Re: [OPE-L] May Day 2005 in Caracas: the revolution advances

From: Paul Zarembka (zarembka@BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Mon May 02 2005 - 14:18:37 EDT


--On Monday, May 02, 2005 2:25 PM -0300 Francisco Paulo Cipolla
<cipolla@UFPR.BR> wrote:

> How likely
> though it is that Chaves will support workers controll of private firms,
> which is tantamount to the socialization of all private productive
> forces? And do you think this power will gather enough momentum to
> prevent a coup d'etat, that is to say, will it gather sufficient strenght
> so as to overwelm the reaction which can only come from within the army?
> In Chile Allende was wary of supporting the workers in their quest for
> control of factories, except in the ones that had been abandoned by their
> owners. He did not want to give the reactionary forces any reason to
> counter-attack. It seems that Chavez is more daring than Allende.

For what it is worth, I see Chavez and Allende as quite different as
leaders.

Allende rejected arming the people as the likelihood of a coup came closer;
Chavez, a military person himself -- unlike Allende, has already given some
indications that, should push-come-to-shove, he would arm the people.

Allende was a leader of self-proclaimed "peaceful road to socialism";
Chavez seems to give more the message, "yes, we want peace, but we don't
count on it".

Going further, the Venezuela military structure itself has more populist
roots than does the Chilean.

And, the Allende coalition did not have a parliamentary majority that
Chavez parties do; this lack in Chile created major problems for the Unidad
Popular and Allende.

Of course, Allende expropriate the copper industries in a manner which led
to no compensation (charging 'excess profits' against the value of the
companies expropriated -- leading to null compensation).  That's on the
other side the ledger comparing the situations.

Paul

***********************************************************************
RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY,  Paul Zarembka, editor, Elsevier Science
******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue May 03 2005 - 00:00:00 EDT