(By the way, this whole post is very good.) I think what bothers me most about Doug's insistence on the Zapatistas' futility is that he's imposing Western norms (revolution, state power, welfare regimes) on political movements that have no use for them and are specifically rejecting them. It reminds me of the moment in his new economy book where he says that it's not so horrible that drug companies are patenting naturally found herbs and medicines because otherwise those things would just go unused. But it's exactly the kinds of logic that see everything as available for exploitation -- albeit regulated by a beneficent social-democratic administration -- and that see inclusion in the circuits of global capital and labor as a requirement to achieve social change, that many movements are refusing.
> That being said, the same thing is true for Venezuela. The
>movement has used the resources available to it to try to change
>the country and its succeeded in many regards.
This is a good point, and one that's well-taken. I have always tried to be careful in my criticisms of chavismo not to criticize solely on principled antistatism, but I'm sure I've fallen off the wagon many times. What I try to focus on is not how Venezuela develops but on the ways that the process there tries to subsume political differences that exceed what the Chavez state is trying to accomplish. Or to put it as Negri might, the state, no matter how much good it might do, is in the end on the side of constituted power and against constituent power.