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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