[lbo-talk] Chavez: slow down

Paul Papadeas papadeas13 at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 29 16:17:33 PST 2008


Critical analysis of Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution from an anti-statist perspective.

http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english.html

Primarily this one: http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english/Venezuela%20Behind%20the%20Smokescreen.txt

- Paul

Claire Pentecost <cpente at saic.edu> wrote:

Paul, is your post serious? if you are satirizing a certain kind of archaic ideologue, you can have a good laugh at my reaction. And if you are serious, and believe in some fantasy of revolutionary change employing no hybrid or transitional forms, you won't be interested in what i have to say but i can't let it go, as there is so much ignorance

on what is happening in venezuela:

state capitalism, yes. It seems pretty clear now that all capitalism is some form of state capitalism, just in different arrangements. The differences are significant in living people's lives.

I have visited venezuela once in 1990, and twice 2005 and 2006, because the hype from both chavistas and anti-chavistas was and still is simplistic and not credible. I have also sought out many different sources for news and background.

In the multiple central districts of caracas, a visitor would think that it's all a disaster. The majority of the corporate owned press hates him, the many daily papers and television news, and they are allowed to operate without censorship, no matter what you hear (though one news outlet has been censored since then). There are two TV stations that support him-- one is operated by the government and the other by sympathetic media activists who also run documentaries on leftist struggles from many parts of the globe as well as videos made in the barrios. Otherwise chavez and the bolivarian revolution is fraudulent and worse to the media. Several restaurant owners and taxi drivers i talked to also think he is ruining the country, but they also revealed that they believe the kind of market fundamentalist cant constantly spewed from the U.S.

Chavez is hated because he is actually redistributing power and resources to the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans who have never benefited from the country's wealth, namely the oil.

When we visited the barrios, vast hillsides of self-made and otherwise substandard housing that surrounds caracas, they are energized. They are organized and their activities suggest that one of the major things that has changed is that if they organize, they get support to improve their own lives and communities. But they have to self organize, which i think is very interesting, and doesn't resemble keynesian programs that i am familiar with.

The people i talked to have had health care for the first time, thanks to the oil for doctors deal with cuba. They are getting free and accessible education for the first time. The literacy programs are for real.

every one carries around a copy of the constitution and many i talked to can quote various sections establishing their rights. There are kiosks on the streets (not government run) which sell copies.

in the small towns, i visited also populated mostly by the poor, i had the same kinds of conversations.

yes, chavez's cult of personality is ridiculous. It's completely disturbing, but it would be foolish to ignore the real redistribution that has happened under his administration. And one has to enjoy his outrageous ridicule of the U.S.

The militarism was also disturbing to me, but in most of Latin America, no one has a prayer of achieving and maintaining any kind of power without the sympathy and respect of the military. If the military was still on the side of the baronistic capitalists they would have taken chavez down long ago as they tried to do. And/or he would have been murdered and overthrown by the U.S.ual imperialists. No one has forgotten what happened to Allende.

Interestingly, he is arming the people. In the towns we saw volunteers doing miliatary exercises on the main squares at night. men and women. What are you doing? We are protecting the pueblo!

It's weird that leftists from affluent countries idealize che and then criticize the militarism of chavez.

I don't buy Holloway's change the world without taking power. The people in power don't give an inch.

Chavez is also creating a block of resistance among Latin american countries that care to resist their historical geopolitical exploitation. This is one of the things that makes the "bolivarian revolution" most interesting. In fact, it is one of the most promising and exciting places in the world right now, perhaps having benefitted from the u.s. distraction in the middle east etc.

I know this is just an anecdotal short-hand reply, but it's so tedious to hear ignorant people railing against chavez in favor of the total over-throw of capitalism. Such attitudes seem to care nothing for the quality of actual people's lives.

and this has nothing to do with what happened in spain several decades ago!

and in the department of non sequitur, my boyfriend just read me this quote:

the older i grow, the more i distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom... h.l. mencken

claire


>Here we again - the inner authoritarian socialism of the "old left
>guard" wheezing its last, putrid breath. The Capitalists are
>salivating....They remember...
>
> Socialism for the 21s century = Version 2.0 of State Capitalism =
>a return to managed capitalism and Keynesian policies which were
>overall ineffective - causing high unemployment and inflation.
>
> So Chavez and his bloated state capitalists are now blaming
>anarchists for the instability in his country on true radicals?
>
> After all of his empty, bombastic rhetoric - Chavez is nothing but
>a reformer of the state - a cadre class that will create an ugly
>bureaucratic nightmare rivaling that of the corporate oligarchy that
>he has been trying to replace and which has allowed him to be
>championed by the celebrities of the left.
>
> Does all of this sound vaguely familiar? Haven't we been down
>this path before?
>
> I guess he has recently read Lenin's - Left Wing Communism - An
>Infantile Disorder. When I read an article like this one below - I
>think of all of the betrayed Spanish brothers who fought against
>Franco and all of the Stalinist scum who have betrayed every great
>worker revolution in the world in the last 50+ years with their
>state unions. These people doing the protesting are for an overthrow
>of capitalism period - not its plastic surgery.
>
> Moreover, I disagree with Chavez's cult of personality, machismo
>nationalist bourgeois movements like this one as I do statist
>Leninist "centralized" conceptions or anything resembling "managed
>capitalism" pushed on the masses by the likes of left wing
>recuperators like Kuttner and Klein.
>
> Good critical review of THE SHOCK DOCTRINE..
>
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/kle1-f27.shtml
>
> http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/kle2-f28.shtml
>
> Read these articles to get a sense that Chavez's system is running
>on empty - the global elite class is figuring him out and the tune
>he plays is outdated as an alternative to capital.
>
>
>http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87205/francisco-rodriguez/an-empty-revolution.html
>
> Bush, Obama, Clinton, Sarkozy, Chavez and Castro, all these
>messiah's of representative democracy ad nauseam should all be
>fought against tooth and nail.
>
> State Capitalism is anathema to the perpetuation of our human
>civilization - it has gone beyond its positive use for development
>and need in our time. It is the scourge of the world and the source
>of all of our problems.
>
> - Paul
>
>
>
>Eric wrote:
> [The sound you here is Zizek moaning his approval.]
>
>Chavez Says Activists May Trigger Backfire Against `Revolution'
>
>By Matthew Walter
>
>Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez criticized
>activists who occupied the archbishop's palace in Caracas and held
>protests in front of a private television network in the name of his
>Bolivarian revolution, saying the acts may lead to violence.
>
>Chavez said social activist Lina Ron, who led a group of about 20
>Chavez supporters in yesterday's occupation of the archbishop's
>palace, acted irresponsibly.
>
>``Lina Ron, I adore her, but I have to criticize her, because this is
>a big display of a lack of discipline,'' Chavez said in comments
>broadcast by state television. ``What it leads you to believe is that
>these groups, which say they are revolutionary, have been
>infiltrated, so that through these actions they can erase the
>government's successes, and cause violent reactions.''
>
>The ``anarchist'' groups that claim to be part of his political
>movement are overshadowing progress being made by the government in
>eliminating food shortages and improving healthcare, Chavez said.
>
>Since voters rejected the president's proposal to rewrite the
>constitution in December, handing him his first electoral defeat in
>nine years, he has focused on fixing problems that affect his poor
>base of supporters.
>
>The president said that last night's protest at Globovision was
>``risky,'' saying it could cause the same kind of damage that the
>``ultra-left'' in Chile did to President Salvador Allende in 1973,
>when he was overthrown in a bloody coup.
>
>``Some of these so-called Bolivarian circles, nobody knows what their
>plan is,'' Chavez said. ``I've met with some of them, and I was very
>concerned. They seem more like anarchistic groups.''
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