>Merely labelling the CTV
>'rightwing' and thereby justifying Chavez's anti-union program against them
>is no more valid than the traditional rightwing policies of supporting the
>destructions of any union labelled "leftwing" in the third world.
Well...when the right calls a union leftwing it generally means the union is aggressive in representing its workers and probably holds to some socialist or social democratic politics. It may be a reductive slur, but generally there's some truth to the class analysis. What, by contrast, do you call a union that takes money from the US government and seconds its foreign policy goals? Rightwing may also be a reductive slur, but there's some truth to that class analysis too, no?
Which isn't to say that Chavez didn't want to remake Venezuelan unions in his own image. But that's another story.
Doug