From the Commision of Anarchist Relations (Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas) and its organ El Libertario, we disseminate three texts in which we publically express our perspective on the upcoming Venezuelan elections of December 3, 2006.
* A Call and an Alert to Public Opinion *
As a group of activists of critical tendencies we have found it necessary before the present situation to signal an alert to all popular forces: workers, indigenous peoples, Afro Venezuelans, students, women, neighborhood groups, intellectuals and social groups.
We maintain that the two options publicized by the established order - Chavez as much as Rosales - represent the domination of financial power and empire over Venezuela, and present a scene of super-exploitation, unemployment, and social exclusion in addition to the fortification of big capital.
Eight years into the "revolution" or the so-called Process, we find that there is a social misery that has resulted from the consolidation of the State and the destruction/co-optation of social groups. In recent years, the political regimen has deteriorated into a total submission to transnational capital on the part of the Chavez government, a fact that Rosales and the opposition pretend to not be aware of.
The established game consists of the following: faced with the superficial and limited reforms of the current administration - which are driven by the Stalinist left within the capitalist State - the opposition pretends that these measures are communist, when in reality they form part of the dynamic of global capitalism. What we have seen is State management with punctual payments of external debt, the surrender of the Orinoco' Delta oil and the natural gas of Falcon state, destruction of the environment (Imataca, Perija and Paria), hegemony and the increase of the commercial sector, of finacial speculation, and the creation of flexible labor and social exclusion.
The ideological discourse of the State is crushing and hegemonic and has managed to block all critical forces, which have been silenced though bribery and cronyism, entangled in a thought process that can only lead to totalitarianism. There has been a increased fragmentation of the social movemements while the power of the cliques has only grown.
In the same way, there is an exercise in direct militarism when the high branches of the public sector are in the hands of the military forces. The popular imagination has been channeled into the civil-military lie; arbitrariness is the actual situation, and the military sector need not look upon the past with nostalgia, since El Amparo in the 90`s is exactly the same as La Paragua today (two military massacres). As a result, Chavismo is simply the reproduction of puntofijismo, as demonstrated by its corruption and impunity.
Based on these considerations, we call upon all indigenous peoples, peasants, students, professors, intellectuals, workers, women, Afro Venezuelans, neighborhood coalitions, social groups and people in general to abstain from voting because there will be no substantial change. The reality is that representative democracy based on populism vs. opposition symbolizes nothing new, but is merely a backward sector anchored in the cold war, just like Chavismo.
This call for abstention is not based on the problem of electoral fraud, which we do not deny; nor does it coincide with the opportunistic call to abstention coming from certain quarters. Required change will never be given through the electoral process, but will rather be produced through the autonomous initiative of the social movements themselves. The grave social, economic and cultural crisis suffered by Venezuela does not find its answer in electoral politics, which banalizes and liquidates all struggle.
We bring this alert forward so that all agents of social change may actively organize around and promote absentionism through their own struggles, without messiahs or authoritarian bureaucrats, in order to demonstrate to the scaffold of power that it is ineffective and antidemocratic. Only the collapse of the existing system will guarentee transformation. Otherwise, we alert you to increases in repressive practices in the immediate future within the framework of the worsening of the structural crisis of the country.
Faced with the bourgeois, genocidal State of the past 40 years, which is expressed in the candidacy of Manuel Rosales, the alternative cannot be support for the totalitarian State of Hugo Chavez.
* Depolarization and autonomy: Challenges to Venezuela’s social movements after D-3 *
Rafael Uzcategui uzcategui.rafael(a)gmail.com
Visualizing what will happen to Venezuela’s social movements after the elections scheduled for December 3 – every indication points to the re-election of president Chavez – cannot be done without at least a general understanding of their historical path. During the second half of the 80’s the economic crises after the “black Friday” was the catalyst of new forms of organizing and demanding that began to develop in this Caribbean country: student and neighborhood movements, women, counterculture, ecological and pro-human rights. Subjective efforts that although coming from the left, did not automatically follow the organizational schemes of the guevarist-lenninists who claimed to be the heirs of the armed insurrection of the 60’s. The “Caracazo” (February 1989) as the expression of the growing malaise, marks the beginning of a civil society as alienated from the traditional political parties - networks of State’s clients - as it is from the left political parties. The effervescence that ensues weaves a social fabric out of infinite socio-political initiatives, with varied and developing levels of mutual interaction, which played a lead role in the mobilizations for the greatest objective at the time: getting Carlos Andres Perez out of power.
Chavez’s original movement raises itself above this dynamic and becomes the face of the people’s malcontent, achieving legitimacy at the polls in 1999 by capitalizing on the prevailing wish for change that ran through the country, but also revitalizing the populist, statist and caudillista ethos so much a part of Venezuela’s historical make-up. The imposition of a personal mode of domination was preconditioned to the break up of the citizen-led dynamics that brought it to power. Among the many causes driving this process there is the polarization imposed by the contending elites: those banned from power representing the traditional productive sectors, and the new “leftist” bureaucracy giving legitimacy to the interests of those sectors crucial to the economic globalization of the country.
After 1999 the social fabric is fragmented (neighborhood, student and ecologist movements), neutralized (human rights) and co-opted (indigenous, women, counterculture) by the expectations created by a government rhetorically of the left. In turn this has caused some expression of popular organization with no autonomy within a new network of clients, amidst one of the greatest economic windfalls ever, brought on by the high oil prices.
These popular initiatives, instructed from above, have some common elements that distinguish them from other social movements:
(1) Vertical solidarity supplants intra-class solidarity: mobilizations follow a political agenda imposed by the top; their calls for solidarity when others in the movement suffer repression are almost non-existent.
(2) An identity permeated by personality cult and a lack of history and arguments different from those originating in the seat of power, which prevents any hypothetical “deepening of the revolution”.
(3) Their praxis aims to legitimize government’s projects, without any other parallel or different process.
(4) A progressing wearing out due to its adoption of politico-electoral cumulative logic.
Default on the expectations generated by Chavez has caused the exponential increase of popular protests during 2006, something that will continue to grow in the coming year. But it is precisely the blackmail of polarization – “to give weapons to the right”, “manipulated by imperialism” – which contains the growing discontent against a state that neither transformed itself when it could, nor has a new bureaucracy able to make policies different from Latin American populist welfare.
The challenges facing the social movements, after the hypothetical presidential re-election, are not only of a practical order such as its autonomous configuration or experimenting with diverse practices and spaces of learning and counter hegemony. They are also theoretical. Overcoming imperialist Manichaeism, centered exclusively on George Bush, would entail squeezing the multiple dynamics of money flow and the power of global capital. It is precisely the social movements, from both poles, which have internalized the discipline of being a cheap energy exporting country, in spite of any consideration for the environment, deepening in the role assigned to Venezuela by economic globalization. Sticking to the events of the last few months – actions against carbon exploitation in Zulia, protests by street vendors in Caracas and traditional fishermen in Guiria – and how they have been opposed and criminalized by the Chavez’s rank and file, we foresee a long period of conflict among the oppressed: some protesting for a few structural improvements and other opposing them to climb up to positions within the hierarchy of those embedded in the personal state.
* Eleven reasons not to vote on Dec. 3 *
(…and without making concessions to the opportunist Accion Democrática)
1.- Chavez and Rosales signify the continuation of and not the break up from the political tradition of Venezuela. They represent, in these times of economic and technological globalization, varieties of the statist, populist and caudillista ethos that dominated the country in the XX century.
2.- Chavez and Rosales don’t represent the largest minority of Venezuelans: that percentage of the population that according to all the surveys and previous electoral results does not identify with either.
3.- Chavez and Rosales base their political strategy on a watershed of support for their charisma and the absolute subordination to their person, denying the diversity, plurality and democratic tolerance they claim to uphold in their speeches.
4.- Chavez and Rosales discourses are an insult to Venezuelan’s intelligence.
5.- Chavez and Rosales help each other, sustaining and promoting the blackmail of political polarization and the “with me or against me” logic.
6) Both candidates’ governing programs are improvised electoral demagogies based on the high price of oil. Their hypothetical application will not change the complex structural problems of the country, nor will they significantly reduce poverty and insecurity.
7.- Both candidates’ electoral campaigns and their past political praxis that avails them have not said anything about human rights, the environment, protecting minorities and improving the standard of living of the people; based almost exclusively on the intensity and prevalence of traditional assistance in Latin American populism.
8.- The lack of widespread and combative social movements with their own and not negotiable political agenda condemns the next government to be a collection of impositions from the seat of power.
9.- Chavez and Rosales governments have granted impunity to the corruption and obvious enrichment of their functionaries
10.- Refusal to opt for the “lesser evil” upholds our right to change: to be different, to wish for another alternative, here and now.
11.- Whether it is the “Castro-communist threat” or the “imperialist invasion” Chavez and Rosales attempt to politically capitalize fear by promoting hysterical explanations about the country’s future without them in power, via the media they control.
No more blackmail: Don’t vote, reject equally the sad past and the demagogic present. It’s a bet on the future.
ellibertario(a)nodo50.org
www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/seccioningles.htm
As a group of activists of critical tendencies we have found it necessary before the present situation to signal an alert to all popular forces: workers, indigenous peoples, Afro Venezuelans, students, women, neighborhood groups, intellectuals and social groups.
We maintain that the two options publicized by the established order - Chavez as much as Rosales - represent the domination of financial power and empire over Venezuela, and present a scene of super-exploitation, unemployment, and social exclusion in addition to the fortification of big capital.
Eight years into the "revolution" or the so-called Process, we find that there is a social misery that has resulted from the consolidation of the State and the destruction/co-optation of social groups. In recent years, the political regimen has deteriorated into a total submission to transnational capital on the part of the Chavez government, a fact that Rosales and the opposition pretend to not be aware of.
The established game consists of the following: faced with the superficial and limited reforms of the current administration - which are driven by the Stalinist left within the capitalist State - the opposition pretends that these measures are communist, when in reality they form part of the dynamic of global capitalism. What we have seen is State management with punctual payments of external debt, the surrender of the Orinoco' Delta oil and the natural gas of Falcon state, destruction of the environment (Imataca, Perija and Paria), hegemony and the increase of the commercial sector, of finacial speculation, and the creation of flexible labor and social exclusion.
The ideological discourse of the State is crushing and hegemonic and has managed to block all critical forces, which have been silenced though bribery and cronyism, entangled in a thought process that can only lead to totalitarianism. There has been a increased fragmentation of the social movemements while the power of the cliques has only grown.
In the same way, there is an exercise in direct militarism when the high branches of the public sector are in the hands of the military forces. The popular imagination has been channeled into the civil-military lie; arbitrariness is the actual situation, and the military sector need not look upon the past with nostalgia, since El Amparo in the 90`s is exactly the same as La Paragua today (two military massacres). As a result, Chavismo is simply the reproduction of puntofijismo, as demonstrated by its corruption and impunity.
Based on these considerations, we call upon all indigenous peoples, peasants, students, professors, intellectuals, workers, women, Afro Venezuelans, neighborhood coalitions, social groups and people in general to abstain from voting because there will be no substantial change. The reality is that representative democracy based on populism vs. opposition symbolizes nothing new, but is merely a backward sector anchored in the cold war, just like Chavismo.
This call for abstention is not based on the problem of electoral fraud, which we do not deny; nor does it coincide with the opportunistic call to abstention coming from certain quarters. Required change will never be given through the electoral process, but will rather be produced through the autonomous initiative of the social movements themselves. The grave social, economic and cultural crisis suffered by Venezuela does not find its answer in electoral politics, which banalizes and liquidates all struggle.
We bring this alert forward so that all agents of social change may actively organize around and promote absentionism through their own struggles, without messiahs or authoritarian bureaucrats, in order to demonstrate to the scaffold of power that it is ineffective and antidemocratic. Only the collapse of the existing system will guarentee transformation. Otherwise, we alert you to increases in repressive practices in the immediate future within the framework of the worsening of the structural crisis of the country.
Faced with the bourgeois, genocidal State of the past 40 years, which is expressed in the candidacy of Manuel Rosales, the alternative cannot be support for the totalitarian State of Hugo Chavez.
* Depolarization and autonomy: Challenges to Venezuela’s social movements after D-3 *
Rafael Uzcategui uzcategui.rafael(a)gmail.com
Visualizing what will happen to Venezuela’s social movements after the elections scheduled for December 3 – every indication points to the re-election of president Chavez – cannot be done without at least a general understanding of their historical path. During the second half of the 80’s the economic crises after the “black Friday” was the catalyst of new forms of organizing and demanding that began to develop in this Caribbean country: student and neighborhood movements, women, counterculture, ecological and pro-human rights. Subjective efforts that although coming from the left, did not automatically follow the organizational schemes of the guevarist-lenninists who claimed to be the heirs of the armed insurrection of the 60’s. The “Caracazo” (February 1989) as the expression of the growing malaise, marks the beginning of a civil society as alienated from the traditional political parties - networks of State’s clients - as it is from the left political parties. The effervescence that ensues weaves a social fabric out of infinite socio-political initiatives, with varied and developing levels of mutual interaction, which played a lead role in the mobilizations for the greatest objective at the time: getting Carlos Andres Perez out of power.
Chavez’s original movement raises itself above this dynamic and becomes the face of the people’s malcontent, achieving legitimacy at the polls in 1999 by capitalizing on the prevailing wish for change that ran through the country, but also revitalizing the populist, statist and caudillista ethos so much a part of Venezuela’s historical make-up. The imposition of a personal mode of domination was preconditioned to the break up of the citizen-led dynamics that brought it to power. Among the many causes driving this process there is the polarization imposed by the contending elites: those banned from power representing the traditional productive sectors, and the new “leftist” bureaucracy giving legitimacy to the interests of those sectors crucial to the economic globalization of the country.
After 1999 the social fabric is fragmented (neighborhood, student and ecologist movements), neutralized (human rights) and co-opted (indigenous, women, counterculture) by the expectations created by a government rhetorically of the left. In turn this has caused some expression of popular organization with no autonomy within a new network of clients, amidst one of the greatest economic windfalls ever, brought on by the high oil prices.
These popular initiatives, instructed from above, have some common elements that distinguish them from other social movements:
(1) Vertical solidarity supplants intra-class solidarity: mobilizations follow a political agenda imposed by the top; their calls for solidarity when others in the movement suffer repression are almost non-existent.
(2) An identity permeated by personality cult and a lack of history and arguments different from those originating in the seat of power, which prevents any hypothetical “deepening of the revolution”.
(3) Their praxis aims to legitimize government’s projects, without any other parallel or different process.
(4) A progressing wearing out due to its adoption of politico-electoral cumulative logic.
Default on the expectations generated by Chavez has caused the exponential increase of popular protests during 2006, something that will continue to grow in the coming year. But it is precisely the blackmail of polarization – “to give weapons to the right”, “manipulated by imperialism” – which contains the growing discontent against a state that neither transformed itself when it could, nor has a new bureaucracy able to make policies different from Latin American populist welfare.
The challenges facing the social movements, after the hypothetical presidential re-election, are not only of a practical order such as its autonomous configuration or experimenting with diverse practices and spaces of learning and counter hegemony. They are also theoretical. Overcoming imperialist Manichaeism, centered exclusively on George Bush, would entail squeezing the multiple dynamics of money flow and the power of global capital. It is precisely the social movements, from both poles, which have internalized the discipline of being a cheap energy exporting country, in spite of any consideration for the environment, deepening in the role assigned to Venezuela by economic globalization. Sticking to the events of the last few months – actions against carbon exploitation in Zulia, protests by street vendors in Caracas and traditional fishermen in Guiria – and how they have been opposed and criminalized by the Chavez’s rank and file, we foresee a long period of conflict among the oppressed: some protesting for a few structural improvements and other opposing them to climb up to positions within the hierarchy of those embedded in the personal state.
* Eleven reasons not to vote on Dec. 3 *
(…and without making concessions to the opportunist Accion Democrática)
1.- Chavez and Rosales signify the continuation of and not the break up from the political tradition of Venezuela. They represent, in these times of economic and technological globalization, varieties of the statist, populist and caudillista ethos that dominated the country in the XX century.
2.- Chavez and Rosales don’t represent the largest minority of Venezuelans: that percentage of the population that according to all the surveys and previous electoral results does not identify with either.
3.- Chavez and Rosales base their political strategy on a watershed of support for their charisma and the absolute subordination to their person, denying the diversity, plurality and democratic tolerance they claim to uphold in their speeches.
4.- Chavez and Rosales discourses are an insult to Venezuelan’s intelligence.
5.- Chavez and Rosales help each other, sustaining and promoting the blackmail of political polarization and the “with me or against me” logic.
6) Both candidates’ governing programs are improvised electoral demagogies based on the high price of oil. Their hypothetical application will not change the complex structural problems of the country, nor will they significantly reduce poverty and insecurity.
7.- Both candidates’ electoral campaigns and their past political praxis that avails them have not said anything about human rights, the environment, protecting minorities and improving the standard of living of the people; based almost exclusively on the intensity and prevalence of traditional assistance in Latin American populism.
8.- The lack of widespread and combative social movements with their own and not negotiable political agenda condemns the next government to be a collection of impositions from the seat of power.
9.- Chavez and Rosales governments have granted impunity to the corruption and obvious enrichment of their functionaries
10.- Refusal to opt for the “lesser evil” upholds our right to change: to be different, to wish for another alternative, here and now.
11.- Whether it is the “Castro-communist threat” or the “imperialist invasion” Chavez and Rosales attempt to politically capitalize fear by promoting hysterical explanations about the country’s future without them in power, via the media they control.
No more blackmail: Don’t vote, reject equally the sad past and the demagogic present. It’s a bet on the future.
ellibertario(a)nodo50.org
www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/seccioningles.htm
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Comments
Hide the following 15 comments
Disgraceful
22.11.2006 11:04
Steve la fevre
More of the same...
22.11.2006 13:54
"Divulgan vía internet plan terrorista para "defensa cívica" en Venezuela, realizado en los EEUU con la ayuda de la CIA y el apoyo de los viejos contras cubanos radicados en Miami y Washington"...(qué coincidencia)
Por: Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias
Fecha de publicación: 06/11/06
Caracas, 06 Nov.(Edgard Ramírez-Ramírez).- Desde los Estados Unidos, vía internet, se imparten instrucciones precisas para preparar a grupos violentos de la oposición venezolana en técnicas terroristas, de cara a las próximas elecciones presidenciales de diciembre.
Entre los sanguinarios ítems que la página de la "Coalición Cuba Nueva" difunde al pueblo venezolano se pueden leer directos llamados al asesinato tales como: 'Apunta al que entiendas es el líder. Y si sólo lo hieres, úsalo como carnada para cuando lo quieran salvar otros enemigos. Con uno herido eliminarás a cinco chavistas'.
Esta apología al terrorismo se puede encontrar completa en la dirección:
En el documento se presentan guías de organización, instrucciones para construir bombas caseras y, lo que es más grave, una lista de personas consideradas 'objetivos'.
'Identifica a los chavistas y recolecta información. Dónde van, donde comen, familiares directos, etc. Bloquea las cerraduras de su auto, espichas sus cauchos, desconecta sus teléfonos. Evita que se escape', reza el manual de terrorismo on line.
También explican, paso a paso, como construir bombas: de hielo seco, de cloro, irritante, entre otras.
El corolario de este mortal manual lo constituye una cuadro con información (nombres y direcciones) de civiles que apoyan al gobierno constitucional del presidente Chávez. Un grupo de personas, sobre todo de las zonas populares, son identificadas como 'objetivos'.
Esta página responde plenamente a la definición de terrorista: Estrategia de guerra asimétrica que se caracteriza por inducir terror en la población civil para forzar políticas o comportamientos que de otra forma no se producirían.
Los autores de este portal, sin el menor rubor, finalizan su manual de terrorismo asegurando que en caso de ser necesario 'nosotros esconderemos y sacaremos o meteremos al país a salvo a los líderes de la oposición'.
Diversos voceros del Gobierno bolivariano, desde el propio Chávez hasta líderes políticos, han denunciado en múltiples oportunidades los planes desestabilizadores que la oposición y sus padrinos extranjeros pretenden llevar adelante para las próximas elecciones.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
En el caso que la página web antes mencionada no cargue, es porque la habrán retirado momentáneamente del ciberespacio, pero "vale la pena" visitar de todas formas la página de inicio y conocer la calaña integral de sus dueños:
Allí, en primera página, se podrá leer que la razón de ser de la "NewCubacoalition.org" es nada menos que:
..."La Coalición Cuba Nueva (CCN) es una organización educacional, no lucrativa, exenta de impuestos, cuyo fin es ayudar a la reconstrucción social, política y económica de Cuba después que termine el debacle de la era de Castro. Reconocemos la preocupación de muchos en Occidente de que un cambio del presente régimen pueda conducir a un caos económico y social en la isla. Nuestro propósito es mostrar como Cuba puede afrontar el difícil reto de su reconstrucción económica y social, sin sufrir la suerte de otros países ex-comunistas. La transición de Cuba a una democracia pluralista y una economía de mercado, requiere, a nuestro entender, una adecuada infraestructura política y legal, para recorrer el camino sin un innecesario sufrimiento humano.
Ese es nuestro enfoque..."
Habría que proponerles agregaran que aquel es también su enfoque y preocupación respecto a la Venezuela Bolivariana y que duda puede cabernos, respecto a Bolivia... y vaya uno a saber cuantos más.
Belero
You don't speak for all venezuelan anarchists
22.11.2006 14:06
The Pathetic Commission of Anarchist Relations is 99% European and is irrelevant to the“indigenous peoples, peasants, students, professors, intellectuals, workers, women, Afro Venezuelans, neighborhood coalitions, social groups and people in general” of Venezuela.
Chavez is the best thing that has happened to the poor people of Venezuela. Your alternative is a road-map for divisionism and imperialism.
“We bring this alert forward so that all agents of social change may actively organize around and promote absentionism through their own struggles.”
Not all Anarchists are still stuck in your time-warp, where committees, Federations, Collectives, etc. must think for the rest and impose ignorance.
It feels great to be autonomous anarchist, I don't have to swallow bullshit, you have the freedom to think for yourself.
autonomous anarchist
Interesting Comments!
22.11.2006 15:42
One of them points to a terrorist manual on a web page which does not exist. The other makes gratuitious remarks about the CRA that can not be substantiated at all.
Even the first one says that the link it provides might be "temporarily" taken off line. That's probably because they have read your post and are concerned about bad PR. Sure, mate! Maybe it is more like you've concoted it all in your mind. Strange no one
As for the other one saying that CRA are 99% european is a bizarre claim. It must be a freaking big group, as all of them I've met are venezuelans. If that is only the 1% of the group, it surely must be the biggest anarchist group on earth. Gosh, I wonder were they keep the rest of them.
While it is true that not all venezuelan anarchists opose the chavez regime, all the other claims in the comment have no resemblance with true at all. You can discuss the pros and cons, from many different points of view. Instead you are not even interested, you just insult and defame. If you want us to get on a honest dicusion about it, I'll be interested. If you are going to keep just insulting, I have no more time for you.
Intrigued!!!
Clarification
22.11.2006 16:52
Steve la fevre
To open the site of the cuban contras...
22.11.2006 23:10
Belero
Steve,
23.11.2006 10:50
and i prefer liberal democracy to fascism, but choosing between capitalist managers is hardly communist or libertarian is it? If politics becomes fixated on the state (or worse a charismatic statist), it can't but become 'socialism from above' of some description i.e. state capitalism. Now that may mean an increased standard of living for Venezuela's poor, but revolutionary it ain't.
(A)
Wrong Mr A
23.11.2006 13:47
Steve la fevre
Revolution from above?
23.11.2006 15:03
What worries me most is what will happen if the good times finish, and for whatever the reason the oil price drops. Chavez has started stockpiling weapons, and because of the very nature of his rethoric, if he finds his grip on power threatened he can easily resort to war to keep his hold on it and silence dissindence. Will it be against Colombia or the Guyana? Hopefully not....
we're getting better
steve
23.11.2006 16:30
i'm not unfamiliar with what Chavez *says*, but i'm also not going to start taking statesmen at their word because they come in leftist clothing. I mean the situation in Venezuela is far from unambiguous, but if anything we should be offering our solidarity to the Venezuelan working class (broadly conceived), rather than a president who *at best* represents them. A revolution identified with one man is no such thing, yes there have been land redistributions and the like, but Chavez has also stressed his respect for private property (only idle/under- utilised land is being seized afaik). I mean some of this is imposed on him from without, for sure, but revolutions happen from below, the best Chavez can do is not inhibit it, but i've read stuff about strike breaking and all sorts by his gov't, so i think it's naive to put faith in *him* as opposed to the potential for mass grassroots action (that restored him to power after the coup afterall), even though he is clearly not simply a clone of Lenin, Mao, Castro or Peron.
(A)
Another Clarification
24.11.2006 17:08
Cars
Houses that you own
Clothes
Are you saying Mr A that these should be nationalised?
Definition of the PRIVATE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
Factories
Land
Comprehende Mr A!!!!!
Steve la fevre
steve
25.11.2006 01:06
firstly such a definition of private property, flattening out directly possessed personal possessions (tooth brushes, cars) and alienated property is pretty lame, and out of synch with the prevailing analysis of the workers movement since marx.
secondly, its not a case of private boss (privatisation) vs state boss (nationalisation), as you seemed to recognise with your earlier comments. i mean i'm hardly labelling chavez the new stalin, just urging we don't disengage our critical faculties whenever a leader waves the red flag. why such a hostile reaction?
(A)
Wait for Dec 2!
27.11.2006 09:45
Belero
Time to go further.
27.11.2006 16:10
The title, Revolution inside the Revolution, sums it all up. While the two first focus to the positive things that have happenned under Chavez, most of those speaking or writting the other articles point out the need to give the people real power and deepen revolution. Roland Denis, ex-minister of a Chavez government says that in the choice between the people and the technocrats the president chose the last ones. And Jose Quintero says that a cycle is over and it is time to start a new one.
Quoting him:
"Two years ago, if you criticised the government they used to say: you are playing in the hands of the right wing trying to topple Chavez".
"Many workers are saying: the political parties are screwed up. when are we going to take control? That's the debate now. Many still believed in Chavez but are starting to be more demanding. They've started bridging that political gap, evaluating what is really happenning. I don't think Chavez can change: the model and the agreements with the transnational companies are very specific."
Now you call me an imperialist, etc. etc. but anarchists are not out of touch with the real situation in Venezuela, being venezuelans themselves and part of the process. By the way, it's amazing how quickly the claim of the CRA members being europeans dropped out of the discussion. So someone knew he was lying after all....
Caracas mon amour
Chavez vs Rosales 03/12/2006
03.12.2006 12:06
For more than eight years, Chavez had the opportunity to prove that he could make an improvement and create a positive difference not only to our land but also its people.
What we, the Venezuelans, have been undergoing in his regime, is not only an increase in poverty but also a creation of hatred, violence and killing. Chavez has created a new uneducated rich society which due to ignorance, ineptitude and support from the government do whatever they want to who ever including murder.
We must not forget to add the fear and terror that we live in that by expressing our views against this government, especially if we are government officers or civil servants, we would lose our jobs and our bodies would appear tragically dead on a corner.
I should add that when one is not living in the country and does not experience the terrible truth, sadly it is possible to view Venezuela today through rose tinted glasses. That in most part includes those Venezuelans living abroad.
When Chavez came into power he was opposed to the so called “Oligarcas” (those people of wealth and high position). Today, Chavez and his government have become the “Oligarcas” themselves, the very thing he pretended to fight against and we the Venezuelans have supported him in it.
The evidence of his extravagance is so huge that I do not know where to start. I will however mention a few;
• his most expensive personal airplane so beautifully built, furnished and decorated with expensive embellishments,
• his most expensive way of life,
• his very expensive clothes and shoes that bear the best trade marks of the French and Italian fashion houses, (something that the previous corrupted presidents in Venezuelan history never did),
• his travelling throughout the world for frivolous reasons,
• his large donations of Venezuelan oil and Venezuelan money to other countries not for the betterment of the poor people but for their (government) backing of him.
The list can carry on and on.
In the meantime we Venezuelans are suffering - hungry, lack of work and misery laden.
Fidel Castro, I must say is a very clever and canny man who has been using Chavez for the progress of Cuba; the Cuba that Fidel Castro destroyed with the same doctrine that Chavez is using in Venezuela. I can say however that at least Fidel Castro in not ostentatious in the style of life that Chavez and his government have become used to.
Make not mistake. The poor do NOT support Chavez. The reality is that we all feel FEAR of him and his Government. In the depths of our hearts we wish and want to be rid of him and his people. What we really do not want and fear more is the bloodshed of any Venezuelan, as life for us is a precious gift from God.
I used to be a Socialist at heart because I was so naïve thinking in honesty and equality for all. Today I realize after all the experiences we have seen from ex-communist countries that it is not such progress for the country and its people BUT for their leaders.
The reality is that if you work with honesty, you will have your daily bread. You will live in peace within yourself and live your life to the fullest. After all what can one do with money and power achieved in this life? Will you have eternal life to enjoy the “good” things that money and power bring to you? Or are you going to take it all with you when your life ends and enjoy the after life with your money and power?
Or will the people (whether they deserve it or not) enjoy what you worked and fought for? This happiness is not permanent as one would live in fear of any attack or treachery?
As for Rosales, perhaps he is the same as Chavez. I do not know and as yet no body knows, but the Venezuelans need to give him the same chance that was given to Chavez and wait to see if he delivers his promises. What we should remember is that Chavez was once a disenchanted paratroops officer who railed against what he saw as corruption. Now there is an understudy in the wings who needs that chance. After all Politics is the most dirty and unclean job that society originated to destroy the world.
Simon Bolivar said, “When all political parties cease to exist and the people have unity, I will finally have peace.” ("Cuando cesen los partidos y se consolide la union yo bajare tranquilo al sepulcro.")
I can only imagine that our Liberator Simon Bolivar is having fits in his grave and would be disgusted with Chavez for using his name and symbolism to gain power in Venezuela and destroy the very country that he, Simon Bolivar, fought for.
I hope that what I wrote here make sense to others as it to me.
Sincerely
Carmen.
carmen (Venezuelan)