Venezuelan Interim President Resigns

[Marta Russell]

>
>In purely political terms, it has _always_ been true -
>well before the 1920's, indeed since the beginning of
>'proletarian time' - that "pure and simple" trade
>unionism was inadequate to the construction of a mass
>working class-oriented political opposition.
>Successful working class political parties never
>simply sprang directly out of the trade union
>movement, but instead developed in parallel with the
>trade unions.  The failure of the American Knights of
>Labor - emerging in one of most violent and widespread
>episodes in capitalist class struggle in its history,
>and probably the largest experiment in
>anarco-syndicalist politics - is the counterexample of
>the same case.
>
>There's no need to wait around for permission from the
>trade unions in order to build a mass working
>class-oriented party, right Doug? ;-)
>

This is not Doug replying ---
The fact that it was mostly poor unemployed persons in Venezuela who 
got out in the streets to stop the military's (and US's -- the word 
is that some of the generals were trained at the Georgia terrorist 
training camp SOA) overthrow of Chavez tells me that "working class" 
needs to be expanded to include the power of all those reserve army 
of labor folks ( including disabled) who don't have a union or any 
other kind of job.  It seems that in this instance in Venezuela the 
poorest and unemployed are the ones taking the risks -- several were 
killed during that protest that got Chavez out of the military prison.

marta
-- 
Marta Russell
Los Angeles, CA
www.disweb.org