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

["Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Gabosch wrote, "For my part, I think there are many things we can
learn and generalize about from all class struggle experiences,
especially revolutions, but in terms of the question of taking state
power and consciously making a socialist revolution - a question on the
historic agenda of Venezuela given the current high level of
mobilization and class struggle consciousness of its workers and
oppressed...."

He then mentions only one of those "many" valid generalizations: "the
concept of the workers and farmers government."  The trouble is that the
term means different things to different people.

Steve does not clarify this by saying that it was "what Marx called the
dictatorship of the proletariat, what Lenin advocated in his April
Theses in 1917, what Castro and Guevara led the creation of in 1959,
what the Sandinistas lost in 1987-1990 (give or take)."  Yet, the
spectrum of things to which these terms could apply is very broad.

In this sense, "the workers and farmers government" become a mere slogan
applicable to virtually any situation where dual power develops...or
it's a magical incantation to ward off the evil eye.

Solidarity!
Mark L.







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