<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 5/29/05 1:30:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Not true. It is very much alive in Latin America and other parts of the developing world seeking the contemporary equivalent of a more equitable distribution of the spoils with global capitalism such as marked the great battles of yesteryear in the advanced capitalist countries between the workers and the bosses. Social democracy or whatever other name it goes by is the ideological instrument of those reform efforts. MG </BLOCKQUOTE> I'm not so sure. The purest example of classical social democracy in Latin America right now is Lula and the Workers Party, which have been completely subservient to the US and its lending institutions. Chavez seems much more like a left-nationalist caudillo type in the tradition of Peron than a social dem. But will he be prepared to defend his program of reforms by arming his Bolivarian committees when, as seems inevitabe, the US starts to turn sections of the officer corps against him, as they did with Allende? This will be the test of Chavez. As for Bolivia, Evo Morales is advocating  50% tax on multinational profits, to the utter horror of foreign investors and the US government. Yet it seems as if large sections of the indigenous people regard this demand as a sellout. They are calling for expropriation without compensation. They don't sound like social democrats to me.</HTML>