Re: [Marxism] NYT on TELESUR: Building a TV Station and a Platform for Leftists

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Eli Stephens wrote:
> "a writer and journalist who was hired by Mr.
> Izarra to help retool Venezuela’s state news agency by drawing
> inspiration from Cuba’s Prensa Libre and Spain’s Agencia EFE."

Btw, Andrés Izarra's father is William Izarra, who is described in the 
NY Times article as a "retired air force officer...political scientist" 
and "one of the chief theorists of Mr. Chávez’s political movement."

Richard Gott discusses William Izarra at some length on his book about 
Chavez, describing him at one point as a “revolutionary officer with 
Trotskyist leanings who had studied at Harvard.” This should give you 
some sense of where Venezuela is headed and why simplistic formulas 
about the state must be avoided in this case.

It actually relates to Trotsky's observation:

"In its historical origins and its traditions, Turkey is a military 
state. Currently, it is the first among the European Nations as regards 
the relative size of its army. A large army requires a considerable 
number officers some of whom had risen from the ranks because of long 
service. But the Yildiz (the Palace of the Sultan), in spite of its 
barbaric resistance to the needs of historical development, was forced 
to Europeanise its army to a certain extent and to open it to educated 
people. The latter did not wait to benefit from this. The unimportance 
of Turkish industry and low level of urban culture left the Turkish 
intelligentsia with hardly any other choice than a military or civil 
service career. So the State organized at its centre the militant 
vanguard of the bourgeois nation in process of formation: the critical 
and dissatisfied intelligentsia. The last few years has seen an 
uninterrupted series of disorders in the Turkish army due to non-payment 
of salaries or delays in promotions. The troops seized a telegraphic 
station and started direct negotiations with the Palace. The Sultan’s 
camarilla had no other choice but to yield and, in this way, regiment 
after regiment, the army was taught in the school of rebellion."

Leon Trotsky, The Young Turks

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1909/01/1909-turks.htm



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