(OPE-L) Re: Labour aristocracy and 'oppressed states'

From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sun Jan 11 2004 - 16:54:35 EST


John H wrote:

>     I am sure this has something to do with the issue of Venezuela.

What is the relation to Venezuela?   What is most important in
Venezuela at present are not the policies of Chavez and the
Venezuelan state but rather the independent organizing of the
poor and the development of new forms of organization by
working people.  What can not be forgotten -- and this is not
forgotten by Chavez or the masses themselves -- is that it was
poor working people who independently mobilized who put
Chavez back in power. Talk about empowerment! And, as Mike L
has stressed, the situation is a very fluid one in which the
poor are developing their self-confidence and are mobilizing in
defense of the Bolivaran revolution.  To fixate on Chavez seems
to me to be missing the central point -- i.e. the unfolding of a
a pre-revolutionary situation and the fact that there is -- quite
literally -- a class war in Venezuela.  It seems to me that a lot
of the same arguments that are being made from the Left
against the Venezualan revolutionaries were also made against
the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

In solidarity, Jerry


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