Thread alert: debating the Chavezistas

Check out the thread "why are so many people so quick to call Hugo Chavez a dictator?" I'm embroiled in a discussion on state capitalism with his supporters. Pretty interesting how none of them can take on any of my criticisms using Marx's analysis of political economy.

Yeah, I hear on that. At the rate they're going, I'm getting a little crispy myself. Though once you ask them to introduce Marx into the picture, that's when the insults come around (because they don't know shit).

I actually thought Mayakovsky was beating you in that argument.

in what way did mayakovsky 'beat' automattick?

I would also like to know.

To be honest, it has been almost a month since I've joined Revleft and rather than enhancing my understanding of Marx, I realized this place just degenerates into tendency wars and ideological posturing.

If there is anyone who wants to actually discuss Marx and not state capitalist idiot, I'd welcome the discussion. At this point I might as well leave.

in what way did mayakovsky 'beat' automattick?

I would also like to know.

You seemed to be going on about how Chavez wasn't a communist which is true enough. But as Mayakovsky pointed out you make the same errors which the Chavezistas do when they reduce everything happening in Venezuela down to Chavez.

Obviously Chavez is a bourgeois politician not to be supported.

However to deny that struggle is occuring in Venezuela and ignore everything is equally as foolish, even if this struggle isn't yet carried out under a "communist" banner:

We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.

Yes, but if there was or still are a strong movement, it has been entirely coopted by Chavez. I'm sorry but much of the struggles after Russia and Spain have quickly just devolved into nationalism. Again, the workers themselves must strive to find expression in their own movement, not through a bourgeois politician.

People are so obsessed with these big national struggles, when I think the most genuine acts are the ones which are small like factory sit-ins and strikes which overflow and power is held in the hands of the workers.

People these days want grandeur, they miss 1917 and 1935. They want those events to return. Yet they have: left nationalism and state capitalism. As left communists we should be uncompromising on this.

Zanthorus: yes, class struggle is taking place in Venezuela, but it is directly against the Chavez state, whereas all the leftists claim that at some level the state structures are an expression of the class movement. See the article our comrades there wrote about the Guyana struggles
http://en.internationalism.org/iccon...010/05/guayana

By the way, automattick, I hope you don't quit revleft, communists need all the forces they can muster against the wall of leftism. Good idea that you logged into libcom though, the balance of class forces there is very different.

You seemed to be going on about how Chavez wasn't a communist which is true enough. But as Mayakovsky pointed out you make the same errors which the Chavezistas do when they reduce everything happening in Venezuela down to Chavez.

Obviously Chavez is a bourgeois politician not to be supported.

However to deny that struggle is occuring in Venezuela and ignore everything is equally as foolish, even if this struggle isn't yet carried out under a "communist" banner:

1) Chavez is a petit-bourgeois politician, not a bourgeois politician. His call to "overthrow" even the "national" bourgeoisie if they pull off another putsch on him is a departure from typical Maoist "new democracy."

2) The new International, if comprised of the right elements, would go a long way towards rebuilding the left programmatically and organizationally.

To be honest, it has been almost a month since I've joined Revleft and rather than enhancing my understanding of Marx, I realized this place just degenerates into tendency wars and ideological posturing.

If there is anyone who wants to actually discuss Marx and not state capitalist idiot, I'd welcome the discussion. At this point I might as well leave.

I think that a deep discussion of Marx is not what really goes on here. For us (the ICC) though this place has been useful. We have made contacts with people, mostly in the US and Australia, who have got involved with our work, in a place where we were very weak, and non-existent.

Also in general it is good for there to be somebody here putting a real communist perspective.

Devrim

Why criticize the only person who can achieve some rights for the working class?

Why criticize the only person who can achieve some rights for the working class?

He is arming the workers for the defence of a bourgeois state.

Class-struggle defencism in a non-revolutionary period isn't a bad thing.

What is needed, though, are worker militias independent of the Venezuelan state in addition to the peasant and other popular militias organized for the supplementary anti-imperialist defense.

Class-struggle defencism.

What exactly does that mean?

It means independent working-class forces defending the Bolivarian revolution against "gringos" (an anti-American insult akin to Castro's usage of yanquis for "Yankees" derived from New York's premier baseball team - basically against US foreign policy and other foreign policies hostile to the "democratic" revolution), but not defending the Venezuelan state.

After all, per above Chavez himself called ordinary Venezuelans to "overthrow the bourgeoisie" if some reactionary pulls off another coup attempt on him.

Totally agree. This is pretty much a line in the sand, like Spain in 36-7.

it is already pretty much a case of internationalism or imperialist war - remember the war tensions between Venezuela and Colombia recently? That's definitely a line in the sand (or the rainforest) for revolutionaries in that area. The main difference today is that we are not in a period of counter-revolution, and many of the people who have illusions in Chavez are going to be able to break from those illusions. Also those opposing revolutionary positions are less likely to use open violence against oppositionists...(except in Venezuela itself of course)