Re: [Marxism] Chavez embraces socialism (but not the old kind)

[Yosef M <roytefon@xxxxxxxxx>]

The claim that Chavez has "embraced socialism" t seriously misleads working 
people. Exactly one enterprise has been nationalized by the chavista regime 
after six and half years in power. One enterprise in six and a half years -- 
and, as the Latin American expert James Petras has pointed out, 
nationalizations in Latin America have gone hand in hand with continued 
capitalist rule. The existence of the Mexican state oil enterprise PEMEX does 
not mean that there is "socialism" in Mexico, and  the existence of the sole 
nationalized enterprise Venepal does not mean that Venezuela is socialist 
either. At Venepal, workers' representatives will sit, probably as decorative 
stooges, on a board that includes representatives of the bourgeois government. 
That may well be "co-pariticpation," in which the workers participate and the 
government officials control, but it is not "workers' control."

Likewise, the chavista "War on the Latifundios" is really only a proposal to 
cede some *vacant* land to some peasants at some point in the future. . Morwe 
than once, peasant representatives have already criticized this plan as 
inadequate,

These  gestures, the nationalization of Venepal, an exception that proves the 
rule (that Venezuela remains a capitalist state), and the so-called "war on the 
latifundios," pale in comparison to revolutionary measures, like the ones taken 
by the Cuban revolutionary government, in which all the means of production in 
Cuba were nationalized, and economic planning was instituted, within two years 
after the revolutionary victory on January 1, 1959. In a real revlution in the 
countryside, the Cuban revolutionary government, early on,  seized  the estates 
 and the land was given to vast numbers of peasants. Even the estate belonging 
to Castro's mother was seized.

Even the reforms carried out by Allende were far, far greater than the proposed 
chavista "war on the latifundios." One of the first things the Allende 
government did was to take over estates greater than 80 hectares in size for 
the benefit of the peasantry.

The academic Lebowitz should have made his headline read, : "Chavez embraces 
socialism, but not the real kind."

With Bolshevik-Leninist greetings,
Yosef M

"michael a. lebowitz" <mlebowit@xxxxxx> wrote:


Defying U.S., Venezuela's Chavez Embraces Socialism

                
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