> http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/34312/print
>
> By Ivan Briscoe <http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Ivan_Briscoe.jsp>
> Created 2007-08-09 17:50
>
> Venezuela may now be more or less democratic than during its
> forty years of two-party oligarchy; the arguments (as a July 2007 _report_
> by Coletta A Youngers for the _Washington Office on Latin America_
> underscores) cut both ways.
Utter nonsense. Venezuela is a complicated place, and it is going through a complicated revolution -- or more precisely, multiple revolutions. But there's no denying that the country is immensely more democratic, accountable, and responsive to the needs of the vast majority of its citizens than in the pre-Chavez period.
> It is crime, the leading concern of 85% of Venezuelans according to a
> poll conducted in 2006, that most confounds the government's expectations.
The old standby of conservatives everywhere: those damn poor people, always robbing and acting up. But there's not a word about Venezuela's tiny, verminous comprador elites, who looted the country's oil wealth like hydrocarbon-based tapeworms. Does Briscoe not realize that 50% of Venezuelans lived in direst poverty in 1998 - the kind where you literally do not have enough to eat? If you're hungry, you do what it takes to survive.
> A visit to any of Caracas' hill settlements
> gives the lie to any notion that the poor long for collective ownership:
> small businesses operate from shadowy ground floors, while residents of
> /23 de Enero/ plaster their slum houses with stucco and inlay them with
> balustrades.
What astounding disdain and contempt for working people, who are simply trying to survive. In the 19th century, the liberal bourgeoisie lectured endlessly about how the poor lacked morality, and therefore shouldn't have the right to vote. In the 20th century, the monopoly-era bourgeoisie lectured endlessly about how the poor lacked social responsibility, and therefore could not be trusted with a welfare state. Now in the 21st, the neoliberals lecture endlessly about how the poor lack entrepreneurship, and therefore don't deserve any say over the consumer surplus.
-- DRR