RE: [OPE] Venezuela is the most democratic country in Latin America

> After all, Gandhi and Luther King seem to be offered more endurable

> and coherent legacies than the communist leaders.

Alejandro:

The *strategy* of non-violent resistance is based on on the (religious)

faith that one's opponents will recoil in horror - if confronted with the

truth - by the own actions. It essentially holds the moral belief that all

people are inherently good and that their conscience can be appealed to

and their innate goodness will prevail. This is an example of exactly what

I have been arguing against - *idealism*. One can not assume that the

strategy applied in India under colonial rule or in the US during the

civil rights movement will work in (most) other countries, including

Venezuela. To demand that the people of Iraq, Palestine, Venezuela

and other places adopt this strategy takes no account of their actual

national histories and class struggles. Furthermore, it is an invitation

to slaughter on a truly epic scale!

What sort of a conscience do you, for example, think fascists have? What

sort of a conscience do you think the CIA has? What sort of a conscience

do you think the "opposition" has. One has to look to *history* to answer

these questions. This is not to say that I am opposed on principle

to the *tactic* of non-violent resistance, but this tactic should not

be elevated to a principle or strategy. The strategy developed in any

struggle must take into account material *reality* and must not descend

from up high from some religious or abstract, absolute, and ahistorical

ideal.

> It is time to oppose any strategic concession if it betrays socialist principles.

 
*Letting the people decide through a democratic process* whether to keep term limits or not
was not a betrayal of socialist principles. A socialist principle which should not be
betrayed, imo, is the *principle of the right of self-determination for oppressed nationalities*.
That means that we should support the right of Venezuelan workers and the poor to decide
on their own destinies rather than impose on them an abstract, absolute, and ahistorical
ideal developed by philosophers and academics. Self-determination for them is not a
question of formulating an 'ideal' type of democracy; it is about making their own
choices and taking control over their own destinies.
 
In solidarity, Jerry

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Received on Sat Feb 28 14:41:57 2009