[lbo-talk] Chavez's socialist world vision

Bhaskar Sunkara bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com
Wed Jun 16 11:30:22 PDT 2010


CB asks: "Could anyone in the real world live up to your standards and lead a state." No. There is something hyper-idealist about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results; namely attempting to govern the capitalist state to bring about socialism (if the extent of your goals are social democratic, never mind, but even that is suspect with capital flight, globalization, etc). I'd like to think it's realistic to say that the goal of socialists is to form an opposition movement *outside of government* in order to build toward majoritarian support. This means rejecting Luxemburgist "mass strike" schemes, the Trotskyist "transitional program" to the left and social democratic coalitionist strategists to the right, which are all basically "get rich quick schemes." Socialists would form the opposition in parliament, build organs of the class struggle and a counter-hegemonic movement from below, but would never assume that they can take hold and use the existing state (Lenin's *State and Revolution* was quite good on this point). To govern the capitalist state is to serve capital, whatever your intentions. The goal is to smash the capitalist state machinery and do it in a somewhat coordinated, synchronized basis in the advanced capitalist countries. Mike Macnair's *Revolutionary Strategy *forms the outline for these points, subtract some of the nationalism from it and Kautsky's 1909 *Road to Power* does too. But this strategy, that of not being able to wield the capitalist state to bring about socialism is pretty much the mainstay of the Lenin-derived left and they are quite right on that basic point. It is quite utopian, but that's why now is the time to lay the groundwork for this "strategy of patience." The NPA in France, perhaps Die Linke in Germany if the left-wing elements win the power struggle, are the shells for the type of socialist opposition we need.

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:11 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> 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:
> 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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