[lbo-talk] Chavez's socialist world vision

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Wed Jun 16 10:11:46 PDT 2010


Bhaskar Sunkara

What Chavez had to say in that trailer was a pretty damn agreeable and articulate. I'm higher on Evo, but that's as good as left Bonapartism gets.

^^^^^ CB: Chavez was elected twice. His party organized the Ven working class enough to modify the Constitution by direct votes of the People, an ultimate action of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty is the definition of democracy. With the Chavez led government, there's nothing going on in Venezuela comparable to what you critique in Iran, is there ? Furthermore, there's little evidence of any tyranny of the majority. How is he a Bonapartist ?

Your criticism of Iran has some cogency, but, unless it's a joke, to claim Chavez is a Bonapartist implies some hyper-idealistic democratic socialist elements in your underlying political theory; i.e. could anybody in the real world live up to your standards and lead a state ?

What do you mean by democratic ?



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