From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Sat Jun 05 2004 - 17:48:13 EDT
At 4:20 PM -0400 6/5/04, Paul Zarembka wrote: >Remember "Civil War in France"; > >Remember "recall" of public officials; > >Remember who proposed it for Venezuela; May I remind you that there is both far left and social democratic opposition to Chavez? With forward of Sonntag site I indicated an expression of the latter type--you have not spoken to what he actually wrote; perhaps through your links with the Venezuelan masses you know about the specific criticisms made by Bandera Roja (led by Gabriel Puerta) and Tercer Camino (led by Douglas Bravo). Why have they argued that Chavez has been effective through the use of demagogy in implementing IMF austerity like programmes? Where does the privatization of oil, gas and basic services stand today? What is the nature of price controls? What do you think of Chavez's earlier relaxation of capital controls and use of hard currency to support the bolivar? Did the latter exacerbate Dutch disease like problems? What has been the class content of his many decrees regarding public sector workers? What's the history of his regime in terms of mediation of industrial class conflict in the private sector? Has he made good use of the bonanza of oil wealth that high prices have yielded? How will the Civil War in France help me or anyone answer such questions? > >Note who has happily accepted such a referundum about himself: > http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/6/3/164137/7540#2; A popular referendum will not answer the above questions. For example, I cannot determine the class content of Schwarzenegger's worker compensation reform from his having won a referendum or even his present widespread popularity. That requires actual analysis of actual policies. > >Reject Bush's, Kerry's, Rakesh's, et al. references to "Chavez's >authoritarian regime". criticism from the right is not the same as criticism from the left. But you seem intent on muddling things so that clear answers to the above questions don't have to be given. By the way, you seem to have interpreted Althusser as writing the exact opposite thing that he did write. See Reading Capital. That's what my last message was about, so I was not expecting this renewal of the Chavez debate. > History is in the making! My idea of history in the making is not the winning of a referendum. What do you think Max Adler's distinction between political and social revolutions; I think it's still illuminating. It's in Austro Marxism, ed. Bottomore and Goode. Rakesh > >Paul Z. > >************************************************************************* >Vol.21-Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy >RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Zarembka/Soederberg, eds, Elsevier Science >********************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
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