> I had occasion yesterday to re-read a bit of the
> Monthly Review pieces on Popular Unity, Allende
> and the coup of 9-11-73, collected in, "Revolution
> and Counter-Revolution In Chile." The very high
> level of analysis (and in places like the Trot Usec
> journal, International Viewpoint
> http://www.3bh.org.uk/IV/ ) has not been reached
> by any of the agit-prop I've seen on Venezuela
> from the USA Left.
I haven't read the MR stuff on Chile, but I remember reading a book by Ed Boorstein, a CPUSA-affiliated economist who -- like Harry Magdoff -- had been a US government economist during WWII, I think for the War Production Board, and who worked for Allende as well. The book was frank about difficulties and mistakes, though I don't know how the perspective would have compared to MR's stuff.
Of course, there's a wide range of work on Venezuela. Wilpert in particular has written stuff where he talks openly about Chavez's occasional fuck-ups. Of COURSE various leftists are going to write more agitprop-oriented stuff -- not everyone is a scholar, and frankly, that stuff has its place when you're trying to reach an audience with the basic truths of the matter. Of course life is also complicated, but the more scholarly stuff is almost always produced ex post facto, when events have run their course and the real -- good or bad -- has achieved an undeserved Hegelian aura of historical inevitability. When events are moving this quickly, much of the reporting is necessarily journalistic.
My sneaking suspicion, though, is that Michael is looking for someone to validate his latter-day instinct -- acquired after the FSLN defeat in 1990, perhaps? -- not to take sides even in a struggle where good and evil are as clearly-defined as this one. How sad.
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!