Venezuela: Is this how revolutions are made?

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/septiembr...lan-people.html (http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/septiembre/mier5/venezuelan-people.html)


Originally posted by Granma Internacional
The legislative has set the date of September 11 for the constitutional reform bill to be read for the second time, thus following the procedures established for such a situation.

To that will be added surveys and calls to vote in favor of the bill within the framework of a popular referendum to be convened for the definitive decision of the population.

The debate is going on throughout the country in the presence of legislators, members of communal councils, public officials and the people in general.

Likewise, the media are incorporating into their regular program schedules, interviews with experts, members of the authorities and representatives of opposition groups.

In a statement to the press, Cilia Flores, president of the National Assembly, highlighted that the analysis will be carried out after receiving representatives of diverse sectors and individuals at the parliamentary commission created to analyze the bill.

[spartan]

that is how state socialist revolutons are made and dictatorship of the "proletariat" is implemented yes. but not real revolutions.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Will the proletariat truly exert a dictatorship through these proposed reforms and the way in which they're being democratically judged by voters?

[p.m.a.]

VZ is how neoliberal statist revolutions are made in underdeveloped capitalist nations where populism is the most effective political rallying tool.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

...spoken like someone who no idea what the fuck is going on.

[Comrade Rage]

Chavez is not perfect, but he definitely isn't neoliberal.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeesh. :rolleyes:

[Die Neue Zeit]

What about the bigger continental picture?

[Warning: possibly bourgeois or reformist article]

A Bolivarian Coordinate? Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity (http://www.counterpunch.org/ross09052007.html)


I muse on all of this as I wait in my hotel room in Quito, Ecuador, for Napoleon Saltos Galazara to arrive. I had just finished reading his article, "UNASUR: la coordenada bolivariana" published in the extraordinary Ecuadoran review, "La Tendencia," in which he considers sub-empires, dying empires and what he calls "the Bolivarian Coordinate" (1) with the skill of a scientist. He is, after all, a scientist, among many other things.

Dr. Napoleon Saltos and I have in common our passage through Liberation Theology into socialism, although I'm not familiar with his mentor, the widely admired Ecuadoran Liberation theologian, Fr. Leonidas Proaño. But Napoleon, rather than following in his mentor's footsteps, seems to have flown over them. In addition to his work as professor and former director of the School of Sociology at the Central University of Ecuador, Dr. Saltos was founder of Pachakutik, the indigenous organization which, along with CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador) led the spectacular rebellions in Ecuador throughout the '90s.

...

"This current [anti-imperialist] struggle should have been organized and led by the social movements, as in Bolivia. I speak of Bolivia as the process from below; Venezuela is a little more a process from above. We should have undertaken this current phase of the process as a social movement but we were too weak to carry it forth, too weak as a result of our errors."

...

Here Napoleon mentions the theories of Theotonio Dos Santos Ruy Mauro Marini who worked on the theory of sub-empires from the Brazilian context. Marini defines subimperialism as "the form that the dependent economy assumes on arriving at the stage of the monopolies and finance capital." It is characterized by "the exercise of an autonomous expansionist policy" and he added that "only Brazil, in Latin America, fully expresses a phenomenon of this nature," although he goes on to add both Mexico and Argentina as countries having "sub-imperialist characteristics." One must keep in mind, however, that Marini wrote this well before Argentina's economic implosion in 2001 and that would leave only Mexico and Brazil as countries in Latin America displaying such "sub-imperialist characteristics."

On a side note, does this "modification" to Lenin&#39;s fifth feature of imperialism (political division of the world) really warrant a separate theory? <_<

[Comrade Rage]

What is happening in Latin America is beautiful. They will most likely be the ones to lead the Revolution in America.

[p.m.a.]

Chavez isn&#39;t neoliberal? PDAVSA selling two or three times more oil now than before he came to power, the majority to American companies such as Chevron-Texaco (Condalezza Rice&#39;s old company). He&#39;s gutting Venezuela&#39;s ecology by tripling oil exploitation to fund his populist revolution, resulting in the destruction of Venezuela countrysides and dislocating indigenous populations. The Bolivarian Revolution would not be possible if Chavez wasn&#39;t sitting on absurd oil wells, because every advance is being financed by oil production. David Harvey, Marxist geographer working for the Graduate Center of CUNY, defines in his work The New Imperialism that neoliberal economic practices are characterized (not only just, but most often) by the market&#39;s redistribution of previously inaccessible resources (usually inaccessible to ownership defined in the public or national domain) toward new centers of capitalist accumulation. He coined the term "accumulation by dispossession" to explain the phenomenon, relating it to Marx&#39;s description of "primitive accumulation" to describe similar tactics employed during the birth of capitalism. The difference, he states, is that the process of neoliberalisation necessitates the ability to continually reroute said capital from different regional areas of capital, in order to disperse crisis. He elaborates on his designation of this new mode of accumulation in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

The Aut/Pub initiative within RAAN has published an exploration of Venezuela imperative to any modern anti-authoritarian&#39;s analysis of the Bolivarian Revolution, entitled The Civil War in Venezuela: Socialism to the Highest Bidder (http://www.redanarchist.org/texts/indy/civilwarinvenezuela.html), based on a network participant&#39;s travels through the country in 2006. Section 4 is a scathing Marxist and Anarchist analysis of the economics of the revolution. I also recommend the documentary financed by the Chávez government until they screened its critique of ecological and indigenous consequences, entitled Our Oil & Other Tales (http://www.ouroil.org). Finally, I challenge any of you to read Harvey&#39;s recent additions to contemporary Marxist economy, and then these accounts of the Bolivarian Revolution, and not conclude that Chavez is leading a neoliberal-populist revolution.

[VukBZ2005]

Chavez isn&#39;t neoliberal? PDAVSA is selling two or three times more oil now than before he came to power, the majority to American companies such as Chevron-Texaco (Condalezza Rice&#39;s old company). He&#39;s gutting Venezuela&#39;s ecology by tripling oil exploitation to fund his populist revolution, resulting in the destruction of Venezuela countrysides and dislocating indigenous populations.

Excuse me p.m.a, but there is a reason why he is doing this. Venezuela is not fully industrialized, nor does it have the technology to develop the oil reserves that it has on its own. To say that it does, especially after you take into account the economic reality of the country, is to state that you have no understanding of that economic reality.

Moreover, the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela has operational control of the oil fields of Venezuela; that is, it may not have complete control over its oil fields, but it has enough control, while allowing enough space for the oil companies to add the proper foreign investments, investments that Venezuela will eventually seize control over, in addition to the technology that would be provided to Venezuela by the minority holdings of oil company ownership of PDVSA oil fields.

As for the destruction of the environment and the displacement of indigenous populations, sometimes it is a process that is necessary, despite the detrimental effects that may come about because of it. Do you really expect me to think that if that something of this sort does not happen, that it would be ultimately beneficial for everyone? In my view, it would be ultimately detrimental, especially in the case of Venezuela, where there are indigenous populations that actually live on vast supplies of coal, oil and other necessary industrial manufacturing raw materials.

[Magic Snowman]

The people of Venezuela are lucky. Their bourgoisie was weak enough to allow the election of a party with real socialist principles. More importantly, the forces of counter-revolution were delt a major blow in the counter-coup. It may too early to tell whether they have been permanatly defeated, but if the process in Latin America continues, I think we will look back at April 13, 2002 as a turning point in history.

Chavez is not without his faults. Indeed, this "revolution" is not really something he has been driving. It is a responce to pressure for the working class which he relly on for power. The factory ocupations are proof of this. They were a case of workers taking control of the means of production; the Chavez government allow it to happen, but there was not impetus from above.

[dez]

both liberalism and neoliberalism strongly call for a lesser intervention of state in echonomy, chavez does exactly the opposite.
He&#39;s a state capitalist.



@ Hammer

Very good article.
I don&#39;t agree with everything though.
I think the bolivarian coordinate is a nice way to say that there is another sub-empire in the continent.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Brazil and Mexico can arguably be said to be sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub empires in Latin America. Any power exerted by either of these two governments upon our neighbors is minuscule next to what the actual imperialists do. The fact that Chavez, a clearly confrontational man, hasn&#39;t in any way at all confronted the Brazilian government I think attests to a total lack of difference of interests between the economic autonomy of Venezuela and the Brazilian bourgeoisie.

[p.m.a.]

Originally posted by "CommunistFireFox"
As for the destruction of the environment and the displacement of indigenous populations, sometimes it is a process that is necessary, despite the detrimental effects that may come about because of it...

But the resistance to capital and struggle for autonomy by all sections of the multitude is what threatens the system most, and that&#39;s what your job, as a communist, is to do. You&#39;d go out to support a picket line, but not a village fighting for their land? If so, that seems to be a seed of some deep-rooted bigotry of the other and this case&#39;s culture.

Chavez is making giant economic leaps for Venezuela, but they&#39;re based on fundamental capital development that is dictating his policies. But just because he wears a red beret, doesn&#39;t make this progress communist; neither does how much he invests in public programs (social democracies and the Keynesian Era both show capital doing this). While the upcoming councils incorporated in the new constitution will bring a new level of community control, the revolution thus-far has been one orchestrated and lead by a ruling military elite, with massive support for its populist policies, draped in pseudo-socialism. This makes it a state-capitalist, neoliberal process so far.


both liberalism and neoliberalism strongly call for a lesser intervention of state in echonomy, chavez does exactly the opposite.

Classical liberalism calls for laissez-faire capitalism with a big state providing extensive public support. It&#39;s exemplified in Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, even JFK. As David Harvey discusses in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Neoliberalism came out of post-Fordism, and thus bears many contradictory and post-modern aspects. Neoliberal theory doesn&#39;t call for a lessen intervention of the state: it calls for lesser state restriction of capital flow in the market. The state is welcome to intervene to open capital flow, as it does when it privatizes previously public assets, or when the WTO forces a country to meet specific economic rules in order to join. Neoliberalism calls for profit as being all purpose: thus public programs of the liberal era are there, but basically with no funds compared to what really makes money: no trade restrictions, war, and privatization. So now the Venezuela situation comes into context: VZ sells the US a sizeable percentage of its total oil purchases, to companies like Chevron-Texaco, and use that money to fund the Bolivarian process. The US uses that oil to drive its war machine. In VZ, a describd "Boli-bourgeoisie" form, a statist class of politicians and metaphorical "party elites" who are profiting. Venezuela is not and cannot be a socialist nation, because it is not developed enough, and one nation cannot be socialist in a capitalist global economy. What is happening is current rapid capitalist development by a statist class of militarists, just as in the USSR and China before. And what happened there?

Revolution cannot be made by the state in its present understanding, even if popularly supported.

[VukBZ2005]

But the resistance to capital and struggle for autonomy by all sections of the multitude is what threatens the system most, and that&#39;s what your job, as a communist, is to do.

But you see, this is not what is exactly going on here. As I have said before, in many cases, a lot of the indigenous peoples that live in Venezuela live on areas of land that are rich with key industrial natural resources and in order to develop and to expand the Venezuelan economy once it is developed, there is going to have to be some kind of force removal of the indigenous populations to other parts of the country. Does that mean that I totally support it? Of course not. But you have to take into account the reality of the situation and when you do that, it becomes apparent that these natural resources, which include coal, iron ore, aluminum and gold, have to be tapped in a manner that is extensive. How else is Venezuela going to become an industrialized country?

The only way avoid situations like this on a worldwide basis, is if we move away from the Capitalist mode of production and towards a Communist mode of production that allows for the development of technologies that would substitute the natural resources that we are currently extracting from the earth. But, until such a thing happens, this is something that people will have to deal with.


You&#39;d go out to support a picket line, but not a village fighting for their land? If so, that seems to be a seed of some deep-rooted bigotry of the other and this case&#39;s culture.

As I have said before, I would only support such a movement of indigenous peoples from their lands if it is necessary. It does not imply any kind of bigotry and racism even whatsoever. I am sure that things like this will happen in any kind of industrialized society, whether it be Capitalist or Communist. That is why I made that statement.

I will respond to the rest of your post later. First, I want to see what you have to say about my response to the first portion of your posts.