[Marxism] "Containing" Chávez

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

"'Containing' Chávez" ("Another World Is Possible" has been a popular
slogan of the global justice movement. What does it mean to actually
build "another world," though, going beyond simply affirming the
possibility of an alternative to capitalism?  Hugo Chávez Frias's
answer is that "[w]e must reclaim socialism," a new type of socialism
that grows organically out of "popular organisations already
constructed as part of the struggle to create 'participatory
democracy.'"  His declaration came at the same time as the land
reform in Venezuela, which had concentrated on distributing public
land to the landless, began to take on the landed estates.
Washington wasted no time announcing "a policy to 'contain' Hugo
Chávez," reported on the front page of the Financial Times.  Look
beneath Washington's feverish rhetoric of the "war on terror" --
"Chávez backs subversives and buys Russian weapons for them!" -- and
observe what's happening in Venezuela, Latin America, and the world
carefully. You can see that what Washington really objects to is not
only Venezuela's domestic policy of empowering the poor socially and
economically -- the program that cannot but eventually impinge upon
class interests of the rich -- but also its international policy of
breaking Venezuela's traditional dependence on the military,
political, and economic ties with the United States by building new
relations with Russia, Iran, and China among others and by playing a
leadership role in integrating Latin America and moving it to the
left.) -- FULL TEXT:
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/03/containing-chvez.html>
--
Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>

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