From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Tue Dec 30 2003 - 14:40:57 EST
>--On Tuesday, December 30, 2003 10:45 AM -0800 Rakesh Bhandari ><rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU> wrote: > >>I'm sure that not all the people fired by Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez were >>labourers. > >But you said 18,000 "workers". So I was wrong by just a bit. Most were doubtless workers. > >>I think Michael L. suggested that most however were >>technicians. Despite the good fortune of strong oil prices for this >>rentier state, even the official unemployment rate had increased >>under the Lt.Col's rule--electorally maintained, to be sure, but then >>so was the rule of Fujimori and Menem. > >Now, why would anyone refer to "Lt. Col." and not "President", his >twice-elected position? Oh, I don't know--a distrust of military leaders. And we will need to investigate how the Constitution is being changed. Moreover, electoral validation is not in itself proof of the progressiveness of the leader. > And why would anyone claim that President Chavez >is responsible for the rise in the unemployment rate in the circumstances >of a massive bourgeois campaign against his government reminding one of >nothing other than the experience of Allende in Chile in the early 1970s? And why would that campaign be fully or even mainly responsible--oil prices were high? Is Chavez to be protected from criticism? > >One doesn't have to claim Allende and Chavez make all the right moves to >know where the principal problem lies. Perhaps the principal problem is a rentier state, however that rent is distributed. We haven't yet discussed the problem of Dutch disease; Terry Karl does discuss it a bit, but does not clearly spell out its workings. A social democrat, Allende was not in charge of a rentier state, and he did have an actual program of land reform and worker rights. Chavez's program is very difficult to decipher. A lot of symbolic politics in the international sphere, charged rhetoric about Bolivar, delusions about the power of OPEC to set the price of oil, a friendly regime for foreign investors, and some minimal programs for the poor coupled with an assault on seemingly the last vestiges of good working class, 'technician' jobs. Allende was not a demagogue. > >For a commentary such as we are seeing, either the writer doesn't know what >he is talking about and writes anyway, or ... > >Enough said, Paul Well if you look at what you have written, you have hardly said anything at all. Rakesh
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