pseudo-leftist group using revolutionary rethoric and just acting as a front of the buorguoise.

[Leo]

Oh, this is about wanting and hoping and lying to ourselves. Your "analysis" is, "students are marching against the shutdown of RCTV under the opposition&#39;s slogans, but, hey, they say they are not working for the opposition, so it must be true".

I am simply saying that the students are saying that they don&#39;t either want the government or the opposition, I am saying that they have said they want to discuss and I am saying that people in the burrios who were sent to attack them refused to do so whereas they would have gone had this been actually a movement of the opposition. You have been saying that they must be lying and that there must be some sort of conspiracy of the opposition behind this movement and this was what we were talking about since. I haven&#39;t even got chance to put forward an analysis.


Imperialism is now tame, and would have frown upon the coup leaders if they killed demonstrators? Please.

Oh dear, try to think please Luis. American imperialism would not, yet Chavist Venezuela is obviously not an "independent" power (as no single power is). There isn&#39;t a brutal cold war going on between two imperialist camps, there are rivalries between lots of different imperialist powers, all of which would have used this event in their political and diplomatic interests. In other words, in the current world situation, having a coup with such brutality would not have been profitable for the US, Chavez is already economically in their pocket, had he been suppressed just because he puts forward a political opposition, lots of louder political opposition from America&#39;s imperialist rivals would have risen. It is not about anything being tame. I am getting the feeling that you are only talking for the sake of polemics.


Do you call this "analysis"?

Why did Kornilov fail?

Workers were not defending Kerensky, they were defending the councils.


Does the ICC want to see the overthrow of Chavez by the opposition?

No, they want to see the overthrow of Chavez by an actual proletarian revolution.


They are not clearly refusing the opposition.

They have refused the opposition&#33;


They are struggling for the opposition&#39;s aims, under the opposition&#39;s banners and slogans.

They might have some of the opposition&#39;s slogans but they are not under their banners.


Where have they "refused" the opposition? Where have they made clear that they don&#39;t support the opposition?

They have been saying it.


Are they? How do you know? All you have is their word.

Well yes. And I also have the opposition&#39;s word who did show interest in forming contact with the students and the students refusing to do so.


There&#39;s not Jewish conspiracy which rules the world.

<_< I&#39;m not sure if that&#39;s what you actually think.


There is a students movement in Venezuela that supports the opposition&#39;s demands, has not one demand that is in conflict with the opposition&#39;s aims, and there are "lefitists" who delude themselves that this students movement is independent from both government and opposition.

Then there are some workers in Venezuela who "delude" themselves that this students movement is independent from both government and opposition in that had this been an opposition movement, they would not have hesitated to attack it yet they have refused to attack it now.


And it is not a conspiracy. They agree politically - and ideologically - with the opposition; they are not different from the opposition; they are part of the opposition. What conspiracy?

The part when they have refused to be a part of the opposition and you still claim that they are a part of the opposition.


You see. The Venezolan opposition has money. Lots of money. Insane lots of money. They can use this money to buy people, and they do that. Now there is a movement that has not one ideological divergence with them - why wouldn&#39;t they offer money, jobs, opportunities, to those people?

It&#39;s a dangerous game. The opposition is not just a few rich men, they already do have mass support (this includes the support of the unions which you are so fond of), they are capable of having mass demonstrations and so forth. They might have tried to buy the student movement, but had they actually bought and controlled the movement, the student movement would have actually supported the opposition. They are not doing this. They do have some of the oppositions slogans and this does show the influence of bourgeois ideology within them but I don&#39;t think there is a conspiracy of the opposition behind the movement. You see, the name is a lot more important than slogans for bourgeois politics. There are lots of political parties with the exact same slogans and different names, and of course those parties hate each other. This movement can&#39;t be helpful for the opposition unless it actually, not in the fantasy conspiracy you described but materially goes under the banners of the opposition. Maybe they will, no one can say for certain.


The last thing the opposition needs is that they confess their links to them&#33; They must pretend they are independent, if they are to fool anyone.

Look, when we are talking about the opposition, we are talking about bourgeois politics not a conspiracy which has to remain secret. The opposition needs a movement to be under their banners to use it, otherwise it is pretty much useless, especially if it is publicly rejecting any contact with the opposition. This is not a plus for the opposition you know, for the students to refuse contact with them. What they care about is polishing their name.


Of course not, mon petit.

Please be a little respectful.


Or would you be spreading the idea that they are independent if they had said they are not?

What?


What "brothers" would they struggle against, Leo?

They had struggled against the opposition in the past.

To sum up: no one is supporting the opposition here, no is supporting the slogans of the opposition, no one is supporting the slogans the students share with the opposition. I don&#39;t think they are connected with the opposition because there isn&#39;t any material evidence to it. I might be wrong, I might turn out to be wrong, after all I don&#39;t know much about the student movement in Venezuela. I would admit that I was wrong, if this movement does join the opposition. However it hasn&#39;t materially joined the opposition so far and there just isn&#39;t any evidence to your conspiracy theory which says that they have to be controlled by the opposition.

[Devrim]

Personally, I am not convinced by this 'Student Movement'. I am even less convinced though that there is anything for the working class to defend in the 'Bolivarian revolution'.

First let's start with the economic situation:


Originally posted by Communist FireFox+--> (Communist FireFox)
Let us start with unemployment; before President Chavez came to power, as much as 15% of the population was unemployed. Since he came to power, the rate of unemployment has dropped to 8%.

It does not look that much to your normal person in terms of gains, but that is massive and the rate of unemployment continues to fall as Venezuela becomes more of an industrialized country. So this claim that unemployment is increasing is just insane. Just insane.

As I have mentioned on another thread, the amount of poverty has fallen from 85% to 33% within the space of eight years.


Originally posted by Communist FireFox+--> (Communist FireFox)It's just insane to continue to assert the same things over and over.

Yes, let's see some sources then, and not just assertions. I read on another board quite a reasonable analysis of the economic situation in Venezuela:


Originally posted by Joseph K.

Originally posted by jonnyflash
Interestingly (for a retirement website), a very nice income breakdown by class can be found here:

http://www.bulletproofretirement.com/public/274.cfm?sd=2

Their analysis states that:


For Social Class E, they've seen their household income go from 437,613 Bolivares per month in 2004 to 680,419 Bolivares per month in the first quarter of 2006. Likewise, for Social Class D, their household income rose from 768,333 per month to 890,990 per month, and the lower half of Class C saw it's income rise from 1,415,099 in 2004 to 1,765,000.
(see the original text for their lettered class category definitions)those figures don't look like they're inflation-adjusted (it doesn't say they are which is standard practice when giving 'real terms' figures not actual ones). so a few sums: (edited to fix denominators, results only minorly different, same conclusions)

Inflation was estimated at 16% in 2005<fn> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela </fn> and 18.3% in January this year<fn> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6364515.stm </fn>, so i'll take 17% as an average.

Social Class E (58% population; "the extreme poor")
437,613 Bs (2004) x 1.17² = 599,048 Bs (2006)

680,419 - 599,048 (i.e. the real terms change)
----------------------- x 100 = +13.6%
599,048 (i.e. the base year figure at present value)

Social Class D (23% population; "the working class or the 'working poor'")
768,333 Bs (2004) x 1.17² = 1,051,771 Bs (2006)

890,990 - 1,051,771
------------------------ x 100 = -15.3%
1,051,771

Social Class C (~16% population; "the middle class")
1,415,099 Bs (2004) x 1.17² = 1,937,129 Bs (2006)

1,765,000 - 1,937,129
-------------------------- x 100 = -8.9%
1,937,129

There's no stats on the upper classes proper, so assuming the veracity of these statistics the poor majority are clearly better off in real terms, though this may be at the expense of the middle (working poor and lower middle class) or both the middle and top, without class A/B data we can't be sure.

A few more caveats;

(i) inflation is calculated on a 'basket of goods', if it contains imported consumer goods and the like whose prices are relatively stable, this could mask a higher rise in basic provisions (i.e. real terms inflation for the poor could outstrip the headline measure). again, we don't know, but this is a common problem, and Chavez has been talking of nationalising shops who ignore price caps and raise prices on basic foodstuffs<fn> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6364515.stm </fn>, so this is likely a problem, which means the real-terms increase in the poor's income would be somewhere below the +18.5% calculated above.

(ii) GDP growth is running at around 9.3% p/a<fn> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela - this doesn't include the black economy which is significant in venezuela, so all sums with GDP involved are very provisional, but nonetheless indicative because GDP does include oil revenues, the major source of recent 'growth'.</fn>, so it would be a reasonable approximation to take across-the-board income increases of 9.3% per year (19.5% compounded over two years) as a base expectation if everyone is sharing equally in economic growth - which is fuelled mostly by high oil prices (i.e. derived from oil rents) - roughly a third of GDP is petroleum-related and so is half of all state revenue.

Some provisional conclusions:

The income growth of the poorest 58% was outstripped by GDP growth by somewhere more than 5.9% (19.5%- lessthan13.6%), meaning their relative share of national wealth actually fell. however, there was a real-terms absolute increase in income of somewhere lessthan13.6%.

The (negative) income growth of the working poor (23% of population) was outstripped by GDP growth by around 34.8%, meaning their relative share of national wealth fell dramatically. They also suffered an absolute real-terms fall in income of around 15.3%.

The (negative) income growth of the lower middle class (16%) was outstripped by GDP growth by around 28.4%, meaning their relative share of national wealth fell. Their absolute real-terms incomes also fell by 8.9%.

Therefore, while the absolute incomes of the poor majority have risen by lessthan13.6% (whilst falling by greaterthan5.9% relative to GDP), the relative share of national wealth of 97% of the population has actually fallen by 16%<fn>Edit: i was half a percent out because of a methodological error (took 97% of the population as 100%). I think it's right now, i'm doing this looking over my shoulder in the office :bb:. the left bits with numbers above and below ----- are divisions. )

0.58
(----- x -5.9) +
0.97

0.23
(----- x -34.8) +
0.97

0.16
(----- x -28.4)
0.97

= -16.5%

</fn>, meaning that the oil-rent bonanza of high oil prices is fuelling a concentration of wealth in the country's richest 3%. Furthermore, the incomes of the 'working poor' have fallen by 15.3% in real terms and 34.8% relative to national wealth, and this in a growing economy where the richest 3% are accruing the lions share of the gains, meaning there is a clear basis for class demands/strike action etc against this attack on venezuelan workers.

note: the less than and greater than symbols fucks up the formatting as it's an open html tag, hence me writing 'lessthan' and 'greaterthan'Also, in my opinion this is slightly flawed in that it takes inflation as an average of 17% when in fact it should be componded, and taken at 18.6% (this favours the pro-Chavez argument though. On a second point I would actually be very wary about believing the governments staistics on inflation to be anything like the reality experienced by workers. Anyone who lives in a high inflation economy will know immediatly what I mean.

Ok, let's look at what are (for those who couldn't be bothered to read), in my opinion, the most important conclusions here:



The income growth of the poorest 58% was outstripped by GDP growth by somewhere more than 5.9% (19.5%- lessthan13.6%), meaning their relative share of national wealth actually fell. however, there was a real-terms absolute increase in income of somewhere lessthan13.6%.

The (negative) income growth of the working poor (23% of population) was outstripped by GDP growth by around 34.8%, meaning their relative share of national wealth fell dramatically. They also suffered an absolute real-terms fall in income of around 15.3%...
meaning that the oil-rent bonanza of high oil prices is fuelling a concentration of wealth in the country's richest 3%. Furthermore, the incomes of the 'working poor' have fallen by 15.3% in real terms and 34.8% relative to national wealth, and this in a growing economy where the richest 3% are accruing the lions share of the gains, So the working class is under attack. The urban poor have benefited (but remember what I said about inflation earlier), but it has been paid for by attacking the working class, and lower middle class while the richest sectors of society have increased their share of the national wealth.

If this is your 'socialism', then you are welcome to it.

Let's continue with the pictures of the 'white kids':

To be honest, I can imagine little stupider than condemning a movement on the basis of one picture. If I showed you a picture of Tehran bus drivers eating caviar, would you condemn their movement? The fact that this single picture shows a bunch of 'white kids' in a shopping mall means nothing at all.

To conclude:
It is possible that the ICC comrades on the ground in Venezuela have got over excited about a movement, which is nothing at all to be excited about. That I can understand. However, as I am not in there, it is difficult to judge, as I believe it is for many others here. If it is true then they have made a serious mistake, albeit one far less serious than all those who talk about Chavez, and socialism in the same sentence.

What exists in Venezuela has nothing in common with socialism. It is capitalism pure, and simple, and will be forced to make even deeper attacks on the working class. As it continues to do this, the leftists will continue to support its attacks on workers:




Does the ICC want to see the overthrow of Chavez by the opposition? Because that's what it sound like. Yes, they do. That's why I think that they are reactionaries in disguise.The ICC doesn't call for the overthrow of Chavez by the opposition, it orientates itself around the defence of workers living standards. As the crisis deepens people like the above poster will be more, and more supporting a regime attacking the working class. These are the true 'reactionaries'.

Devrim

[al-Ibadani]

Luis Henrique,

It seems to me that we agree that both sides in Venezuela are bourgeois, and you and I support neither side and oppose both sides. (I hope we agree because you seem to oppose the opposition more). Where we disagree is whether the student movement is a spawn of the opposition or whether it is more kin to the anti-CPE movement of France last year.



Or does the ICC want us also to believe there is, somewhere hidden in Venezuela, an independent proletariat, standing by its own aims? Where? Where? Where? Or perhaps they are exercising their class independence by demanding "freedom of expression" (for the bourgeois RCTV, no less&#33;), "autonomy of the university", "end of poverty", "end of crime", and, gem of gems of proletarian autonomous thought, "a better world" (for everybody, of course, like those students endlessly repeat, "Venezuela ahora sí es de todos")?

Luis, if you are serious about this discussion then hear me out a bit o.k? There is a certain concept known as class terrain. When workers struggle they don&#39;t always do it on the proletarian terrain. Basically if they do not control the forms of their struggles, if the dynamic of the struggle is towards isolation from other workers, if they are being shepherded by leftists, then they are not fighting on the proletarian terrain. If however workers do control the forms of their struggle (by creating general assemblies, strike committees etc) if the dynamic is towards spreading the struggle then the fight is on their terrain.

This doesn&#39;t mean that the initial demands or the superficial aims of the struggles on our terrain aren&#39;t flawed. Past great workers struggles began with chauvinism (1871), with religiosity (1905) or with illusions in democracy (Poland 1980).

Sometimes struggles with legitimate class demands (wages, working conditions etc.) and even with revolutionary slogans are waged on the bourgeoisie&#39;s terrain. If workers wage such struggles by participating in the electoral circus, by striking under the thumb of the unions, if the dynamic is towards isolation of the struggle etc. The struggles on the bourgeoisies terrain are almost always hopeless.

So our task as revolutionaries is to explain how to FUSE real class demands with struggles on our terrain.

Is this movement of future workers in Venezuela on our terrain? I think the general assemblies are quite telling. (Movements spawned by the bourgeoisie tend to lack these.) If this is the case, then I tend to also believe the ICC&#39;s reports of the general assemblies opening up to the public, as the ones in France did.

What we have is a struggle on our class terrain, many of whose slogans are deluded and infantile, although some aren&#39;t. Thus the movement, in a subterranean manner, is an attempt to break free from the false alternative between Chavism and the opposition.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Past great workers struggles began with ... illusions in democracy (Poland 1980).

If that was a "great struggle" than I guess Lech Wałęsa was a "great leader" and the clerical-CIA/Reagan-backed-Solidarność "union" was a "great organization"?

[Leo]

Obviously not: Lech Wałęsa and Solidarność were opposed to the interests of the struggling working class as much as the Polish state - perhaps they proved to be even more dangerous as they manipulated the struggle and used it for their own interests. Another great example of workers&#39; actual relationship with the trade unions. This, however, doesn&#39;t neglect the fact that there was an actual workers struggle, that there was an actual strike, which was caused by workers&#39; discontent about their living standards.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 07, 2007 07:46 am
I am simply saying that the students are saying that they don&#39;t either want the government or the opposition, I am saying that they have said they want to discuss and I am saying that people in the burrios [sic] who were sent to attack them refused to do so whereas they would have gone had this been actually a movement of the opposition.
Listen, if the government had actually sent people in the barrios to physically attack those students, and 1% of those people in the barrios had answered to the government&#39;s call, we would be talking about the massacre of the students, not about their demonstrations.


You have been saying that they must be lying and that there must be some sort of conspiracy of the opposition behind this movement and this was what we were talking about since. I haven&#39;t even got chance to put forward an analysis.

But I have. Those students are, for the most part, members of the upper middle class, and they oppose Chavez because of what they perceive as attacks against their privileges. So they are under the ideological hegemony of the opposition. And of course they won&#39;t "support" the opposition leaders; after all who wants to be publicly linked to guys who are not only golpistas, but incompetent golpistas?

What they don&#39;t do, because they can&#39;t do, is to distance themselves from the "opposition" demands, banners, slogans - in a word, from the "opposition" political program&#33; And they can&#39;t do that, not because they are under a general influence of democratic bourgeois ideology, but because their material interests are best defended by the "opposition", and so there are under the influence of the specific ideology of the Venezolan "opposition". Of course this is phrased in the characteristic petty-bourgeois way, but evidently they play the role the "opposition" wants them to play. And the "opposition" is not eager to take credit for the movement, because the "opposition" needs something to show to the world as a grassroots anti-Chavez movement, something they can claim, "see? that&#39;s not just us, the oligarchs, the escuálidos, the corrupt, the gusanos, the compradores, the carcomidos - there are actually people who oppose Chavez&#33;"

And quit that "conspiracy" thing. There is no conspiracy. This is bourgeois politics in action.

I would love to learn the ICC analysis of the truck drivers in Chile, 1973. Would you also believe their claims that they opposed both Allende and the milicos?


Oh dear, try to think please Luis. American imperialism would not, yet Chavist Venezuela is obviously not an "independent" power (as no single power is). There isn&#39;t a brutal cold war going on between two imperialist camps, there are rivalries between lots of different imperialist powers, all of which would have used this event in their political and diplomatic interests.

Like France and Germany did concerning Iraq, threatening the US with armed action if they invaded, and in fact sending troops to help Saddam Hussein? :unsure:


In other words, in the current world situation, having a coup with such brutality would not have been profitable for the US, Chavez is already economically in their pocket,

But politically is not, and that is the problem.

Do you think Saddam wasn&#39;t, or the Ayatollahs aren&#39;t "already economically in their pocket"?


I am getting the feeling that you are only talking for the sake of polemics.

I&#39;m talking for the sake of saving you from unwittingly help the Venezolan far right.


Workers were not defending Kerensky, they were defending the councils.

Just like the workers in Venezuela weren&#39;t defending Chavez, they were defending a political situation in which their organisations can thrive.


No, they want to see the overthrow of Chavez by an actual proletarian revolution.

In this case, they better denounce this "students movement" as a farce.


They have refused the opposition&#33;

Don&#39;t lie. They haven&#39;t refused one line of the "oppositionist" political program&#33;


They might have some of the opposition&#39;s slogans but they are not under their banners.

Your own text belies you. There isn&#39;t a single demand there that isn&#39;t directly taken from the "oppostion"&#33;


They have been saying it.

Where? Give us a single link to their movement, quote a single text by them, where they in fact decry the "opposition" aims and methods&#33;


Well yes. And I also have the opposition&#39;s word who did show interest in forming contact with the students and the students refusing to do so.

And I have already explained you why it is in the best interest of both parts that this contact does not surface&#33;



There&#39;s not Jewish conspiracy which rules the world.

<_< I&#39;m not sure if that&#39;s what you actually think.

This goes beyond the pail.

It is a serious accusation. Substantiate it, or take it back.


Then there are some workers in Venezuela who "delude" themselves that this students movement is independent from both government and opposition in that had this been an opposition movement, they would not have hesitated to attack it yet
they have refused to attack it now.

You are taking one quote by one supposed worker, and trying to make it a substantial mass phenomenon. It is not convincing.


It&#39;s a dangerous game. The opposition is not just a few rich men, they already do have mass support (this includes the support of the unions which you are so fond of),

Be civil.

I am not "fond of unions" in the abstract. There are unions and unions, and the Venezolan workers have, in great numbers, broken with the yellow CTV - not to join the ICC, thankfully, but to build a different unionist movement, the UNT.



Of course not, mon petit.

Please be a little respectful.

You, demanding that from me, the guy who leeches the working class movement to earn a comfortable life?

Quit being a brat.


I might turn out to be wrong, after all I don&#39;t know much about the student movement in Venezuela.

Quoted for truth.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 07:58 am
Personally, I am not convinced by this &#39;Student Movement&#39;. I am even less convinced though that there is anything for the working class to defend in the &#39;Bolivarian revolution&#39;.
Fine. Some reasoning seems to be dawning.

We have discussed the "Bolivarian Revolution" in many other threads.

This thread is for the discussion of this yellow students movement, not of the "Bolivarian Revolution". So the diversion is useless.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 08:36 am
It seems to me that we agree that both sides in Venezuela are bourgeois, and you and I support neither side and oppose both sides. (I hope we agree because you seem to oppose the opposition more).
No, we don&#39;t agree at all.

Your position is, the Chavez government is bourgeois, the "opposition" is bourgeois, so they are the same; the situation would not fundamentally change if the opposition succeeded in toppling Chavez&#39;s government.

My position is, the Chavez government works within the limits of bourgeois ideology; its program is delusional. They have not support of any significant sector, layer, or fraction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie. But under Chavez&#39;s regime, there is significant freedom of expression and organisation for the popular classes, the workers, the peasants, students, etc. Under an "oppositionist" regime, those freedoms would be immediately taken back, and the reunified Venezolan bourgeoisie would unleash a brutal counteroffensive against the workers and their allies.


Where we disagree is whether the student movement is a spawn of the opposition or whether it is more kin to the anti-CPE movement of France last year.


Of course we disagree about that.


Luis, if you are serious about this discussion then hear me out a bit o.k? There is a certain concept known as class terrain. When workers struggle they don&#39;t always do it on the proletarian terrain. Basically if they do not control the forms of their struggles, if the dynamic of the struggle is towards isolation from other workers, if they are being shepherded by leftists, then they are not fighting on the proletarian terrain. If however workers do control the forms of their struggle (by creating general assemblies, strike committees etc) if the dynamic is towards spreading the struggle then the fight is on their terrain.

That&#39;s not the issue concerning this students movement. The reasoning can be applied to the proletarian supporters of Chavez, and I&#39;m curious why you don&#39;t; but not to this clearly petty bourgeois movement.


So our task as revolutionaries is to explain how to FUSE real class demands with struggles on our terrain.

Then why support a movement whose demands are, all of them, unrelated to proletarian class struggle, and that operates firmly within the bourgeois terrain?


Is this movement of future workers in Venezuela on our terrain? I think the general assemblies are quite telling. (Movements spawned by the bourgeoisie tend to lack these.) If this is the case, then I tend to also believe the ICC&#39;s reports of the general assemblies opening up to the public, as the ones in France did.

This is sheer wishful thinking.


What we have is a struggle on our class terrain, many of whose slogans are deluded and infantile, although some aren&#39;t. Thus the movement, in a subterranean manner, is an attempt to break free from the false alternative between Chavism and the opposition.

I don&#39;t believe that. It&#39;s an attempt to break the opposition&#39;s isolation.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Listen, if the government had actually sent people in the barrios to physically attack those students, and 1% of those people in the barrios had answered to the government&#39;s call, we would be talking about the massacre of the students, not about their demonstrations.

Or we would be talking about the people in the barrios refusing to attack the students.


But I have.

Sorry, you haven&#39;t.


Those students are, for the most part, members of the upper middle class, and they oppose Chavez because of what they perceive as attacks against their privileges.

I&#39;m very interested in how you&#39;re gonna prove that.


What they don&#39;t do, because they can&#39;t do, is to distance themselves from the "opposition" demands, banners, slogans - in a word, from the "opposition" political program&#33;

To say the truth, I don&#39;t think the opposition has really have significant demands and slogans, nor does it have a significant program (this is exactly why they are not in power). In fact, I would compare the opposition in Venezuela to CHP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_People%27s_Party_%28Turkey%29) and the Chavez government to AKP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_and_Development_Party_%28Turkey%29) in Turkey in one failing because it uses hysterical yet empty completely slogans without an actual program and the other being succesful because of it&#39;s economical policy, attacking the working class and giving charity to the urban poor.


Like France and Germany did concerning Iraq, threatening the US with armed action if they invaded, and in fact sending troops to help Saddam Hussein?

We are talking about a coup, not a war.


Do you think Saddam wasn&#39;t

I don&#39;t think America was really concerned about Saddam when they invaded Iraq.


I&#39;m talking for the sake of saving you from unwittingly help the Venezolan far right.

I am not helping the Venezuelan far right in any way, this is simply a lie.


There isn&#39;t a single demand there that isn&#39;t directly taken from the "oppostion"&#33;

I don&#39;t think the opposition is against poverty.


Where? Give us a single link to their movement, quote a single text by them, where they in fact decry the "opposition" aims and methods&#33;

"The politicians have their agenda, we have ours".


This goes beyond the pail.

It is a serious accusation. Substantiate it,

or take it back.

Why on earth do you care if I take it back or not?

Oh dear Luis, no I don&#39;t think you are a conspiracy theorist in general, I just think you have conspiracy theories about the actions of the Venezuelan opposition. "They have secretly created this movement&#33;" Yeah, right - it&#39;s like we haven&#39;t seen a movement created... Let&#39;s make a bet: if you show me evidence that a leader of the opposition comes to one of those protests to speak is supported at the protest I will admit that I was wrong and if no such thing happens you will admit that you were wrong, deal?


You are taking one quote by one supposed worker

Oh dear <_<


I am not "fond of unions" in the abstract. There are unions and unions, and the Venezolan workers have, in great numbers, broken with the yellow CTV - not to join the ICC, thankfully, but to build a different unionist movement, the UNT.

Ah, very nice - this is like supporting the Stalinist union in Poland against Solidarność.


You, demanding that from me, the guy who leeches the working class movement to earn a comfortable life?

Oh please... It wasn&#39;t a personal insult, it was a comment about high-ranking bureaucrats in general, get over it.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 07, 2007 05:13 pm
I am not helping the Venezuelan far right in any way, this is simply a lie.
Oh yes, you are.


I don&#39;t think the opposition is against poverty.

Nor do I think the Nazis were socialists or pro-working class, yet they named their party "Nazional-Sozialistiche Deutsches Arbeiter Partei".

Parole, parole, parole...


"The politicians have their agenda, we have ours".

And what, in their enlightened opinion, is wrong with the politicians agenda?

They can&#39;t put up a single criticism of the "opposition"; and this quote eerily resembles the description of an united front...


Why on earth do you care if I take it back or not?

You are not going to call me an antisemite and get along with it. Please apologise for that comment.


Let&#39;s make a bet: if you show me evidence that a leader of the opposition comes to one of those protests to speak is supported at the protest I will admit that I was wrong and if no such thing happens you will admit that you were wrong, deal?


No deal. It does not matter if such happens or not.

It is the equivalent of proposing you this bet:

"If Bush publicly speaks in favour of Chavez, I will admit that Chavez is bourgeois, but if he doesn&#39;t, you will admit that Chavez is a proletarian hero, and convert to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Chavism".

Don&#39;t insult my intelligence.


Ah, very nice - this is like supporting the Stalinist union in Poland against Solidarność.

So you believe the UNT is Stalinist?


Oh please... It wasn&#39;t a personal insult, it was a comment about high-ranking bureaucrats in general, get over it.

It was a personal insult, Leo. You called me corrupt, with absolutely no proof that I am such. And out of what? Out of your total ignorance about the situation of unions in Brazil, plus your ridiculous prejudices against unions in general.

So I am demanding apologies from you. Seems the least you can do, in order to maintain the relations between us minimally civil, don&#39;t you think so?

Luís Henrique

[al-Ibadani]

Your position is, the Chavez government is bourgeois, the "opposition" is bourgeois, so they are the same; the situation would not fundamentally change if the opposition succeeded in toppling Chavez&#39;s government.

My position is, the Chavez government works within the limits of bourgeois ideology; its program is delusional. They have not support of any significant sector, layer, or fraction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie. But under Chavez&#39;s regime, there is significant freedom of expression and organisation for the popular classes, the workers, the peasants, students, etc. Under an "oppositionist" regime, those freedoms would be immediately taken back, and the reunified Venezolan bourgeoisie would unleash a brutal counteroffensive against the workers and their allies.

So the Chavez government is a workers government that works within the limits of bourgeois ideology? :o Maybe it is some hybrid workers/bourgeois government. Or even a classless government? Clarify please

Chavez doesn&#39;t have the support of many bourgeois Venezuelans. FDR was despised by the majority of America&#39;s bourgeoisie. What they have in common is their defense of national capital, the "collective bourgeois". If the workers of Venezuela do take an independent course, creating and controlling their own forms of struggle, Chavez will accuse them of being controlled by the opposition. He will call on the poor of the barrios, his base of support to stand up to them. The opposition will in turn claim them as their own, especially if their slogans are iffy (which at first they probably would be) and try to influence them. And folks like Luis Henrique would join in Chavez&#39;s refrain against the workers: repress the workers, in order to prevent the opposition from coming to power and repressing them. :wacko:



That&#39;s not the issue concerning this students movement. The reasoning can be applied to the proletarian supporters of Chavez, and I&#39;m curious why you don&#39;t; but not to this clearly petty bourgeois movement.


The issue of class terrain does concern the students, many of whom are future workers. And I do apply the reasoning to proletarian supporters of Chavez. Many of their demands are legitimate class demands, and I&#39;m guessing some of their slogans are even revolutionary. (Others, not so much.) The class terrain they are struggling on is not theirs however. They would need to break free of Chavism for that to happen.

You seem to be under the impression that I oppose the class demand of Chavist workers. I don&#39;t. I just think that they should link up with the students, create parallel forms of struggle, and fight on their own terrain, like the students are doing.


I don&#39;t believe that. It&#39;s an attempt to break the opposition&#39;s isolation.

No. The opposition might be trying to use the movement as an attempt to increase its influence. Certain forms of struggle cannot be spawned by the bourgeoisie, or for the bourgeoisie. Surely the bourgeoisie can try to recuperate these forms of struggle, and claim them. The French opposition tried to claim the student movement there.


Those students are, for the most part, members of the upper middle class, and they oppose Chavez because of what they perceive as attacks against their privileges.

The future nurses, and social workers, and teachers, and heath care workers. Even those from petty bourgeois backgrounds are facing a future where their professions are proletarianized. Students know that their future hopes won&#39;t be realized whether under Chavism or under the opposition.

[al-Ibadani]

No deal. It does not matter if such happens or not.

It is the equivalent of proposing you this bet:

"If Bush publicly speaks in favour of Chavez, I will admit that Chavez is bourgeois, but if he doesn&#39;t, you will admit that Chavez is a proletarian hero, and convert to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Chavism".

Don&#39;t insult my intelligence.

COME ON. Your analogy is way off. Bush doesn&#39;t claim affinity with Chavez. The opposition claims affinity with the students. Bush doesn&#39;t want to publicly speak in favor of Chavez. The opposition already publicly speaks in favor of the students, against the students&#39; wishes. A leader of the opposition would love to speak and be cheered at one of the students&#39; general assemblies. Has that happened yet?

Take the bet.

[Leo]

Oh yes, you are.

Lies, lies, lies...


And what, in their enlightened opinion, is wrong with the politicians agenda?

That it&#39;s bourgeois of course.


You are not going to call me an antisemite and get along with it. Please apologise for that comment.

Oh fine Luis, have it your way I apologize for calling you an antisemite.


No deal.

I expected this answer, even if the government and the opposition united against any movement in Venezuela, you would call it a conspiracy of the opposition.


So you believe the UNT is Stalinist?


Don&#39;t insult my intelligence.

No offense but sometimes I think that your intelligence deserves insults. No Luis, I don&#39;t think UNT is Stalinist, I think it is Chavist, it is the state union.


It was a personal insult, Leo. You called me corrupt, with absolutely no proof that I am such. And out of what? Out of your total ignorance about the situation of unions in Brazil, plus your ridiculous prejudices against unions in general.

It wasn&#39;t a personal insult Luis, I didn&#39;t even say it to you. I am not doubting your intentions however, I would apologize if you felt that I was. However I do think union bureaucrats, especially full time union bureaucrats are socially leeches (of course some of them might be actually believing in what they are doing), obviously based on what I know - this is not a prejudice although I thought you weren&#39;t a full timer anyway.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 06:51 pm
So the Chavez government is a workers government that works within the limits of bourgeois ideology? :o Maybe it is some hybrid workers/bourgeois government. Or even a classless government? Clarify please
Of course it&#39;s not a worker&#39;s government.

If I am absolutely pressed to characterise it, I would say it looks like a curious case of some kind of "benign" bonapartism. It is obviously completely detached from the Venezolan bourgeoisie, which opposes it en bloc. It seems to dream about building a "national", "popular" capitalism in Venezuela, using oil revenues as a substitute for the Venezolan weak primitive accumulation. A project that has no base in reality: there is no demand for the products of such "bolivarian capitalism"; the attempts to (re)industrialise Venezuela are doomed to fail, unless they are going to give their products away for free.


Chavez doesn&#39;t have the support of many bourgeois Venezuelans. FDR was despised by the majority of America&#39;s bourgeoisie.

They are completely different. FDR was elected four times, in competitive campaigns in which money spoke loud. If he hadn&#39;t massive support from significant sectors of the American bourgeoisie, he would have never managed it.


What they have in common is their defense of national capital, the "collective bourgeois".

And the huge difference between them is the huge difference between American capital - world&#39;s most powerful capital, able to sustain not only a power project in America, but in the whole world - and Venezolan capital - a weak third world capital, deeply associated with American imperialism, unable to think strategically any farther than "we must be in good terms with the Americans, even if it cripples our faint capital accumulation, otherwise the masses will impose communism on us".


If the workers of Venezuela do take an independent course, creating and controlling their own forms of struggle, Chavez will accuse them of being controlled by the opposition.

I don&#39;t think he is in a position to do so, but if he does, he will fall in weeks.


He will call on the poor of the barrios, his base of support to stand up to them.

Ah - so to you "the poor of the barrios" are a distinct entity from "the workers"? Please elaborate on that, I was under the impression that the overlap between them was huge...


The opposition will in turn claim them as their own, especially if their slogans are iffy (which at first they probably would be) and try to influence them.

Oh, so the "opposition" would claim the workers independent organisation as their own... while the &#39;proof&#39; that the students movement doesn&#39;t play the "opposition" game is precisely that the opposition has claimed that?


And folks like Luis Henrique would join in Chavez&#39;s refrain against the workers:

Listen, arsehole: you don&#39;t know me, so don&#39;t go ahead slandering me. Idiot.


The issue of class terrain does concern the students, many of whom are future workers. And I do apply the reasoning to proletarian supporters of Chavez. Many of their demands are legitimate class demands, and I&#39;m guessing some of their slogans are even revolutionary. (Others, not so much.) The class terrain they are struggling on is not theirs however. They would need to break free of Chavism for that to happen.

While those students are operating in the proletarian class terrain? Go figure&#33;


You seem to be under the impression that I oppose the class demand of Chavist workers. I don&#39;t. I just think that they should link up with the students, create parallel forms of struggle, and fight on their own terrain, like the students are doing.

They cannot make such link, unless the students completely change their platform&#33;


Students know that their future hopes won&#39;t be realized whether under Chavism or under the opposition.

They surely don&#39;t.

Luís Henrique

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by Lu�s [email protected] 07, 2007 07:23 pm


If I am absolutely pressed to characterise it, I would say it looks like a curious case of some kind of "benign" bonapartism. It is obviously completely detached from the Venezolan bourgeoisie, which opposes it en bloc. It seems to dream about building a "national", "popular" capitalism in Venezuela, using oil revenues as a substitute for the Venezolan weak primitive accumulation. A project that has no base in reality: there is no demand for the products of such "bolivarian capitalism"; the attempts to (re)industrialise Venezuela are doomed to fail, unless they are going to give their products away for free.

The Bonapartes did not establish workers&#39; councils or communal councils, and you disregard them as well. So may we assume that you regard such institutions as not relevant- or opposed to- the project of workers&#39; power?

Why can there be no demand for Venezuelan products? Will the Venezuelan workers refuse to drive the cars which are to be made by Venezuelan workers? Apparently, new housing is being given free so could that make Venezuelan products more palatable to Venezuelans?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 07:58 pm
The Bonapartes did not establish workers&#39; councils or communal councils, and you disregard them as well. So may we assume that you regard such institutions as not relevant- or opposed to- the project of workers&#39; power?
No, Bonaparte didn&#39;t do that... neither Chavez, I believe. To the extent that those organisations effectively are what their name indicates - and I am far from sure they are - they must have been put up by the workers themselves.

I was referring to bonapartism in the sence of a State bureaucracy that tries to surf the class conflict, pretending neutrality. But you are right in that bonapartism, in the classical sence, would require a dictatorial regime, that seems totally absent in Venezuela (that&#39;s why I added the somewhat oxymorical adjective - "benign bonapartism"...)

It seems a sui generis case, and only possible due to oil revenues.


Why can there be no demand for Venezuelan products? Will the Venezuelan workers refuse to drive the cars which are to be made by Venezuelan workers? Apparently, new housing is being given free so could that make Venezuelan products more palatable to Venezuelans?

I don&#39;t think it is an issue of palatability. Nowadays, an automotive industry requires a world market to function, and that market seems closed to Venezuela. The Venezolan market is very small, it won&#39;t be able to sustain a truly independent capitalism (the Venezolan bourgeoisie knows that, and loathes Chavez for not realizing it, too). Latecomers do have terrible problems&#33;

Luís Henrique

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 07, 2007 08:15 pm
No, Bonaparte didn&#39;t do that... neither Chavez, I believe. To the extent that those organisations effectively are what their name indicates - and I am far from sure they are - they must have been put up by the workers themselves.

I was referring to bonapartism in the sence of a State bureaucracy that tries to surf the class conflict, pretending neutrality. But you are right in that bonapartism, in the classical sence, would require a dictatorial regime, that seems totally absent in Venezuela (that&#39;s why I added the somewhat oxymorical adjective - "benign bonapartism"...)

It seems a sui generis case, and only possible due to oil revenues.


Hopefully, the workers themselves have indeed established the workers&#39; councils but I&#39;ve never seen any claim that the communal councils are anything but a project of the Bolivarian Revolution, or that they are not enthusiastically propagated by the archvillain Chavez.

The fact that oil money drives the politics of the country is fairly obvious. It is less clear how productively the money is spent, but is there not an emphasis on health and education? And would not any leftist regime be obligated to emphasis those elements?



Nowadays, an automotive industry requires a world market to function, and that market seems closed to Venezuela. The Venezolan market is very small, it won&#39;t be able to sustain a truly independent capitalism (the Venezolan bourgeoisie knows that, and loathes Chavez for not realizing it, too). Latecomers do have terrible problems&#33;

Luís Henrique

But a "true" Revolution wouldn&#39;t open up those markets either, no? And whether the Bolivarian Revolution is "true" or not, it lives on the brink of US attack. Russia is no longer able to sustain client states. So what would "true" Revolutionaries do but use the oil money to drive alternative international institutions and alliances?

[al-Ibadani]

If I am absolutely pressed to characterise it, I would say it looks like a curious case of some kind of "benign" bonapartism. It is obviously completely detached from the Venezolan bourgeoisie, which opposes it en bloc.

Unfortunately you have failed to characterize it. A "benign" Bonapartism is still a bourgeois regime.


They are completely different. FDR was elected four times, in competitive campaigns in which money spoke loud. If he hadn&#39;t massive support from significant sectors of the American bourgeoisie, he would have never managed it.

You also seem to have the narrowest possible view of the bourgeoisie. It doesn&#39;t seem to include those who specifically administer the state and its entire apparatus, repressive or "benign". That being said, I doubt the entire business elite is anti-Chavez.

Even if the entire business elite were anti-Chavez, much of the rest of the bourgeoisie is pro Chavez.




I don&#39;t think he is in a position to do so, but if he does, he will fall in weeks.

He is not in a position to do so because there is no such workers movement there at the moment. DUH.


Oh, so the "opposition" would claim the workers independent organisation as their own... while the &#39;proof&#39; that the students movement doesn&#39;t play the "opposition" game is precisely that the opposition has claimed that?


HUH? I didn&#39;t say that the proof the student movement doesn&#39;t play the opposition game is precisely that the opposition claims it. The proof is:

-- The students have sought to distance themselves form both sides

-- "the movement has given itself organisational forms such as assembles, where they can discuss, elect commissions and decide upon what actions to carry out: this has taken place at the local and national level. It was in these assembles, formed in several universities, where they discussed the aim of the movement and prepared the first actions, which were transmitted to the rest of the students."

--"this movement since its beginning has been that it has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors. To this end the students have called upon all of the students and the population as a whole, Chavistas or not, to take part in an open dialogue in the universities, the barrios and the street, outside of the institutions and organs controlled by the government, as well as those dominated by the opposition."

--the slogans of the movement which the opposition media have have "treated as something secondary" have sympathy amongst Chavez&#39;s supposed base.



Ah - so to you "the poor of the barrios" are a distinct entity from "the workers"? Please elaborate on that, I was under the impression that the overlap between them was huge...

Remember I was saying that if the workers do create their own forms of struggle, Chavez would call on the poor of the barrios to oppose them. There is overlap between them. That is why such an appeal by Chavez would probably get a response like "We do not want to struggle against our brothers".


Listen, arsehole: you don&#39;t know me, so don&#39;t go ahead slandering me. Idiot.

I haven&#39;t called you an asshole or an idiot yet, even while being accused of helping the Venezuelan right. :angry: :angry: My point is that there could indeed arise in Venezuala, a workers movement, whose slogans are similar to those of the students, which is criminalized by Chavez as "lackeys of imperialism", "traitors to the fatherland" etc., which is claimed by the opposition. Basically very much like the students except they are workers, not future workers. Based on your posts, why would I assume that you would react differently to such a movement.

Maybe I should have quoted devrimankara


As the crisis deepens people like the above poster will be more, and more supporting a regime attacking the working class. These are the true &#39;reactionaries&#39;.

If you are not one of those people Devrim speaks of, say so without the insults O.K?


They cannot make such link, unless the students completely change their platform&#33;

Actually such a link could result in the students completely changing their platform, and could result in the workers changing the terrain on which the struggle.


They surely don&#39;t.

Three-word replies? :rolleyes:

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 06, 2007 09:30 pm
What makes you think that they have "leaders" even?
John Goicochea, Universidad Católica Andrés Bello:


el movimiento apunta a defender la "libertad de expresión", a exigir "la regularización de los medios de comunicación con la renovación de sus concesiones"

Stalin González, chairman of Universidad Central de Venezuela&#39;s Students Association:


este país es uno solo y queremos devolver este país a todos los venezolanos.

Douglas Barrios, who spoke in their name towards the Asambléa Nacional:


Dear parents, brothers, companions, and whoever might be reading these lines, I write because I decided to try, in a very humble way, to capture the feelings and the thoughts of the Venezuelan youth regarding these sociopolitical issues. This is a big and complex piece of homework, but I am willing to accept it, since I think it is necessary to have the message of our nonviolent struggle set forth in a clear and understandable way to those who may listen to it.

You have to begin to understand that university students are not socialists, but we are social beings. University students are not neoliberals, but we are free. University students are not in opposition, but we do have proposals.

We cannot pretend to become part of a popular mythology or to have our images decorate the walls of the university and young students&#39; t-shirts. Neither can we pretend to decorate the pages of books that are seen by high schools the length and breadth of our national territory, nor can we pretend to have a highway bearing our names. We don&#39;t wish "it could have been" and don&#39;t want to say, "sorry it passed." Rather, we wish something more: what is "to be" and what "will be."

Students, and young Venezuelans in general, carry on our shoulders the burden of history. We carry on our shoulders the sins of our ancestors, our parents&#39; mistakes and our grandparents&#39; mistakes, but we do not complain. We accept the challenge. We won&#39;t let these mistakes, these sins, and this history overcome us. We are members of the future of this country. We have a moral obligation to watch over the present. We accept the moral obligation of building the future. We have the moral obligation to be vigilant.

Our responsibility is to ourselves, to those who preceded us, to those who will follow us, and to those who are with us daily, making life in this country. By evading this responsibility, we would let others down, we would be cowards, we would be apathetic; evading is just not an option.

That is why today, the youth are in the streets. We are not fighting for any business interests, we are not fighting in the name of international interests, and we are not fighting in favor of a political way. We are on the streets making politics without politicians, forging a daily fight in the name of our nation, and safeguarding the interests of our entire society.

We are on the streets because we are democrats and we do not believe in any other option, of any kind of dictatorship. We do not believe in the dictatorship of minorities or majorities. We criticize objectively all forms of government, past or present, that completely take away the right of any citizen to live, and even more the right of any citizen to live in freedom.

We are on the streets. Not only do we require freedom, but also it is our right and our duty to do so. That is why we require conscious plans for social security and health, to secure the right to live. We require education reform to help those less fortunate make progress. That is why we require national reconciliation, to live in peace and tranquility. That is why we require you to let us take part, to listen to us, to consider our proposals and to consider the creation and application of these solutions, since our generation has to live the consequences of what we decide. That is why we require, strongly, that you assure and guarantee the right to elections.

We want to assure the right of the individual to decide what clothes to wear; to decide what name to give children; to choose a profession; to elect the president; to choose what to study and where; to select what to eat and how much; to choose cultural events; to choose a political line; and to read the newspapers, listen to the radio stations, and watch the TV channels of one&#39;s choice..

These decisions belong to the individual, the citizen, and not the state. The right to select what satisfies us is what makes us really free; it is what makes us human. Living without elections and without choices is not real life and has no meaning. Such a life would be a robotic existence, without either the positive or the negative. It would be the end.

Our goal is to fight a fight without political ambitions, a fight without violence—we are not trying to take down the government by force; that would be unstable—a fight for freedom, one for the right to choose and to fight like real men, women, students, members of the universities, and above all, as Venezuelans. We cannot stop fighting for freedom. It is our right and our duty, our responsibility, and our moral obligation.

We are a new generation without political debts, a generation without a dark past, and a generation with no hate and no hatred. We young Venezuelans are fully prepared, with force, heart, character, solidarity, happiness, and humility. We are a new generation that is prepared to fail and then to try again, a generation ready to begin from zero, and a generation not able to rest until we see freedom and until we are the society that we should be. A generation that will fight for our country today, tomorrow, and forever to be free, to be truly human beings.

Luís Henrique

[CornetJoyce]

That is why today, the youth are in the streets. We are not fighting for any business interests, we are not fighting in the name of international interests, and we are not fighting in favor of a political way. We are on the streets making politics without politicians, forging a daily fight in the name of our nation, and safeguarding the interests of our entire society.


Youth, Youth,
Spring of beauty,
your song rings and goes
through the sorrows of life&#33;
For Benito Mussolini,
Eja eja alalà.
For our beautiful Motherland,
Eja eja alalà.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 07, 2007 09:47 pm
Stalin González, chairman of Universidad Central de Venezuela&#39;s Students Association
And former member of Bandera Roja, now joined Un Nuevo Tiempo, "centrist" bourgeois party.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Also Geraldine Alvarez, who seems to have ties to bourgeois oppositionists abroad:

Venezuelan Student in Washington - Geraldine Alvarez (http://www.blog.vdebate.org/2007/06/venezuelan-student-in-washington.html)

Geraldine Alvarez, a student from the Universidad Católica Andres Bello and one of the leaders of the Venezuelan Students Movement, will address at the National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW. Washington, DC 20045, Friday, June 29, 9:00-10:30 AM, the progressive erosion of civil liberties in Venezuela and will explain the objectives of the student movement that has taken the lead in the struggle to counteract the government&#39;s efforts to limit free speech, the right to protest and University autonomy. The student movement she represents was galvanized by the recent unlawful closure of the country&#39;s oldest and most watched TV station: Radio Caracas Television (RCTV).
Ms. Alvarez&#39;s presentation will be complemented by observations made by experts in the fields of human rights, Latin American politics and academia who will provide additional details of the current state of Democracy and Human Rights in the country.
· Thor Halvorssen, President of Human Rights Foundation, who will speak on the works of his organization covering cases in Venezuela where individuals have been persecuted and jailed for expressing their views or exercising their rights to free speech.
· Roberto Izurieta (TBC), Director of Latin American Projects for The Graduate School of Political Management, The George Washington University, who will give a scholar analysis on the situation of freedom of expression, academic freedom and overall democracy in Venezuela.

At least one of them is already traveling the world - at the expense of whom?

Luís Henrique

[chebol]

Reproduced in full, to counter the ream on garbage that began the thread...

Who&#39;s Pulling the Strings? (http://www.counterpunch.com/maher06092007.html)
Behind Venezuela&#39;s "Student Rebellion"

By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

Caracas.

In response to the Venezuelan governments non-renewal of RCTV&#39;s broadcasting license, a concession which expired on May 27th at midnight, a new student movement emerged that has since grabbed headlines domestically and internationally. Thousands took to the streets, some marching peacefully and some squaring off against the police with rocks and bullets, all in the name of "freedom of expression." But it&#39;s worth asking: who are "the students," and what do they represent? In recent days, it has become clear that these student mobilizations have been, in fact, largely directed and supported by sectors of the opposition, all in an effort to provoke, in Chávez&#39;s own words, a "soft coup" against the revolutionary government. The opposition&#39;s strategy vis-à-vis this student movement has consisted of two fundamental elements, both of which could only be executed mediatically. But now, after being revealed and discredited, that strategy is rapidly disintegrating.


Step One: Don&#39;t Be Seen

Firstly, opposition parties made a clear decision to stay out of the spotlight, emphasizing the "independent" and "spontaneous" nature of the student protests. Beyond anything else, this gesture proves the degree to which the opposition has been discredited, garnering a reverse Midas touch through years of poor decisionmaking and supporting coups. From the beginning, the government was arguing that opposition politicians were behind the student mobilizations, and so when government-run channel 8 covered one of the early student demonstrations in Plaza Brion in Chacaito, the headline read "opposition demonstration disguised as a student demonstration."

This claim was perhaps justified by the appearance at the demonstration of Leopoldo López, mayor of opposition stronghold Chacao, formerly of far-right party Primero Justicia, which he more recently abandoned in favor of Manuel Rosales&#39; nominally social democratic Un Nuevo Tiempo. Opposition news channel Globovisión countered with the thoroughly unconvincing claim that López, 36 years old and an established politician, was a "youth leader." López himself wouldn&#39;t help the situation when at a press conference he "accidentally" called for the students to employ "non-peaceful" tactics (he later claimed that he had meant to call for "non-violent" forms of protest).

That the "student leaders" are tied to the opposition is far from controversial: for example, spokesperson Yon Goicochea is a member of Primero Justicia and the aptly-named Stalin González belonged until recently to the strangest of opposition organizations, Bandera Roja. BR is a nominally Marxist-Leninist group which made the unlikely transition from a respectable guerrilla organization to the attack dogs of the far right, claiming to use the opposition as a vehicle to topple the fake communism of Chávez and institute a true dictatorship of the proletariat. But González recently revealed the extent of his opportunism by joining Rosales and Un Nuevo Tiempo.

But the contours of the opposition&#39;s hands-off strategy wouldn&#39;t be fully clear until the revelation of a taped phone conversation in which Un Nuevo Tiempo leader Alfonso Marquina spoke of the need to remain in the background, but to pull the strings regardless: "Let&#39;s mobilize all the kids We have a strategy as an organization Let&#39;s mobilize all the kids, because you know [UCV student leader] Stalin [González] is our vice president here in Caracas Let&#39;s mobilize the kids from the Catholic [University] We&#39;ve decided that the politicians won&#39;t intervene, that we&#39;ll leave it to the kids in their natural environment. We&#39;ll give them support, stick them in trucks If I go out there, they&#39;ll say it&#39;s the politicians that are calling the kids out"

"The only thing that can save us in this situation is if something extraordinary happens," replies Elías, an advisor to RCTV head Marcel Granier, on the leaked tape. It&#39;s comments like this that lead the Vice President of the National Assembly Desiree Santos to argue that the political opposition to Chávez was "looking for a death" among the students, to "repeat the actions of 2002" in which pre-meditated deaths were inserted into a pre-fabricated media strategy to overthrow Chávez.

Santos continues: "We want to denounce today a campaign which intends to convince the country that these student protests are spontaneous, civil, peaceful, and democratic, but behind them there lies an entire conspiratorial apparatus. They are using these kids as cannon fodder..." It was little surprise, then, that when a student was indeed killed (but under circumstances unrelated to the protests), the opposition press immediately ran with the story, only later rectifying their erroneous reports that she had been shot by police. This convenient misreporting even led to the story reaching the pages of Spain&#39;s El País.

Despite Marquina&#39;s revelations, Globovisión has continued to toe the opposition line that these are apolitical "student demonstrations" and that their objective is not to bring down a government, but merely to support RCTV and "free speech." To make such claims, they continue to systematically obscure the political affiliations of the students, their interactions with opposition political actors, and conveniently ignore the frequently heard chants asserting that "the tyrant will fall."


Step Two: Construct "the Students"

The second element of the opposition&#39;s strategy is to present the students as a unified mass. This is not as difficult as it may seem: Venezuela&#39;s university system is notoriously exclusionary, and this applies both to private universities like the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) and selective public universities like the Central (UCV). In most of these bodies, which represent the wealthy historical cream of Venezuelan society, the opposition has significant strength, controlling most of the official student unions and political bodies.

But, as Metropolitan Mayor Juan Barreto recently emphasized in a response to the mobilizations, Caracas boasts 200,000 students, whereas these demonstrations have not managed to mobilize more than 5,000. And these mobilizations had been largely concentrated in the wealthy East of Caracas, with no student protests in the sprawling barrios that house half of the city&#39;s population. Who are the rest of these students? It is here that we see another piece of the puzzle, and another crucial sector which opposes the policies of the Bolivarian Revolution. As a response to the entrenched elitism and conservatism of the existing Venezuelan university structure, and lacking the political weight to attack the long-cherished tradition of university autonomy head on, Chávez&#39;s government opted for a different strategy.

Rather than attempting to change institutions like the UCV, the government has funneled resources into the creation of new, alternative educational institutions like the Bolivarian University (UBV), among others. In all, the government has created 8 new free universities and plans 28 more (11 national, 13 regional, and 4 technological institutes) as a part of the recently-baptized Mission Alma Mater. And this isn&#39;t even to mention the vast network of already existing educational missions which stretch from preschool to post-graduate education, and whose participants are currently demanding that they, too, be recognized as "students." As it stands, these new universities reach approximately 1.5 million students, and the educational missions a further 3.8 million, together representing more than 8% of the Venezuelan population, a figure which will only continue to grow.

Recognizing that the students of these new universities are actually "students" would certainly put a damper on the opposition&#39;s plans, and so the opposition and international press has insistently maintained the rhetoric by which "the students" of the opposition stand in for students as a whole. It&#39;s a classic strategy of substitutionism, and one intimately tied to the purportedly apolitical nature of the protests: since they aren&#39;t political, the opposition press is attempting to paint a picture of a unified (i.e. opposition and Chavista) student body standing together in support of press freedom.


A Scripted Performance in the Assembly

The efforts of the students to appear peaceful and democratic ultimately led them down a blind alley. This alley ended in the National Assembly, and revealed with absolute clarity the falseness of the "unity" of the student movement. Perhaps not expecting a positive response, the opposition students demanded first to be received at the Assembly, and later to be given the opportunity to address the national parliament in an emergency session. Unfortunately for them, Assembly President Cilia Flores accepted.

But here&#39;s the kicker: the opposition students were invited to participate in a debate with a group of students identifying with the Revolution. While opposition students had continuously emphasized their openness to debate, the structure of the proposed debate threatened to fracture their meticulously-constructed image as the sole representatives of the Venezuelan student population. This was clearly a debate that the opposition students couldn&#39;t accept. But on the appointed day and time, they arrived at the Assembly. I was standing outside, when shouts went up about "escualidos [i.e. opposition] disguised as Chavistas." Sure enough, the anti-Chavista students were entering the National Assembly wearing red t-shirts, a color generally reserved for supporters of the government.

At first, it was thought that they had merely donned the red to ensure safe passage through the crowds of Chavista students massed outside, chanting "education first to the children of the worker, education second to the children of the bourgeoisie," and, "the people have spoken, and they are right, now it&#39;s Globovisión and Venevisión&#39;s turn [to go off the air]." But the red t-shirts were far more than a safety strategy: they were an integral part of a professionally-designed media strategy.

The first speaker to the podium was Douglas Barrios, an opposition student leader and economics student from the private (and notoriously-elite) Metropolitan University (UNIMET). His speech, while well-crafted, contained no arguments, only vague promises of continued struggle for RCTV and, somewhat paradoxically, a process of national reconciliation. At the end of his speech, Barrios said: "I dream of a country in which we can be taken into account without having to wear a uniform." At this point, he and other opposition student leaders in the chamber removed their red t-shirts, revealing a variety of pro-RCTV messages.

The opposition students then began to withdraw from the Assembly, and it was only the entreaties of the Chavista students and Assembly members that convinced them to stay to hear the speech by the first revolutionary student, Andreína Tarazón of the UCV (and representative of the revolutionary M-28 movement). Tarazón began by attacking the opposition students&#39; anti-democratic threats to withdraw from the debate. Comparing their performance to the recent behavior of Condolezza Rice at the summit of the OAS, in which Rice attacked Venezuela before withdrawing to avoid critical responses, Tarazón observed that "they had a march, they demanded freedom of expression, and when it was granted to them they withdraw."

Tarazón continued, demanding that the opposition students clarify their concepts. They seem to be confusing, she argued, "libertad de prensa" (press freedom) and "libertad de empresa" (the freedom of private businesses). Any productive debate would need to set out from clarifying what these opposition students mean by freedom of expression. Tarazón went out of her way, moreover, to attack the racism, sexism, and otherwise exclusionary nature of RCTV, noting that Barrios himself had spoken of the "political exile" Nixon Moreno, a student leader who, among other things, is wanted for attempted rape. "I can&#39;t believe," Tarazón added, "that actresses would come on television crying because they will no longer be able to market their bodies as sexual commodities."

After Tarazón&#39;s speech, and a brief intervention by Primero Justicia member Yon Goicochea, in which he again asserted the non-political nature of their intervention, the opposition students withdrew from the chamber and the debate, and their exit was carried live on a national cadena, or simultaneous broadcast on all channels. The students, after demanding the right to speak in the Assembly, had withdrawn, refusing to debate with Chavista students.

This being the first time in Venezuelan history that student organizations of any stripe were invited to address the Assembly, their departure rightly shocked both Chavistas and anti-Chavistas: after all, these were the same students who had been professing their democratic credentials and demanding national debate. But the most interesting part of the day was yet to come. As the opposition students were making defiant press declarations before being hustled out the Assembly&#39;s back door to avoid the masses of pro-Chavista students gathered out front (who were, at the time, shouting "Cowards&#33; Cowards&#33;" and "Victory, victory, victory of the people&#33;") they failed to notice that they had forgotten something.

Speeches by the scheduled Chavista students continued, with each laying out substantive arguments about the nature the Bolivarian Revolution and its relationship to traditional notions of press freedom. When it came to be his turn to speak, Chavista student leader Héctor Rodríguez of the UCV stepped up to the podium with a sheet of paper that he promptly held up in front of the gathered deputies. It was the last page of the opposition&#39;s scripted performance in the Assembly, which laid-out the text of the speech and the exact moment at which Barrios was to remove his red shirt. And the script was signed by ARS Publicity, a company owned by none other than the Globovisión media empire. Together with Globovisión (as well as all other private media outlets), ARS was directly implicated in the planning and execution of the 2002 media coup against the constitutional order.

Let&#39;s go over this again, slowly: the students&#39; withdrawal from the National Assembly was scripted. This isn&#39;t all that surprising. But that it was scripted by an organization owned by the opposition press is quite revealing. It makes transparent not merely the political nature of the opposition students and the fact that they don&#39;t represent the totality of Venezuelan students, but more importantly it reveals the fact that the opposition media has played an active role in planning and structuring this wave of student protests that they themselves have painted as a "spontaneous" rebellion.

In the meantime, Globovisión is busy broadcasting some of RCTV&#39;s programs, a tactic which while seemingly benevolent, conveniently assures Globovisión&#39;s control of much of RCTV&#39;s former audience share. And this alongside advertisements sponsored by opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo which encourage the population to do all they can to get RCTV back on the air: "it&#39;s in your hands," so the people are told. But RCTV&#39;s hope had been pinned on "the students," an apolitical and unified rebellion that threatened to disrupt Chavista hegemony. Unfortunately for the opposition, the rebellion was more meticulously-crafted media image than hard reality, and this image has begun to crack.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Caracas, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.

[chebol]

VENEZUELA
Interview with Eva Golinger: US continues destabilisation push in Venezuela

Caracas
28 June 2007
From Green Left Weekly (http://www.greenleft.org.au), issue #716, 4 July 2007.

In the wake of widely covered opposition protests against the Venezuelan government’s decision not to renew Radio Caracas Televison’s (RCTV) broadcasting licence following its countless violations of the law and its role in the 2002 coup attempt against the democratically elected government, Green Left Weekly’s Sam King spoke with lawyer and writer Eva Golinger in Caracas. Golinger is the author of The Chavez Code and Bush Versus Chavez, which expose US intervention into Venezuela aiming to overthrow Chavez.

What evidence is there to support the view that the student-led mobilisations in support of RCTV are part of a broader destabilisation plan aimed at overthrowing the government of President Hugo Chavez, and are linked to hostile political forces based in the US?

A lot of evidence. One angle is if you look at who are the people protesting. Everyone has the right to protest, but all of a sudden the wealthier upper-class and upper middle-class students from primarily private universities take to the streets to defend an issue that has been at the forefront of the opposition movement of the traditional politicians. All of a sudden, here they appear out of nowhere and they’re carrying the same agenda and the same political discourse, even though they are trying to disguise it as not being political. Any march in the street is political. Any claiming or demanding of rights is a political action.

They are repeating a discourse the traditional opposition has been using here and they’re doing it in a way that is not even fully formed. It’s a contradiction in itself to say “no, no we’re not being political” and then crying out for freedom of expression, liberty and things like that in a country that has more freedom of expression than probably most countries in the world, and certainly under this government more than this country has ever had before. Unfortunately they’re being used as mouthpieces for an opposition that’s been using that discourse over the past seven years, despite the fact that they’re the ones who ruled the country before.

I was looking at the 1992-93 annual report from a Venezuelan human rights group Provea when Antonia Ledezma, who is one of the opposition spokespeople today, was the governor of Caracas. He had actually prohibited all student protests in the street for that entire year. This just shows the hypocrisy, contradictions and double discourse. [The student protest campaign] is part of what has been going on for the last five, six years … different attempts and different ways to destabilise the country, leading to the overthrow of Chavez.

We know that is the final objective because they tried it already during the coup in April 2002, then later the economic sabotage at the end of that year when they specifically said the goal was to force Chavez to resign or to overthrow Chavez. Also the [unsuccessful August 2004 presidential] recall referendum … It is apparent that [this is] a student movement that was not born naturally from the ranks of students.

From my own investigations, looking at documents that I have obtained over the last four years using the Freedom of Information Act in the US, looking at [information] that I got a year or two ago from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is a funding entity of the US State Department, there were a series of contracts or grants to different student organisations, private universities and other entities …

There were six grants from USAID that showed the US government had been funding efforts to have training seminars and formation seminars for student leaders with the objective being — and this is what the documents were saying — to reinsert universities and student activism back into political life in Venezuela. It used to be before Chavez [came to power in 1998 that] students were always the vanguard, as they are in most countries, of movements to push social changes. The difference is now we have a revolutionary government where many of those student leaders are now the ones in power — so even though there are movements within the universities, they have not played a role in fighting against the state because now they are the state. It’s the reverse situation.

One of these grants was for 90 million bolivars (A&#036;50,000). That’s a lot of money for a series of seminars at the UCV. This was a joint venture with this strange organisation called Foundation for Educating the Country, the UCV student federation that is headed by this opposition student Stalin Gonzalez and the [student federation] from University of the Andes, which is headed by a student who is now a fugitive — Nixon Moreno.

They’re involved in this grant that is for forming student leaders, to reinsert them back into political life in Venezuela so that students can help define the direction the country is taking, and now we are seeing that manifest. The grants that were given, the funding, training programs, all kinds of things [form a] relationship with the US starting from a couple of years ago.

On top of that, some of the same groups or individuals have participated since 2004 in training sessions with other US entities such as the Albert Einstein Institute and the International Centre on Non-Violent Conflict. These are the entities that were responsible for helping to promote, fund and advise the “coloured” revolutions in Eastern Europe [in the] Ukraine, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Georgia. They failed in Belarus and they began working here in April 2003, first with traditional opposition leaders and then, as in those movements in Eastern Europe, they used young people — students.

Even though the US government likes to talk about Venezuela and Chavez as a dictatorship, it is not. While those strategies may have worked in countries where there were governments that were maybe more authoritarian and that had also been run down by bombing campaigns of the US government [such as Serbia] … Here there are totally different circumstances. They tried to apply the same tactics and the evidence is quite clear. The documents from those organisations themselves, their annual reports, talk about how they worked to help form the Venezuelan opposition.

Then this movement manifested in support or in defence of a media corporation — not even anything to do with freedom of speech but corporate rights, which is bizarre for students to be out on the streets defending the rights, non-existent rights, of a corporation&#33; It goes against the entire anti-globalisation movement around the world that the student movement here in Venezuela is actually promoting corporate rights. They are using the same symbols and actions and strategies that were used by other groups that were trained and formed by the Albert Einstein Institute and the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict, so I think there is a lot of different evidence that shows there is a US tie, certainly financially [and] more so in providing strategic advice.

Very unfortunately I think for students and for student movements, a lot of the students said “no, no we are not being manipulated, we are out here because this is what we believe in” and I believe that, but … when the coup took place in April 2002 there were about 1 million people on the streets for the opposition and I don’t think that million knew that a conspiracy had already been planned and set up to be executed that day using them. I think a lot of people were in the streets because they were protesting against the Chavez government, but they were used to execute a coup.

I think we have a similar situation here. Yes there are a lot of students who are voluntarily in that movement, they have been brought up with those values, they mainly come from middle and upper classes, that’s what they believe in. They don’t know the history of the country and how things were before because their parents were part of the ruling classes and so didn’t teach them that part of it. However there is a smaller group connected with international interests and with the traditional political and economic elite here in the country that has a plan and is using the rest of them to try and execute it.

The opposition student leaders declined the opportunity to debate the RCTV issue in the National Assembly on June 7, at the same time as trying to present themselves as non-political and for peace. Do you think this represented a retreat from the original intentions of the movement?

That was very strange. I think that they possibly got nervous and thought that they had to find a way out of that situation. And if they were to have a debate in that setting, they would certainly not come out in a positive way … I don’t think any country in the world has ever offered to students … an entire day, with no time limit to speak before the congress … and transmitted it live on television on every channel around the country. It certainly surprised me that they were given that opportunity, and the fact that they didn’t take advantage of it shows that their discourse is empty, that it is a manipulated movement, unfortunately because I think that it tars the other student movements, the ones that are more genuine and sincere.

[They also tried] to make a circus out of the National Assembly and that whole scenario. [They were] reading fabricated speeches — a speech that had been written by a publicity company — and then taking shirts off, things … that you do in a show to draw attention to yourself, so it became very clear there was no profound meaning in what they were saying.

It seems that what remains of that student movement now has dropped the issue of RCTV and is focused more on defending the autonomy of the prestigious universities. Has it lost the battle for RCTV and now moved into a new defensive battle?

If there was a battle it was lost from the beginning because the only way they saw that they could win the battle is if RCTV was given a concession again to operate on the public airwaves and that is not going to happen. I think they actually thought — not the students, the opposition leaders, [RCTV owner and multi-millionaire] Marcel Granier, those directing RCTV — that the government was going to retract its decision, because of international pressure. But in the end the international pressure was only coming from the US, and Venezuela has had international pressure coming from the US for the past five years — it’s used to it, so it didn’t do anything. I think they [the opposition leaders] were kind of shocked. Even though they will continue to find ways to promote their agenda, that is definitely a lost battle.

Anyone who looks at it in a dry legal way sees that there is no issue — like the Organisation of American States did. Its secretary general said “that’s an administrative matter in the country, it has nothing to do with freedom of expression” and that’s true. You can make a scene about anything you want but in the end the government did not violate absolutely anything.

The issue of universities is kind of ridiculous because this is a government that has created more autonomy for universities than ever before. It has created more in the sense of providing more funding, opening more universities, providing more access to education, providing more alternative education in the sense that it is not following traditional state structures of rigid or very limited operating structures in the universities. We’ve got universities that are in the communities, all kinds such as the Bolivarian University … So I think that issue [is lost].

Has the opposition had to abandon any serious attempts to destabilise the political situation in the immediate future?

Yes and no. They have a big march planned for the 27th [of June], which is International Journalists’ Day. Whenever they try to plan these marches, there is always the moment of concern that there could be further aggression, especially because at that point the America Cup [football competition] will have started. That provides them with another scenario to try and make a scene, and there is a lot of concern that extremist groups might try to use terrorism or some kind of violence against the America Cup so that again the international community would want to get involved.

It’s a very strange objective for a student movement or any movement to try to encourage international intervention. Not only is that a betrayal of your country but it is incredibly dangerous, especially when you are trying to encourage the international intervention from the United States, with a warmongering government that would love to come in here and take over everything, especially the oil industry, and militarise the entire country. I think that a lot of people don’t understand — they think that US intervention means more McDonald’s and restaurants and shops, or something like that. I don’t understand why anyone would be calling for that. It’s outrageous. The danger still exists certainly.

More at the forefront is the possibility of an assassination attempt against the president. As ridiculous as that may sound, not only has it been used in the past against other foreign leaders, but here it almost seems to be the only way out. Chavez just keeps winning, keeps getting more support, more people are with [the revolution], the country is improving, things are getting better, regionally people are integrating with Venezuela. Around the world people are starting to pay attention to Venezuela and they’re interested in what is happening. Every attempt to defeat Chavez and the revolution is stopped and Chavez comes out stronger and the revolution comes out stronger, the people come out more conscious.

We are denouncing things here that have never been talked about, even though they exist in other countries. On a public level, this puts the US in a really difficult position. They always do this sort of risk-benefit analysis. If they do assassinate Chavez what would happen? Would there really be a reaction around the world? … People would be up in arms, but would there be any sort of a unified reaction that could somehow harm the US? It’s probably not likely. What could countries do? Cripple the US economy? Militarily damage the US? No. So the other issue is what would happen in Venezuela? It would go into civil war. Does the US care? They care about the oil so what would they do? They would militarise [the country] just like they have done in Iraq.

The US would care what the outcome is. They would be thinking, who is going to win a civil war?

Look what they have done in Iraq. The same thing happened in Iraq and now Iraq is in a civil war and [the US is] controlling pretty much the oil industry there — but it is a constant risk situation. As different as Venezuela and Iraq are, I think that is almost the study of what would happen here. So I think [assassination is] a very likely scenario that Chavez talks about all the time and the government is constantly investigating and taking security measures to prevent it.

Chavez talks about assassination attempts all the time?

Sure, because it’s true. One, it’s true that [the Venezuelan government has] stopped a few of them, found evidence and things like that. Also because the more that you talk about it the less likely that it will happen. The more people who are aware, the more people who are consciously considering what would happen, what we would do, how we would react, and therefore preparing for that kind of scenario, which makes it more difficult because then it would be obvious if anything happened to Chavez what the source was.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+August 07, 2007 02:03 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ August 07, 2007 02:03 pm)
[email protected] 07, 2007 07:58 am
Personally, I am not convinced by this &#39;Student Movement&#39;. I am even less convinced though that there is anything for the working class to defend in the &#39;Bolivarian revolution&#39;.
Fine. Some reasoning seems to be dawning.

We have discussed the "Bolivarian Revolution" in many other threads.

This thread is for the discussion of this yellow students movement, not of the "Bolivarian Revolution". So the diversion is useless.

Luís Henrique [/b]
Well that was a convincing answer, Luis. I don&#39;t really think that it is possible to talk about the nature of this students movement in any meaningful way until you have clarified the nature of the state in Venezuela.
It is also interesting that all the leftists have just ignored a simple clear argument that Chavez is attacking the working class.
Devrim

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 12:34 am
It is also interesting that all the leftists have just ignored a simple clear argument that Chavez is attacking the working class.

Before I effectively respond to your nonsensical claims about "Chavez is attacking the working class", it must be said that it is interesting that you ignore the active factory occupations movement that has been going on in Venezuela since the false strike of December 2002.

For you to support these students and for you to ignore your fellow workers in struggle to establish permanent workers&#39; power in their factories shows what kind of person you really are.

It is even more interesting that you ignore the fact that Chavez has not attacked these movements directly nor indirectly. If he were to do so, then that is when you say that he is attacking the working class, because he would be actually attacking an instrument of working class power.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Communist FireFox+August 08, 2007 08:15 am--> (Communist FireFox @ August 08, 2007 08:15 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 12:34 am
It is also interesting that all the leftists have just ignored a simple clear argument that Chavez is attacking the working class.

Before I effectively respond to your nonsensical claims about "Chavez is attacking the working class", it must be said that it is interesting that you ignore the active factory occupations movement that has been going on in Venezuela since the false strike of December 2002.



[/b]
Actually, I pretty much ignore most things about Venezuela. I am not really interested in it at all. It is pretty obvious that there is nothing socialist about it. It is an argument we come across in Turkey mainly from middle class leftists, usually the one who hate the working class in this country the most.


Communist FireFox
For you to support these students and for you to ignore your fellow workers in struggle to establish permanent workers&#39; power in their factories shows what kind of person you really are.

Where did I support these students? I think for you to blatantly misrepresent people&#39;s positions, and attempt to slander movements on the basis of one picture shows exactly the type of person that you really are.


It is even more interesting that you ignore the fact that Chavez has not attacked these movements directly nor indirectly. If he were to do so, then that is when you say that he is attacking the working class, because he would be actually attacking an instrument of working class power.

As I said before, I know little about, neither do I have much interest in, the details of what goes on in Venezuela.
It is quite obvious that there is nothing at all socialist about the Chavez regime.

Devrim

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

&#39;I have no idea what&#39;s going on; but I know it&#39;s not socialism.&#39;

Amazing.

[Leo]

There was this part, clearly demonstrating what is going on in Venezuela:


The income growth of the poorest 58% was outstripped by GDP growth by somewhere more than 5.9% (19.5%- lessthan13.6%), meaning their relative share of national wealth actually fell. however, there was a real-terms absolute increase in income of somewhere lessthan13.6%.

The (negative) income growth of the working poor (23% of population) was outstripped by GDP growth by around 34.8%, meaning their relative share of national wealth fell dramatically. They also suffered an absolute real-terms fall in income of around 15.3%...
meaning that the oil-rent bonanza of high oil prices is fuelling a concentration of wealth in the country&#39;s richest 3%. Furthermore, the incomes of the &#39;working poor&#39; have fallen by 15.3% in real terms and 34.8% relative to national wealth, and this in a growing economy where the richest 3% are accruing the lions share of the gains,

For details: http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic...st&p=1292359665 (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=69551&view=findpost&p=1292359665)

What does this mean? This means the working class is under attack while the bourgeoisie is getting richer. This means that Venezuela is simply just another capitalist country.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 08, 2007 08:45 am
&#39;I have no idea what&#39;s going on; but I know it&#39;s not socialism.&#39;

Amazing.
No, I am not interested in the specific details, but anyone with even the most basic understanding of what class struggle is can see there is nothing even remotely resembling socialism at a glance.
That said I get the impression that you are one of those people who see/saw socialism in the most bizarre of places, for example Eastern Europe.

Please, go back to refuting that economic analysis, and either find a post where I said I supported these students, or apologise for lying.

Devrim

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I didn&#39;t lie, I rephrased what you said in a more concise form.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 05:34 am
Well that was a convincing answer, Luis. I don&#39;t really think that it is possible to talk about the nature of this students movement in any meaningful way until you have clarified the nature of the state in Venezuela.
Fair. The problem is, you and your group are not interested in clarifying the nature of the Venezolan State - just to repeat tautologies about the State in general.

It then comes unsurprisingly that your group is also not interested in debating the Venezolan students movement. They have already set up their scheme: the Chavez government is bourgeois, the students oppose this bourgeois government, so the students must be proletarian.

Great analysis.


It is also interesting that all the leftists have just ignored a simple clear argument that Chavez is attacking the working class.


Capital attacks the working class, regardless of governments. And that&#39;s what your data show, nothing else.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Communist [email protected] 08, 2007 08:15 am
Before I effectively respond to your nonsensical claims about "Chavez is attacking the working class", it must be said that it is interesting that you ignore the active factory occupations movement that has been going on in Venezuela since the false strike of December 2002.

For you to support these students and for you to ignore your fellow workers in struggle to establish permanent workers&#39; power in their factories shows what kind of person you really are.

It is even more interesting that you ignore the fact that Chavez has not attacked these movements directly nor indirectly. If he were to do so, then that is when you say that he is attacking the working class, because he would be actually attacking an instrument of working class power.
But what to expect from "revolutionaries" to whom the college students are proletarians, but the shanty town inhabitants are not?

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

Stalin González belonged until recently to the strangest of opposition organizations, Bandera Roja. BR is a nominally Marxist-Leninist group which made the unlikely transition from a respectable guerrilla organization to the attack dogs of the far right, claiming to use the opposition as a vehicle to topple the fake communism of Chávez and institute a true dictatorship of the proletariat.

Is this where the ICC is heading?

From their interventions in this thread, it would appear so.

[Hit The North]

But what to expect from "revolutionaries" to whom the college students are proletarians, but the shanty town inhabitants are not?

Yes but for the ICC it&#39;s not the social composition of a movement or the political demands it raises which is important. What&#39;s important is its autonomy from existing social and political forces (&#33;)

A strange fetishism which appears to be the root of all their political errors.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by CompañeroDeLibertad+August 08, 2007 09:26 am--> (CompañeroDeLibertad @ August 08, 2007 09:26 am) I didn&#39;t lie, I rephrased what you said in a more concise form. [/b]
So my only comment cocerning my opinions of this student movement:

Devrim
Personally, I am not convinced by this &#39;Student Movement&#39;.
Becomes:

For you to support these students and for you to ignore your fellow workers in struggle to establish permanent workers&#39; power in their factories shows what kind of person you really are.

Where did I mention I supported this movement? I would call rephrasing somebody saying that they weren&#39;t convinced by something into them support for something a blatant lie.

Devrim

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

What the hell are you talking about?? That second quote doesn&#39;t come from me, it comes from another poster.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 08, 2007 12:46 pm
What the hell are you talking about?? That second quote doesn&#39;t come from me, it comes from another poster.
Sorry my mistake. I apologise.
Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by devrimankara+August 08, 2007 12:42 pm--> (devrimankara &#064; August 08, 2007 12:42 pm) So my only comment cocerning my opinions of this student movement:

Devrim
Personally, I am not convinced by this &#39;Student Movement&#39;. [/b]
Well, we saw that comment, and I even answered that it seemed an improvement.

But the OP is signed by the ICC, the organisation you belong to, and it is a clear endorsement, only slightly critical, of the movement. So, do you think your organisation is wrong concerning this issue? Where is the problem, in the Venezolan chapter, or in the ICC as a whole?


Where did I mention I supported this movement? I would call rephrasing somebody saying that they weren&#39;t convinced by something into them support for something a blatant lie.

Apart from the confusion CdL points, you would still have to distance yourself more clearly from the Venezolan jeunesse dorée movement, which some of your comrades - Leo Uillean and alibadani - are defending with claws and teeth.

Luís Henrique

edited to allow for the difference between the ICC collective opinion and devrim&#39;s personal stand.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Citizen Zero+--> (Citizen Zero)Is this where the ICC is heading?

From their interventions in this thread, it would appear so.[/b]

Just to clarify things, the ICC have not made any comments on this thread. The only thing from the ICC is the original article.


Originally posted by Luís Henrique+--> (Luís Henrique)Fair. The problem is, you and your group are not interested in clarifying the nature of the Venezolan State - just to repeat tautologies about the State in general.[/b]

Ok, if that is what you believe.


Luís [email protected]
It then comes unsurprisingly that you and your group are also not interested in debating the Venezolan students movement. You have already set up your scheme: the Chavez government is bourgeois, the students oppose this bourgeois government, so the students must be proletarian.

Great analysis.

Well no, we haven&#39;t. Leo posted an article from a group that is close to ours, and then defended it. I don&#39;t think that this is really an organisation setting out a schema.


Luís Henrique
Capital attacks the working class, regardless of governments. And that&#39;s what your data show, nothing else.

Well yes, it is very clear. There are many people who post on here who reject the idea that Venezuela is capitalist, and claim it is socialist. The fact that it is capitalist is what I wanted to show.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+--> (Luís Henrique)But the OP is signed by the ICC, the organisation you belong to, [/b]
Er...no we don&#39;t.

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+--> (Luís Henrique)some of your comrades - Leo Uillean and alibadani - are defending with claws and teeth.[/b]
Leo is a member of our organisation. Alibadani isn&#39;t.

Luís [email protected]
Apart from the confusion CdL points, you would still have to distance yourself more clearly from the Venezolan jeunesse dorée movement
This is a very strange point. We do not have to distance ourselves from this organisation as we are not in any way close to this organisation.
Leo talked about the student movement, I don&#39;t think (but am not 100% certain) that he even mentioned this organisation.

Luís Henrique
So, do you think your organisation is wrong concerning this issue? Where is the problem, in the Venezolan chapter, or in the ICC as a whole?
As mentioned earlier, it is not our organisation. I don&#39;t know if the ICC is right, or wrong about this issue. It is possible they may be right. I personally have my doubts about this movement though. However, I know very little about it. If the ICC have made a mistake, I don&#39;t think it is in their organisation as a whole, but in comrades on the ground being over enthusiastic about a movement that seems to be independent.

Certainly, it would be a far smaller mistake than those who see socialism in Venezeuala.

Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by devrimankara+August 08, 2007 12:57 pm--> (devrimankara @ August 08, 2007 12:57 pm)
Originally posted by Citizen Zero+--> (Citizen Zero)Is this where the ICC is heading?

From their interventions in this thread, it would appear so.[/b]

Just to clarify things, the ICC have not made any comments on this thread. The only thing from the ICC is the original article.


Originally posted by Luís Henrique
Fair. The problem is, you and your group are not interested in clarifying the nature of the Venezolan State - just to repeat tautologies about the State in general.

Ok, if that is what you believe.


Luís [email protected]
It then comes unsurprisingly that you and your group are also not interested in debating the Venezolan students movement. You have already set up your scheme: the Chavez government is bourgeois, the students oppose this bourgeois government, so the students must be proletarian.

Great analysis.

Well no, we haven&#39;t. Leo posted an article from a group that is close to ours, and then defended it. I don&#39;t think that this is really an organisation setting out a schema.


Luís Henrique
Capital attacks the working class, regardless of governments. And that&#39;s what your data show, nothing else.

Well yes, it is very clear. There are many people who post on here who reject the idea that Venezuela is capitalist, and claim it is socialist. The fact that it is capitalist is what I wanted to show.

Devrim [/b]
There should be no doubt that the Venezolan economy is a capitalist one.

If we were going to debate the general state of affairs in Venezuela, the debatable point is whether the Chavez regime actively supports the bourgeois attacks on the proletariat, or inefficiently tries to minimise such attacks.

In debating the Venezolan "White Hands" students movement, it is the class nature of that movement, and its political and ideological ties to the Venezolan "opposition" and to the CIA that should be under discussion.

Those ties seem to have been clearly consubstantiated, and yet alibadani and Leo Uillean insist that the movement is independent, and that any attempt to link them to the Venezolan right and American interventionism can only be explained by blind support for the Chavez government.

And, by the way, since Leo Uillean obviously respects you and your opinion, can you explain him why it is wrong to accuse people he doesn&#39;t know of being corrupt or anti-semitic?

Thanks in advance.

Luís Henrique

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There are many people who post on here who reject the idea that Venezuela is capitalist, and claim it is socialist.

Who are these "many people" that claim that Venezuela is currently socialist?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by devrimankara+August 08, 2007 01:10 pm--> (devrimankara &#064; August 08, 2007 01:10 pm)
Originally posted by Luís [email protected]
But the OP is signed by the ICC, the organisation you belong to,
Er...no we don&#39;t. [/b]
Oh, I see. I&#39;m sorry, I was under the impression that your organisation was part of the ICC.



Luís Henrique
Apart from the confusion CdL points, you would still have to distance yourself more clearly from the Venezolan jeunesse dorée movement
This is a very strange point. We do not have to distance ourselves from this organisation as we are not in any way close to this organisation.
Leo talked about the student movement, I don&#39;t think (but am not 100% certain) that he even mentioned this organisation.

It is not, as far as I understand, an organisation, it is just a movement. The organisations concerned are the commonplace students organisations, in Venezuela called Centros Estudiantiles, and the various bourgeois and pseudo-leftist political organisations involved in it - Bandera Roja, Primero Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo - as well as the fronts set in Venezuela by American imperialist stooges - Fundación Educando País and other NGOs that train political personnel for the Venezolan right.

It is the recognising that those ties between the students "White Hands" movement and the political right in Venezuela exist, and that denouncing them is not necessarily endorsement of Chavismo, that is lacking on your part.


As mentioned earlier, it is not our organisation. I don&#39;t know if the ICC is right, or wrong about this issue. It is possible they may be right. I personally have my doubts about this movement though. However, I know very little about it. If the ICC have made a mistake, I don&#39;t think it is in their organisation as a whole, but in comrades on the ground being over enthusiastic

That&#39;s fair.


about a movement that seems to be independent.

The problem is, this movement does not seem to be independent. It seems to be very closely tied to the Venezolan political right.


Certainly, it would be a far smaller mistake than those who see socialism in Venezeuala.

Supporting a CIA backed reactionary movement is no small mistake.

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

It is the recognising that those ties between the students "White Hands" movement and the political right in Venezuela exist, and that denouncing them is not necessarily endorsement of Chavismo, that is lacking on your part.

I am not denouncing these links as I don&#39;t know that they exist, nor do I know who any of the organisations that you mentioned are. Neither have I denounced any organisations in Brazil, Bolivia, or in fact any Latin American country today.


The problem is, this movement does not seem to be independent. It seems to be very closely tied to the Venezolan political right.

To the ICC comrades on the ground it looked independent. As I said previously they may be right, or wrong.


Supporting a CIA backed reactionary movement is no small mistake.

No, of course it isn&#39;t. However, it has yet to be seen that is a CIA backed movement, and even if it becomes one, it does not mean it started as one.

There are those that are supporting the regime against the working class already though.


Originally posted by CompañeroDeLibertad
Who are these "many people" that claim that Venezuela is currently socialist?

Come on. I saw someone claiming it was communist on here the other day even.

[Leo]

And, by the way, since Leo Uillean obviously respects you and your opinion, can you explain him why it is wrong to accuse people he doesn&#39;t know of being corrupt or anti-semitic?

Jeez I apologized already, it was merely a comment about you definately seeing this movement as a secret creation of the opposition and not even accepting that there is a possibility that it wasn&#39;t.


Those ties seem to have been clearly consubstantiated, and yet alibadani and Leo Uillean insist that the movement is independent, and that any attempt to link them to the Venezolan right and American interventionism can only be explained by blind support for the Chavez government.

I never even said anything like that&#33; All I have been saying is that there isn&#39;t any concrete evidence that this movement is not independent, I simply don&#39;t see any evidence&#33; If the movement is actually independent (which I never said I knew for sure), then although the people involved in it have deep influence of bourgeois ideology, it might prove to be positive for the working class in Venezuela, of course it will also be positive for the students in that they can overcome the democratic illusions they have, and put away with their "program". If it is not independent, if it is created by the opposition, if it is created by the CIA or if it loses it&#39;s independence, then we will almost definately see the opposition leaders eventually ending up speaking among the crowds of students. After all, what the opposition wants is not just to see Chavez being overthrown: they want themselves to be the ones who overthrows Chavez.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by devrimankara+August 08, 2007 01:50 pm--> (devrimankara @ August 08, 2007 01:50 pm) I am not denouncing these links as I don&#39;t know that they exist, nor do I know who any of the organisations that you mentioned are. Neither have I denounced any organisations in Brazil, Bolivia, or in fact any Latin American country today. [/b]
Well. In this thread, I and others have pointed to those links. Your comrade Leo Uillean has told me that I was only doing it because I support Chavez:

Leo Uillean
The only reason why you say this is because they are opposed to the Chavez government.

But I am not asking you to denounce such links. I am asking you two far less complicated things:

1. that you defer to those who have more close knowledge than you have;

2. that you understand that denouncing the links of "White Hands" with the Venezolan political right and American imperialism does not equal supporting Chavez and his regime.


To the ICC comrades on the ground it looked independent. As I said previously they may be right, or wrong.

The ICC comrades on the ground have serious sight problems, then.


No, of course it isn&#39;t. However, it has yet to be seen that is a CIA backed movement, and even if it becomes one, it does not mean it started as one.

devrim, the CIA usually operates in a covert way. I would not expect those students to come publicly and say, "well, yes, the CIA gives us money and ideological training, why do you ask?"

Latin America has a long story of CIA interventions, we have learned something of it. This movement carries all marks of being supported by the CIA. The students organisation concerned, the Centros Estudiantiles, have agreed with a partnership with Fundación Educando País, which is an NGO directly backed by American imperialist interests, in order to give their leaders political training.

I don&#39;t know exactly at what moment they became involved with the Venezolan right or the CIA. I know that when they went to the streets to protest the non-renewal of RCTV&#39;s concession, they were already an instrument of both.


There are those that are supporting the regime against the working class already though.

Maybe. I will ask you to except me from that company, though.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Your comrade Leo Uillean has told me that I was only doing it because I support Chavez


The only reason why you say this is because they are opposed to the Chavez government.

You are distorting what I said. I didn&#39;t mean that you supported Chavez, I meant that you assumed anyone opposing Chavez would be a part of the opposition, would be on the payroll of the opposition etc.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 02:15 pm
Jeez I apologized already, it was merely a comment about you definately seeing this movement as a secret creation of the opposition and not even accepting that there is a possibility that it wasn&#39;t.
You didn&#39;t apologise, you tried to make it sound as an irrelevant comment.

I am not an anti-semite, I don&#39;t like being called so. Please state clearly that you are sorry you called me an anti-semite.

Also, please state clearly that you understand that I do not earn more money when I am in the union board, and that your comment concerning that was made out ignorance of the actual situation.

If you keep treating me as a class enemy, then I will have to come to the conclusion that you are my class enemy. And I know on which side of class struggle I am.


I never even said anything like that&#33; All I have been saying is that there isn&#39;t any concrete evidence that this movement is not independent, I simply don&#39;t see any evidence&#33;

Of course there is such evidence.

Their politics mirrors the "opposition" politics. One of their leaders, Geraldine Alvarez, is on a trip to the United States, giving talks to American bourgeois political clubs, backed by a reactionary organisation of Venezolan students abroad. Their students organisations have agreed to receive grants and political training from Fundación Educando País.

All that has been stated before. You choose not to acknowledge it.


If it is not independent, if it is created by the opposition, if it is created by the CIA or if it loses it&#39;s independence, then we will almost definately see the opposition leaders eventually ending up speaking among the crowds of students.

And that has already happened. I have to search again for the source, but there are clear connections. Not to say, or repeat, Yon Goicoechea is a member of Un Nuevo Tiempo, and former member of Primero Justicia. Stalin Gonzalez, former member of Bandera Roja, is now a member of Un Nuevo Tiempo also.

Do you think I am lying when I say that?


After all, what the opposition wants is not just to see Chavez being overthrown: they want themselves to be the ones who overthrows Chavez.

Nope. They want to be the ones who get in charge once Chavez is overthrown. They would have no problems with others doing the work, as long as they get the prize&#33;

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 02:33 pm
You are distorting what I said. I didn&#39;t mean that you supported Chavez, I meant that you assumed anyone opposing Chavez would be a part of the opposition, would be on the payroll of the opposition etc.
Which is the same, of course. Because if I assumed anyone not supporting Chavez is in the payroll of the "opposition", I would have to either support Chavez, or admit to being in the payroll of the "opposition".

Don&#39;t insult my intelligence, please.

I don&#39;t assume anyone opposing Chavez is a part of the "opposition". I am saying this particular movement, "White Hands" or whatever else they call themselves, is a part of the "opposition" because it clearly shares the "opposition" political program. Which is further substantiated by the material links they have via Fundación Educando País and Geraldine Alvarez giving speeches to American bourgeois political clubs.

You ignore that evidence at your own risk.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

You didn&#39;t apologise, you tried to make it sound as an irrelevant comment.

I am not an anti-semite, I don&#39;t like being called so. Please state clearly that you are sorry you called me an anti-semite.

Okay, I&#39;m sorry I called you an anti-semite, I don&#39;t think that you are an anti-semite.


Also, please state clearly that you understand that I do not earn more money when I am in the union board, and that your comment concerning that was made out ignorance of the actual situation.

I was really talking about full-timers, they obviously do earn money.


If you keep treating me as a class enemy

I am not treating you as a class enemy.


Their politics mirrors the "opposition" politics.

I am not saying that it is not influenced by the opposition. I think some of them might even be influenced by the Chavists in the past. However I don&#39;t think it "mirrors" the oppositions politics, as far as I heard, the points they bring up are secondary issues for the opposition.


One of their leaders, Geraldine Alvarez,

Is this person a leader of the movement or someone trying to be so? Did he create it or did he become involved with it?


backed by a reactionary organisation of Venezolan students abroad. Their students organisations have agreed to receive grants and political training from Fundación Educando País.

So is this students organization leading this movement?


And that has already happened. I have to search again for the source, but there are clear connections. Not to say, or repeat, Yon Goicoechea is a member of Un Nuevo Tiempo, and former member of Primero Justicia. Stalin Gonzalez, former member of Bandera Roja, is now a member of Un Nuevo Tiempo also.

Are those people leading this movement or are they trying to get involved? Are they students? Do you know if those people are really influential?

Ah, and Bandera Roja is this Hoxhaist organization and Un Nuevo Tiempo is the main social democratic opposition organization, Primero Justica was center-right if I remember correctly for those who don&#39;t know.


Do you think I am lying when I say that?

No, however I do want to know more about the influence of those three people you mentioned. You know, just by itself, the fact that three people who are involved with "oppositionists" are also involved with this student movement does not prove that it is controlled by the opposition.


Nope. They want to be the ones who get in charge once Chavez is overthrown. They would have no problems with others doing the work, as long as they get the prize&#33;

Fair enough but that&#39;s sort of a long shot isn&#39;t it?

[Leo]

Which is the same, of course. Because if I assumed anyone not supporting Chavez is in the payroll of the "opposition", I would have to either support Chavez, or admit to being in the payroll of the "opposition".

No, it would mean that you don&#39;t see any alternative and that you would prefer Chavez to the opposition and defend Chavez because it&#39;s more democratic, although you still consider it bourgeois. That is more or less your position, isn&#39;t it?

You on the other hand have called me a "supporter" of the opposition just because I said that there wasn&#39;t any evidence that this movement was created by the opposition or the students in the streets were lying&#33;

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+August 08, 2007 02:27 pm--> (Luís Henrique &#064; August 08, 2007 02:27 pm) But I am not asking you to denounce such links. I am asking you two far less complicated things:

1. that you defer to those who have more close knowledge than you have;


[/b]
1. Well actually, I haven&#39;t made any comments about the nature of this movement at all apart from being sceptical about it. In that there is no need to defer to anyone.


Luís Henrique
2. that you understand that denouncing the links of "White Hands" with the Venezolan political right and American imperialism does not equal supporting Chavez and his regime.

Of course it is possible that this group is linked to the right, and America. Denouncing that does not equal supporting Chavez, and his regime.



To the ICC comrades on the ground it looked independent. As I said previously they may be right, or wrong.

The ICC comrades on the ground have serious sight problems, then.

Again, I don&#39;t know enough about it to comment. They may be right. They may be wrong. The nature of this movement may have not been clear at the time of writing (the text says July 2007 so I presume it means for their publication in July i.e. at the start of the month).

Here is a link to the ICC&#39;s Spanish page if anyone wants to check details: http://es.internationalism.org/

In Venezuala capital will continue to attack workers. Workers will be forced to defend their own living standards. When that happens the leftists will denounce workers as being in the pay of the CIA. That is what makes me very cautious about people claiming that such and such a movement is a CIA/opposition front.

In this case it may, or may not be true. In the future it will almost certainly be used to attack class militants.

Devrim

Editted to fix quote.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 02:59 pm
Okay, I&#39;m sorry I called you an anti-semite, I don&#39;t think that you are an anti-semite.
That&#39;s OK, thank you very much.


I was really talking about full-timers, they obviously do earn money.


I was a full-timer, and obviously I earned money - paid by my employer, the Brazilian State - the same as I would earn if I was in my job, minus the "productivity" gratifications, to which, having no "productivity" in the views of the State, I had no right.

Edit - Oh, yes, and just to make things clear. Being an unionist was never my choice. It was a task my organisation gave me, and to which I only agreed very reluctantly. And the money loss I had in accepting it played only a minor part on such reluctance.


I am not treating you as a class enemy.

People who believe the Jews secretly dominate the world are class enemies. People who are in the unionist movement to make themselves a comfortable life are class enemies.


I am not saying that it is not influenced by the opposition. I think some of them might even be influenced by the Chavists in the past. However I don&#39;t think it "mirrors" the oppositions politics, as far as I heard, the points they bring up are secondary issues for the opposition.

They bring up the opposition&#39;s tactically most important point - against the "closing" of RCTV.


Is this person a leader of the movement or someone trying to be so? Did he create it or did he become involved with it?

"He" is a she.

She was one of the two who spoke for them in the Asambléa Nacional (the other was Douglas Barrios, who took off his red shirt when he talked about not using uniforms - and all the "White Hands" there immediately took their red shirts too. So I would say Douglas Barrios is a real leader, and I don&#39;t see why they would have a real leader, Douglas Barrios, and a non-leader, Geraldine Alvarez, to speak for them, if the choice was entirely theirs.


So is this students organization leading this movement?

No. Not that I know. This organisation is parading Geraldine Alvarez in the US. I would guess they paid her ticket to there.


Are those people leading this movement or are they trying to get involved?

Apparently they are just trying to get involved. Ask me if they were booed, or what.


Are they students?

No.


Do you know if those people are really influential?

Personally? No. I think they represent the "opposition", and that the "opposition" is, yes, really influential.


Ah, and Bandera Roja is this Hoxhaist organization and Un Nuevo Tiempo is the main social democratic opposition organization, Primero Justica was center-right if I remember correctly for those who don&#39;t know.

More or less. Parties that claim to be social-democratic in Latin America usually aren&#39;t. Un Nuevo Tiempo looks more like a bourgeois political party, without the characteristic ties to unions social-democratic parties have.


No, however I do want to know more about the influence of those three people you mentioned. You know, just by itself, the fact that three people who are involved with "oppositionists" are also involved with this student movement does not prove that it is controlled by the opposition.

No, but it proves that there are real, material ties between the "opposition" and "White Hands". And those people, Geraldine Alvarez, Douglas Barrios, Yon (or John) Goicoechea, Stalin Gonzalez, are the ones who speak for them, those who give speeches, those who sign documents, those who give interviews to newspapers. They don&#39;t seem to be outsiders; all of them are chairmen or members of the board of their Centros Estudiantiles.

As a side note, Douglas Barrios, in his speech in the Asambléa Nacional, said that "students are not socialist, but they are social beings; students are not neoliberals, but they are free [libres in Castillian]". Now, Douglas Barrios is an Economy student, and not a freshman or sophomore. What kind of economical science is he for? (and, as a side note of the side note, the leaders seem to be mainly from Law or Economics Schools.)


Fair enough but that&#39;s sort of a long shot isn&#39;t it?

Why? That&#39;s what the bourgeois always do, put others to work for them, isn&#39;t it?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 03:33 pm
Of course it is possible that this group is linked to the right, and America. Denouncing that does not equal supporting Chavez, and his regime.
Thank you.


In Venezuala capital will continue to attack workers. Workers will be forced to defend their own living standards. When that happens the leftists will denounce workers as being in the pay of the CIA. That is what makes me very cautious about people claiming that such and such a movement is a CIA/opposition front.

In this case it may, or may not be true. In the future it will almost certainly be used to attack class militants.

Maybe. In this particular case, that&#39;s not what is going on.

Also, do you remember the truck drivers strike in Chile, 1973? Would you say that those were "workers defending their own living standards"? Would you say that people who denounced them as imperialist stooges were attacking class militants on behalf of Chilean capital?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 03:02 pm
No, it would mean that you don&#39;t see any alternative and that you would prefer Chavez to the opposition and defend Chavez because it&#39;s more democratic, although you still consider it bourgeois. That is more or less your position, isn&#39;t it?
No, that&#39;s a caricature.

Of course the alternative is independent proletarian class struggle. The issue is, under Chavez regime there is some possibility that it will develop, because Chavez cannot count on the bourgeosie to support him, and has to pander to the workers and the petty-bourgeosie. Under the "opposition"&#39;s dictatorship, all movement will retrocede into begging for democracy and human rights.

I don&#39;t "prefer Chavez". I understand the nature of his regime, and the nature of the "opposition" enough to see what our class interests are here. And, so, I would never agree to a united front with the "opposition" against Chavez.


You on the other hand have called me a "supporter" of the opposition just because I said that there wasn&#39;t any evidence that this movement was created by the opposition or the students in the streets were lying&#33;

No, that&#39;s not right. I didn&#39;t say you are a supporter of the "opposition"; I said, and stand by it, that you are, in this particular case, supporting the opposition (unwittingly, I believe). And that only after you repeatedly discarded the evidence that was being shown to you.

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 08, 2007 03:39 pm

In Venezuala capital will continue to attack workers. Workers will be forced to defend their own living standards. When that happens the leftists will denounce workers as being in the pay of the CIA. That is what makes me very cautious about people claiming that such and such a movement is a CIA/opposition front.

In this case it may, or may not be true. In the future it will almost certainly be used to attack class militants.

Maybe. In this particular case, that&#39;s not what is going on.

Also, do you remember the truck drivers strike in Chile, 1973? Would you say that those were "workers defending their own living standards"? Would you say that people who denounced them as imperialist stooges were attacking class militants on behalf of Chilean capital?

Luís Henrique
No, I don&#39;t remember it. I was at school at the time. Should I ask you questions about obscure strikes in the Middle East?

The line that I get the impression that you are taking though is that the working class has an interest in supporting one bourgeois faction, or another.

For us the fight between Chavez, and the opposition is an inter-bourgeois faction fight. The task of the working class is to defend its own living standards, not support one faction, or the other.

Devrim

[Leo]

I was a full-timer, and obviously I earned money - paid by my employer, the Brazilian State - the same as I would earn if I was in my job, minus the "productivity" gratifications, to which, having no "productivity" in the views of the State, I had no right.


People who are in the unionist movement to make themselves a comfortable life are class enemies.

It wasn&#39;t a comment about your intentions which I do not doubt, in fact it wasn&#39;t a comment about you; it was simply about the social status of union bureaucrats in general, really.


More or less. Parties that claim to be social-democratic in Latin America usually aren&#39;t.

Well, what does social-democratic mean anymore?


Un Nuevo Tiempo looks more like a bourgeois political party,

Well, all social democratic parties are bourgeois parties.


without the characteristic ties to unions social-democratic parties have.

Don&#39;t they have ties with the oppositions union?


No. Not that I know. This organisation is parading Geraldine Alvarez in the US. I would guess they paid her ticket to there.

I see.


Apparently they are just trying to get involved. Ask me if they were booed, or what.

If they spoke wisely, they probably didn&#39;t get booed by the majority, they could have booed had they declared open support for the opposition though. Even if the movement is later on took over by the opposition, I do actually think that probably most of the students who say they don&#39;t want to be involved with the opposition are sincere. Of course it is impossible to know without actually going there.


No, but it proves that there are real, material ties between the "opposition" and "White Hands".

I would say that it proves the opposition is trying to establish those ties and has sent some "infiltrators".


Why? That&#39;s what the bourgeois always do, put others to work for them, isn&#39;t it?

Well obviously, but if they want to get the chair, they want people who are doing the work for them publicly defending them.

[Leo]

The issue is, under Chavez regime there is some possibility that it will develop, because Chavez cannot count on the bourgeosie to support him

I think a faction of the bourgeoisie is supporting Chavez, so is the majority of the high levels of the state and the army bureaucracy. I mean, there is an organization called "Revolutionary Middle Class" supporting him.


I don&#39;t "prefer Chavez". I understand the nature of his regime

I don&#39;t think you do.


And, so, I would never agree to a united front with the "opposition" against Chavez.

It&#39;s good to hear that. Would you agree to a united front with the Chavists against the "opposition"?


No, that&#39;s not right. I didn&#39;t say you are a supporter of the "opposition"; I said, and stand by it, that you are, in this particular case, supporting the opposition (unwittingly, I believe). And that only after you repeatedly discarded the evidence that was being shown to you.

You can&#39;t say I "discarded" the evidence simply because I had different conclusions, based on a different analysis about what the political situation there.

[Comrade Castro]

OK, I just want to clear up that the "student movement", which consists of well-off students in private universities.

1. It does not represent at all the actual majority of Venezuela&#39;s students. They are obviously oppositionists, at their marches you can see some waving the flags of rightist political parties.

2. They get their instructions from a disgusting little website called ruedalo.org. This is a branch of ORVEX, the "Organization of Venezuelans In Exile", a little group of such colorful characters as millionaires, corrupt ex-judges, old politicians, military conspirators. The ORVEX itself has said they are "allies" of and funded by none other than the International Republican Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and whole bunch of other CIA fronts. If you can read spanish, go to ruedalo.org and see their little plans, I guarantee there&#39;s gonna be a "student march" there right when they say. LOL. They say that each of these marches "is the one that&#39;s finally gonna overthrow Chavez".

3. Being a bunch of spoiled little rich kids, their marches rarely reach a few hundred people now. Whenever they decide to leave the rich neighborhoods or the shopping malls, and try to go to an important place as happened on July 24, Bolivar&#39;s birthday, when they tried to go to Bolivar&#39;s tomb. They (a little group of about 40) were blocked by a few thousand Chavez supporters. This has happened every time, and whether organized by the government or not, the marches to block them often reach hundreds of thousands of people.

4. If they tried to do a little rally in a poor barrio, they would be instantly mobbed and killed in whatever way possible. Not that they&#39;d want to even be near to the "chusma".

5. Their popular support is nonexistent, especially as RCTV is broadcasting on cable now, obviously not closed. And they don&#39;t only use some opposition slogans, they are like parrots of whatever some politician or opposition website tells them. It&#39;s ridiculous to assume they aren&#39;t part of the opposition.

6. "Nonviolence" is how they say they&#39;re gonna get Chavez out. Sure, when they&#39;ve found ANTI-AIR AND ANTI-TANK MISSILES, PLUS SNIPER AND ASSAULT RIFLES in the houses of some of the millionaires who fund them. Again, that&#39;s why they&#39;re in exile. Oh yeah, and what was that about the 2002 coup being non-violent. I guess nobody cares about the traitorous police department of Caracas firing on the Chavista marches with military weapons on April 12, the day they were in power. 50-200 dead right in the streets.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 04:02 pm
It&#39;s good to hear that. Would you agree to a united front with the Chavists against the "opposition"?
If the opposition tries another coup?

If the opposition goes into the street calling for the renewal of RCTV&#39;s concession?

If the opposition demands the occupied factories to be returned to their "legitimate owners" (which, btw, is a logical extension of the former)?

What would you do?


You can&#39;t say I "discarded" the evidence simply because I had different conclusions, based on a different analysis about what the political situation there.

I showed you that all the political stances of the students were contained in the opposition program. It was not enough for you, you wanted material links. I said those material links certainly existed, you ridiculed me as a conspiracy theorist. Contrary to my likes - I would have thought that the programmatic issues would settle the question - I went after concrete evidence, which I offered you. Others, particularly chebol, did the same.

It&#39;s really up to you. Do you still think it is possible to defend "White Hands" after seeing the evidence?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 08, 2007 03:55 pm
No, I don&#39;t remember it. I was at school at the time. Should I ask you questions about obscure strikes in the Middle East?
Well, whenever I come to a thread about Middle East to post some pompous nonsense by an organisation that I don&#39;t even know enough about... and whenever, having done so, I refuse to accept criticism from Middle Easterns, and instead cling to the pompous text as some piece of revealed truth... feel free to ask me whatever you wish.

But...


obscure

... is not the appropriate word to describe the (in)famous truck drivers strike that started in October 1972, to the end of destabilising Allende&#39;s government:


In October 1972, Chile saw the first of what were to be a wave of confrontational strikes led by some of the historically well-off sectors of Chilean society; these received the open support of United States President Richard Nixon. A strike by truck-owners, which the CIA supported by funding them with US&#036;2 million within the frame of the "September Plan," began on October 9, 1972 [3]. The strike was declared by the Confederación Nacional del Transporte, then presided by León Vilarín, one of the leader of the far-right paramilitary group Patria y Libertad [3]. The Confederation, which gathered 165 truck-owners trade-unions, with 40 000 members and 56 000 vehicles, decreeted an indefinite strike, paralyzing the country.

Wikepedia for "Chilean coup d&#39;état" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)

The line that I get the impression that you are taking though is that the working class has an interest in supporting one bourgeois faction, or another.

The working class has an interest in defending political conditions in which it can organise, demonstrate, and defend itself against the economical attacks of capital.


For us the fight between Chavez, and the opposition is an inter-bourgeois faction fight. The task of the working class is to defend its own living standards, not support one faction, or the other.

To defend our living standards, we must defend the political conditions of such defence. Since the political program of the "opposition" openly calls for the restriction of such conditions, we must vehemently oppose the golpistas. If to you that is supporting Chavez...

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 03:55 pm
It wasn&#39;t a comment about your intentions which I do not doubt, in fact it wasn&#39;t a comment about you; it was simply about the social status of union bureaucrats in general, really.
To refresh you memory, I said that I had lost last elections to the union board, and you retorted with something like (I quote from memory): "pity, otherwise you would be living a comfortable life". It wasn&#39;t about union bureaucrats in general, it was about me, personally, it offended me deeply, and I am demanding you apologies.


Well, all social democratic parties are bourgeois parties.

But not all bourgeois parties are social democratic. Un Nuevo Tiempo, for instance, is not.

But that&#39;s hairsplitting. The point is, two of the leaders of "White Hands" - including the one who has said they aren&#39;t politicians - are affiliated to that bourgeois party.



without the characteristic ties to unions social-democratic parties have.

Don&#39;t they have ties with the oppositions union?

The party that used to had that ties was Acción Democrática, but nowadays everything seems broken at the Venezolan political right&#39;s home.


Even if the movement is later on took over by the opposition, I do actually think that probably most of the students who say they don&#39;t want to be involved with the opposition are sincere.

Their sincerity or insincerity doesn&#39;t matter. Their actions favour the "opposition"&#39;s politics.

I am sure if you could tell the millions of Germans who voted Nazi in the early thirties what they were in fact doing, they would, very sincerely, tell you that they did not want that. But, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.


Of course it is impossible to know without actually going there.

In which case we should trust the people who are there.

But truely, it is of course possible to know without going there. One just has to read what those people have to say, and try to understand it critically. The nature of their movement is very clear, I am surprised that committed leftists can be fooled by such naïve disguises.


Well obviously, but if they want to get the chair, they want people who are doing the work for them publicly defending them.

Not necessarily; if they think they are isolated, and are trying to break the isolation, convincing the world that they have allies among the popular classes would help them a lot. Apparently their efforts have not been in vain.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 04:02 pm
I think a faction of the bourgeoisie is supporting Chavez,
In which case you should be able to name that faction, and show us what material interest they have in Chavez&#39;s government.


so is the majority of the high levels of the state and the army bureaucracy.

Well, of course those groups support the State, and whomever happens to be at its head, as long as their grip is solid.


I mean, there is an organization called "Revolutionary Middle Class" supporting him.

And what exactly does "middle class" mean in this context? Because when the middle class paints their hands in white and march to defend corporate property rights, you seem willing to believe they are truely proletarian revolutionaries...


I don&#39;t think you do.

Better than you, certainly.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

If the opposition tries another coup?

If the opposition goes into the street calling for the renewal of RCTV&#39;s concession?

If the opposition demands the occupied factories to be returned to their "legitimate owners" (which, btw, is a logical extension of the former)?

What would you do?

I would definately not enter into a united front with any faction of the bourgeoisie and I would consider doing so as class treason.


I showed you that all the political stances of the students were contained in the opposition program. It was not enough for you,

I considered them as democratic illusions, slogans which show the bourgeois illusions in the movement. I&#39;m sorry, they are not enough for me to see this entire thing as a creation of the bourgeoisie.


I went after concrete evidence, which I offered you.

Which was quotes from three infiltrators the opposition sent to win over the movement who apparently played their cards well and were succesful in getting key positions, fair enough but this not an evidence for stating that this thing has been created by the opposition.


It&#39;s really up to you. Do you still think it is possible to defend "White Hands" after seeing the evidence?

It is not about "defending the movement", first of all it is about stating that neither Chavez nor the opposition is the way for the proletariat. If the students in this movement, not the leaders, not the infiltrators, actually want to stay away from both and if they actually are open to discussion with the workers, then this is a positive thing, then they can get rid of their democratic illusions, their slogans and such. If not, I do think that we will find out about it soon.


Well, whenever I come to a thread about Middle East to post some pompous nonsense by an organisation that I don&#39;t even know enough about... and whenever, having done so, I refuse to accept criticism from Middle Easterns, and instead cling to the pompous text as some piece of revealed truth... feel free to ask me whatever you wish.

Aren&#39;t you living in Brazil Luis? South America is a several times bigger than the Middle East. Isn&#39;t Venezuela more far for you that Kazakhstan is to us?


To refresh you memory, I said that I had lost last elections to the union board, and you retorted with something like (I quote from memory): "pity, otherwise you would be living a comfortable life". It wasn&#39;t about union bureaucrats in general, it was about me, personally, it offended me deeply, and I am demanding you apologies.

Okay sorry then - it really was an unnecessary insult.

However I still do think running for the union board is ridiculous.


But not all bourgeois parties are social democratic. Un Nuevo Tiempo, for instance, is not.

Meh... I mean what is social democratic?


But that&#39;s hairsplitting. The point is, two of the leaders of "White Hands" - including the one who has said they aren&#39;t politicians - are affiliated to that bourgeois party.

That is not good.


The party that used to had that ties was Acción Democrática, but nowadays everything seems broken at the Venezolan political right&#39;s home.

Ah, interesting... Is that why the opposition lost the election or would they have lost anyway?


Their sincerity or insincerity doesn&#39;t matter.

In this case, I think it does. Sincerely wanting to distance oneself with both the Chavez regime and the opposition is a positive thing.


Their actions favour the "opposition"&#39;s politics.

The opposition is trying to use their actions in it&#39;s favor is a much accurate way of putting it. I don&#39;t think them distancing themselves from the opposition really favors the opposition.


I am sure if you could tell the millions of Germans who voted Nazi in the early thirties what they were in fact doing, they would, very sincerely, tell you that they did not want that. But, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This is definately not a fair analogy.


In which case we should trust the people who are there.

Ah, yes.


One just has to read what those people have to say, and try to understand it critically.

You mean the three people they quoted?


Not necessarily; if they think they are isolated

Do they? The last time I checked, they easily could have mass demonstrations.


In which case you should be able to name that faction, and show us what material interest they have in Chavez&#39;s government.

According to the statistics, the richest %3 of the population is getting richer and the working class is under attack, they are getting poorer.

I&#39;ll say that is good enough for the bourgeoisie. I can even go ahead and say that despite the fact that they publicly supported and voted for the opposition, most of the big capitalists in Venezuela are actually quite happy with the "stability" Chavez "brought" to the economy.


Well, of course those groups support the State, and whomever happens to be at its head, as long as their grip is solid.

You don&#39;t think they have anything to do with the trade and industrial bourgeoisie?


And what exactly does "middle class" mean in this context?

Managers in companies?


Because when the middle class paints their hands in white and march to defend corporate property rights, you seem willing to believe they are truely proletarian revolutionaries...

Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said they were proletarian revolutionaries. I think the majority of those students are not middle class or bourgeois, and I think a great majority of them are going to end up as workers because of the deepening of the crisis. Also I am against their slogans which are under democratic illusions.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+August 08, 2007 07:16 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ August 08, 2007 07:16 pm)
Originally posted by devrimankara+August 08, 2007 03:55 pm--> (devrimankara &#064; August 08, 2007 03:55 pm) No, I don&#39;t remember it. I was at school at the time. Should I ask you questions about obscure strikes in the Middle East? [/b]
Well, whenever I come to a thread about Middle East to post some pompous nonsense by an organisation that I don&#39;t even know enough about... and whenever, having done so, I refuse to accept criticism from Middle Easterns, and instead cling to the pompous text as some piece of revealed truth... feel free to ask me whatever you wish.

[/b]
What &#39;pompous nonsense&#39; did I post from what organisation?


Luís [email protected]
But...

obscure
... is not the appropriate word to describe the (in)famous truck drivers strike that started in October 1972, to the end of destabilising Allende&#39;s government:

Actually, I think it is.


Luís Henrique

The working class has an interest in defending political conditions in which it can organise, demonstrate, and defend itself against the economical attacks of capital.



For us the fight between Chavez, and the opposition is an inter-bourgeois faction fight. The task of the working class is to defend its own living standards, not support one faction, or the other.


To defend our living standards, we must defend the political conditions of such defence. Since the political program of the "opposition" openly calls for the restriction of such conditions, we must vehemently oppose the golpistas. If to you that is supporting Chavez...

Yes, I think it practice, it will turn out to be.

The working class can&#39;t defend itself from capital&#39;s attacks by tying itself to a different faction of capital.

Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 08:23 pm
I would definately not enter into a united front with any faction of the bourgeoisie and I would consider doing so as class treason.
So you let the Chavistas and the "oppositionists" battle each other without taking sides?


I considered them as democratic illusions, slogans which show the bourgeois illusions in the movement. I&#39;m sorry, they are not enough for me to see this entire thing as a creation of the bourgeoisie.

I see. To me they are more than enough. But, since to you they are not, I have provided you evidence that there is a material link between the "White Hands" and the political right.


Which was quotes from three infiltrators the opposition sent to win over the movement who apparently played their cards well and were succesful in getting key positions,

So successful that they are aknowleged as leaders of the movement by the movement itself&#33;

In fact, it is not fair to call them infiltrators, they seem to have been at the head of the movement from the start.


fair enough but this not an evidence for stating that this thing has been created by the opposition.

Created by the "opposition" or not created by the "opposition", they are certainly a tool in the hands of the Venezolan political right. They are in a united front with the political right.


It is not about "defending the movement", first of all it is about stating that neither Chavez nor the opposition is the way for the proletariat.

Fair. Which means that this movement, which is part of the opposition, is also not the way for the proletariat. Right?


If the students in this movement, not the leaders, not the infiltrators, actually want to stay away from both and if they actually are open to discussion with the workers,

That&#39;s not the intention, Leo. They oppose the workers, they support the private property rights of RCTV&#33;


then this is a positive thing, then they can get rid of their democratic illusions, their slogans and such. If not, I do think that we will find out about it soon.


I have already found it out, Leo. They are tools of the political right, they are financed by the CIA. Their rank and file is deluded, of course, but their delusions stem from their petty bourgeois desire to not take sides in class struggle - which leads them to take the side of those who deny the existence of class struggle: the bourgeois.


Aren&#39;t you living in Brazil Luis? South America is a several times bigger than the Middle East. Isn&#39;t Venezuela more far for you that Kazakhstan is to us?

In kilometers? Perhaps. Can you speak Kazakh? Arab? Farsi? Pashtun? Hebraic?

I can speak Portuguese and Castillian, and those are the relevant languages to be in contact with the political reality of Latin America.


Okay sorry then - it really was an unnecessary insult.

Good. Thank you.


However I still do think running for the union board is ridiculous.

That&#39;s your opinion, which I find equally ridiculous, but to which you have every right.



But that&#39;s hairsplitting. The point is, two of the leaders of "White Hands" - including the one who has said they aren&#39;t politicians - are affiliated to that bourgeois party.

That is not good.

There&#39;s nothing good about those people and their movement.


Ah, interesting... Is that why the opposition lost the election or would they have lost anyway?

Don&#39;t know. The traditional political parties of the Venezolan bourgeoisie, AD and COPEI, are broken, utterly demoralised. They do not serve anymore the interests of the bourgeoisie. Which has been trying to set up new parties with new names and the same old faces. This movement is probably their hope to have new faces to delude the people. Let&#39;s hope they fail. Let&#39;s work for their failure, spreading the word that Douglas Barrios, Geraldine Alvarez, Stalin Gonzales, Yon Goicoechea, are instruments of the escuálidos. Let&#39;s not help them by hiding this fact. Let&#39;s not be accomplicits of their crimes&#33;


In this case, I think it does. Sincerely wanting to distance oneself with both the Chavez regime and the opposition is a positive thing.

Only if from a proletarian perspective. Which this movement has not. They want to be "neutral", not more radical. They don&#39;t want to be either "socialist nor neoliberal". They want "Venezuela para todos". They are against class struggle, they are for "peace".


The opposition is trying to use their actions in it&#39;s favor is a much accurate way of putting it. I don&#39;t think them distancing themselves from the opposition really favors the opposition.

I and others have already explained why&#39;s that the "opposition" needs exactly that. Such nominal distancing is what gives them a fig leaf of legitimacy. But they do not distance themselves from the "opposition" politically. Their demands are the demands of the opposition.

They are a students movement, Leo. Where are their demands against professors&#39; authoritarianism, against fees, against the quality of the food in the college restaurant, against the quality of the education they receive? I have been a students movement activist at my time, Leo, and those were the demands that were always central to us, besides the fight against a dictatorship that would criminalise all of those demands. These kids live in a full democracy, they go where they want, they talk what they want, and the "tyrany" they fight against invites them to the parliament to debate, and be broadcasted on national network. And they haven&#39;t a single complain about their conditions of living and studying; they complain about a private TV station being closed&#33;

They are helping the "opposition" with their movement.


This is definately not a fair analogy.

Why not?



One just has to read what those people have to say, and try to understand it critically.

You mean the three people they quoted?

Or any of the many blogs that incense them. What else do you want us to read? They have a collective intellectual production, which is clearly anti-communist, pro-capitalist, deals with the fears of a decadent middle class, etc.


Do they? The last time I checked, they easily could have mass demonstrations.

And when did you last check them?


According to the statistics, the richest %3 of the population is getting richer and the working class is under attack, they are getting poorer.

That&#39;s the way concentration of capital works, it concentrates capital, and, consequently, wealth. If a faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie opposes Chavez, and another one supports him, what is the basis of such divide?


I&#39;ll say that is good enough for the bourgeoisie. I can even go ahead and say that despite the fact that they publicly supported and voted for the opposition, most of the big capitalists in Venezuela are actually quite happy with the "stability" Chavez "brought" to the economy.

I don&#39;t think they consider it stability, and I believe they think Chavez is making them lose good business opportunities abroad, while dangerously letting the "scum" to put its nose into the elite&#39;s affairs.


You don&#39;t think they have anything to do with the trade and industrial bourgeoisie?

Well, yes. But who gives them the blue bill, who pays them their salary, is the bureaucracy. Normally, there is no conflict between the class and its State, but when there is, they get confused, but tend to support the hierarchy.


Managers in companies?

Private companies?


Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said they were proletarian revolutionaries.

You did. When asked what those students would have against the politicos, you answered, quite naïvely, "that they are bourgeois", thus attributing them a level of consciousness that cannot be found in one single of their manifestations.



I think the majority of those students are not middle class or bourgeois,

I think you are wrong. Probably most of Venezuela&#39;s college students are middle class (in Brazil they sure are); and certainly within this movement the middle class percentage is much higher than among the students in general.


and I think a great majority of them are going to end up as workers because of the deepening of the crisis.

Oh, possibly. That&#39;s their great fear, that they will end as proletarians. That&#39;s also why they hate proletarians so much.

Luís Henrique

[al-Ibadani]

Luis Henrique,

It seems you ignored my last post. I think you have a strange conception of the bourgeoisie. I think that a significant portion of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie supports Chavez, especially those who owe their present comfortable lives to his regime.


In which case you should be able to name that faction, and show us what material interest they have in Chavez&#39;s government.


Well some, like the Chavist MP&#39;s are interested in their salaries. Others are interested in shoring up Venezuelan imperialism. Others seek to tie the working class ideologically to the state, by presenting the latter as defenders of the former. All in the interest of national capital "the collective bourgeois". This faction apparently has a minority of the "chamber of commerce" type bourgeois in its ranks.

Back to the students. I think the movement is indeed independent. Why? It&#39;s organizational forms and practices are not some CIA creation.

It is often the case that the leaders and spokespeople of such movements are indeed linked to bourgeois parties. This is how so many such movements end up in dead ends. In France the leaders of student unions linked to the left often were placed in influential positions in the AG (general assemblies). They actively sought to sabotage the struggle and sometimes met with resistance from "below". However they were the "official" spokespeople for the movement. This is typical stuff.

[Leo]

So you let the Chavistas and the "oppositionists" battle each other without taking sides?

Would you let the Democrats and the Republicans battle each other without taking sides? Would you let two imperialist countries battle each other without taking sides? Would you let Pompei battle Caesar without taking sides if you are a slave? If saying that the real sides are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the ruling class and the exploited class is letting faction X and faction Y battle each other without taking sides, then that&#39;s exactly I&#39;d do.

The key here is to defend the interests of the working class, not the defend the interests of faction X or faction Y.


So successful that they are aknowleged as leaders of the movement by the movement itself&#33;

Wasn&#39;t one of them have been elected to leadership in one university, I think - or did I misunderstand what you said about those three?


In fact, it is not fair to call them infiltrators, they seem to have been at the head of the movement from the start.

Didn&#39;t you say that they weren&#39;t even students?


Created by the "opposition" or not created by the "opposition", they are certainly a tool in the hands of the Venezolan political right.

I think the opposition is trying to use them, I don&#39;t think the opposition controls them so much to call them a tool though.


They are in a united front with the political right.

Really? I thought they refused to be involved?


Fair. Which means that this movement, which is part of the opposition, is also not the way for the proletariat. Right?

If it is an actual part of the opposition, then obviously. If it clearly becomes a part of the opposition, then again, obviously.


That&#39;s not the intention, Leo.

I read that most of the students were open to talking with everyone, including Chavistas. Do you think that is wrong?


They oppose the workers, they support the private property rights of RCTV&#33;

Didn&#39;t they call for support for the RCTV workers?


I have already found it out, Leo. They are tools of the political right, they are financed by the CIA.

The majority of the students obviously aren&#39;t funded by the CIA, some organization which is trying to get involved is funded by the CIA.


In kilometers? Perhaps. Can you speak Kazakh?

No but I can understand it for the most part and I can read it if it is not in Cyrillic. It is more or less the same for Uzbek. I am good at Azerbaijani, as most people here are: I can understand almost every word and Azerbaijanis can easily understand me.


Arab?

I can&#39;t, a comrade and several relatives does.


Farsi?

Nope, but I have relatives who can understand some Farsi because it is so close to Kurdish and as I said I am good with Azerbaijani which is a big language in Iran.


Pashtun?

No, Pakistan and Afghanistan is quite far from us here.


Hebraic?

No. I haven&#39;t even met anyone who does speak Hebrew, although I knew some people who spoke Yiddish.


Don&#39;t know. The traditional political parties of the Venezolan bourgeoisie, AD and COPEI, are broken, utterly demoralised.

Seems to be happening a lot world wide these days.


This movement is probably their hope to have new faces to delude the people. Let&#39;s hope they fail.

This seems unlikely to me, we will see if you turn out to be right - I think it would be wiser to say let&#39;s hope it isn&#39;t so right now.


Let&#39;s work for their failure, spreading the word that Douglas Barrios, Geraldine Alvarez, Stalin Gonzales, Yon Goicoechea, are instruments of the escuálidos.

Sure, no one is supporting those three, they are what they are. Them being instruments of the opposition doesn&#39;t make rest of the students who are sincere about opposing both sides.


I and others have already explained why&#39;s that the "opposition" needs exactly that.

And I and others have already explained why the opposition doesn&#39;t need that.


they go where they want, they talk what they want, and the "tyrany" they fight against invites them to the parliament to debate, and be broadcasted on national network.

And tries to send people to beat them up who refuse to do so&#33;


These kids live in a full democracy

I don&#39;t think Venezuela is more democratic than most of the countries around, possibly including US, Turkey and Brazil. Of course this isn&#39;t really something which impresses me because "full democracies" can be as good as dictatorships in suppressing the workers.


They are a students movement, Leo. Where are their demands against professors&#39; authoritarianism, against fees, against the quality of the food in the college restaurant, against the quality of the education they receive? I have been a students movement activist at my time, Leo, and those were the demands that were always central to us, besides the fight against a dictatorship that would criminalise all of those demands... And they haven&#39;t a single complain about their conditions of living and studying; they complain about a private TV station being closed&#33;

They are helping the "opposition" with their movement.

Yes, their demands are problematic.


And when did you last check them?

Elections time, the opposition did get a high percentage of votes.


That&#39;s the way concentration of capital works, it concentrates capital, and, consequently, wealth.

Yeah, but first of all it doesn&#39;t happen by itself and secondly the way this continued shows that economically the Chavez government has actually been using neoliberal policies&#33; The only thing they are doing is to give charity to make it up.


If a faction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie opposes Chavez, and another one supports him, what is the basis of such divide?

I am going to go ahead and say that the idealists among the high bourgeoisie are actually opposing Chavez and the majority, although possibly voting for the opposition, are fine with Chavez there.


I don&#39;t think they consider it stability, and I believe they think Chavez is making them lose good business opportunities abroad

Oh, they are having good oil sales now, besides they can do business with the "locked" countries as well which is a very significant trade advantage.


Well, yes. But who gives them the blue bill, who pays them their salary, is the bureaucracy. Normally, there is no conflict between the class and its State,

It depends. The real question I would ask here would be this: has there historically been a tension between the bourgeoisie and it&#39;s state? There has been lots of coups in Venezuela, were they actually made against some factions of the mainstream bourgeoisie or were they rather different coups with the intention to terrorize the working class? If it is the former then I can say that the conflict between the opposition and Chavez would require more study as it would be necessary to place the state and military bureaucracies, their loyal supporters among the bourgeoisie and the other wing of the bourgeoisie. However, if if the latter is the case, then it is clear that the majority of the bourgeoisie is fine with Chavez.


I think you are wrong. Probably most of Venezuela&#39;s college students are middle class (in Brazil they sure are)

In Turkey they are not. I think for most of the college students to be middle class and for them to remain that way there needs to be very few universities. Are there really few universities in Venezuela and Brazil? Do you have all the movies about the poor father working really hard to send his son to collage and all?


Oh, possibly. That&#39;s their great fear, that they will end as proletarians. That&#39;s also why they hate proletarians so much.

That&#39;s a big accusation.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 08, 2007 11:44 pm
Would you let the Democrats and the Republicans battle each other without taking sides?
Let&#39;s make that clear, Democrats don&#39;t battle Republicans. Lately, not even in parliamentary "battles".


Would you let two imperialist countries battle each other without taking sides?

No, I wouldn&#39;t "let them battle". That&#39;s the point.

Of course we have no sides in such battle, but we must strike, as violently as possible, against the one that is closer. How do you do that in a civil war?


The key here is to defend the interests of the working class, not the defend the interests of faction X or faction Y.

Exactly. The interests of the working class include avoiding political situations in which our class struggle has to retrocede.


Wasn&#39;t one of them have been elected to leadership in one university, I think - or did I misunderstand what you said about those three?

I&#39;m sorry? They speak for the students, they are cheered when they speak, followed in their acts. How are they not leaders?


Didn&#39;t you say that they weren&#39;t even students?

You asked me if oppositionist speakers giving speeches for the students were students themselves. No, they aren&#39;t.

The students leaders - Geraldine Alvarez, Yon Goicoechea, Douglas Barrios, Stalin Gonzales - are students, members of students association boards. Respectively, they study Architecture, Law, Economics, and Law again.


I think the opposition is trying to use them, I don&#39;t think the opposition controls them so much to call them a tool though.

I must disagree, they are certainly a tool of the "opposition".


Really? I thought they refused to be involved?

Aren&#39;t you paying attention?

They received grants for their "political education" from bourgeois, imperialist NGO&#39;s. They are affiliated to Venezolan bourgeois parties. They are traveling to the United States, giving speeches to bourgeois political clubs, as good Venezolan freedom fighters. They lead a movement that claims to be "apolitical", and yet upholds the "opposition"&#39;s program.

They are in a united front with the political right, and no, they fucking didn&#39;t refuse to get involved.


If it is an actual part of the opposition, then obviously. If it clearly becomes a part of the opposition, then again, obviously.

It already is, Leo.


I read that most of the students were open to talking with everyone, including Chavistas. Do you think that is wrong?

I think this is a lie, in fact, it is their propaganda.


Didn&#39;t they call for support for the RCTV workers?

Darn it. They called for the renewal of RCTV&#39;s concession&#33; They called for RCTV&#39;s right to continue to exploit workers&#33; They called for the right of RCTV to continue to lie to workers&#33; Can&#39;t you see that that bit about "workers" is sheer demagoguery? Like those bourgeois assholes who would say that closing Boeing or Lockheed to stop manufacturing weapons would be wrong, for the poor employers of those corporations would lose their jobs?


The majority of the students obviously aren&#39;t funded by the CIA, some organization which is trying to get involved is funded by the CIA.

The organisations that lead them are funded by the CIA. The organisations that call the marches and meetings are funded by the CIA. The organisations that decide the political slogans are funded by the CIA.


This seems unlikely to me, we will see if you turn out to be right - I think it would be wiser to say let&#39;s hope it isn&#39;t so right now.

So let&#39;s take a bet? I bet that at least one of those guys is going to run for some elective position, in a right wing slate, at the first opportunity.


Sure, no one is supporting those three, they are what they are. Them being instruments of the opposition doesn&#39;t make rest of the students who are sincere about opposing both sides.

Listen, if they are sincere about opposing both sides, they must understand what game their leaders play. But this game isn&#39;t very much concealed, and yet...


And I and others have already explained why the opposition doesn&#39;t need that.

Not so. You have just repeated, without any real counter-argument, that they don&#39;t need it.


And tries to send people to beat them up who refuse to do so&#33;

According to their own propaganda. How many have been beaten down?


I don&#39;t think Venezuela is more democratic than most of the countries around, possibly including US, Turkey and Brazil. Of course this isn&#39;t really something which impresses me because "full democracies" can be as good as dictatorships in suppressing the workers.

They aren&#39;t being suppressed.


Yes, their demands are problematic.

Their demands are not problematic&#33; Their demands are bourgeois&#33; Bourgeois&#33;


Elections time, the opposition did get a high percentage of votes.

On the contrary, they refused to participate. Probably because they knew they wouldn&#39;t.


Yeah, but first of all it doesn&#39;t happen by itself

Of course it does.


and secondly the way this continued shows that economically the Chavez government has actually been using neoliberal policies&#33;

Which neoliberal policies? What are, in your opinion, Chavez&#39;s government economic policies?


I am going to go ahead and say that the idealists among the high bourgeoisie are actually opposing Chavez and the majority, although possibly voting for the opposition, are fine with Chavez there.

That&#39;s certainly not materialist analysis. What material base divides them? Which interests the government supports, that make a sector of the bourgeoisie support it? Which interests the government confronts, that make another sector oppose it?


Oh, they are having good oil sales now,

And how does the Venezolan bourgeoisie make profits from oil sales?


besides they can do business with the "locked" countries as well which is a very significant trade advantage.

Renouncing the American market for the Cuban or Iranian market? No, Leo, the bourgeoisie knows how to count.


It depends. The real question I would ask here would be this: has there historically been a tension between the bourgeoisie and it&#39;s state? There has been lots of coups in Venezuela, were they actually made against some factions of the mainstream bourgeoisie or were they rather different coups with the intention to terrorize the working class?

They usually happen when the bourgeoisie is unable to sort its affairs without too much confront; the military then acts as a bourgeois super-party, that, not being directly tied to any of the competing factions, are able to govern in name of all.


In Turkey they are not. I think for most of the college students to be middle class and for them to remain that way there needs to be very few universities. Are there really few universities in Venezuela and Brazil?

Yes, we have few universities, and I fear Venezuela has, proportionally, even less. To make it worse, usually the poorer students find it difficult to prepare to the highly selective entrance exams to the best, public, free universities, and end up in shitty, private, paid colleges.


Do you have all the movies about the poor father working really hard to send his son to collage and all?

Nope. Not that we have many movies at all, but this is not a popular theme in our cinema or TV.


That&#39;s a big accusation.

And a true one. It&#39;s quite clear on the "criminality" clause of their demands.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2007 08:53 pm
-- The students have sought to distance themselves form both sides
By saying that they reject both sides. But they have not in fact distanced themselves from the "oppostion", to which political program they are tied from head to feet.


-- "the movement has given itself organisational forms such as assembles, where they can discuss, elect commissions and decide upon what actions to carry out: this has taken place at the local and national level. It was in these assembles, formed in several universities, where they discussed the aim of the movement and prepared the first actions, which were transmitted to the rest of the students."

Unhappily this is just a fantasy. The decisions are taken, at best, at the Centros Estudantiles boards; at worse, at the American Embassy. Those have, effectively, called assemblies, but cautiously led assemblies in which the leaders speak and the others hear.

Listen, workers have gone much farther than having assemblies; they have occupied factories. Why don&#39;t you take those occupations into account in your analysis?


--"this movement since its beginning has been that it has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors.

That&#39;s not even a fantasy, it is just an outright lie. It has revolved around corporate property rights, and upholding the existing college bureaucracy of the catedráticos.


To this end the students have called upon all of the students and the population as a whole, Chavistas or not, to take part in an open dialogue in the universities, the barrios and the street, outside of the institutions and organs controlled by the government, as well as those dominated by the opposition."

And when that happen, they have been defeated by Chavistas students.


--the slogans of the movement which the opposition media have have "treated as something secondary" have sympathy amongst Chavez&#39;s supposed base.


Those slogans being? Fight against criminality, end of poverty, and a better world? Please.


Remember I was saying that if the workers do create their own forms of struggle, Chavez would call on the poor of the barrios to oppose them. There is overlap between them. That is why such an appeal by Chavez would probably get a response like "We do not want to struggle against our brothers".

This is again a fantasy. Where there has been such appeal? Where has the government called for popular violence against the students?


I haven&#39;t called you an asshole or an idiot yet, even while being accused of helping the Venezuelan right.

There is a big difference between telling you what you are doing, which is helping the Venezolan right, and pretending to know what I would do in the future.


My point is that there could indeed arise in Venezuala, a workers movement, whose slogans are similar to those of the students, which is criminalized by Chavez as "lackeys of imperialism", "traitors to the fatherland" etc., which is claimed by the opposition. Basically very much like the students except they are workers, not future workers. Based on your posts, why would I assume that you would react differently to such a movement.

I don&#39;t think a workers movements would have those slogans. They would not uphold RCTV&#39;s property rights, they would not support a crackdown against themselves under the disguise of "fight against criminality", nor they would make ridiculous, abstract points like "end of poverty" or "a better world". They would, like, demand better wages, less working hours, voice in political issues, freedom to organise themselves in the factories and neighbourhoods. They would, probably, occupy factories abandoned by their bourgeois owners. You know, those demands and actions that have characterised working class movement for almost two centuries now.


Actually such a link could result in the students completely changing their platform, and could result in the workers changing the terrain on which the struggle.


That&#39;s again a fantasy. The Venezolan workers are much ahead of the students, when it comes to the "terrain" of their struggle. Or how many universities have the students occupied?

Luís Henrique

[al-Ibadani]

Luis,

Since you said nothing about my description of the Chavist bourgeoisie and the interests they represent, I&#39;ll assume you agree with me.


Listen, workers have gone much farther than having assemblies; they have occupied factories. Why don&#39;t you take those occupations into account in your analysis?

The few occupied factories are no threat to anyone. These were abandoned and bankrupt agricultural and industrial companies or those with serious judicial problems. These have now been brought under state control. The same with the Bolivarian circles, the militias, the so-called joint management companies. These have been used to control workers, "to subject them to an iron vigilance, to blackmail them (‘if you do not participate in the revolution you have no right to social support’), to repress workers’ strikes and demonstrations. What is the real difference between these organisms of state imprisonment and the ‘popular militias’ of the Stalinist regimes or the Nazi SA? The only difference is the ideological justification." [source (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/295_chavez)]



This is again a fantasy. Where there has been such appeal? Where has the government called for popular violence against the students?

No one said Chavez called for popular violence against the students, but for mass mobilization by the barrios. "the "radical" deputies of the National Assembly (formed totally of deputies who support the so-called "Bolivarian revolution"), gave their full support to their leader&#39;s call for the inhabitants of the barrios to demonstrate against student movements. However the inhabitants of the shanty towns and the poor barrios - where Chavism is meant to dominate - did not mobilise and have not done so since." [source (http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/student-protests-venezuela#_ftnref2)]

Are you purposefully misrepresenting me?



By saying that they reject both sides. But they have not in fact distanced themselves from the "oppostion", to which political program they are tied from head to feet.


Well the left in France claimed to be anti-CPE . That doesn&#39;t mean the student movement there was the brain-child of the Social democrats, Stalinists, and unions. From what you&#39;ve said you probably were a lot more impressed with the occupied universities, the clashes with the cops, the blocked highways than you were with the general assemblies which were the lungs of the movement.



Unhappily this is just a fantasy. The decisions are taken, at best, at the Centros Estudantiles boards; at worse, at the American Embassy. Those have, effectively, called assemblies, but cautiously led assemblies in which the leaders speak and the others hear.

This amounts to a IT&#39;S TRUE/NO IT&#39;S A LIE argument. Except I have sources on the ground, actual Venezuelans, and you have conspiracy theories. To deny the obvious existence of the general assemblies, to deny the methods they use, what everyone with eyes can see is just a case of wishing too hard to be correct.



That&#39;s not even a fantasy, it is just an outright lie. It has revolved around corporate property rights, and upholding the existing college bureaucracy of the catedráticos.

The media, mainly opposition controlled, have made these the central slogans of the movement, by ignoring slogans like "the end of repression, the freeing of the detained students and those having to report to police stations daily, solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV, against criminality, against poverty and for the need to "create a better world" etc."[source (http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/student-protests-venezuela#_ftnref2)]


And when that happen, they have been defeated by Chavistas students.

OK so you agree that this movement since its beginning has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors.

And you proudly say that when the students call for dialog on these issues the Chavist students defeat these appeals? I&#39;m lost here dude.


I don&#39;t think a workers movements would have those slogans. They would not uphold RCTV&#39;s property rights, they would not support a crackdown against themselves under the disguise of "fight against criminality", nor they would make ridiculous, abstract points like "end of poverty" or "a better world". They would, like, demand better wages, less working hours, voice in political issues, freedom to organise themselves in the factories and neighbourhoods. They would, probably, occupy factories abandoned by their bourgeois owners. You know, those demands and actions that have characterised working class movement for almost two centuries now.


Some history of the slogans workers have made. Remember 1905? Lenin wrote:

Thousands of workers - not Social-Democrats, but loyal God-fearing subjects - led by the priest Gapon, streamed from all parts of the capital to its centre, to the square in front of the Winter Palace, to submit a petition to the Tsar. The workers carried icons. In a letter to the Tsar, their then leader, Gapon, had guaranteed his personal safety and asked him to appear before the people

Soon after that they made the bourgeoisie tremble. I don&#39;t emphsise slogans, but about the autonomy of the struggle, it&#39;s terrain, its dynamic.


That&#39;s again a fantasy. The Venezolan workers are much ahead of the students, when it comes to the "terrain" of their struggle. Or how many universities have the students occupied?

Well maybe if a university were abandoned the students would occupy it. :P

Seriously though, if the workers were so far ahead of the students they would have created organizations like AG&#39;s. The occupation of abandoned factories can easily be incorporated into "Bolivarian" state-capitalism. I&#39;m hoping the workers will be inspired by the students in their future struggles against the Chavists and the opposition.

[Alf]

The basic problem with discussing the nature of the student movement in Venezuela is that the supporters of Chavism begin from a position that any resistance to the present government must necessarily be a tool of the right wing opposition and US imperialism. That’s logical if you think that Chavez is instituting a form of workers’ power or socialism. From this starting point, the ‘terrain of the working class’ is precisely the terrain of the existing regime and state, which must be defended against all attempts to subvert it. Most of the people who have posted on this thread criticising Leo, Alibadani and Devrim explicitly take up this point of view. With the exception of the main protagonist, Luis Henrique, who claims that he doesn’t support Chavez. He characterises the regime as “Bonapartist”. But he does seem to argue that the Chavez regime offers a space for workers to organise that would be totally denied if the right wing stages a successful coup.

“My position is, the Chavez government works within the limits of bourgeois ideology; its program is delusional. They have not support of any significant sector, layer, or fraction of the Venezolan bourgeoisie. But under Chavez&#39;s regime, there is significant freedom of expression and organisation for the popular classes, the workers, the peasants, students, etc. Under an "oppositionist" regime, those freedoms would be immediately taken back, and the reunified Venezolan bourgeoisie would unleash a brutal counteroffensive against the workers and their allies”.

Hence the extremely ambiguous statements about where he would stand in the event of coup:

“So you let the Chavistas and the "oppositionists" battle each other without taking sides?”

“Of course we have no sides in such battle, but we must strike, as violently as possible, against the one that is closer. How do you do that in a civil war?”

The theory of Bonapartism, of a regime ‘suspended’ above the bourgeoisie yet not bourgeois, elaborated by Marx in a different period of history when the bourgeoisie had not yet established its definitive domination over society, makes little sense in today’s period when the bourgeoisie rules the entire planet. On the other hand it has been used by Trotskyists many times to give ‘critical’ support to capitalist regimes (such as Egypt under Nasser) and their alleged ‘anti-imperialist’ actions.

In this case, Luis sees a “benign” Bonpartism in which there is “significant freedom of expression and organisation for the popular classes”. Thus it would appear entirely logical for him to defend this regime in the event of a right wing coup. We thus end up with a sophisticated defence of the regime, but a defence nevertheless.

In our view, the Chavez regime, far from permitting “significant freedom of expression and organisation for the popular classes, the workers, peasants, students etc” is an expression of totalitarian state capitalism, which uses the so-called popular forms of organisation (“communal councils” etc) to recuperate the real discontent of the proletariat and other oppressed strata and tie their struggles to the state.

Our comrades in Venezuela thus saw the assemblies that arose in the student movement as significant because they were not state-sponsored organs and because the students had raised the perspective of organisational forms that were controlled neither by the bourgeois government nor by the bourgeois opposition. This is important because there is a desperate need for independent forms of organisation among the waged workers, in the barrios etc – forms that will enable the proletarians to defend their class interests against the demands of the national economy and the state. And there is no doubt that if such demands are raised, if the sectors at the heart of the proletariat go on strike to defend these demands, they will be denounced by the Chavez regime and all its international supporters as counter-revolutionary, as expressions of a privileged layer, etc.

Luis Henrique poses the question of the Chilean experience and it is indeed relevant. Yes, the truck drivers ‘strike’ (an action by truck owners, not proletarians) was strongly manipulated by the CIA. But this was not at all the case with the copper miners’ strikes, even if the bourgeois opposition to Allende tried to jump on that bandwagon too. These were real struggles for real class demands. But because they broke out in reaction to the attacks of a ‘marxist’ government allegedly introducing ‘socialism’, the copper miners were attacked by the entire Chilean and international ‘left’ as a privileged layer, even as agents of fascism, who refused to make patriotic sacrifices in the name of building socialism. As Richard Gott – a faithful cheerleader for the capitalist left in Latin America - put it at the time:

"The prolonged strike at El Teniente earlier this year was a contributory factor to the atmosphere that permitted Allende&#39;s downfall ….Any government that really wanted to do something for the poorest section of Chilean society would inevitably have looked unfavourably on the wage demands of such a privileged group as the copper miners" (The Guardian, 1.10.73)” (see http://en.internationalism.org/wr/268_chile.htm ).

Neither the ICC article, nor the posters who have defended the ICC’s reputation against the slander that it is in favour of a right wing coup in Venezuela today, or is simply ‘playing the game’ of the right, have denied that the right wing opposition is seeking to use the student movement for its own ends, to recuperate it. Neither am I currently in a position to judge how far these efforts have succeeded. But the claims that it was from the start nothing but a front for the opposition, that it expresses the class interests of a privileged layer etc, need to be approached with caution when they come from people who are poorly judged to evaluate the independence of a social movement for the simple reason that they are committed, more or less openly, to defending a ‘really existing’ bourgeois state apparatus.

[Leo]

Let&#39;s make that clear, Democrats don&#39;t battle Republicans. Lately, not even in parliamentary "battles".

Of course they do, well some of them at least, "anti-war" democrats, "labor" democrats and such. And of course the Republicans battle Democrats too, quite harshly in fact.


No, I wouldn&#39;t "let them battle". That&#39;s the point. Of course we have no sides in such battle, but we must strike, as violently as possible, against the one that is closer.

We internationally strike against both, both are closer, the working class is international - we don&#39;t support the imperialism which is far from the country where we are as individual militants.


Renouncing the American market for the Cuban or Iranian market?

That&#39;s the key: they are not renouncing the American market, they are selling oil to the American market.

No capitalist country can escape being a part of world imperialism.

Unfortunately the most interesting question was left unanswered: Would you let Pompei battle Caesar without taking sides if you are a slave?

[beltov]

Hi,

Just to briefly support the posts made by Devrim, Leo, Alibadani - and now Alf.

First, it&#39;s important to start from the international perspective. Venezuela is capitalist because the whole world is capitalist. ALL states are capitalist and imperialist in one form or another - including China, Cuba, North Korea etc. etc. There can&#39;t be islands of socialism/communism. The &#39;socialist&#39; or &#39;communist&#39; countries were always and continue to be state-capitalist entities and absolutely nothing to do with socialism/ communism.

Second, it&#39;s necessary to break with the politics of the &#39;lesser evil&#39;. Chavez and the Opposition are both bourgeois. The working class has no interest in supporting either side so must break with this false alternative. This is what the student movement in Venezuela is beginning to express. The whole bourgeoisie - all factions - must be overthrown, everywhere. Ouside of the &#39;left&#39; and &#39;right&#39; camps there is a &#39;third&#39; camp - the struggle of the working class in defence of its living and working conditions&#33;

Third, the dangers in the current situation must not be underestimated: the potential for regional war/conflict, military build-up, regional economic instability, oil. This is indeed a very &#39;flammable&#39; mixture. Chavez is aiming to strengthen national unity. In a regional war he would call for the defence of the &#39;socialist motherland&#39; which would be a bloodbath for the working class and the rest of the population. The working class must struggle against nationalism, for internationalism and the class war.

B.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 12:49 pm
Hence the extremely ambiguous statements about where he would stand in the event of coup:
There&#39;s no ambiguity. We have the duty to defend ourselves from the total repression that would ensue a coup. If the regime is willing to defend itself, there is no way to avoid a united front to happen, in practice. If the regime would have already come to the point that it is no longer able to defend itself, because its class origins are in conflict with the measures that must be taken to ensure its own existence - then we will fight alone against the reaction, and the regime will fall. To what side, it depends on the result of the struggle.


In our view, the Chavez regime, far from permitting “significant freedom of expression and organisation for the popular classes, the workers, peasants, students etc” is an expression of totalitarian state capitalism, which uses the so-called popular forms of organisation (“communal councils” etc) to recuperate the real discontent of the proletariat and other oppressed strata and tie their struggles to the state.

The problem with such analysis is that it does not match the known facts.


Our comrades in Venezuela thus saw the assemblies that arose in the student movement as significant because they were not state-sponsored organs

They are "sponsored" by the university bureaucracy, which is, yes, a State organ.


and because the students had raised the perspective of organisational forms that were controlled neither by the bourgeois government nor by the bourgeois opposition.

That&#39;s not true, their organisational forms are strictly within the bourgeois "terrain".


And there is no doubt that if such demands are raised, if the sectors at the heart of the proletariat go on strike to defend these demands, they will be denounced by the Chavez regime and all its international supporters as counter-revolutionary, as expressions of a privileged layer, etc.

Possibly. Probably, even. But let&#39;s make it clear: that&#39;s not what is happening now, concerning this movement.


Luis Henrique poses the question of the Chilean experience and it is indeed relevant. Yes, the truck drivers ‘strike’ (an action by truck owners, not proletarians) was strongly manipulated by the CIA.

Exactly. The truck drivers were not proletarians, but petty bourgeois who owned the trucks they drove.


But this was not at all the case with the copper miners’ strikes, even if the bourgeois opposition to Allende tried to jump on that bandwagon too.

Certainly. That&#39;s the reason the bourgeoisie could not manipulate them except to the extent of saying, "see? there is discontent there, too&#33;"


These were real struggles for real class demands.

And not for the reinstatement of bourgeois property rights, not for a policiac crackdown under the disguise of fight against criminality, not for "the end of poverty", not "for a better world". For improved working conditions, for higher wages, for shorter working hours, for freedom of proletarian organisation. For proletarian demands, organised by proletarians, not by stooges finance by the CIA.


But because they broke out in reaction to the attacks of a ‘marxist’ government allegedly introducing ‘socialism’, the copper miners were attacked by the entire Chilean and international ‘left’ as a privileged layer, even as agents of fascism, who refused to make patriotic sacrifices in the name of building socialism.

Which much was a reenactment of events of Spanish Civil War.

But those workers distanced effectively from the opposition from the start. They never said "neither Allende nor the golpistas. They said, the regime has to go further in order to be able to defend itself. They did not pose their struggle as a political struggle against the government, not even under the silly petty bourgeois disguise, or delusion, of being "against both". They standed in the vanguard of the process the Chilean government was nominally committed too, not in some comfortable middle ground.


But the claims that it was from the start nothing but a front for the opposition, that it expresses the class interests of a privileged layer etc, need to be approached with caution when they come from people who are poorly judged to evaluate the independence of a social movement for the simple reason that they are committed, more or less openly, to defending a ‘really existing’ bourgeois state apparatus.

Lenin had a phrase that I don&#39;t like - proletarian instinct. Redstar2000 once said that he was almost able to "smell" reformists. And I don&#39;t like the phrase either. But, instinct or odour, there are some things that a revolutionary should be able to recognise at a glance. The reactionary nature of the "White Hands" movement is one of them. The class origin of its members (who aren&#39;t well paid miners, but bureaucrats, managers, organic bourgeois intellectuals), the class nature of their demands, which are utterly unrelated to anything proletarian, the class nature of their political links - the political right, the American Embassy, bourgeois NGOs, the universitary bureaucracy, the right-wing press -, even the "terrain" they prefer - speeches to bourgeois political clubs, "teaching the workers", marches al palacio del gobierno, quibbling through the bourgeois press and blogs, etc... all this screams "bourgeois reaction".

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 09, 2007 01:42 pm
And of course the Republicans battle Democrats too, quite harshly in fact.
Yes, but it is an one-sided struggle. The democrats don&#39;t fight back. And, of course, it is all parliamentary fight, not real struggle.


We internationally strike against both, both are closer, the working class is international - we don&#39;t support the imperialism which is far from the country where we are as individual militants.

No, that&#39;s not an internationalist position. Indeed, it is a position that will lead sooner or later to defensism.

If Brazil was to go to war against Argentina, my duty is not to fight the Argentinian bourgeoisie, it is to fight against the Brazilian bourgeoisie. It is false to say that I would "fight both"; it is materially impossible, and would leave as only consequent option not to fight against the Brazilian bourgeoisie, to avoid "taking the side" of the Argentinians. I have to fight against the Brazilian bourgeoisie; fighting against the Argentinian bourgeoisie is a task of Argentinian workers.

What cannot be done (and the left has done more than once) is to hope that the bourgeoisie in the other side would perform our tasks for us - like we saw in the case of part of the British left, who instead of actively opposing the war, instead sat to cheerleader the Argentinians, in the hope that Videla and his cronies would defeat the British bourgeoisie for them...


That&#39;s the key: they are not renouncing the American market, they are selling oil to the American market.

Certainly. But that&#39;s not the Chavista fantasy; the Chavista fantasy is to industrialise Venezuela, to have Venezuela selling cars and computers. That is not possible.


No capitalist country can escape being a part of world imperialism.

No, they can&#39;t. Their position within it, however, widely varies.


Unfortunately the most interesting question was left unanswered: Would you let Pompei battle Caesar without taking sides if you are a slave?

It seems to me a totally uninteresting question, totally unrelated to our problems. We are proletarians, not slaves, our struggles take completely different forms.

But if you really wish an answer, I would stab whomever of the two happened to be my master. I wouldn&#39;t "oppose both" and fail to take care of my own master because the other asshole wasn&#39;t at hand to be duly pierced.

Luís Henrique

[Marion]

Originally posted by Luís [email protected] 09, 2007 04:28 pm
If Brazil was to go to war against Argentina, my duty is not to fight the Argentinian bourgeoisie, it is to fight against the Brazilian bourgeoisie. It is false to say that I would "fight both"; it is materially impossible, and would leave as only consequent option not to fight against the Brazilian bourgeoisie, to avoid "taking the side" of the Argentinians. I have to fight against the Brazilian bourgeoisie; fighting against the Argentinian bourgeoisie is a task of Argentinian workers.
Why is it materially impossible to fight simultaneously the Argentinian and Brazilian bourgeoisie? Why could you not be involved in, say, propaganda calling for fraternisation of workers in both countries in a united struggle against both bourgeoisies and against the war? It may well be a more difficult position to take, and certainly wouldn&#39;t be particularly popular at the moment, but why don&#39;t you consider it as an option?

[ern]

Luis thank you for your unambigious statement

There&#39;s no ambiguity. We have the duty to defend ourselves from the total repression that would ensue a coup. If the regime is willing to defend itself, there is no way to avoid a united front to happen, in practice. If the regime would have already come to the point that it is no longer able to defend itself, because its class origins are in conflict with the measures that must be taken to ensure its own existence - then we will fight alone against the reaction, and the regime will fall. To what side, it depends on the result of the struggle.

The proletariat of Venezuela should die defending their exploiters.

You will reply that Chavez and his fraction of the Venezuelan state are not exploiters or rather they are exploiters with good -but unrealistic- intentions. For you, as with the Left in general, the bourgeoisie are businessmen, men in bowler hats. For Marxists the bourgeoisie is the class that exploits the working class be it throw &#39;free enterprise&#39; or state capitalism. Chavez and his fraction are the front of that part of the exploiting class in Venezuela who see greater state control as being the most effective way for the national capital to defend itself, to exploit the working class and to best spread illusions in the capitalist state as being the defender of the poor.

You will ask what do you mean by Chavez and his cronies being part of the state? This is what we (the ICC) mean: the military, the managers of the state, the deputies, the Left. Or may be we are being we are being plain stupid in believing the military and the state is part of the bourgeoisie? Or on the other hand, may be Chavezismo has changed the nature of the bourgeois state?

Luis you are very vehement in your condemnation of the student movement but where are you getting your information?

On the student movement, as others have pointed out, the article throughout warns about the danger of the potential of this movement being absorbed by the opposition. The article also warns about the way the official student bodies and even the university authorities have tried to hijack the movement. It also constantly warns of the danger of the influence of the democratic slogans. However, it shows that the base of the movement were the assemblies and the efforts to extend these into the barrioes etc.

As another poster has pointed out your denunciation of this movement as being in the pay of the CIA, it not only wrong but serves as a justification for the use of repression now and in the future. As it is you have remained silent about the attacks carried out against the students mentioned in the article: but the logic of your argument (even if you do not follow it) is that because it is funded by the CIA then it is a danger to the regime and thus it is fair enough to use repression against it.

Luis, what is your opinion of Chavez&#39;s imperialist ambitions? His building up of anti-American alliances, his relations with Cuba, Iran etc. Is this not the defence of the national interest, but instead of being pro-US as the previous government were, his fraction sees the nations best interests being served through being anti-US. What do you think

Luis you have still not responded to Devrim post on the reality of the Chavez&#39;s attack on the working class, are you planning to?

[ern]

Marion, an excellent question.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 04:55 pm
Why is it materially impossible to fight simultaneously the Argentinian and Brazilian bourgeoisie??
Because, from Brazil, the only way to fight the Argentinian army is through the Brazilian army. That&#39;s how an "oppose both" position translates into patriotic defensism.


Why could you not be involved in, say, propaganda calling for fraternisation of workers in both countries in a united struggle against both bourgeoisies and against the war?

I am not talking about propaganda, I am talking about mutiny.


It may well be a more difficult position to take, and certainly wouldn&#39;t be particularly popular at the moment, but why don&#39;t you consider it as an option

Our bullets are for our generals. The generals on the other side must be taken care by the soldiers on the other side.

Luís Henrique

[ern]

At the beginning of the discussion CompaneroDeLibertad raised the question of the way that Walesa and Solidarnoce were supported by the West and the CIA. This was the typical refrain of the Stalinist when faced with the Mass Strike in 1980 i.e., to conflate the mass strike with Solidarity and Walesa. The ICC at the time constantly underlined that the Solidarity union supported and advised by the unions in the West. However, this was done with the collaboration of the Polish state -which gratefully received the advise and support of their class brothers in the West- which like the bourgeoisie in the West was greatly disturbed by the mass strike that broke out in Poland BEFORE Solidarity was formed. This struggle came at the same time as the imperialist tensions were at a high point with the USSR invasion of Afghanistan, and showed that there was a proletarian answer to this. This movement had to be stopped because it posed the possibility of the movement spreading beyond Poland and demonstrated to the workers of the world that the working class could organise its own massive movement.
Faced with this the Stalinist resorted to their usual denunciation of workers struggles as being inspired by the West (sounds familiar does is not&#33;), whilst letting the Evil west organise the union body that was needed to first contain the movement that had spread all over Poland and then to prepare the ground for its repression by the state.
The ability of the bourgeoisie East and West to impose the solidarity union onto this movement obviously could only take place because workers had illusions in the idea of free trade unions, democracy and religion but that does not change the proletarian nature of the movement. A movement which in the matter of weeks saw workers uniting their mass assemblies on a national level and forcing the state to negotiate with them. It saw the working class demanding that all negotiations with the state were broadcast to the mass assemblies around the country.
The Student movement was not the same as a mass strike, but its efforts to distance itself from the Chavists and the opposition, the mass assembles, its demands about poverty, unemployment etc and its willingness to take its discussions into the barrios etc, all showed, as others have rightly said, that this was not some movement controlled by the Opposition by an expression of a growing discontent with the Chavez government.

[Leo]

Because, from Brazil, the only way to fight the Argentinian army is through the Brazilian army.

You are thinking like an individual, not like a militant of a communist organization (and you are not in an organization anyway, right?). A communist organization is necessarily international, being organized in Argentina and Brazil, it will be ultimately against both bourgeoisies. In this specific case, without the working class opposition to war in Argentina, there can&#39;t be a strong working class opposition to war in Brazil and of course it is true for the working class opposition in Argentina. The proletarian opposition to war can only grow jointly, the working class is international.



Why could you not be involved in, say, propaganda calling for fraternisation of workers in both countries in a united struggle against both bourgeoisies and against the war?I am not talking about propaganda, I am talking about mutiny.

Without the fraternization of workers in both countries in a united struggle against both bourgeoisies and against the war there can be no mutiny.


It seems to me a totally uninteresting question, totally unrelated to our problems. We are proletarians, not slaves, our struggles take completely different forms.

But if you really wish an answer, I would stab whomever of the two happened to be my master. I wouldn&#39;t "oppose both" and fail to take care of my own master because the other asshole wasn&#39;t at hand to be duly pierced.

So you think slaves should have individually stabbed their masters instead of creating slave rebellions?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 06:37 pm
The proletariat of Venezuela should die defending their exploiters.
Your conclusion is totally false. The proletariat of Venezuela should fight for its freedom. Whether some of its class enemies are willing to join this fight out or their own reasons, is immaterial.


You will reply that Chavez and his fraction of the Venezuelan state are not exploiters or rather they are exploiters with good -but unrealistic- intentions.

No.

You people in the ultra-left have not gone to Hogwarts. Why do you insist in attempting to predict my future or to read my mind.

I am going to reply - again - that Chavez&#39;s regime allows for a level of self-expression of the exploited that a escuálido regime would never allow. And that level of freedom must be defended. It has nothing to do with the "intentions" of Chavez - on the contrary or you, I don&#39;t read minds. It has to do with the system of forces that support Chavez government. If he was to unleash a general crackdown on proletarian organisations, he would fall - no longer having support from below, he would be toppled from above, by the bourgeoisie, who prefers its own personal to do such task.


For you, as with the Left in general, the bourgeoisie are those businessmen, men in bowler hats.

No, but I am becoming convinced that you in the "ultra-left" use pointed hats, and gowns decorated with stars and half-moons. If you don&#39;t, please stop trying to read other people&#39;s minds.


Luis you are very vehement in your condemnation of the student movement but where are you getting your information?

From the internet. From their own blogs. From the right-wing media in Venezuela.

But, really, what kind of information is needed to understand the class nature of an upper middle class movement that states they are "apolitical" and "oppose both" (and yet, also, that they "luchamos contra lo que és, no contra lo que fué" - they fight against what is, not against what was, ie, the fight against Chavismo - that is - not against the opposition - that was), who insist in being above classes ("Venezuela, ahora sí, es de todos"), who demand the reinstatement of corporate right properties, who demand law and order (against criminality), who carefully distance from the working class - "we are not socialists" - who are in alliance with the university bureaucracy, whose leaders have been politically trained by a CIA front?


However, it shows that the base of the movement were the assemblies and the efforts to extend these into the barrioes etc.

The base of the movement are its demands, and the specifical grievance those students have - the shutdown of RCTV, and the feared loss of autonomy of the universities. Assemblies are a form, not the base of anything. And you are clearly mythifying those assemblies. There is nothing to substantiate the claim that they are anything else than ordinary meetings in which the leaders get mass approval for their proposals. There is no sence in saying there is an effort to extend them to the barrios. Their platform has no appeal to the workers in the barrios. The assemblies are called by the students organisations, and the calls are directed to the students, not to the people at large (which would result in them, obvioulsy, loosing control of the whole thing).


As another poster has pointed out your denunciation of this movement as being in the pay of the CIA, it not only wrong but serves as a justification for the use of repression now and in the future.

That denunciation is not wrong. They are in the pay of the CIA.


Luis, what is your opinion of Chavez&#39;s imperialist ambitions? His building up of anti-American alliances, his relations with Cuba, Iran etc.

That your concept of imperialism is clearly flawed.


Luis you have still not responded to Devrim post on the reality of the Chavez&#39;s attack on the working class, are you planning to?

I have already responded to that. Capital always wages war against the working class, independently of regime. The issue is, how do Chavez policies actively help such attacks? And to that question, I still have no answer.

Luís Henrique

[ern]

Luis, you appear to think that by working for the closed TV channel the workers were somehow taking sides and deserve to be made unemployed because they helped to broad cast the message of the opposition, am I right in thinking this?

[Leo]

Your conclusion is totally false. The proletariat of Venezuela should fight for its freedom. Whether some of its class enemies are willing to join this fight out or their own reasons, is immaterial.

This is the key: it&#39;s class enemies are not joining proletarians "fighting for their freedom". Instead, proletarians are joining some of it&#39;s class enemies against another class enemies.

[Andy Bowden]

I asked this earlier and didn&#39;t get an answer, have any RCTV workers actually been laid off?

RCTVs licence to broadcast on public airwaves was revoked, and much of their equipment was taken to set up TVes. Chavez has encouraged RCTV workers to join TVes, while RCTV continues to broadcast on cable.

So, surely RCTV workers now still work for TVes or continue to work for RCTV that broadcasts on cable?

[ern]

Luis, you will find a very detailed analysis of the way in which the Venezuelan state is attacking the working class here Chavismo (http://http://es.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/197)


You say


Your conclusion is totally false. The proletariat of Venezuela should fight for its freedom. Whether some of its class enemies are willing to join this fight out or their own reasons, is immaterial

For you the Chavez state capitalist regime is helping the proletariat fight for its freedom through giving its more freedom, so the proletariat should side with the military, the police and the rest of the state apparatus. Just how is this regime any different from them the democratic one the came before it? What proletarian organisations have a better time of it under Chavez?


For you, as with the Left in general, the bourgeoisie are those businessmen, men in bowler hats.
No, but I am becoming convinced that you in the "ultra-left" use pointed hats, and gowns decorated with stars and half-moons. If you don&#39;t, please stop trying to read other people&#39;s minds.


Luis this is meaningless and an avoidance. Do you think that the military, the state manager etc are part of the bourgeoisie or not, and if not why not? It is a simply question. It needs answering because it is at the very heart of this discussion,

In relation to the mass assemblies you sweep aside the carefully argued analysis of the initial article:

Assemblies are a form, not the base of anything. And you are clearly mythifying those assemblies. There is nothing to substantiate the claim that they are anything else than ordinary meetings in which the leaders get mass approval for their proposals.

So our section in Venezuela simply plucked its understanding out of thin air then?

As for
the feared loss of autonomy of the universities you would do well to read our article where we make clear that such claims whilst having a weight in the movement has been most promoted by the official student bodies and has weakened the movement. This is what we say:

The struggle for the "autonomy of the universities" is another expression of these democratic illusions. It is an old demand of the university milieu which defends the idea that these institutions can be free of state intervention, ignoring the fact that universities and educational institutions are the main means for transmitting the ideology of the ruling class (whether of the left or right) to new generations and for training cadre for the maintaining of this order. This slogan, mainly put forward by the student federations and university authorities, tries to imprison the emerging struggle within the four walls of the universities, isolating it from the whole of society

Luis, could you expand more on how our analysis of imperialism is flawed? This is probably another important element to understanding the real differences between your critical defence of the Venezuelan state apparatus and our denounciation of said state and WHOLE of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie.

Also in order to keep the discussion as clear as possible it would be well worth reminding those reading this thread of the conclusion of the article

This student movement, which we salute and support, has the great virtue of trying to break with the vicious and poisonous circle of polarisation, through putting forward dialogue and discussion through assemblies that decide what to discussion and in what conditions. This is a gain for the students, for the workers and for society as a whole, since it strengthens the real ties of social solidarity.

However it would be illusory to think that the students&#39; struggle, no matter how brave and courageous it has been, is going to change the present state of things. This movement will truly bear fruit if it can lead to the spreading of the proletarian elements that it contains not only to the barrios, but even more importantly to the workers in the factories and in the private and public enterprises. This cannot be done through the unions and political parties, but only by inviting workers from all sectors and the unemployed to participate in the assemblies. In this way workers will be able to see the proletarian vein running through the movement. At the same time this will stimulate reflection and also the struggle of the proletariat, whose actions are indispensable for confronting the state and being able to attack the root causes of the barbarity in which we live - the capitalist system of exploitation - and to implement real socialism based on the power of the workers&#39; councils. However, if it were to stay an ephemeral movement, subsumed in the inter-bourgeois struggle, it will be crushed.

The most advanced participants in the movement need to try to regroup in discussion circles, in order to be able to draw a balance sheet of the movement up to now and search for ways to strengthen the proletarian elements of the movement which though still at an embryonic state, are being deepened because they arise from the worsening of the economic and social crisis.

Independently of the future of this movement, something very important for the future of the class struggle has occurred: the opening up of a process of reflection and discussion.

For us Chavez has not opened up the ability for the proletariat to discuss but has, along with the rest of the bourgeoisie i.e., the Opposition, used the divisions in the bourgeoisie to try and stop workers seeing their own interests and instead thinking they have to side with one or the other fraction. As the article shows this polarisation has had an important impact on the proletariat and society. Thus the student movements effort to separate itself from this polarisation and to try and push for discussion within society -no matter its weaknesses- has to be seen as something very important. Unless one thinks that the polarisation of the proletariat and society around support for this or that fraction of the ruling class is somehow increasing the political freedom of the proletariat.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 09, 2007 07:15 pm

Because, from Brazil, the only way to fight the Argentinian army is through the Brazilian army.

You are thinking like an individual, not like a militant of a communist organization (and you are not in an organization anyway, right?).
Of course I am in an organisation. People who are not in organisations are not communists.

But, hey, weren&#39;t you who asked about a slave and Caesar and Pompaeus?


A communist organization is necessarily international, being organized in Argentina and Brazil,

Yes, but it happens that while we have an organisation here, we might have no organisation there. Or the other way round. Or we could succeed in toppling our bourgeois here, and they fail there. Or the other way round. So?


The proletarian opposition to war can only grow jointly, the working class is international.

But its organisation and ability to fight varies from country to country.


Without the fraternization of workers in both countries in a united struggle against both bourgeoisies and against the war there can be no mutiny.

Well, the example of 1917 says otherwise.


So you think slaves should have individually stabbed their masters instead of creating slave rebellions?

Yes, certainly. That&#39;s one important difference between their struggle and ours. They didn&#39;t have the time and means to organise. Their resistence should be expressed as soon as possible, through flights and individual actions against the masters.

But this was long ago. Our struggle is of a different nature.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 07:47 pm
So our section in Venezuela simply plucked its understanding out of thin air then?
More likely, they are giving you overoptimistic reports out of internal issues (exagerating the importance of their national section, giving them a more revolutionary status, etc).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 07:20 pm
Luis, you appear to think that by working for the closed TV channel the workers were somehow taking sides and deserve to be made unemployed because they helped to broad cast the message of the opposition, am I right in thinking this?
I have already asked, "which workers?"

With the degree of outsourcing that is a norm these days, I don&#39;t think RCTV had many employees that were less than, say, cameramen or continuity editors. Hardly people who would be left to starve because the company they worked for closed.

But perhaps you have some data? Perhaps you can tell us what kind of workers they are? Perhaps you have contacted some organisation of those former RCTV workers? Perhaps there is something that resembles proletarian class struggle from there? Can you please point to that? Otherwise it is what it seems to be. Demagoguery from right wingers trying to appear as leftists.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 07:47 pm
Luis, you will find a very detailed analysis of the way in which the Venezuelan state is attacking the working class here Chavismo (http://http://es.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/197)
I can&#39;t open that page.


Luis this is meaningless and an avoidance. Do you think that the military, the state manager etc are part of the bourgeoisie or not, and if not why not? It is a simply question. It needs answering because it is at the very heart of this discussion,


Of course their top is part of the bourgeoisie, what an idea.

Listen, social classes are social classes, not abstract juridical relations to the means of productions. Does the daughter of the general marry the banker or the welder? Generals are members of the bourgeoisie.



The struggle for the "autonomy of the universities" is another expression of these democratic illusions. It is an old demand of the university milieu which defends the idea that these institutions can be free of state intervention, ignoring the fact that universities and educational institutions are the main means for transmitting the ideology of the ruling class (whether of the left or right) to new generations and for training cadre for the maintaining of this order. This slogan, mainly put forward by the student federations and university authorities, tries to imprison the emerging struggle within the four walls of the universities, isolating it from the whole of society

You strip the movement off any of its real issues - the people in it and their class origin, their demands and their class nature, their tactics, their relationship with the other forces in struggle, and want that the central issue are those phantomatic assemblies. Assemblies are not of itself revolutionary, they are commonplace events in the life of any reformist union or comformist Centro Estudiantil. As long as the top does not lose control over them - which seems far from being even suspected within this movement - they are as revolutionary as the Rotary Club or your local Episcopalian Church.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

But, hey, weren&#39;t you who asked about a slave and Caesar and Pompaeus?

I meant a slave as a part of the general slave population.


Yes, but it happens that while we have an organisation here, we might have no organisation there. Or the other way round. Or we could succeed in toppling our bourgeois here, and they fail there. Or the other way round. So?


Except, if you are internationally so weak that you don&#39;t have an organization in countries as big as Argentina and Brazil, it is materially impossible for you to be strong enough to actually succeed in toppling the bourgeoisie in the other country - this is a material fact.


But its organisation and ability to fight varies from country to country.

Yeah, but not that much.


Well, the example of 1917 says otherwise.

No it doesn&#39;t, it exactly proves my point: there was a very strong revolutionary opposition to war not only in Russia but in all Europe, especially in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland and to a lesser extent in France and Britain. What I say doesn&#39;t mean that revolutions are going to take place at the exact same second but the revolutionary wave of the working class is, and has to be international, and when it falls down it falls down internationally.


Yes, certainly.

History proves otherwise.


they are giving you overoptimistic reports out of internal issues (exagerating the importance of their national section, giving them a more revolutionary status, etc).

That is quite an heavy and a completely baseless accusation. I&#39;m only going to say as someone who isn&#39;t in the ICC who met the Venezuelan comrades that it isn&#39;t so.

[al-Ibadani]

Of course their top is part of the bourgeoisie, what an idea.

The point Luis, is that this is precisely the part of the bourgeoisie represented by Chavez. As a retort to your claim that no significant faction of the bourgeoisie is Chavist.

Luis, I&#39;m assuming (not reading minds) that the personal freedoms you see in Venezuela are more than the ordinary democratic freedoms. It is all the "participatory democracy" stuff which you really seem to like, especially the occupied abandoned factories, but I&#39;m guessing also the communal councils etc. Since these were permitted, even encouraged by Chavez&#39;s faction of the ruling class (let us reaffirm who these folks are: military brass, left Mp&#39;s, police, technocrats, and yes, a few guys is bowler hats) then workers ought to ally themselves with these folks (a quick reminder of who they are: military brass, left MP&#39;s, police... :rolleyes: ) to oppose a potential coup by the CIA-backed fraction of the bourgeoisie, who would presumably crack down on all those freedoms.

Do you believe the aforementioned elements are interested in increased space for workers&#39; self organization? Or is it better to conclude that their support for the "participatory democarcy" stuff is to better tie the workers to their ultimate exploiter, the state?



they are as revolutionary as the Rotary Club or your local Episcopalian Church.

Well its too bad you can&#39;t distinguish between the Rotary Club and "assembles where they can discuss, elect commissions and decide upon what actions to carry out"

It ain&#39;t revolutionary. That never was the claim.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 09, 2007 09:30 pm
Except, if you are internationally so weak that you don&#39;t have an organization in countries as big as Argentina and Brazil, it is materially impossible for you to be strong enough to actually succeed in toppling the bourgeoisie in the other country - this is a material fact.
But not being strong enough to do it doesn&#39;t mean that you haven&#39;t to attempt it. Your soldiers organisations, in either country, cannot join soldiers from both countries. And your soldiers organisations in each country have to try to organise mutinies in the army they are in first place.

Also, being strong enough to topple the bourgeoisie doesn&#39;t mean you will be effectively able to do so. You may succeed in one country (Russia) and fail in others (Germany, Italy).


No it doesn&#39;t, it exactly proves my point: there was a very strong revolutionary opposition to war not only in Russia but in all Europe, especially in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Finland and to a lesser extent in France and Britain. What I say doesn&#39;t mean that revolutions are going to take place at the exact same second but the revolutionary wave of the working class is, and has to be international, and when it falls down it falls down internationally.

To put it correctly, especially in Germany and Hungary; to a lesser extent, in Italy and France; and to much lesser extent, in Britain. And to an even lesser extent in the United States.

But yes, the revolution must be international. What we can&#39;t do is to wait that the conditions mature in all countries. We must be able to work within the frame of the State we are in, or there will be no pieces to build the puzzle.


History proves otherwise.

Yes, there have been important slave rebellions in Ancient Rome - most, if not all, linked to a phenomenon that&#39;s not structural to slavery: the gladiatorii. Those happened to have access to weapons, and, due to the nature of their "work", to be relatively protected from arbitrary punishments by the masters (the Roman equivalent of MIM would have characterised them as parasitical members of a slave aristocracy...). For the common slave, however, the usual choice was death under torture or life under torture. The lesser evil being to be able to bring a few masters together in your journey to hell.


That is quite an heavy and a completely baseless accusation.

Well, I was asked, and I answered. Would you prefer me to lie, and say that I have no opinion on that?

If by "baseless" you mean that I don&#39;t know enough about that specifical organisation to claim it, you are right. That&#39;s why I wrote, "more likely". But I don&#39;t think it is baseless in a broader sence - I have seen such behaviour before, in other leftist organisations, and it is a common reason why unrealistic reports are spread. It is a nasty thing, even dangerous, and I really don&#39;t have a formula to avoid it. Perhaps you have? Do you know how to prevent it?

Besides, the alternative causes that I can imagine for the Venezolan section of the ICC being so absurdly wrong are much worse than that. With the possible exception of "inexperience, combined with a theoretical apparatus that doesn&#39;t make them able to distinguish between friend and foe", they are all really slanderous.


I&#39;m only going to say as someone who isn&#39;t in the ICC who met the Venezuelan comrades that it isn&#39;t so.

That&#39;s your opinion, and you are entitled to it. As we possibly cannot discuss the details, out of safety considerations, I will keep my own opinion, until more facts prove that I am wrong.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 09, 2007 10:00 pm
The point Luis, is that this is precisely the part of the bourgeoisie represented by Chavez. As a retort to your claim that no significant faction of the bourgeoisie is Chavist.
I see. The fact that they are part of the bourgeoisie doesn&#39;t make them a sector of the bourgeoisie, with specifical interests that conflict with other sector. The State apparatus is meant to be representative of the bourgeoisie, not independent or opposed to it.

Unless... unless we are talking about some kind of bonapartism, isn&#39;t it? When the State apparatus takes in its hands to represent the general interests of the bourgeoisie, against the various partial, factional interests.


Luis, I&#39;m assuming (not reading minds) that the personal freedoms you see in Venezuela are more than the ordinary democratic freedoms.

They seem to be, yes. Not of a qualitatively difference, just larger than in other bourgeois democracies.


It is all the "participatory democracy" stuff which you really seem to like,

Really, quit trying to guess me. You are systematically failing. No, I don&#39;t "like" this participatory democracy bullshit.


especially the occupied abandoned factories,

The occupation of factories, whether abandoned or not, brings into question the bourgeois monopoly of means of production, and is a direct attack against bourgeois property rights.


but I&#39;m guessing also the communal councils etc.

I don&#39;t know enough about the communal councils to give you a solid opinion. My gut feeling is that they are not authentic working class organisations; that they are attempts to enclose the working class movement within an organisational frame that can be controlled by the Chavista top.

But this is just that - a gut feeling. I could be very wrong about it.


Do you believe the aforementioned elements are interested in increased space for workers&#39; self organization? Or is it better to conclude that their support for the "participatory democarcy" stuff is to better tie the workers to their ultimate exploiter, the state?

Neither former nor latter. It is the possible way to keep workers under the control of the Chavismo. The whole idea being to use the revolutionary energy of the Venezolan proletariat to build an "independent", "popular", "social" capitalism "from below" that is in fact impossible in the conditions of the XXI century.


Well its too bad you can&#39;t distinguish between the Rotary Club and "assembles where they can discuss, elect commissions and decide upon what actions to carry out"

Of course I can distinguish between them. What they have in common is the fact that neither are revolutionary.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

But not being strong enough to do it doesn&#39;t mean that you haven&#39;t to attempt it.

You do attempt it, but you start from working for the fraternization of workers in both countries in a united struggle against both bourgeoisies and against the war, you don&#39;t attack the army headquarters with fifty militants.


And your soldiers organisations in each country have to try to organise mutinies in the army they are in first place.

Again, if the working class is strong enough to have soldier organizations (like soldiers soviets) in one country, the chances are high that it will also have those organizations in other countries as well. Of course the working class first overthrows the bourgeoisie in the place where it lives.


Also, being strong enough to topple the bourgeoisie doesn&#39;t mean you will be effectively able to do so. You may succeed in one country (Russia) and fail in others (Germany, Italy).

Obviously.


If by "baseless" you mean that I don&#39;t know enough about that specifical organisation to claim it, you are right.

You don&#39;t know anything about their specific section, but that&#39;s not just it. You are doubting the intentions of dedicated militants who you don&#39;t even know. How would you feel if I doubted your intentions about running for the union board?

[Leo]

The occupation of factories, whether abandoned or not, brings into question the bourgeois monopoly of means of production, and is a direct attack against bourgeois property rights.

That sounds very... academic. Occupation of abandoned factories might seem as a "direct attack against bourgeois property rights" on paper, however they in reality vary from being insignificant and being helpful for the bourgeoisie. Especially if the workers are trying to help the occupied factory, they are giving a bit to the bourgeoisie.

Occupying a factory where people actually work and a capitalist actually profits is a very militant form of class struggle, where workers even lock themselves in with their boss and keep him there until their demands are met. Those occupations either end with the union bureaucrats coming in to tell the workers they should stop or the police attacking the workers. Still it&#39;s not a "direct attack against bourgeois property rights" more than a strike is, it is rather a very militant means for workers to struggle for their interests.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 10, 2007 02:25 pm
You don&#39;t know anything about their specific section, but that&#39;s not just it. You are doubting the intentions of dedicated militants who you don&#39;t even know.
No, I&#39;m not doubting their intentions. I know they want a workers revolution, and all of that. But this does not mean that they don&#39;t have other, even unconscious, reasons to act.


How would you feel if I doubted your intentions about running for the union board?

That&#39;s not a hypothetical question - it happened, and I know how I felt.

Look, if you wish to say that I&#39;m in the union because I am a petty bourgeois fool, who wants to get into socialism without having to go through a revolution, I will tell that you are wrong. But it is your opinion, which I cannot change nor forbid you from expressing. What you cannot do is to say that I am in it for money, because that&#39;s not a political opinion, but a personal slander. You have no right to express it, because you cannot prove it - and, indeed, the opposite is true: I earned less money when I was in the union board, and, if necessary, I can prove it.

The accusation that those people are trying to give themselves more importance than they actually have is not a personal slander. I am sure that, even if those people are doing it, they don&#39;t know that this is what they are doing. They act, I&#39;m certain, with the best of intentions. Yet the fact remains: they are mistaking a petty bourgeois reactionary "law and order" movement for a genuine grassroots working class movement. I didn&#39;t want to discuss why they are doing it, and have avoided to do so, until I was directly asked - why do they do that? "out of thin air?"

If you prefer, I will take that back, and admit that I really don&#39;t know why the Venezolan ICC is taking such reactionary views. Usually, I would think that a revolutionary organisation should always examine the reasons and motivations of its acts and stands, and be open to the fact that its members are just common human beings, with normal desires and delusions. But if the ICC isn&#39;t open to question itself publicly, I will respect that. And demand, on the other hand, not to be asked again why the ICC is going so horribly wrong in Venezuela. Deal?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 10, 2007 02:35 pm
That sounds very... academic. Occupation of abandoned factories might seem as a "direct attack against bourgeois property rights" on paper, however they in reality vary from being insignificant and being helpful for the bourgeoisie.
How many occupied factories do you have in Turkey?


Especially if the workers are trying to help the occupied factory, they are giving a bit to the bourgeoisie.

They usually demand that the State takes over the factories. The proprietors, on the other hand, usually demand that the State remove the workers forcibly, and prosecute them on criminal charges.

Which the State usually agrees in doing.


Occupying a factory where people actually work and a capitalist actually profits is a very militant form of class struggle, where workers even lock themselves in with their boss and keep him there until their demands are met.

There&#39;s no doubt that it is a more advanced form of struggle.


Still it&#39;s not a "direct attack against bourgeois property rights" more than a strike is, it is rather a very militant means for workers to struggle for their interests.

Of course it is a direct attack against bourgeois property rights; imagine. The guy "owns" a factory, thinks the factory is his, has a lot of papers by the State that the factory is indeed his - and then he can&#39;t go in, or can&#39;t come out, and totally looses control over his "property".

Luís Henrique

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by Devrim+--> (Devrim)Actually, I pretty much ignore most things about Venezuela. I am not really interested in it at all. It is pretty obvious that there is nothing socialist about it. It is an argument we come across in Turkey mainly from middle class leftists, usually the one who hate the working class in this country the most.[/b]

Firstly, if you ignore most things about Venezuela, then you negate all the other stuff that is happening. By negating all the other stuff that is happening, you are failing to understand the characteristics that make this situation unique from that of an normal Capitalist form of function. People can not be doing that in situations such as this, no matter how rational it may seem to them, because of the fact that there are certain things that may not exist at the surface at this time, but may exist above the surface in the future and because of the fact if people were to continue to engage in an act of ignorance towards the majority of a situation, they end up isolating themselves from revolutionary forces and potentially revolutionary forces, while re-enforcing a false perception of a country's reality.

For example, what if I engaged in a massive ignorance to the majority of the situation in Turkey, if it was like that of Venezuela? What if I was doing the same thing that ICC has been doing by posting this on Venezuela, but instead, turned around on the situation of Turkey and to some extent, you must admit, that you have been doing in using that economic scale in pointing out that Venezuela is a Capitalist country, which I actually agree with you on, but instead, turned that around on the Turkish people and the Turkish situation? I would be isolating myself from the revolutionary forces that actually exist in the country and the potential revolutionary forces that actually exist in the country as well. Not only that, I would be making myself look like an fool, an enemy or somewhat suspicious to those who know better of that situation than I. A revolutionary can not do that. He or she must look at all angles; that is the only way one can avoid falling into the position of making themselves look like a full-scale reactionary that says he or she cares about his own fellow workers but he acts like he or she does not and enable themselves to better effectively connect with both revolutionary forces and potentially revolutionary forces, so that you could be better able to help direct the series of events that take place in Turkey, for instance, towards the establishment of a real Communist society, not a form of Capitalism.

Secondly, here is my position on the situation in Venezuela, because clearly, certain people do not understand it and because I do not want people to get the wrong point of view. As you have said, Venezuela is not socialist; that is, the Capitalist commodity relation continues to exist. Again, I actually agree with that. However, despite the fact that it is a Capitalist country, there are severely contradictory elements.

The first example that I will give is this; the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela has engaged in the act of nationalizing many industrial manufacturing enterprises. That, in and of itself, is most definitely a non-revolutionary act, because it changes the boss from being a boss that privately has control over his workers to being the state the boss and the boss having control over its workers and it continues the Capitalist commodity relationship, in addition to strengthening the native Capitalist class of that country.

The difference between what the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela is doing with these nationalizations and what other governments have done is that with these nationalizations is that the government has effectively allowed the workers of these factories to control them. According to the strategy of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, "Revolutionary Co-management" starts off with the state controlling half and the workers controlling half or 49% of that factory. As time goes on, the state owns less and less of that factory, as the revenues from that factory enable the workers of that factory to buy shares of that factory until the workers entirely own the factory while being interlinked with society and the state does not control any amount of it any longer. The workers operate the factory with a workers' assembly or workers' council, the highest form of organization at the factory. This is significantly different from Yugoslavian "self-management", where workers' councils did exist in factories and where they directed work operations, but were directly controlled by the ruling party, thus invalidating the logic behind Yugoslavian "self-management". This is also significantly different from Western European forms of "workers' control", where the workers got a seat on the board of the companies, but did not really control the movement of operations nor had control over who made the decisions in the factories.

Before we proceed, it must be said that these nationalizations and this program has had a massive impact on the Venezuelan factory occupations movement, causing the factories that have not been expropriated under working class control to push for government expropriation under working class control and for greater organization between occupied factories and expropriated factories under working class control. This is where the slogan "Nationalization under Workers' Control" originates from by the way. Most Venezuelan workers view "Revolutionary Co-management" as the key to the future, as it will ensure that neither the Capitalists nor the state do not control the means of production, but they will, through a process and, as it will ensure that such a form of control would enable higher forms of organization that would result in the end of Venezuela as a Capitalist society. You may not see it as the way to go, but that is the direction of real working class struggle in Venezuela and thus, to deny the nature of the situation is to deny fellow Venezuelan workers, unconsciously if not consciously.

Now, you may say, "what exactly, is the contradictory element here then?" and I will say to you that the contradictory element is that such an arrangement is calling into question the Capitalist nature of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela. The highest parts of the Venezuelan government has sent psychological messages to the Venezuelan working class in support of actual control of the means of production, a message that contradicts the supposed support for private property that the government continues to elaborate upon, both at home and at abroad. This has caused the forces of the Bolivarian government that feel that they must attack every attempt to establish workers' power in Venezuela, because it ruins their chances of rationalizing themselves into a new rich that controls the government completely while giving the people of Venezuela want they want to give to them, putting them in greater proportion to conflict with Chavez and the parts of the Bolivarian Government that have proven that they want working class people to be in control, not the state.

So the struggle here is not really between Chavez and the Venezuelan working class, there is no real struggle against him, they feel that he is too amendable to pressure and that he is under their effective control, as he has created an environment, pushed forward by institutions that he created or has helped to create which happens to leave an opening for genuine revolutionary working class movements to take advantage of and spread. Because they are taking advantage of the institutions that he has generated and has spread, it has increased the pressure upon him to do whatever they want him to do. If Chavez did not do this and was actively involved in attacking the Venezuelan working class through concrete action, it would leave Venezuela open to covert American interference and it would increase the possibility of a real civil war, between Chavez and his entire government vs. the forces of the working class, who will attempt to actively destroy the government to consolidate its power. In other words, it would mean the end of the Venezuelan experiment. You must understand this.

The struggle is between the bureaucracy that remains from the structures of the Punto Fijo system that came before Chavez and the working class movements in coordination with certain parts of the government that have proven themselves to be on the side of working class power. For example, since the nationalization of Inveval, an industrial manufacturing enterprise that is in effect, controlled by the workers of that enterprise, sectors of the Bolivarian government have constantly attempted to interfere with their operations, by trying to fuck over the shipments of supplies that the workers need to make the valves and by trying to fuck up certain operations that would make the Inveval plant operate more than efficiently. This is just a glimpse into the developing conflict that is taking place here. If this conflict was not real, then there would be no pressure upon Chavez to be doing the things that he is doing, by forming a United Socialist Party of Venezuela and by giving the Communal Councils more and more power.

The second example that I will give are the Communal Councils. On 10 April 2006, the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela passed a law legalizing the formation of Communal Councils that directly administer the social, cultural, economical and political functioning of their communities, enabling them to solve problems that their community faces without the help of the state itself. These Communal Councils would have their material basis upon 200 to 400 families in urban areas and 40 families in rural areas, which would allow for accurate decisions to be made for each neighborhood. Since the law has been passed by the National Assembly in April 2006, the Chavez administration has given the Communal Councils over 2,500,000,000 or 2.5 billion dollars so far, as to allow them to carry out the task of solving the problems of their neighborhoods and since the law has been passed by the National Assembly in April 2006, over 25,000 Communal Councils have been independently formed, with the goal, stated by those who are pushing for the formation of these councils, to expand to over 50,000 Communal Councils throughout the entire country by the end of 2007. This goal of expansion is working in tandem with the goal of Chavez having Communal Councils assuming more and more roles that currently belong to the state and to the municipalities.

Now, you may ask again, "What exactly is the contradictory element here, again?" and I will say that the contradiction that exists here is the fact that the sections of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela's that have proven themselves to be genuine supporters of the concept of workers' power and their attempt to directly empower people through the legalization of Communal Councils, is going against the nature of bureaucracy and centralization that the sections of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, that are against any kind of direct empowerment of the people, wish to keep in place. This contradiction again leads to the fight between bureaucracy and the working class in coordination with the parts of the Venezuelan government that have proven themselves to be behind the concept of workers' power and is polarizing the pressure of the genuine revolutionary working class movements upon Chavez to do something; again, that is why he is working on the construction of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Thirdly, in order to start my response to your economic "proof" that Chavez is attacking the Venezuelan working class, I must say that Joseph K., the person whose economic analysis you have quoted, has a fundamentally flawed understanding of what class is and why people are separated into classes. Joseph K. operates upon the common myth that classes are based upon income. Because he operates upon that myth, he uses the current analysis in Venezuela to gauge the separation of classes in order to justify his attack on Chavez, leading him to the conclusion that the Venezuelan working class makes up over 23% percent of the entire population.

Now, how can this be, when class is actually based upon one's position to the means of production? And how can this be when there is clearly a large majority of the Venezuelan population that do not own property and are not actively reproducing Capital from that property? Therefore, the two questions that I asked magnify my point; if class is based upon one's position to the the means of production and if class is not based on one's income, then there is no way in hell that the Venezuelan working class makes up 23% of the population. No way in hell.

That is practically dismantling the argument that you are making Devrim. Because you basically said that since the Venezuelan working class makes up over 23% of the entire population of Venezuela, and since, according to Joseph K., their incomes have thus declined, that amounts to Chavez attacking the working class. Also, if there was a decline of income for some working class people, that was probably because the estimation that Joseph K. was using was taken in 2004, which was still feeling, to some significant extent, the results of the "oil strike" of 2002-2003. That was how devastating that was.

That is not really the case now, but I am not going to use income as the basis of my argument, because I believe that income is not a basis to determine class. It would just be re-validating that myth in the minds of those who may be reading this.

Now, here's the first half of the meat; let us look some simple graphs that explain a lot of things in a direct manner and remember, this is actual and real GDP;

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image002-2.gif

Let us discuss this first. For the Venezuelan working class to actually be under the direct attack of Chavez, thus increasing the amount of joblessness and poverty, he would have be doing something to prevent the diversification of the economy away from oil.

By preventing the diversification of the economy, you prevent the economy from absorbing more working class people, thus increasing poverty, because there is no income coming in from whatever job it is that they are supposed to have and thus increasing unemployment, because there are no other jobs. Such a situation forces people to survive in the informal sector of the economy, which fuels the black market and the need of the people to survive from the black market.

But we do not see this in this graph. Under Chavez's rule, growth of the non-oil sector by GDP shot up from a total of -7.1% percent between 1993-1998 to a stunning total of 36.7% between 1998-2007. That means that there are more jobs and there is less poverty. Not only that, that means that the amount of jobs are going to grow by a higher percentage per year because there are more manufacturing and service jobs being generated, thus ensuring that more and more people will get jobs as time goes on.

This is also interesting in that it shows how pitiful the reactionaries that the "student movement" supports actually are. They did not diversify the economy from the oil sector, in fact, they were destroying the non-oil sector in the process.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image003.gif

Now, this is the key to understanding the massive economic growth that has occurred in Venezuela in the past two years; manufacturing. Since manufacturing is basis of any industrialized country, not services, you will know for sure if Chavez is attacking the working class, thus increasing joblessness and poverty, if there is a massive decline in manufacturing.

But is there? Not according to this graph. In fact, according to this graph, under Chavez's rule, manufacturing has shot up to a total of 34.3% between 1998-2007 from a total of - 15.9% between 1993-1998. This says that the country is industrializing, and because it is industrializing*, more jobs are becoming available to the Venezuelan people and if there are more jobs becoming available to the Venezuelan people, that means that more working class people are being lifted out of poverty and out of the informal sector and are being introduced into the formal sector of the economy.

It also says a lot about the people that the "student movement" supports.

* Unlike what Luis said, Venezuela is not re-industrializing, because if it were re-industrializing in the first place, then manufacturing would have to have been contributing between 60% and 70% of the economy for a country the size of Venezuela. But Venezuela's manufacturing sector has never contributed that much to the Venezuelan economy.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image004.gif

If Chavez was attacking the working class, increasing joblessness and poverty, then the following would not be happening;

1.) There would be no free homes for people being built at all.
2.) There would be no infrastructural development going on at all.
3.) There would be less jobs in the construction sector.

But this graph does not show that. In fact, it shows the reverse. It shows that under Chavez's rule, the construction sector of the economy has leaped from a total of - 31.4% between 1993-1998 to a total of 44.6% between 1998-2007. That means that Chavez's infrastructural program and his public housing programs are pulling more people out of poverty because he is putting more people into work and he is increasing the employment rate; in addition to putting people into quality housing that was never built for them in the years before Chavez.

It also shows that the compador Bourgeois and Petit-bourgeois that the "student movement" supports never really cared about construction to the extent that this administration does, because the only houses they have ever actually built with any quality were their houses; while building the houses of most working class people with plastic and cardboard. This is the reality that the "student movement" wants Venezuela to return to, along with their real masters.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image008.gif

If Chavez was really attacking the Venezuelan working class, then the transportation sector would not be doing well at all, because then, there would be fewer cab drivers, fewer bus drivers and fewer subway train operators for the Caracas subway. Not only that, there would not be that much people going to and from school and work in the first place, which helps to add to the transportation unemployment rate because there would be less fares that translate into a higher surplus.

This graph does not show that. What this graph shows is the opposite of that. Under Chavez's rule, the transportation sector has leaped to a total of 42.4% between 1998-2007 from a total of -14.4% between 1993-1998. That means that there is less poverty and there is less joblessness, because more people are working in the transportation sector and that means that more people are going to and from work and school. You can not deny this shit.

Again, it shows how retarded (excuse my language) the opposition really was and how retarded the "student movement" that supports them is.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image011.gif

If Chavez was really attacking the Venezuelan working class, then the amount of government services being provided would have been reduced; that means that the Mercal food program that it is running would be extremely impacted, that means that the education system would be really fucked up; that means that everything else (like healthcare) would really be on life support. It also means less employment and more poverty, because there would not be that many people working in the government sectors of the economy.

This chart says otherwise. It states that under Chavez's rule government services have leaped to a total of 26.2% between 1998-2007 from a total of - 8.7% between 1993-1998. That means that Chavez is not cutting back on these programs, but rather, is enlargening them.

No need to mention how fucked up the masters of the "student movement", the opposition, was.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image009.gif

Story: Communications increases under Chavez to a total of 119.2% between 1998-2007, which means more jobs and less poverty, while under the opposition, communications increase to 113.2% between 1993-1998. Now, it also translates to the same thing, except that even though that is the case, it really does not make that much of an impact to the employment and poverty ratings.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image010.gif

Story: Mining increases under Chavez to a total of 31.2%, which means more jobs and less poverty, while under the opposition, mining increases to a total of 27.6%, which means less jobs and more poverty, but not by much.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image007.gif

Story: Electric production increases under Chavez to a total of 36.9% between 1998-2007, which means, more jobs, less poverty and under oppostion, electric production increases by 16.9% between 1993-1998, which means, less jobs and more poverty.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image006.gif

Now, look at this, if Venezuela's economic growth was really just based on just a oil boom, then this would not be happening. The graph states that under Chavez's rule, the oil sector has fallen from a total of 33.1% between 1993-1998 to a total of, oh shit, - 8.5%. This is further collaborated by the next economic report I am going to show you. That really just shuts up the lies about Venezuela's economy and that oil is the only growing economic sector while everything is going to rot. And no need to mention how stupid the "student movement's" controllers really were. They never really cared about industrial production. They only cared about how much oil they could have sold to the United States.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/image001-4.gif

This is the total rate of economic growth that has taken place in all sectors of the economy under both regimes. Under Chavez's rule, the economy has grown to a total of 30.3% between 1998-2007. Under the rule of the masters of the "student movement", the economy grew to a total of 2.4% between 1993-1998. Nothing more to say here.

Sources:
http://www.bcv.org.ve/excel/5_2_4.xls?id=332
http://www.bcv.org.ve/excel/5_2_6.xls?id=63
(These graphs are just the simplified version of this data really.)

Here is the next part of the meat that I am going to throw to you; the CEPR report on Venezuela. It will not be as clear as the charts above, but it is practically saying the same thing that they are saying but in a different language; there are more jobs and there is less poverty and its economic growth is set to continue into the near future. There is no imminent economic threat to Venezuela at this time because of its material circumstances and that means that there is no real basis for any real strike action against the Chavez government. If there was, then his support would not be up to 71%;

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications...ela_2007_07.pdf (http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_2007_07.pdf)
The Venezuelan Economy in the Chávez Years


Originally posted by Devrim+--> (Devrim)Where did I support these students? I think for you to blatantly misrepresent people's positions, and attempt to slander movements on the basis of one picture shows exactly the type of person that you really are.[/b]

I apologize. But I did that intentionally as so draw a certain kind of response to demonstrate something to all that are reading this. You said that you were suspicious of the "student movement" in Venezuela and then even though you said that you were suspicious of it, you turn around and you crtiqued my picture and say that "it is stupid to condemn a movement on the basis of one picture." Most of the time, it is. But in certain cases, it is not and moreover, a picture can convey complex messages about the nature of a group of people. The latter applies to this case.

The white population of Venezuela makes up at least 23% of the entire population and 10% of the entire white population possesses over 90% (the number is in the process of changing, but for the sake of argument, let us use that) of the entire country's wealth. Because of this, when you look at the statistics and collaborate it with the picture that I showed, it should become obvious that this movement is not a working class movement, but a Petit-bourgeois and Bourgeois movement. If it actually was a working class movement, then, we would be seeing this type of stuff in a barrio like Catia or Petare in Caracas, not some affluent Caracas neighborhood like Altamira and at least the majority of them would have been darker than that. All does this serve to do is to amplify the fact that you have been ignoring the situation of Venezuela and thus, do not really understand the mechanics of the situation at hand here.

And if you are not convinced, here are some more pictures of the mall protest;

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/sambil5.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/sambil1.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/sambil2.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/oilwars/sambil3.jpg

I will try to find some more pictures of other kinds of protest done by this "student movement" and put them up should it become possible for me do to so.


Luís Henrique
@
Certainly. But that's not the Chavista fantasy; the Chavista fantasy is to industrialise Venezuela, to have Venezuela selling cars and computers. That is not possible.I must say, this is the main issue that I have with you here Luis. What you are saying is that everything that the Venezuelan working class is fighting for is ultimately fighting for in vain. This makes your position unattainable and thus, it truly does place you in a real contradiction here. But because I want to make a basis as so to allow you understand my argument that Venezuela can industrialize, I will use some examples. But, if you want to discuss this more, I will be willing to discuss it.

For example, it does not really take a world market for an automobile industry to function. No. If that was the case, then why does Iran have an automobile industry? It is under an limited embargo and it is affected by that limited embargo, but it still has an automobile industry, otherwise, Iran would not be teaming up with Venezuela in the first place. An automobile industry just needs a guaranteed market, ethier through a fair quota or through open trade. Once you have a guaranteed market to export to, you would be able to grow and expand your automobile industry to the most realistic extent possible. And for example, it really does not take a world market to have a functioning electronics industry. What you need, in Venezuela's case that is, is a big domestic sector and a guaranteed market to export to for the export sector. For certain types of electronics, it is really not that world-dependent.

But if I must say something though, Luis, it is that I think that the fantasy of the sections of the Bolivarian government that are linked to Capital and support Capitalism is to centralize industrial manufacturing with limited private industry on the side, something that some people would like to call "practical "socalism". But that is not really possible because of the kinds of things that would entail; a real and viable threat to the situation of the working class of Venezuela, which will eventually put Venezuela for even greater risk for an intervention by covert foreign forces, should that those sections attempt to consolidate power. In addition with the kind of influence that the working class is able to exert upon Chavez, something may be done about this soon.


alibadani

The few occupied factories are no threat to anyone. These were abandoned and bankrupt agricultural and industrial companies or those with serious judicial problems. These have now been brought under state control.First of all, why do you think that they were abandoned? Because the owners of these companies joined the "oil strike" of December 2002 and ended up bankrupting their companies. They decided to run from these companies and from the country, which heavily impacted the manufacturing sector, causing it to decline by 18%. To brush this off is to reveal what kind of view you have on direct action, because it proves that you think that workers occupying a factory is not a revolutionary act and because it proves you think that an occupation of a workplace is not a threat to anyone. It is in both cases. If working class people occupying factories was not a threat, then Russia in 1917, Italy in 1920, Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1956, France in May 1968 and Portugal in 1974 are nothing to you, they were not threats to anyone. That says a lot.

And second of all, not every occupied factory has been expropriated by the state, and in fact, both the UNT and FRETECO are debating on how to extend the factory occupations to other factories throughout the country of Venezuela as so add pressure to establish their goal of "Nationalization under Workers' Control" as a generalized reality; not limited to a few state industries, but across the board. Moreover, whenever a factory gets expropriated by the state, they often do so with the workers of those factories controlling the factory, as was mentioned in the first part of my response, as a part of the program of Co-management that is endorsed by the most advanced sectors of the Venezuelan working class.

[CornetJoyce]

An impressive survey, CFF.
Please do find more photos of the RMR (Revolutionary Mall Rats). It&#39;s the most inspiring sight since George Bush in his flight suit.

[ern]

Luis thank you for withdrawing your unpleasant attack on our section in Venezuela. It was a tasteless effort to besmirch our comrades intentions. For your and others information there has been a section of the ICC in Venezuela since 1975 and the ICC was formed in part by the comrades of Internacionalismo who had been organised and active in Venezuela since 1964. So your rather off hand comment about inexperience is wide of the mark. Our comrades have intransigently defend internationalism and left communist politics against the bourgeois throughout that period. A period when those who you now say are challenge property relations etc were imposing repression and terror for the bourgeois class, or may be Chavez was never an officer in the army and this was simply a CIA lie&#33;
It is most welcome to hear you say that you agree that our section is dedicated to the proletarian revolution. However, when you say they are defending reactionary positions you are saying we are defending reactionary positions. The ICC is an international organisation and we have full confidence in our comrades ability to apply our international understanding to the national situation in Venezuela. The [U]ICC"s[B] intransigent defence of the need for proletarian autonomy faced with the situation in Venezuela is not now or never has been reactionary. It analysis of the student movement is based on the comrades experience and understanding of this movement, it was an insult to try and impute some effort self-aggrandisement to their analysis. Given the social pressure and climate of fear and terror in the country it would be far easier for them to give up defending class positions and side with one fraction or the other, but they have not and that takes real courage, commitment and human dignity.
The ICC has never questioned your honesty, so why question our comrades, unless it was a cheap way of avoiding the central question of your critical support for the Venezuelan state under the leadership of Chavez? May be, just may be your sources of information have been wrong and our comrades has been correct. Has this idea every occurred to you

[ern]

Our and others analysis of Chavez and his crew being a fraction of the bourgeoisie is clearly causing you real puzzlement


QUOTE (alibadani @ August 09, 2007 10:00 pm)
The point Luis, is that this is precisely the part of the bourgeoisie represented by Chavez. As a retort to your claim that no significant faction of the bourgeoisie is Chavist.

I see. The fact that they are part of the bourgeoisie doesn&#39;t make them a sector of the bourgeoisie, with specifical interests that conflict with other sector. The State apparatus is meant to be representative of the bourgeoisie, not independent or opposed to it.

Unless... unless we are talking about some kind of bonapartism, isn&#39;t it? When the State apparatus takes in its hands to represent the general interests of the bourgeoisie, against the various partial, factional interests.

Your later point is going in the right direction we do think that the capitalist state has taken on the central role in the control of society. Marx did begin to analysis the growing tendency of the state to become &#39;autonomous&#39; with the idea of bonapartism. Marx and Engels later developed this understanding further through their analysis of the growing centralisation of capitalism through the state. Engel&#39;s in the Anti-Duhring analysed the way in which the state had begun take over parts of the economy. In this analysis he was also responding to those within the workers movement of the time who said that such actions were an socialism.

For the Communist International and the Marxist Left this process took on a fully developed form with the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase marked by World War First, when the whole economy was organised as a war economy. After the war it became clear to the ruling class that given the tensions caused by imperialism, the class struggle and the worsening economic contradictions of capitalism that it had to give its state increasing power.

Thus when we say that Chavez et al are a fraction of the bourgeois seeking to strengthen the capitalist states hold over society in order to better control society and to enable it to mobilise the population for civil war and for external wars, this is what we mean.

Your (and Communist firefox&#39;s) understanding of the nature of Venezuelan state capitalism as being progressive because it has taken over increasing parts of the economy thus amounts to the same positions that Engels reject over 100 years ago. Unfortunately the mixing up of increased state control of society with socialism has has been a powerful weapon of the bourgeois. In Britain we were told that the post war labour government was introducing socialism because it nationalised certain industries, introduced the health service etc etc, when in reality it was simply carrying out the needs of British capital.

Luis, to put it simply for us and others the fact that the state controls something dose not make it progressive or a step towards socialism.

The following article in our publication in Venezuela Internacionalismo, takes up this very point in some detail in response to the idea of 21st century Socialism 21st Century Socialism (http://es.internationalism.org/intmo/2007/57_veintiuno)

Luis hopefully this will have helped to clarify the central question we are discussing.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 05:44 pm
Luis thank you for withdrawing your unpleasant attack on our section in Venezuela. It was a tasteless effort to besmirch our comrades intentions. For your and others information there has been a section of the ICC in Venezuela since 1975 and the ICC was formed in part by the comrades of Internacionalismo who had been organised and active in Venezuela since 1964. So your rather off hand comment about inexperience is wide of the mark. Our comrades have intransigently defend internationalism and left communist politics against the bourgeois throughout that period. A period when those who you now say are challenge property relations etc were imposing repression and terror for the bourgeois class, or may be Chavez was never an officer in the army and this was simply a CIA lie&#33;
Look, either you don&#39;t want to discuss the Venezolan sector of the ICC, or you do.

If you don&#39;t want to discuss it, I won&#39;t discuss it, and won&#39;t say unpleasant things about it. But if you do wish to discuss it, I will gladly reinstate my unpleasant attack, and/or make new ones.


It is most welcome to hear you say that you agree that our section is dedicated to the proletarian revolution. However, when you say they are defending reactionary positions you are saying we are defending reactionary positions.

Yes, you are.


The ICC is an international organisation and we have full confidence in our comrades ability to apply our international understanding to the national situation in Venezuela.

Which means that it is not a problem of the Venezolan section, but of the international organisation as a whole.


The [U]ICC"s[B] intransigent defence of the need for proletarian autonomy faced with the situation in Venezuela is not now or never has been reactionary.

It&#39;s support, even if "critical", of a reactionary movement, however, certainly is.


It analysis of the student movement is based on the comrades experience and understanding of this movement, it was an insult to try and impute some effort self-aggrandisement to their analysis.

Fine. It is then due to their theoretical positions making them blind to the difference between proletarian movements and petty bourgeois reactionary movements. Happy now?


Given the social pressure and climate of fear and terror in the country it would be far easier for them to give up defending class positions and side with one fraction or the other, but they have not and that takes real courage, commitment and human dignity.

They clearly seem to be takiing side with one of the fractions.


The ICC has never questioned your honesty, so why question our comrades, unless it was a cheap way of avoiding the central question of your critical support for the Venezuelan state under the leadership of Chavez?

That&#39;s funny. You openly support a reactionary movement, and suddenly the issue becomes my "critical support for the Venezuelan state under the leadership of Chavez"?

If you want to question my honesty, be at will. What can I say? I am not supporting class enemies under outworldish pretences.


May be, just may be your sources of information have been wrong and our comrades has been correct. Has this idea every occurred to you

No, it hasn&#39;t. The idea that a movement that calls for the reinstatement of corporate property rights could possibly be a genuine working class movement really never ocurred to me. Strange, isn&#39;t it?

Luís Henrique

[ern]

Luis, sorry about the link I place it incorrectly here is the working one: Chavismo (http://es.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/197)

The history and organisation of slave revolts is very interesting, important and very under analysed (for obvious reasons, the ruling class want us to think slave and thus the proletariat is incapable of organising). You my find our article on Spartacus enlightening Spartacus (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/247_spartacus.htm). You should also look into the history of the slave war in what is now haiti, but which at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th saw a highly organised slave army defeat the French and the English (the best book on this is CLR Jame&#39;s The Black Jacobins). There were also several organised attempts at slave revolts in America during slavery. This is our history, ie that of the exploited and it should be better known.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 06:08 pm
Your (and Communist firefox&#39;s) understanding of the nature of Venezuelan state capitalism as being progressive because it has taken over increasing parts of the economy thus amounts to the same positions that Engels reject over 100 years ago.
There you go again. Where have I ever said that the Venezuelan State is progressive because it has been taking over increasing parts of the economy?

Yes, that&#39;s it. Nowhere. I am not a Lassalist, sorry to unmake your preconceptions.


Luis hopefully this will have helped to clarify the central question we are discussing.

The central issue I have been trying to discuss in this thread is the class nature of the "White Hands" movement. Which seems something you aren&#39;t interested in: at one point or another, your arguments turn into some variation of "but Chavez..."

Luís Henrique

[ern]

Luis if you impute the integrity of our section what do you expect. There is a real difference between saying you think that we are wrong in our analysis of the student movement which as we have shown we are more than willing to discuss with you; and the calling into question the integrity of our comrades actions in seeking to analysis and make this movement known. As I said we have never questioned your integrity.

[ern]

Ok may be I got the wrong impression about what you are saying about the actions of the Venezuelan state, but did you not say that the workers should defend Chavez as long as he is allowing their organisations freedom? To us that is support for the Venezuelan state, unless we have missed something and Chavez is no longer the head of the state.
We too are concerned to discuss the student movement, but you cannot understand that without understanding the nature of Chavismo. We clearly disagree on this but we say we are not interested in discussing the movement is clearly erroneous, but as we show in the article to understand the real nature of this movement you have to understand its characteristics. You think it was totally controlled by the Opposition or the CIA, and we think that whilst the opposition tried to use it and control it within the movement there was a real effort to escape the false polarisation of Chavismo or the Opposition. Again you would not agree with us on this.

[ern]

Leo, thank you for defending our comrades.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 06:40 pm
Ok may be I got the wrong impression about what you are saying about the actions of the Venezuelan state, but did you not say that the workers should defend Chavez as long as he is allowing their organisations freedom? To us that is support for the Venezuelan state, unless we have missed something and Chavez is no longer the head of the state.
What a confusion.

You stated that I believe that the Venezolan State is progressive because it is taking over the economy. Nowhere I stated anything like that. Socialism is not State ownership of means of production. Please don&#39;t attribute to me things that I have not written.


You think it was totally controlled by the Opposition or the CIA, and we think that whilst the opposition tried to use it and control it within the movement there was a real effort to escape the false polarisation of Chavismo or the Opposition. Again you would not agree with us on this.

No, I don&#39;t agree. I don&#39;t know to what extent it is controlled by the CIA, the Venezolan right, or both, but:

1. The influence of the political right over the movement is strong, and not external;

2. The movement has no proletarian content; all its demands, banners and slogans are reactionary and bourgeois/petty bourgeois in content.

3. It has nothing to do with escaping the polarisation Chavez/anti-Chavez. On the contrary, they say it clearly:


Contra lo que es, no contra lo que fué

which is to say, against Chavez, not against the "opposition".

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 06:32 pm
Luis if you impute the integrity of our section what do you expect.
I proposed a truce, and you took to a long diatribe against the consideration I had taken back. I&#39;m willing to avoid discussing the issue, but then it must be bilateral, or there is no deal.


As I said we have never questioned your integrity.

You have no base for doing it; I don&#39;t support enemies of the people under outlandish claims.

Luís Henrique

[ern]

Luis, OK.

Not sure how to go forwards on this. For you our position is outlandish and supports the enemy of the people (so chavez and those controling the state are not enemies of the people?) whereas for us we are not. Anyone got any ideas?

[VukBZ2005]

Your (and Communist firefox's) understanding of the nature of Venezuelan state capitalism as being progressive because it has taken over increasing parts of the economy thus amounts to the same positions that Engels reject over 100 years ago.Excuse me there, ern, but I did not say that. What I said was this; the nationalization of many industries with workers being in control of their workplaces through arrangements that give them more and more complete control of the factories as time goes on is progressive, because the working class will eventually get 100% control of the factory while allowing the factory to be owned by all of society at once. I think that is the best thing to be done in Venezuela under the current circumstances.

I also do not find state ownership of the means of production by the bureaucracy to be, in and of itself, progressive, because it lets the bureaucracy control the means of production, not the working class and the workers would have their labor-power extracted by the bureaucracy. Eventually that state ownership will be privatized.

[Leo]

That&#39;s not a hypothetical question - it happened, and I know how I felt.

Good, then don&#39;t do it to others, especially people you don&#39;t even know.


What you cannot do is to say that I am in it for money, because that&#39;s not a political opinion, but a personal slander.

And what you cannot do is to say they are saying what they are because they want to be more important, not because they actually think it&#39;s true.


You have no right to express it, because you cannot prove it

Nor can you, so "you have no right to express it" too.

Would you feel better if I said you are probably in the union business for your own sake?


You have no base for doing it; I don&#39;t support enemies of the people under outlandish claims.

We do, we have much more base then you do about the ICC section in Venezuela: you openly admitted that you would enter into a "united front" with the Chavez regime which we regard as a bourgeois regime, you defend the state unions in Venezuela, you were a full time union bureaucrat. To us, this is supporting the enemies of the working class much openly while we are clearly completely reject the opposition, it&#39;s slogans, it&#39;s intentions and so forth.


If you prefer, I will take that back

I don&#39;t care if you take it back or not. On political matters I would discuss with you, however I don&#39;t take your opinions about the ICC section seriously because I think you don&#39;t know what you&#39;re talking about.

Now, back to the political issues:


How many occupied factories do you have in Turkey?

We don&#39;t have any occupied abandoned factories as it isn&#39;t something which would happen unless either the bourgeoisie is promoting it for their own purposes or there is a situation allowing the unemployed to occupy the abandoned factory and find a job, possibly also if petty-bourgeois leftists trying to run the place with "self-management".

Although there were lots of occupations this year, perhaps in 10 workplaces or so. They all ended bitterly, unfortunately. I can tell you about them if you wanna know.


Of course it is a direct attack against bourgeois property rights; imagine. The guy "owns" a factory, thinks the factory is his, has a lot of papers by the State that the factory is indeed his - and then he can&#39;t go in, or can&#39;t come out, and totally looses control over his "property".

Yeah, but the workers don&#39;t do it to challenge property rights, in fact quite honestly this is something I wouldn&#39;t even think of if I was occupying the place I worked at. I mean it&#39;s the class interests which guide the workers. The question of "property rights" seem quite simple to me: you smash them when you are overthrowing the bourgeoisie. You don&#39;t smash them when you start trying to make an abandoned factory work again.


Firstly, if you ignore most things about Venezuela, then you negate all the other stuff that is happening. By negating all the other stuff that is happening, you are failing to understand the characteristics that make this situation unique from that of an normal Capitalist form of function.

Simple fact about Venezuela: the poorest 58% lost 5.9% of it&#39;s share in the national economy under Chavez. The "working poor" lost 23% of the population lost 34.8% from their share in the national economy. The middle class, 16% lost 28.4% of their share in the national economy. To sum up, the poorest 97% percent lost 16% of their share in the national economy. Obviously the richest %3 gained that money. It seems quite normally capitalist.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 10, 2007 07:36 pm
We do, we have much more base then you do about the ICC section in Venezuela: you openly admitted that you would enter into a "united front" with the Chavez regime which we regard as a bourgeois regime, you defend the state unions in Venezuela, you were a full time union bureaucrat. To us, this is supporting the enemies of the working class much openly while we are clearly completely reject the opposition, it&#39;s slogans, it&#39;s intentions and so forth.
Fine. So let&#39;s put it like this:

To you, I am an enemy of the working class.

To me, you support enemies of the working class in Venezuela. I am no longer trying to make excuses for you. You support the because you want to support them.

Do with that whatever you wish.


We don&#39;t have any occupied abandoned factories as it isn&#39;t something which would happen unless either the bourgeoisie is promoting it for their own purposes or there is a situation allowing the unemployed to occupy the abandoned factory and find a job, possibly also if petty-bourgeois leftists trying to run the place with "self-management".

So there aren&#39;t any occupied factories in Turkey. Thanks for the information.


Although there were lots of occupations this year, perhaps in 10 workplaces or so. They all ended bitterly, unfortunately. I can tell you about them if you wanna know.

You mean strikes with occupation, I suppose. How did they end?


Yeah, but the workers don&#39;t do it to challenge property rights, in fact quite honestly this is something I wouldn&#39;t even think of if I was occupying the place I worked at. I mean it&#39;s the class interests which guide the workers.

Evidently. If you haven&#39;t yet noticed, our class interests are at odds with bourgeois property rights.


The question of "property rights" seem quite simple to me: you smash them when you are overthrowing the bourgeoisie. You don&#39;t smash them when you start trying to make an abandoned factory work again.

You try to make an abandoned factory work again in order not to lose your job. Simply put, the employers run the business bankrupt, then they tell the workers: "quit, because we are closing the factory, and selling it piecemeal to pay our debts". Then the workers occupy the factory, tell the bosses away, and try to run the place.

But I guess for you the issue of not being unemployed only counts if you work at RCTV?

Luís Henrique

[VukBZ2005]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 10, 2007 02:36 pm
Simple fact about Venezuela: the poorest 58% lost 5.9% of it&#39;s share in the national economy under Chavez. The "working poor" lost 23% of the population lost 34.8% from their share in the national economy. The middle class, 16% lost 28.4% of their share in the national economy. To sum up, the poorest 97% percent lost 16% of their share in the national economy. Obviously the richest %3 gained that money. It seems quite normally capitalist.
Idiot, class is not based on income, it is based on one&#39;s relationship and position to the means of production. Because it is based on one&#39;s relationship and position to the means of production, that means that the analysis that you are using to gauge the situation of Venezuela&#39;s economic reality is flawed from the outset. Read some Marx man. And also, as I stated before, if there was indeed an income decrease, it was because in 2004, the economy was still feeling the effects of the false "oil strike" of 2002-2003, despite the high growth at the time. It only really got over that in 2005. Moreover, idiot, no one said that Venezuela&#39;s economy was socialist. It is pretty clear that it is Capitalist and it is pretty clear that you and the ICC supports attempts to subvert the current situation in Venezuela. Why are you supporting reactionaries like Stalin Gonzales and Douglas Barrios?

[Leo]

class is not based on income, it is based on one&#39;s relationship and position to the means of production.

Obviously.

Yet I hope you don&#39;t consider the richest 3% proletarian and the remaining 97% bourgeois.

Only the richest 3% is doing better, all of the rest are doing worse. This richest three percent is obviously the bourgeoisie. All of the remaining 97% is doing worse. The proletariat is included in this, obviously.

You don&#39;t even have an argument here.


that means that the analysis that you are using to gauge the situation of Venezuela&#39;s economic reality is flawed from the outset.

It shows how the income distribution among the Venezuelan population changed, you don&#39;t know what you are saying.


Why are you supporting reactionaries like Stalin Gonzales and Douglas Barrios?

I am not supporting them, I am not supporting the opposition, I don&#39;t support a bourgeois coup in Venezuela or any other bourgeois faction in Venezuela, or in any other part of the world. I am opposed to all. This is perfectly clear.


You mean strikes with occupation, I suppose. How did they end?

In some the police attacked the workers. In some the union bureaucrats came, told them to go home but gave them a huge Turkish flag to hang on top of the factory before that.


To you, I am an enemy of the working class.

To be honest I do think that you have several anti-working class ideas, this doesn&#39;t mean I won&#39;t discuss with you in a civil manner however; lots of people have some anti-working class ideas, I do think it is a good idea to discuss regardless as long as they are sincere and have good intentions.


To me, you support enemies of the working class in Venezuela.

"We clearly completely reject the opposition, it&#39;s slogans, it&#39;s intentions and so forth." I don&#39;t know how more clear I can be about this.


You try to make an abandoned factory work again in order not to lose your job. Simply put, the employers run the business bankrupt, then they tell the workers: "quit, because we are closing the factory, and selling it piecemeal to pay our debts". Then the workers occupy the factory, tell the bosses away, and try to run the place.

Well yes, of course. This is however simply an effort to survive, not something that challenges the capitalist; of course if the factory is recently being closed and if workers in other factories of, say, the same company decide to show solidarity to the ones in the factory which is being closed, then it will obviously harm the capitalist.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 10, 2007 08:42 pm
In some the police attacked the workers. In some the union bureaucrats came, told them to go home but gave them a huge Turkish flag to hang on top of the factory before that.
Were there no gains in any cases? Or perhaps, to begin from the beginning, what were the demands, and how came the strikes escalated into occupations?


To be honest I do think that you have several anti-working class ideas, this doesn&#39;t mean I won&#39;t discuss with you in a civil manner however; lots of people have some anti-working class ideas, I do think it is a good idea to discuss regardless as long as they are sincere and have good intentions.

Now pray tell me, how do you know that your own ideas are not anti-working class?


"We clearly completely reject the opposition, it&#39;s slogans, it&#39;s intentions and so forth." I don&#39;t know how more clear I can be about this.

And yet you confuse one of their fronts with a genuine working class movement. And by doing this, you help them break their isolation. In that sence, whatever the discourse you use to justify it, you are supporting enemies of the working class.


Well yes, of course. This is however simply an effort to survive, not something that challenges the capitalist;

Anything that we do to attempt to survive, except submitting to their monopoly of means of production, is a potential challenge to them.


of course if the factory is recently being closed and if workers in other factories of, say, the same company decide to show solidarity to the ones in the factory which is being closed, then it will obviously harm the capitalist.

I think you don&#39;t grasp the situation as it usually happens in this side of the world. It is usually not the case that a company is closing one of its factories. It is generally the case that the company is closing itself, together with as many factories they happen to have. The capitalist&#39;s intentions are to close down, fire all workers, and sell the machines and whatever else can be sold, in order to pay off their debts. The workers then have to occupy the factory, or factories, and put them to run - and they have to directly confront the right of the capitalist, who is nominally the owner of the equipment, to dispose of it at will. Understand how this does pose a problem that cannot be reduced to "attempting to survive", much less to "the bourgeois "promoting it for their own purposes"?

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Were there no gains in any cases? Or perhaps, to begin from the beginning, what were the demands, and how came the strikes escalated into occupations?

I am not sure if this is the correct word for it but several of them was against subcontracting (which is a big issue), one huge wave of occupations were against some factories of a company being closed; workers from open factories occupied the factories they worked as well and there were in the end by definition temporary gains: the bosses said that some of the factories which were going to be closed were going to be open for a short period of time (one year perhaps). One was about workers being fired from a factory which was still going to continue to run; this was the one the union came in and stopped. Later a scandal about the way union acted came up which I won&#39;t explain here as I&#39;ll have to talk about the whole union system here.


Now pray tell me, how do you know that your own ideas are not anti-working class?

Is this a serious question?

If so through studying history, observations, studying theory, discussions and personal experiences, I came to the conclusion that those basic positions are the way to be pro-working class. I don&#39;t claim to be the holder of the truth, nor do I claim to know everything, but this is just the way I think.


Anything that we do to attempt to survive, except submitting to their monopoly of means of production, is a potential challenge to them.

A potential challenge, yes. If the boss comes back to the abandoned factory to run it again, then it will be a real challenge for example.


I think you don&#39;t grasp the situation as it usually happens in this side of the world. It is usually not the case that a company is closing one of its factories.

It usually is here.


It is generally the case that the company is closing itself, together with as many factories they happen to have. The capitalist&#39;s intentions are to close down, fire all workers, and sell the machines and whatever else can be sold, in order to pay off their debts. The workers then have to occupy the factory, or factories, and put them to run - and they have to directly confront the right of the capitalist, who is nominally the owner of the equipment, to dispose of it at will.

So you say it is a battle over the equipment, I can see that happening - I don&#39;t think it is a common case though.

[beltov]

One brief point on the &#39;self-management&#39; of the factories and how they are used against the working class in Venezuela...

Originally posted by Internacionalismo
Moreover, the Chavist bourgeoisie, in order to establish a social basis for its ‘Bolivarian revolution’, has developed a whole network of organs of social control (the Bolivarian circles, commissions, militias, etc), which allows it to dilute the workers in the mass of the ‘people’. The opposition is trying to do the same thing with its ‘citizens’ assemblies’. In this way, the autonomy required by the proletariat is dissolved into the petty bourgeois strata and other oppressed sectors of the population. And among the workers themselves, Chavism has introduced its own version of co-operativism, the various forms of co-management and self-management directly promoted by the parties and organs of the state and aimed at conferring a ‘proletarian’ character on the new government. In fact these co-operatives are a means of ideologically controlling the workers and to subject them to increasingly precarious working conditions...

The living conditions of the workers, above all in the public sector, have also been attacked by means of the commissions, co-operatives and co- and self-managed enterprises created by the government in order to exert its political and social control. With these organs, the Chavez government has succeeded in making the workforce ‘flexible’, because they are hired only temporarily by these organs, without any social wage and for the most part on wages even lower than the official minimum wage. Thus the Chavist bourgeoisie is doing the same thing as the bourgeoisies of the other governments of the right and the left in the region that are applying the typical measures of “brutal neo-liberalism”: making employment even more precarious and exploitation even more intense. This is the true face of ‘socialism of the 21st century’&#33;

These organs, however, are also instruments of blackmail against the conventionally employed workers: the government has progressively covered the public services with commissions and co-operatives, with the explicit aim of weakening and blackmailing the workers who provide these services. If they mobilise to put their demands forward, they are threatened with dismissal and replacement with workers organised in co-operatives. This is how Chavism pits workers against each other.

Venezuela: The fraud of Chavist ‘socialism’
http://en.internationalism.org/ICConline/2...vism_fraud.html (http://en.internationalism.org/ICConline/2006/march/chavism_fraud.html)

B.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 11, 2007 07:48 am
I am not sure if this is the correct word for it but several of them was against subcontracting (which is a big issue), one huge wave of occupations were against some factories of a company being closed; workers from open factories occupied the factories they worked as well and there were in the end by definition temporary gains: the bosses said that some of the factories which were going to be closed were going to be open for a short period of time (one year perhaps). One was about workers being fired from a factory which was still going to continue to run; this was the one the union came in and stopped. Later a scandal about the way union acted came up which I won&#39;t explain here as I&#39;ll have to talk about the whole union system here.
So there were no gains in the struggle against subcontrating?

I am guessing the strikes against subcontrating and against the closure of factories were reppressed by the police? Are the workers being prosecuted? Are there workers still under arrest? What was the position of the union concerning those strikes (and what unions were concerned here, are they the nationalist unions, the islamist unions?

How did those strikes start, which forces were involved in it (if you can answer that without safety concerns)? Did the islamists support it? the nationalists? the fascists? the reformists?


Is this a serious question?

If so through studying history, observations, studying theory, discussions and personal experiences, I came to the conclusion that those basic positions are the way to be pro-working class. I don&#39;t claim to be the holder of the truth, nor do I claim to know everything, but this is just the way I think.

Of course it is a serious question, indeed, it is a most serious question, a central one.

Any organisation that does not question itself about how it came to its conclusions, that does not question itself about the validity of its conclusions, that does not exercise autocriticism, is, I dare say, lost for proletarian struggle. It may be right at times, like a still clock gives you the right time twice a day, but it is lost in disorientation.

This is particularly nasty in the case of organisation like yours, to whom everybody else is reformist and treacherous. It leads to vicious attacks on other leftist organisations, eventually to the priorisation of such intra-left conflicts over the struggle against the class enemy, and in the end to open reactionary positions. This is why the Venezolan "White Hands" movement is so worrysome: it may be the point where the ICC is crossing this line. Unable to understand the class nature of this movement, it is taking it as something completely different, because it needs to hold to something, to anything, that vaguely resembles a proletarian struggle, to confront the rest of the Venezolan left. And it comes out tailing the far right.

We shall see the outcome of those events. Most probably, the "White Hands" will fade into unimportance in a few weeks, if they haven&#39;t yet. In which case the ICC will be able to come out of this without analysing its own treacherous behaviour. But if the movement is to become an important front of the Venezolan right - which is the other possible outcome - be sure that their sectarianism is going to be challenged; it won&#39;t do to take cover under the caveats of the text in the OP. The issue is, the ICC is unable to keep itself in the correct side of the class struggle in a case of radicalisation of social strife.

So, yes, it is a serious question - a question that was not convincingly answered by you, and that I fear cannot be convincingly answered by organisations that suffer the kind of degeneration the ICC suffers.


A potential challenge, yes. If the boss comes back to the abandoned factory to run it again, then it will be a real challenge for example.

And do you think the employers just abandon it and go nowhere? Of course they want the factories back; they just don&#39;t want to run them again. They want them to wreck them and sell the pieces so that they can pay their debts off.



I think you don&#39;t grasp the situation as it usually happens in this side of the world. It is usually not the case that a company is closing one of its factories.

It usually is here.

Well, then please understand that the occupations in Latin America are from a different nature from that you are used to see in Turkey.


So you say it is a battle over the equipment, I can see that happening - I don&#39;t think it is a common case though.

It is the case of all factories that are under workers occupation in Brazil at this moment, which are admittedly few. I don&#39;t know of any occupations here that are due to any different cause. To the extent that I know, this is also valid in the case of Venezuela. In any case, if this is not a common case, it is because occupations in general are uncommon, not because it is a rare case among occupations.

Luís Henrique

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2007 06:24 pm

The history and organisation of slave revolts is very interesting, important and very under analysed (for obvious reasons, the ruling class want us to think slave and thus the proletariat is incapable of organising). You my find our article on Spartacus enlightening Spartacus (http://en.internationalism.org/wr/247_spartacus.htm). You should also look into the history of the slave war in what is now haiti, but which at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th saw a highly organised slave army defeat the French and the English (the best book on this is CLR Jame&#39;s The Black Jacobins). There were also several organised attempts at slave revolts in America during slavery. This is our history, ie that of the exploited and it should be better known.
No leftist needs to be told about The Black Jacobins. It&#39;s a classic work.
I&#39;ll restrain myself from cluttering up the thread with comments on the Spartacus article but it&#39;s very good.

[ern]

Luis, you say:

The issue is, the ICC is unable to keep itself in the correct side of the class struggle in a case of radicalisation of social strife

What is the right side then?

You are constantly repeating that the ICC supports a reactionary movement and to prove it you say this or that person or this or that organisation has organised it, but you never answer the basic point from the article that there were independent assemblies. You say about this or that assembly, but this is kicking at open doors because we have already said in the article that the Opposition and authorities tried to gain control of the movement through setting up assembles of their own. Basically you have not been able to show that there were not independent assemblies.

To remind readers of the criteria we used for defining the character of the movement here is the part of the article dealing with that:


How to understand this student movement?

In order to characterise this movement, we must pose the following questions: are these demonstrations another expression of the confrontation between the bourgeoisie fractions of Chavism and the opposition, which have dominated the political scene over the course of 8 years of Chávez government? Do they represent merely student protests about their own concerns?

We think that we have to answer both of these in the negative. This movement by an important part of the students, to the surprise both of the government and the opposition, has taken on a character that is tending to break with the sterile circle of the political polarisation induced by the struggle between bourgeois fractions, and is expressed in a social discontent that until now has been caught up in this polarisation. It is therefore transcending a merely student framework. We can see that:

* It is undeniable that political forces of the government and the opposition have tried to use the movement to their on ends: the first pose it as a mere manipulation by the political forces opposed to the government, including North American imperialism; the second say it is a political movement of the opposition, since they share slogans such as the struggle for "free expression" and against "state totalitarianism", bourgeois slogans defended by the opposition which is trying to remove Chávez from power. However, the movement has tried to distance itself from political leaders and forces, as much the government as the opposition. The students have not hidden the political character of the protest, but they have made it clear that they owe no political obedience to the leader of the government or opposition. The statements by the spontaneous leaders of the movement have been clear on this aspect: "The politicians have their agenda, we have ours".
* With this aim, the movement has given itself organisational forms such as assembles, where they can discuss, elect commissions and decide upon what actions to carry out: this has taken place at the local and national level. It was in these assembles, formed in several universities, where they discussed the aim of the movement and prepared the first actions, which were transmitted to the rest of the students. For their part, the students have organised to cover the costs of the mobilisations through their own means, through collections amongst the students and the public.
* Another important character of this movement since its beginning has been that it has posed the need for dialogue and discussion of the main social problems effecting society: unemployment, insecurity, etc showing solidarity with the neediest sectors. To this end the students have called upon all of the students and the population as a whole, Chavistas or not, to take part in an open dialogue in the universities, the barrios and the street, outside of the institutions and organs controlled by the government, as well as those dominated by the opposition. In this sense, the students understood the need to avoid the trap set by the government, when the government proposed to discuss with the student adepts of Chavism in the National Assembly. The scheme backfired: other students mobilised, and, in a creative and audacious action, read out a document accusing the deputies of the Assembly of criminalising the movement, denouncing the Assembly for not being an impartial place for debate and posing their demands, abandoning the building, faced with the ire and astonishment of the deputies and Chavist students[4]
* The slogans of the movement have taken on an increasingly political character. although the media, mainly the parts controlled by the opposition, have made the central slogans of the movement the "struggle for freedom of expression" and "stopping the closure of RCTV" or the "defence of the autonomy of the universities", the students since the beginning of the movement have defended openly political slogans: the end of repression, the freeing of the detained students and those having to report to police stations daily, solidarity with the 3000 workers of RCTV, against criminality, against poverty and for the need to "create a better world" etc.

In this sense the student movement that is unfolding is in a "latent" state, due in part to the actions of the government and opposition to control and constrain it. But it did seek to break with the schemas of the past student movements and expressed a social content, influenced by tendencies within it to express the interests of wage labourers.

Luis in one of your posts you say that the ICC is wrong to say that the mobilisation did not mobilise when Chavez and the state called upon them to come out against the students: could you please quote your sources and the date so we can try and verify this with the comrades in Venezuela.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 05:59 pm
You are constantly repeating that the ICC supports a reactionary movement and to prove it you say this or that person or this or that organisation has organised it, but you never answer the basic point from the article that there were independent assemblies.
Of course I answer you "basic point", and I am going to answer it again:

There are no "independent assemblies" outside some misguided leftists&#39; imagination. The assemblies are clearly under control of the bourgeois leadership. No workers have ever spoke in those assemblies; not one of them was held in a place and circumstance that not ensured, from start, absolute majority of college students over any other sector of the population, and not one of them was directed by anybody else besides the pandilla of leaders directly linked to the political right.


You say about this or that assembly, but this is kicking at open doors because we have already said in the article that the Opposition and authorities tried to gain control of the movement through setting up assembles of their own.

That&#39;s false. The opposition has no need to "try" to gain control of the movement; they have had control over it from the start.


Basically you have not been able to show that there were not independent assemblies.

Evidently. There were no independent assemblies. What do you expect me to show? A photo of an independent assembly not taking place? A film of an independent assembly not happening? A tape of people not speaking in an inexistent assembly?

The burden of proof is on you. You weren&#39;t able to point to a single assembly that wasn&#39;t under the control of the gusano leadership&#33;


Luis in one of your posts you say that the ICC is wrong to say that the mobilisation did not mobilise when Chavez and the state called upon them to come out against the students: could you please quote your sources and the date so we can try and verify this with the comrades in Venezuela.

Look: the Chavez government has no social base within the Venezolan bourgeoisie. It has to rely on its popular base to survive. If such base crumbles, Chavez is about to be toppled within days. Is that your analysis? If so, exactly what will you have to rethink about your position when the Chavez government manages to survive the students&#39; movement?

Your own analysis shows that your characterisation of the "White Hands" is flawed. If the proletariat has no independent organisation and expression, its positions won&#39;t magically appear within a college students movement. If workers have no strength to take their own movement under their control, and thwart the Chavistas out from the circles, councils, occupied factories, etc, they will also be unable to polarise the political expressions of other social forces.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2007 10:34 am
One brief point on the &#39;self-management&#39; of the factories and how they are used against the working class in Venezuela...
Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I agreed, ipsis litteris, with your analysis of the Chavez government. How would this force me to agree with you analysis of the "White Hands"?

By retorting, systematically, with the "but Chavez" argument, you don&#39;t help your cause. It makes it clear that the point is not to break the false alternative Chavez/escuálidos, but, on the contrary, to enforce it upon those who disagree with your class treason. If I am against the "White Hands", it absolutely must be because I support Chavez and its real or fancied crimes against the Venezolan working class... the fact that the "White Hands" are a bourgeois "law and order" movement can&#39;t possible have any relation to my position.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

So, yes, it is a serious question - a question that was not convincingly answered by you

No it wasn&#39;t a serious question as it turns out by your reply to my answer and to be honest I regret even attempting to actually answer it seriously. <_<


By retorting, systematically, with the "but Chavez" argument, you don&#39;t help your cause. It makes it clear that the point is not to break the false alternative Chavez/escuálidos, but, on the contrary, to enforce it upon those who disagree with your class treason. If I am against the "White Hands", it absolutely must be because I support Chavez and its real or fancied crimes against the Venezolan working class... the fact that the "White Hands" are a bourgeois "law and order" movement can&#39;t possible have any relation to my position.

I am going to explain this clearly for the last time.

1) People who you argue against here are completely against the opposition.

2) People who you argue against here are completely against the people of the opposition who are involved with the students movement.

3) People who you argue against here are completely against the oppositionist slogans of the movement, attacking them as bourgeois influence, democratic illusions and so forth.

4) People who you argue against here don&#39;t consider this movement to be revolutionary.

5) People who you argue against here are not convinced that this movement is created by the opposition but think that the opposition is trying to succeed on doing so and obviously is opposed to all movements the opposition takes over.

6) People who you argue against here think that if the students in this movement are sincere about their rejection to both the government and the opposition and if this actually gave way to assemblies which are not in control of the opposition and if the students talk to the workers there can be positive results to it.

7) People who you argue against here if you can show evidence that the students in this movement are not sincere about their rejection of both the government and the opposition and that there aren&#39;t actually independent assemblies.

So, if you say things like "they support reactionaries" etc. I will consider that you are lying after this point and that you don&#39;t have good intentions.


Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I agreed, ipsis litteris, with your analysis of the Chavez government. How would this force me to agree with you analysis of the "White Hands"?

Had you been completely opposed to both Chavez and the opposition, then this would be a question of analysis. The big issue is the opposition to Chavez and the opposition. That is the class line. There can be mistakes about analysis, it is acceptable for one to admit that one is wrong.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 11, 2007 11:05 pm
No it wasn&#39;t a serious question as it turns out by your reply to my answer and to be honest I regret even attempting to actually answer it seriously. <_<
What question can be more serious than asking how we avoid degeneration in our organisation? I don&#39;t understand why you aren&#39;t willing to discuss this.


I am going to explain this clearly for the last time.

Yes, you have already explained it. It isn&#39;t convincing, that&#39;s all.


1) People who you argue against here are completely against the opposition.


So how does that position manifests itself in practice? To say, "I am against the "opposition"" isn&#39;t enough for a revolutionary organisation. It is necessary that such "being against" manifests itself into practical actions that, to the extent it is possible, effectively confront the actions of the "opposition".


2) People who you argue against here are completely against the people of the opposition who are involved with the students movement.

It doesn&#39;t even seem, given the arguments discussed here, that they are aware of such involvement. They systematically deny that this involvement is not adventicious, but has to do with the very core of the movement.


3) People who you argue against here are completely against the oppositionist slogans of the movement, attacking them as bourgeois influence, democratic illusions and so forth.

See answer to point 1).


4) People who you argue against here don&#39;t consider this movement to be revolutionary.

No - they consider it potentially revolutionary, as long as the influence of the "opposition" is deflected, as long as the slogans are changed, and as long as the movement is directed via general assemblies. That is to say, if we are not trying to delude ourselves, as long as it is another movement, a movement that does not exist in Venezuela or anywhere in the real world.


5) People who you argue against here are not convinced that this movement is created by the opposition but think that the opposition is trying to succeed on doing so and obviously is opposed to all movements the opposition takes over.

And this is the main mistake.


6) People who you argue against here think that if the students in this movement are sincere about their rejection to both the government and the opposition and if this actually gave way to assemblies which are not in control of the opposition and if the students talk to the workers there can be positive results to it.

People who argue against me here use the word "if" a lot, to refer to events that are not hypothetical.


7) People who you argue against here if you can show evidence that the students in this movement are not sincere about their rejection of both the government and the opposition and that there aren&#39;t actually independent assemblies.

I have shown such evidence repeatedly.

The slogans of the movement are slogans of the "opposition". The leaders of the movement (not people who are "trying to infiltrate the movement", but people who have directed it from the very beginning, people who speak in the assemblies, and people who get repeatedly elected by those assemblies to represent them) are directly involved with the "opposition" political party. The ideology of the movement is the ideology of the "opposition". The actions the movement has taken tend to legitimise the "opposition".

And they say that explicitely: contra lo que es, no contra lo que fué.


So, if you say things like "they support reactionaries" etc. I will consider that you are lying after this point and that you don&#39;t have good intentions.


You never considered the possibility that I may have good intentions. As anyone else who is not a member of your organisation, you consider me a reformist, a class traitor, a corrupt bureaucrat whose intention is to mislead the class, in exchange for some petty personal gain. You may try to be polite in the surface, but that is what you believe in the core.


Had you been completely opposed to both Chavez and the opposition, then this would be a question of analysis.

I see. It is not a question of analysis. It is a question of intentions. My intention is, I suppose, to maintain the Venezolan working class under the (mis)lead of the Chavistas, so that they can be more easily defeated by the Venezolan bourgeoisie. And, of course, if that is my intention, there is no place to discuss analysis.


The big issue is the opposition to Chavez and the opposition. That is the class line.

Rather, that is what your petty-bourgeois organisation believes is the class line.


There can be mistakes about analysis, it is acceptable for one to admit that one is wrong.

Which makes one wonder why you and the ICC cannot admit you are wrong in your "analysis" about this reactionary movement.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

So how does that position manifests itself in practice? To say, "I am against the "opposition"" isn&#39;t enough for a revolutionary organisation. It is necessary that such "being against" manifests itself into practical actions that, to the extent it is possible, effectively confront the actions of the "opposition".

When it is materially possible, obviously. Right now you&#39;ll have to settle with the propaganda made against opposition.


It doesn&#39;t even seem, given the arguments discussed here, that they are aware of such involvement.

The opposition has been attempting to take the movement under it&#39;s wings, such involvement, that is the involvement of three people, is something which can be expected.


They systematically deny that this involvement is not adventicious, but has to do with the very core of the movement.

This is not about systematically denying anything. There is no evidence that the movements was created by the opposition, thus there is no evidence that the involvement of the opposition has to do with the very core of the movement. You have been able to show three people who are actually linked with the opposition which is in the movement.

I have shown a leading person in the "communal council" of one barrio refusing to strike against the students.


And this is the main mistake.

According to you, of course.


People who argue against me here use the word "if" a lot, to refer to events that are not hypothetical.

Yes, we are not in Venezuela. If you are in Venezuela, please tell us what you have seen. If not, I would suggest you to use the word "if" as well.


The leaders of the movement (not people who are "trying to infiltrate the movement", but people who have directed it from the very beginning, people who speak in the assemblies, and people who get repeatedly elected by those assemblies to represent them) are directly involved with the "opposition" political party.

Of course that is only three people.


You never considered the possibility that I may have good intentions.

No I did. I thought you had good intentions but sophisticated but not pro-working class politics.


As anyone else who is not a member of your organisation

It has got nothing to do with organizations and everything to do with politics.


you consider me a reformist

I don&#39;t consider you a reformist.


a corrupt bureaucrat whose intention is to mislead the class, in exchange for some petty personal gain.

I have already apologized for that.


You may try to be polite in the surface, but that is what you believe in the core.

No. What I actually think is that you have is, as sophisticated as they are, shit politics. That&#39;s it.


I see. It is not a question of analysis. It is a question of intentions.

No, it is a question of politics. Because you think the right thing to do for the workers in Venezuela is to enter into a "united front" with the Chavist government, you are completely prejudiced about this movement.


You may try to be polite in the surface,


My intention is, I suppose, to maintain the Venezolan working class under the (mis)lead of the Chavistas, so that they can be more easily defeated by the Venezolan bourgeoisie.

I don&#39;t think so. I don&#39;t know what your intentions are. You might be fully sincere about everything you are saying, you might be just keeping up with this because you are stubborn, you might be fond of arguing against "ultra-leftists" because one of them beat you up when you were in high school and so forth. Unless, however, I have seen evidence regarding whatever your intentions are, I have decided that it&#39;s best not to question your intentions (or anyone elses) and assume that you are fully sincere. So I am not trying to be polite, I am doing what I have decided to be necessary while debating in the internet, this is why apologized otherwise I have to admit that honestly I don&#39;t care about hurting your feelings because I&#39;m rude.


Rather, that is what your petty-bourgeois organisation believes is the class line.

In the (EKS), we are proletarians and students from proletarian backgrounds. An overwhelming majority of the ICC are proletarians. Who the fuck are you to call us petty-bourgeois and as if you are proletarian yourself.

This is obviously a completely baseless accusation, something that shouldn&#39;t even be taken seriously.


Which makes one wonder why you and the ICC cannot admit you are wrong in your "analysis" about this reactionary movement.

We haven&#39;t seen evidence to prove it. We see the slogans as what they are: bourgeois slogans, democratic illusions and such but not as something to prove that this is the opposition in disguise. We see the three "leaders" of the movement as bourgeois, as class enemies but we don&#39;t think they created the movement by themselves and we think that simply three oppositionists who are involved with the movement doesn&#39;t prove anything. We need to see the proof about whether the assemblies are actually independent or not and why the opposition created it&#39;s own assemblies if the assemblies were not actually independent.


What question can be more serious than asking how we avoid degeneration in our organisation? I don&#39;t understand why you aren&#39;t willing to discuss this.

Because with this question, I have seen that it wasn&#39;t a sincere question but a means for you to try to prove your point further, a polemic. I will not discuss with you about avoiding degeneration in the organization right now but if you are actually concerned, it is a topic, among things such as evaluations, self-criticism and talking about mistakes, which we regard as very important.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 12, 2007 03:17 pm
When it is materially possible, obviously.
If it is possible for a students movement to be independent from the bourgeoisie in Venezuela, now, how can it be so difficult for a communist organisation to take action that effectively distance itself from the "opposition"?


No. What I actually think is that you have is, as sophisticated as they are, shit politics. That&#39;s it.

Fair. Let me then say what I think about your politics. They are not "shit" politics. They are politics that necessarily drive the working class into defeat.


I have to admit that honestly I don&#39;t care about hurting your feelings because I&#39;m rude.

Well, for a change, here you speak the truth.


Who the fuck are you to call us petty-bourgeois and as if you are proletarian yourself.

I am me, and that&#39;s enough. Enough to tell you, with all letters, and no fear of being mistaken, that your organisation is organising defeat. Which is typical of petty-bourgeois organisations.


Because with this question, I have seen that it wasn&#39;t a sincere question but a means for you to try to prove your point further, a polemic. I will not discuss with you about avoiding degeneration in the organization right now but if you are actually concerned, it is a topic, among things such as evaluations, self-criticism and talking about mistakes, which we regard as very important.

It becomes an issue whenever an organisation shows signs of degeneration. And refusing to understand the class nature of the "White Hands" movement seems to me a clear symptom of degeneration.

But enough, I don&#39;t want to discuss your organisation or the ICC; I have already taken my conclusions. I have also made the point. The "White Hands" movement is a reactionary one. Believe otherwise at your own risk.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Las manifestaciones estudiantiles no se van de vacaciones (http://venezuelareal.zoomblog.com/archivo/2007/07/04/las-manifestaciones-estudiantiles-no-s.html)


Ronald Gaglio, de la Universidad Monteávila, asegura que el llamado a "la defensa de la libertad, el respeto y los derechos civiles se han convertido para el movimiento estudiantil en una forma de vida", por ello están tratando de llevarla a todos los espacios y por eso incluyen en las manifestaciones la concienciación del ciudadano.

"Tenemos que trabajar todos los días, en todos lugares donde vemos que se cometen infracciones, donde no se hacen las cosas bien, o no se respeta la ley".

Explica que uno de sus principales objetivos es que "la gente sepa que estamos en todos lados, no solamente en una marcha o en un semáforo, sino que puede encontrarnos en cualquier lado, defendiendo y exigiendo que se cumpla la ley".

"We must work every day, in all places in which we see that infractions are being committed, where things are not well done, or law is disrespected".

"that people know that we are everywhere, not only in marches or traffic lights, but that we can be found at any place, defending and demanding that law is abiden by".

There you go, the policiac nature of the movement.

http://www.eluniversal.com/2007/07/04/foto%20(1519313)%20copia.jpg

Above, one of them, helping to enforce traffic laws... :rolleyes:

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

If it is possible for a students movement to be independent from the bourgeoisie in Venezuela, now

This is about the students involved wanting to be independent - this doesn&#39;t mean the movement is independent from bourgeois influence, obviously&#33;


how can it be so difficult for a communist organisation to take action that effectively distance itself from the "opposition"?

It is effectively distancing itself from the opposition.


It becomes an issue whenever an organisation shows signs of degeneration.

Your understanding of "signs of degeneration" is flawed. An analysis can be right and wrong, it is the politics that matter and it is the politics that determine whether and organization is degenerating. So what is said about this movement is not important, analysis is something to be discussed. So if you think that opposing both Chavez and the opposition is a sign of degeneration, then fair enough, however you can say that this analysis is right or wrong, yet unless you speculate about the integrity and intentions of the ICC comrades on the ground, you can&#39;t judge this as a sign of degeneration.

[Leo]

"We must work every day, in all places in which we see that infractions are being committed, where things are not well done, or law is disrespected".

"that people know that we are everywhere, not only in marches or traffic lights, but that we can be found at any place, defending and demanding that law is abiden by".

There you go, the policiac nature of the movement.

Above, one of them, helping to enforce traffic laws...

Yeah, this shows the influence of bourgeois ideology. Yet just as someone looking from the outside, I&#39;m going to say that it resembles rather the ideology of the Chavez government, after all "they are the law" right now and they don&#39;t want to see it being disrespected.

[ern]

Ok Luis you want to conclude the discussion fair enough. So lets lay out where we stand.

For you the students movement was a product of the Opposition and the machinations of the CIA. According to you there were no independent assemblies or efforts to engage in discussion with the poor etc. You have insisted that the ICC is wrong in saying this, but at no point have you been able to prove that there were no independent assembles, (remembering that you are &#39;not on the ground&#39; but dependent upon the media) where as our section through its position on the ground has been able see that there are independent assemblies and real efforts to oppose the efforts of the Opposition and government to dominate this movement. As we said before may be you should stand back from your sources a bit more.

Your understanding of the nature is Chavez and his movement is summed up by the following

Look: the Chavez government has no social base within the Venezolan bourgeoisie. It has to rely on its popular base to survive. If such base crumbles, Chavez is about to be toppled within days. Is that your analysis? If so, exactly what will you have to rethink about your position when the Chavez government manages to survive the students&#39; movement?
This is very clear. We would not disagree with you that Chavez and his fraction has very cleverly used the huge discontent of he most impoverished elements of society as a power base; there is no denying that. However we disagree over where that means he is part of the bourgeoisie or not. For you that power base places him to the side of the bourgeoisie some how or at least not as a fully fledged bourgeois. For us this making of the poor masses as a power base is clear evidence of his role for the bourgeoisie and the interests of the capitalist state. This was a very astute political action by the part of the bourgeoisie that Chavez fronts. Before Chavez came to power the former ruling parties has become increasingly unable to impose social control on society due to the deepening economic crisis, the corruption of the political parties and their increasing internal fraction struggle. This made the political life of the bourgeoisie difficult, and their ability to imprison the population in democratic mystifications very difficult. There was also the important question of the old parties support for Uncle Sam, during the Cold War this had been fine being Uncle Sam&#39;s friend meant one could have support from the world most powerful leader, however with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the following years of the gradual weakening of the leadership of the US being its friend was not so profitable. Thus part of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie had the brilliant idea of setting up a movement to try and overcome all these problems; to mobilise the poor in support of the state, to reinforce the capitalist states control over the society especially the working class and the poor masses, to re-ignite interest in the democratic process and to try and distance itself from the US and thus increase the influence of Venezuelan imperialism in the region. Thus, up sprung Chavez promising all of these things. He has clearly been opposed by the old fraction who want to carry on supporting the US and who are opposed to giving the capitalist state more control over the economy. However, the clever use of the mobilisation of the poor around Chavez meant that the fraction of the bourgeoisie he represents can use them against the opposition. More than this Chavez and his campaigns about 21st Century socialism and his anti-amercianism has enable Venezuelan imperialism to spread its influence, with the support of many leftists abroad who have fallen for the idea that some how because his power base is the poor that he is dependent upon them and thus not fully part of the bourgeoisie. What a brilliant bit of political manipulation.
It is also necessary to see that his &#39;dependency&#39; on the poor is a means for penetrating the grip of the state into parts of the population which were not so directly under its control: the slums etc. Now the state has its offices and representatives right in the slums etc through the good offices of the misiones, the communal councils etc. Again a very clever bit of political action by part of the bourgeoisie.
Chavez has mobilised his power base in support of the state and parts of the bourgeoisie are very grateful. This is why the military, the managers of the state, the judiciary and the &#39;democratic&#39; institutions back him. Without the backing of the military and the secrete services Chavez would be useless. They could get rid of him if they want to. They do not need to overthrow him, if he was becoming unpopular with the poor etc they could finder another individual who would promise to "return to the true path of the revolution". Chavez is a figurehead that is all. Though Chavez may not go quietly which could cause problems, but if he was lossing his ability to help keep the masses tied to the state, his ability to mobilse them would be weakened. Bacially as long as he is able to maintain the massive ideological attack on the working class and the poor and thus to hid the real actions of the capitalist state that part of the ruling class backing him will be happy. Also as long as he is happy to keep on lining their very large pockets with oil gold and allowing them to plunder the working class and the economy in the name of &#39;socialism&#39;.
The reality is, and Luis you do not seem to understand this, Chavez has enabled Venezuelan imperialism to strengthen its ability to impose its interests on society and the area.
Luis, it is very clear that you are not an uncritical supporter of Chavez, but try and stand back and see just how clever the fraction of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie using Chavez have been. Basically they are using your (and others) desire for improving the situation of the working class and the poor in order to provide cover for their strengthening of capitalists states hold over society.
This strengthening of the state cannot solve the problems of the working class and power, and you are correct to say that there is a need for an independent workers struggle against Chavez and the polarisation of society. For that struggle to fully develop it is going to be central that the proletariat has no illusions in Chavez and his claim to represent the poor etc. They have to see that Chavez is not some defender of the poor but another member of the ruling class who is trying to impose the dictatorship of capital upon them. Any lack of clarify on this only helps to maintain the hold of the capitalist class over the exploited. Thus concretely and in practice, all those who want to defend the class and its autonomy have to do this, which is what we have done, consistently.
This summary will not change your mind, but hopefully it may help those who are questioning what is happening in Venezuela under the name of 21st century Socialism to begin to better understand the complexity of the situation better.

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12, 2007 06:15 pm

.
This summary will not change your mind, but hopefully it may help those who are questioning what is happening in Venezuela under the name of 21st century Socialism to begin to better understand the complexity of the situation better.
It certainly helps us understand the ICC&#39;s concern about the "Venezuelan empire," as we were enlightened by Reagan&#39;s concern that Sandinista imperialism had to be stopped before it reached El Paso.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 12, 2007 05:01 pm

"We must work every day, in all places in which we see that infractions are being committed, where things are not well done, or law is disrespected".

"that people know that we are everywhere, not only in marches or traffic lights, but that we can be found at any place, defending and demanding that law is abiden by".

There you go, the policiac nature of the movement.

Above, one of them, helping to enforce traffic laws...

Yeah, this shows the influence of bourgeois ideology. Yet just as someone looking from the outside, I&#39;m going to say that it resembles rather the ideology of the Chavez government, after all "they are the law" right now and they don&#39;t want to see it being disrespected.
Yes, interesting, isn&#39;t it?

The problem is, a part of the Venezolan society doesn&#39;t see Chavez government as "law and order", but rather as the institutionalisation of chaos. This is based upon those sectors&#39; atavic fear of "the poor", "the slum dwellers", but also has its roots in reality: the fact that criminality is in the rise under Chavez (whether as a result of polyarchic conflicts between national and local police, or of a more general crisis of the Venezolan State), which reinforces that fear and makes it ignite petty-bourgeois, reactionary demands for "public safety" and "fight against criminality". And as they see the Chavez government as incapable or unwilling to harm its political base in the slums through a general crackdown, it seems they have now resorted into playing the State role themselves.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Let&#39;s see...

Stalin Gonzales
Yon Goicoechea
Geraldine Alvarez
Douglas Barrios

Then Ronald Gaglio and his take of the students movement as a law enforcer...

And here, Andrés Ayala, who studies Journalism in Monte Ávila University, speaks... to the main employers organisation in Venezuela, the notorious FEDECAMARAS.

Carabobo High School&#39;s Students&#39; Blog (http://estudiantesunidosdecarabobo.blogspot.com/2007/08/asamblea-nacional-de-fedecamaras.html)

Ustedes como empresarios tienen un alto grado de responsabilidad hacia la sociedad, el cual en este momento lo están cumpliendo de forma ineficaz.

Nosotros vemos como los empresarios en la actualidad han perdido la confianza en el país, han perdido la conciencia de país que se necesita para pensar en el progreso. No tienen arraigo nacional ni defienden el nacionalismo “lo hecho en Venezuela”.

"You as entrepreneurs have a high degree of responsibility towards society, which in this moment you are being inefficacious to attend."

"We see how the entrepreneurs nowadays have lost confidence in our country, have lost the country conscience that is needed to think about progress. You have no national attachment, nor you defend nationalism or what is "made in Venezuela."

It starts to sound like third positionism...


Han perdido las principales características que definen a un empresario como lo es el estar dispuesto a arriesgarse y asumir retos para el beneficio de la sociedad, pretenden que el estado los proteja y por ello tienen monopolios y oligopolios.

"You have lost the main characteristics that define an entrepreneur, such as being disposed to incur in risks and accept challenges for the benefit of society; you want to be protected by the State, and because of that you have monopolies and oligopolies."

As you can see, the criticism is not against the system, the capitalist system, but, instead, against &#39;incompetent&#39; or &#39;ill-intentioned&#39; employers, who do not adequately perform their capitalist role.

Impressive, isn&#39;t it?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

The same text as above, in a (lousy) translation to English:

The End of Venezuela as I know it (http://antipatrioticvenezuelan.blogspot.com/)

[Luís Henrique]

III Encuentro Nacional de Estudiantes de Bachillerato (http://sociales.eluniversal.com/2007/06/29/pol_art_estudiantes-de-bachi_338794.shtml)


En el evento, que fue conducido por Ramón Castro, animador de RCTV, los jóvenes expusieron sus razones para mantenerse en las calles y para sumarse al movimiento universitario en el afán de defender los derechos civiles de todos.

La Concha Acústica de Bello Monte fue el escenario para este encuentro de jóvenes que contó con la presencia del periodista Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, del profesor universitario Amalio Belmonte, del presidente de la Cámara Venezolana de la Educación Privada (Cavep), Octavio de Lamo y de dirigentes del movimiento universitario, quienes sirvieron de oradores.

"In the event, that was directed by Ramón Castro, RCTV showman, the youths talked about their reasons to keep on the streets and join the college students in the issue of defending civil rights for all."

The Bello Monte "Concha Acústica" was the scenery for this meeting of young people that featured the presence of journalist Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, college Professor Amalio Belmont, the chairman of the Venezolan Chamber of Private Education, Octavio de Lamo, and of leaders of the college students movement, who gave speeches."

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

It certainly helps us understand the ICC&#39;s concern about the "Venezuelan empire," as we were enlightened by Reagan&#39;s concern that Sandinista imperialism had to be stopped before it reached El Paso.

Opposing Venezuela&#39;s imperialist interests, and yes it is obviously a very small country but still has imperialist interests, doesn&#39;t mean supporting the US: in fact you can&#39;t oppose American imperialism without opposing world imperialism, without opposing world capitalism as they are all necessarily connected.

Economically, the Chavez government is very much dependent on American capital, of course American capital is dependent on Venezuelan oil. Chavez organized oil sales to be most profitable and of course liberal, by encouraging foreign oil companies to invest more in Venezuela without having to go through a state intermediary. Chavez&#39;s imperialist ambitions might have taken him elsewhere, Iran, Russia and such politically, yet economically they have a close relationship with American capital: after all "it&#39;s business".


And here, Andrés Ayala, who studies Journalism in Monte Ávila University, speaks... to the main employers organisation in Venezuela, the notorious FEDECAMARAS.

Carabobo High School&#39;s Students&#39; Blog

Ustedes como empresarios tienen un alto grado de responsabilidad hacia la sociedad, el cual en este momento lo están cumpliendo de forma ineficaz.

Nosotros vemos como los empresarios en la actualidad han perdido la confianza en el país, han perdido la conciencia de país que se necesita para pensar en el progreso. No tienen arraigo nacional ni defienden el nacionalismo “lo hecho en Venezuela”.


"You as entrepreneurs have a high degree of responsibility towards society, which in this moment you are being inefficacious to attend."

"We see how the entrepreneurs nowadays have lost confidence in our country, have lost the country conscience that is needed to think about progress. You have no national attachment, nor you defend nationalism or what is "made in Venezuela."

It starts to sound like third positionism...

Han perdido las principales características que definen a un empresario como lo es el estar dispuesto a arriesgarse y asumir retos para el beneficio de la sociedad, pretenden que el estado los proteja y por ello tienen monopolios y oligopolios.

"You have lost the main characteristics that define an entrepreneur, such as being disposed to incur in risks and accept challenges for the benefit of society; you want to be protected by the State, and because of that you have monopolies and oligopolies."

As you can see, the criticism is not against the system, the capitalist system, but, instead, against &#39;incompetent&#39; or &#39;ill-intentioned&#39; employers, who do not adequately perform their capitalist role.

Impressive, isn&#39;t it?

Yeah, lots of people have shit ideas.

[Luís Henrique]

More of Andrés Ayala (http://venezuelareal.zoomblog.com/archivo/2007/06/11/vamos-a-seguir-en-la-calle.html)


–¿Hasta cuándo van a seguir las marchas?
–Hasta que sea necesario. Sólo hay un fin idóneo en este momento que sería la reapertura de RCTV, porque sentimos que ahí se nos cortó la libertad de expresión en Venezuela.

No somos chavistas, ni somos de oposición, pero nada más existe hoy en día un sólo canal de TV que está en contra del gobierno y está dando otro punto de vista a toda la ciudadanía en Venezuela

"- Till when are the marches going to continue?"

"- As long as it is necessary. There is only one wholesome end at this moment, which would be the reopening of RCTV, because we feel that there was when freedom of speech was severed in Venezuela."

"We are not Chavistas, nor oppositionists, but there is no more than one TV station nowadays that is against the government and is giving a different perspective to all the Venezolan citizenry."

That is, the objective of the movement is the reopening of RCTV (not the end of poverty or a better world, but the reopening of a private TV station). And they "oppose both" Chavez and the "opposition", but their demand is that more an oppositionist TV station is able to function.

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

This student movement is beginning to sound more like the one which acted as strike breakers for British capital during the 1926 General Strike, than the one which forged links with workers in Paris &#39;68&#33;

Message for the ICC: "It&#39;s the politics, stupid&#33;" And as Luis has demonstrated at length, the political demands raised by the Venezuelan students is petite bourgeois and within the remit of the opposition.


It starts to sound like third positionism...

Which appears as quite an attractive option when you fetishise "autonomy" in the manner of the ICC here.

[Luís Henrique]

More leaders:

Ricardo Sánchez, member of the Student Council, Central University of Venezuela;
Alexis Cabrera, chair of the student council at Simón Bolívar University (USB).

Still haven&#39;t found anyone related to this movement that effectively disclaims the opposition. At most, as Andrés Ayala, they decry the Venezolan capitalists for not being capitalist enough. But this is what a "united front" means: we criticise our allies when they aren&#39;t committed enough.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Also Freddy Guevara, chairman of the Centro Estudiantil of UCAB.


Guevara recordó que este domingo el movimiento estudiantil visitará cada una de las iglesias del país para elevar una oración por la paz, por la unión y por la vida en Venezuela.

From the Un Nuevo Tiempo Youth webpage (http://unnuevotiempojuvenil.blogspot.com/2007/07/en-el-marco-del-fin-de-semana-por-la.html).

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

You can list dozens of people and call them leaders, I am not really interested in that.

Yet while you&#39;re on it, can you try to find out about those assemblies, whether the assemblies are actually independent or not and why the opposition created it&#39;s own assemblies if the assemblies were not actually independent. Also if you can find about reactions of barrios, especially the barrio of Patarse - it would be interesting.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 12, 2007 09:08 pm
You can list dozens of people and call them leaders, I am not really interested in that.

Yet while you&#39;re on it, can you try to find out about those assemblies, whether the assemblies are actually independent or not and why the opposition created it&#39;s own assemblies if the assemblies were not actually independent. Also if you can find about reactions of barrios, especially the barrio of Patarse - it would be interesting.
Assemblies chaired by an RCTV showman?

There are no independent assemblies that I can find - and the most reasonable explanation for that is that there are no independent assemblies at all.

Nowhere I find students complaining that the political right is trying to hijack their movement. Nowhere I find any signs of conflict between the students leadership and their rank-and-file. Nowhere I see any internal struggle to change the demands of the movement.

You have been talking about a fantasy; it simply does not exist.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Well - or you are simply taking the opposition&#39;s word for it.

[Luís Henrique]

Google for "asambleas independientes" "estudiantes venozolanos" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22asambleas+independientes%22+%22estudiantes+ve nezolanos%22&btnG=Search)

Google for "asambleas independientes" "manos blancas" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22asambleas+independientes%22+%22manos+blancas% 22&btnG=Search)

Google for "asambleas independientes" "movimiento estudiantil" (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22asambleas+independientes%22+%22movimiento+est udiantil%22&btnG=Search)

Google for "asambleas independientes" Venezuela (http://)

Google for "asambleas independientes" Caracas (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22asambleas+independientes%22+%22Caracas%22&btnG=Search)

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Uh... I don&#39;t think an independent assembly will be called "The Independent Assembly". :unsure:

Besides, isn&#39;t what we get in the web simply going to be either the oppositions or the Chavists arguements?

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 12, 2007 09:23 pm
Uh... I don&#39;t think an independent assembly will be called "The Independent Assembly". :unsure:

Besides, isn&#39;t what we get in the web simply going to be either the oppositions or the Chavists arguements?
And how do you suggest that I search for them?

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

Okay, I have found an interesting decleration of some sorts written by students from Universidad Central de Venezuela. Obviously it is in Spanish - my Spanish is not good enough to translate it completely so I would appreciate if you help me with it.


Como estudiantes de la UCV nos preocupamos por los acontecimientos que ocurren en el país en estos momentos, donde pareciera se esta presentando una reacción estudiantil, que por tanto tiempo ha estado apagada. Como jóvenes nos preguntamos y manifestamos lo siguiente:
- Rechazamos el cierre de cualquier medio, ya que esto es solo una muestra de autoritarismo, mas no defendemos los intereses de particulares (RCTV).
- ¿Donde están los trabajadores de RCTV cuando los estudiantes estamos siendo agredidos? ¿Acaso para ellos sólo somos carne de cañón?
- ¿Por qué a Venevisión le renovaron la concesión cuando ellos son tan inmorales como RCTV?
- La libertad de expresión representada a través de los medios televisivos es, en realidad, inexistente ya que los canales están 100% al servicio del Estado o 100% al servicio de la oposición, son los representantes del poder, nunca han defendido los intereses de los estudiantes.
- ¿Por qué no hemos protestado por los enormes problemas de nuestra UCV pero salimos a protestar a favor de un canal que promueve el consumismo, es sexista, amarillista, pornográfico, etc.? En las épocas duras de los 70, 80 y 90’s nunca defendió a los estudiantes, ni mucho menos la libertad de expresión, siempre actuó a favor de sus intereses. Tampoco podemos dejar a un lado el carácter mitómano,
autoritario y alienante de las televisoras al servicio de «Hugo I», donde no se discute lo que diga el amo.
- No creemos en la polarización que nos imponen Chávez y la oposición. Creemos que el cambio debe venir desde abajo, de los estudiantes, de las comunidades, no de unos políticos con discursos de misses.
- ¿Será esta otra lucha de una semana, por fin estaremos despertando de esta larga apatía? Esperamos que así sea, que de ahora en adelante nos levantemos en contra de los males que aquejan a nuestra
sociedad: asesinatos, violaciones, ecocodios, etc |

¡Ni Chávez ni Granier, ni Lara ni Ravell&#33;

http://ucevistasinconformes.blogspot.com/

I have tried to translate the bits I understood, feel free to correct me.

"As the youth we declare that we reject the closing of any media, since this by itself is a sample of authoritarianism but we do not defend the interests of individuals (RCTV)."

"The freedom of speech represented through the television media is, in reality, nonexistent since the channels are 100% at the service of the State or 100% at the service of the opposition, they are the representatives of the power, they have never defended the interests of the students."

"Why have we not protested for the enormous problems we have in the UCV but we leave to protest in favor of a channel that promotes consumerism, that is sexist pornographic, etc.? In the hard times of 70, 80 and 90&#39; s they never defended us, nor did they defend freedom of speech: they always acted in favor of its interests. Neither can we take the side of the "mitomano" (mythomaniac?), authoritarian and alienating character of the television, "Hugo I" where what the master says itself is not discussed."

"We do not believe in the polarization that impose us Chávez and the opposition. We believe that the change should come from below, of the students, of the communities, not of some politicians."

"Neither Chávez nor Granier nor Lara nor Ravell&#33;"

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 12, 2007 10:50 pm
Okay, I have found an interesting decleration of some sorts written by students from Universidad Central de Venezuela. Obviously it is in Spanish - my Spanish is not good enough to translate it completely so I would appreciate if you help me with it.


Como estudiantes de la UCV nos preocupamos por los acontecimientos que ocurren en el país en estos momentos, donde pareciera se esta presentando una reacción estudiantil, que por tanto tiempo ha estado apagada. Como jóvenes nos preguntamos y manifestamos lo siguiente:
- Rechazamos el cierre de cualquier medio, ya que esto es solo una muestra de autoritarismo, mas no defendemos los intereses de particulares (RCTV).
- ¿Donde están los trabajadores de RCTV cuando los estudiantes estamos siendo agredidos? ¿Acaso para ellos sólo somos carne de cañón?
- ¿Por qué a Venevisión le renovaron la concesión cuando ellos son tan inmorales como RCTV?
- La libertad de expresión representada a través de los medios televisivos es, en realidad, inexistente ya que los canales están 100% al servicio del Estado o 100% al servicio de la oposición, son los representantes del poder, nunca han defendido los intereses de los estudiantes.
- ¿Por qué no hemos protestado por los enormes problemas de nuestra UCV pero salimos a protestar a favor de un canal que promueve el consumismo, es sexista, amarillista, pornográfico, etc.? En las épocas duras de los 70, 80 y 90’s nunca defendió a los estudiantes, ni mucho menos la libertad de expresión, siempre actuó a favor de sus intereses. Tampoco podemos dejar a un lado el carácter mitómano,
autoritario y alienante de las televisoras al servicio de «Hugo I», donde no se discute lo que diga el amo.
- No creemos en la polarización que nos imponen Chávez y la oposición. Creemos que el cambio debe venir desde abajo, de los estudiantes, de las comunidades, no de unos políticos con discursos de misses.
- ¿Será esta otra lucha de una semana, por fin estaremos despertando de esta larga apatía? Esperamos que así sea, que de ahora en adelante nos levantemos en contra de los males que aquejan a nuestra
sociedad: asesinatos, violaciones, ecocodios, etc |

¡Ni Chávez ni Granier, ni Lara ni Ravell&#33;

http://ucevistasinconformes.blogspot.com/

I have tried to translate the bits I understood, feel free to correct me.

"As the youth we declare that we reject the closing of any media, since this by itself is a sample of authoritarianism but we do not defend the interests of individuals (RCTV)."

"The freedom of speech represented through the television media is, in reality, nonexistent since the channels are 100% at the service of the State or 100% at the service of the opposition, they are the representatives of the power, they have never defended the interests of the students."

"Why have we not protested for the enormous problems we have in the UCV but we leave to protest in favor of a channel that promotes consumerism, that is sexist pornographic, etc.? In the hard times of 70, 80 and 90&#39; s they never defended us, nor did they defend freedom of speech: they always acted in favor of its interests. Neither can we take the side of the "mitomano" (mythomaniac?), authoritarian and alienating character of the television, "Hugo I" where what the master says itself is not discussed."

"We do not believe in the polarization that impose us Chávez and the opposition. We believe that the change should come from below, of the students, of the communities, not of some politicians."

"Neither Chávez nor Granier nor Lara nor Ravell&#33;"
It&#39;s a good translation; you missed these:


- ¿Donde están los trabajadores de RCTV cuando los estudiantes estamos siendo agredidos? ¿Acaso para ellos sólo somos carne de cañón?
- ¿Por qué a Venevisión le renovaron la concesión cuando ellos son tan inmorales como RCTV?

"Where are the workers of RCTV when the students are being attacked? Perhaps to them we are just cannon fodder?"

"Why was Venevisión&#39;s concession, when they are just as immoral as RCTV?"

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

It&#39;s a good translation

Actually you can&#39;t imagine how hard it was for me :(


you missed these:


¿Acaso para ellos sólo somos carne de cañón?


"Where are the workers of RCTV when the students are being attacked? Perhaps to them we are just cannon fodder?"

Ah, that phrase carne de cañón confused me - I didn&#39;t know of an expression called cannon fodder.


- ¿Por qué a Venevisión le renovaron la concesión cuando ellos son tan inmorales como RCTV?


"Why was Venevisión&#39;s concession, when they are just as immoral as RCTV?"

And here that phrase le renovaron la concesión confused me, I didn&#39;t understand what renewal of concession meant.

[Luís Henrique]

I&#39;m sorry, I&#39;m not able to post as often as I would wish until Thursday. I have been helping in the elections of a union here - the Data Processing Workers Union. Very tiresome. The guys in the board - Unidade na Luta, the reformists that are a majority within the PT - are shamelessly stealing the election, since it is quite clear they lost the vote. We will probably split the union; an assembly might take place tomorrow, to decide that. I&#39;ve been sleeping late, waking early, and away from internet connections all day. :(

Two weeks ago it was the Municipal Civil Servants from Águas Lindas (a city close to Brasília). There they went to the point of physically robbing one of the ballot boxes. Or trying to; happily we were able to take it back (a comrade was punched in his mouth during the process). We beat them (Unidade na Luta) 70 - 30%; very nice victory... :lol:

I wish to comment on the Ucevistas Inconformes texts; they are very interesting. But I really need to postpone this for some days. :( We haven&#39;t a sleepy smiley; I needed one now&#33;

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Mkay, lets have a look at it.

El alza del movimiento estudiantil para demostrar su descontento con lo que sucede en nuestro país es un acto de responsabilidad con Venezuela. Lo lamentable es el motivo que despertó finalmente a los estudiantes universitarios, que durante años permanecieron apáticos, y que no muestra el verdadero potencial de nuestro pensamiento.

The rise of the students movement to show their discontent with what happens in our country is an act of responsibility towards Venezuela. To be lamented is the reason that finally woke university students, who for years kept apathetic, and that does not reveal the true potential of our thought.

So, for starters, the writer shows her inconformity, perhaps surprise, for the mobile of the protest.


El cese de la concesión del canal de televisión RCTV no debe ser motivo de reacción por parte de quienes seremos el futuro de nuestro país. Debemos evaluar la situación y preguntarnos si realmente vale el esfuerzo defender a una empresa privada que nunca ha mostrado interés por los estudiantes, además de contribuir a la desmoralización de los televidentes a través de su programación sexista, amarillista y sin contenido de calidad que alimente a la cultura nacional. Habría que preguntarnos si RCTV era sinónimo de libertad de expresión: si todos podíamos participar o si sólo lo hacían los que complacían los intereses de Marcel Granier.

The finishing of RCTV&#39;s concession should not be reason of reaction from us, who will be the future of our country. We should evaluate the situation and ask if it really is worth the effort to defend a private company that has never shown interest for the students, and besides has contributed to the demoralisation of televiewers through its sexist, sensationalist programs, which were devoid of any quality content that could foster national culture. We should ask if RCTV was synonim of freedom of speed: if any of us could participate, or only those who pleased the interests of Marcel Granier.

So we have here a correct critique of RCTV (even if some nationalist content shows up) and what it meant in the Venezolan context; and no delusions about the students movement having other motivation besides what has been stated by themselves and everybody who has witnessed it: that it was a movement for RCTV&#39;s property rights.


La oportunidad se ha prestado para que la Autonomía de nuestra Universidad se vea vulnerada por el Gobierno Nacional, que siempre está sediento de poder y que no ha logrado tomar posesión de nuestra casa de estudio. Tanto al actual presidente como a los futuros se les debe recordar que la Autonomía Universitaria no se negocia y no necesitamos recibir señales de amenaza para defenderla.

This was the opportunity for our University&#39;s autonomy to come under attack by the National Government, which is always power-thirsty, and has not been able to take possession of our house of studies. To the incumbent president, as well as to the future ones, it should be reminded that University&#39;s Autonomy is not negotiable, and that we don&#39;t need to be threatened to defend it.

Which is a defence of the University from its own, corporative, point-of-view; not necessarily reactionary or even incorrect, but it certainly lacks a broader, classist perspective.


Pero ¿cómo han aportado al movimiento los líderes estudiantiles?, la respuesta es sencilla: como oportunistas politiqueros.

But, how have the students leaders conducted the movement? the answer is simple: like opportunist petty politicians.

So we have a brief appreciation of the leadership: base opportunists.


Hasta el momento no hemos logrado avanzar, el tema de la defensa de RCTV tampoco ayuda, pero existen argumentos dentro de los grupos de estudiantes que no son tomados en cuenta por estos seudo-líderes,

Until this moment we have not been able to make any advances; the theme of RCTV&#39;s defence also does not help, but there are arguments within the groups of students that are not taken into account by those pseudo-leaders.

So now she seems to contradict herself: first, she said that the students leadership was opportunist; now she seems to be questioning whether such leaders are in fact leaders, for they don&#39;t express all of the students&#39; concerns. But then, if those are not true leaders, we have to ask: but who are the true ones? And, to this, the article has no answer, because, as a matter of fact, the leadership of the movement is not under dispute (or, if it is, it is being disputed by diverse bourgeois or petty-bourgeois lines, not from a proletarian perspective - which seems in line with a sober evaluation of the Venezolan situation, in which our class seems to have still not an independent voice).


probablemente por conveniencia, e incluso nos queda la duda de si están siendo respaldados por los partidos políticos que sólo han logrado hacerle daño a nuestro país durante años, porque si se analizan sus conductas se podrán encontrar varias semejanzas:

probably because it is convenient, and there is a doubt of whether they are being supported by the political parties that have only harmed our country, for many years, because if you analyse their behaviour, many similarities can be found:

Which is more or less what I have been insisting in saying from the beginning.


el uso de los medios de comunicación que sólo informan lo que les interesa (y además tergiversado), la salida de la Asamblea Nacional (a pesar de estar en cadena nacional), la continúa repetición de frases trilladas, la defensa de grupos irracionales que han destruido a nuestro país (sólo porque comparten su descontento con el Gobierno), la falta de argumentos, además de otros aspectos.

the use of mass media that only give information on what is of their interest (and, besides, tergiversing), the quitting of the Asamblea Nacional (in spite of being in national network), the continual repeat of buzz words, the defence of irrational groups who have destroyed our country (just because they share their discontent with Government), the lack of arguments, besides other aspects.

I really haven&#39;t anything to add here. :(


Si la verdadera intención es protestar para que nuestros derechos se cumplan y Venezuela mejore, debemos hacerlo con seriedad y no con excusas que pueden ser fácilmente invalidadas.

If the true intention is to protest so that our rights are respected and Venezuela improves, we must do it earnestly, not with excuses that can be easily invalidated.

Which seems to me a quite damning appreciation of the movement as a whole: it is not serious, and it&#39;s intentions are not clear, to say the least.

I will resume this appreciation tomorrow, but I think the tone of the article is already transparent, and is quite different from the ICC&#39;s.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Los estudiantes universitarios tenemos mucho más por qué manifestarnos, pero si no se permite que lo hagamos seremos vencidos antes de la batalla. Es necesario organizarnos para concentrar el intelecto de los estudiantes, de esa manera seremos indestructibles.

La Autonomía es un tema que afecta a los estudiantes, profesores, obreros, personal administrativo, entre otros, y todos deben ser tomados en consideración. Mientras nosotros mismos no velemos por que se cumplan los derechos de todos los miembros de nuestra comunidad universitaria, estaremos poniendo en riesgo nuestra Autonomía, aparecerán los interesados en apoderarse de lo que es nuestro y lograrán arrebatárnoslo bajo la excusa de ellos sí ser capaces de resolver nuestros problemas.

Las exigencias que hace Venezuela a la Universidad Central de Venezuela son: a los estudiantes para que tengan un pensamiento crítico y cometan acciones constructivas, a los profesores para que faciliten las vías para el desarrollo de nuestro intelecto; a los trabajadores para mantener a nuestra Universidad en óptimas condiciones de funcionamiento y a los entes rectores les toca la labor más importante: velar porque los estudiantes, profesores y trabajadores ejerzan sus funciones de manera correcta y armoniosa.

La UCV es independiente, capaz, tiene las herramientas necesarias, pero está amenazada. El motivo para ejercer cargos directivos debería ser la mejora del sistema, no satisfacer necesidades de poder sin aportar ni ser productivos. La discriminación dentro de la UCV debe ser repudiada, la lucha por el poder de los bandos políticos extremistas que sólo velan por sus intereses debe ser eliminada, basta de politiquería, bienvenidos sean quienes estén dispuestos a trabajar por una mejor UCV.

We college students have much more reasons to demonstrate, but if we are not allowed to, we are going to be defeated before battle. It is necessary that we organise to concentrate the students&#39; intellect; this way we shall be indestructible.

Autonomy is a subject that affects students, professors, workers, administrative personel, among others, and all must be taken into account. As long as we don take care ourselves that the rights of all members of the university community are respected, we are going to put our Autonomy in danger; those interested in taking what is ours will appear and succeed, under the excuse that they are capable of solving our problems.

Venezuela demands from the Universidad Central de Venezuela: that the students have a critical thought and undertake constructive actions; that professors provide the ways for our intellectual development; that the workers maintain our University in optimal functioning conditions; and from the rector bodies the most important task: to zeal so that students, professors, and workers exert their functions in a correct and harmonious way.

UCV is independent, capable, it has the necessary tools, but it is threatened. The reason for exerting directive functions should be the betterment of the system, not to satisfy power needs without contributing and being productive. Discrimination within the UCV must be repudiated, the struggle for power of the extremist political factions that only care for their interests must be eliminated; enough with base politics, welcome to those who are willing to work for a better UCV.

This analysis seems quite naïve, besides again tinted with some kind of academic corporativism. Evidently, there is no future for a students&#39; movement, if they don&#39;t side with either the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. The existence and importance of class struggle within the University is not taken into account - and even the unavoidable conflicts between the cognitive labour of the University and its administration, and between students and professors, is downplayed; one is tempted to imagine the University as some kind of utopic paradise. The Ivory Tower, perhaps.

Now something about what the article does not say. No references are made to independent assemblies: the author seems to be well aware that the movement is conducted in an undemocratical way; that the real problems of the University and of its students are not addressed - instead, the movement is polarised towards dubious banners that favour private interests and old political parties; and that there is no sizeable struggle to take the movement away from this direction.

So, this article seems to take the perspective the ICC claims to be the perspective of the movement as a whole: independence from both government and "opposition" - but it seems to deny that this is what the movement is about, and decries its submission to the old politiqueros. But, then, the article has a central problem of itself, too: it is unable to point a direction. From it, we can conclude that we should not side with the movement acritically; but not whether we should join it in order to try to take it back from its undemocratical and reactionary leadership, or keep away from it en bloc and perhaps start organising a separate movement under different banners.

Luís Henrique

[Leo]

So, this article seems to take the perspective the ICC claims to be the perspective of the movement as a whole:

Yes, I think this face of the movement is what the ICC saw.

I have got loads of work to do so I won&#39;t be able to respond to the rest of the comments for a while.

[Luís Henrique]

We shall see the outcome of those events. Most probably, the "White Hands" will fade into unimportance in a few weeks, if they haven't yet.

Bingo, it seems...

http://resistensanleo.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

Some interesting pics from that blog:
Di&#243;s salve El Rey:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/R0DnWOf2QbI/AAAAAAAACGA/EQ55gz9IOPI/S220/REY+JUAN+CARLOS+I.jpghttp://bp0.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/RxgLthfk7YI/AAAAAAAABOw/UrvkwP6IfWk/S220/ACABEMOS+CON+EL+COMUNISMO.jpghttp://bp1.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/RwmCMhfk57I/AAAAAAAABDA/oQQI6V5gk80/S220/ABSOLUT+MOLOTOV.jpghttp://bp0.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/R490aYX-dnI/AAAAAAAADeI/Ix6NYswgRY8/S220/NO+MAS+FARC.jpghttp://bp0.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/RwmBtRfk55I/AAAAAAAABCw/vr8JH2BA-o8/S220/ESTUDIANTES+POR+LA+LIBERTAD.jpg
http://bp2.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/RtKSMi4cNlI/AAAAAAAAAao/uZcvA30o5uc/S220/BANDERA+CON+SISTE+ESTRELLAS.jpghttp://bp2.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/RyahD7Q3VLI/AAAAAAAABdg/-JqqS4TfWpQ/s400/CHAVEZ+CON+LA+BOCA+DEFORME.jpghttp://bp2.blogger.com/_Qzxi0Y2oYgA/RroafhewUNI/AAAAAAAAAKE/9E1WBHyqPzI/S220/NO+A+LA+INVASION+CUBANA.gif

Lu&#237;s Henrique

[black magick hustla]

The antichavista student movement is full of well off white reactioanries btw

[Davie zepeda]

ok after reading this your saying that Venezuela is not a revolution but false hope so all of latin America's progress is a lie?

Also so Chavez is a pig now what happened to the support of him earlier? it makes me sick how quick you can turn on a man just because he makes some mistakes..

Are we forgotten the situation in Venezuela it's not easy transforming a 3rd world nation to a first world give it time plus don't we need capitalism to speed the process of advancing ones nation? towards socialism?

chavez hmph i don't like him but hey we got to support some attempt at socialism so go chavez ! you might not be perfect but i know you can do it!

[Davie zepeda]

im sorry but i really hate that blog there retarded they probably think obama is a communist since he want's to take the united states into a new direction.

[Plan9]

I recommend people check out a short spanish documentary ("New Faces, Same Objective") the guy on gringoinvenezuela.com has uploaded w/ english subtitles. Very relevant to what we are discussing here.

Description from the site:



The Truth About Venezuela's Student Movement

In the national and international media they have given the image that here in Venezuela a student movement for "freedom" and "democracy" has emerged against an "authoritarian dictator." But in the last few years, several journalists have been writing about how this student movement shares the same objectives and characteristics of other students movements that have been supported and backed by Washington in the various Color Revolutions. Their objective is very simple: overthrow a democratically-elected government. The strategy has been used in many countries around the world to overthrow leaders who are unfriendly to Washington's interests. Now the target is Hugo Chavez.

Spanish journalist David Segarra Soler put together this short video named "New Faces, The Same Objective" revealing the connections that Venezuela's student movement has with various CIA front organizations, and right-wing political groups from around Europe. It clearly shows how the intention of this student movement is to follow in the footsteps of previous youth movements that were used by Washington to overthrow regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, in the name of "freedom." It also shows how the media play a key role in distorting and manipulating events, using as an example the recent violence in the Central University of Venezuela, and how the truth was completely hidden and distorted.

[Louis Pio]

This was exactly why the coup failed. The situation is different now: I think that if there is a coup in Venezuela under the current the new regime will have to be as "democratic" as the Chavez regime and most importantly it will have to be "bloodless" otherwise it won't have a chance.

Seriously Leo, I try to restrain myself but for that comment I have to say: "fucking idiot, what world do you live in? One of happy fairies that run around singing happy songs? Seriously you are so blinded by the faults in the process that you end up supporting the opposition. You and your organisation talk all the time about: "the working class must be indpendent, we must build at party bla bla bla etc etc", and then what do you do? You are not independent in any way, you just parrot the opposition, you are just as bad as Chirinos that ended up joining the bourgious "no" campaign and even ended getting interviewed by a semi-fascist paper.
The worst thing is the damage people like you can do, unconsciously you placed yourself on the side of reaction. Only cause of your hate of Chavez, so he's not revolutionary enough? Is that gonna change cause you support reactionary forces? As I said in the start: "fucking idiot", your digging your own grave, worst thing is you are so oblivious you are singing happy Disney songs while you are doing it

[Luís Henrique]

We shall see the outcome of those events. Most probably, the "White Hands" will fade into unimportance in a few weeks, if they haven't yet.Bingo, it seems...

Or perhaps not. A similar movement has taken the streets of Bogotá yesterday. I hope at least this time the ICC won't come up with the tale that those people "oppose both".

http://colombiasoyyo.org/noticias.html

Luís Henrique