[Marxism] Russia Draws Closer to Venezuela

["yossi schwartz" <ssschwartz8@xxxxxxxxx>]

 The interview with Forrest Hylton in Monthly Review

How many errors can  make in one simple article ?.

Monthly Review is not some unknown magazine. It  is the magazine associated
with the theories Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy  who were apologetics for
Stalinism a very common attitude among the middle class who considered
themselves Marxists.





In his  answers to Zaa Nkweta, The Real News, Hylton denies that Russia is
an imperialist state. First he says "because we haven't seen this type of
involvement with anything concerning the Russian military in the Western
Hemisphere since the missile crisis under the Kennedy Administration, so it
has many people sort of alarmed with the idea that Russia is now some kind
of expansionist power, but it has to be understood in the context of the
NATO's effort to basically encircle Russia by incorporating the former
satellite republics all along Russia's borders".



Thus he denies that Russia is some kind of  expansionist power like the US.



Later on he states that " Of course, Hugo Chavez is looking for allies
wherever he can find them in the developing world, China, Russia, Iran, and
so forth"



Thus Russia for him is part of the oppressed nations a semi colony of
Imperialism instead of recognizing its class nature.



Secondly he puts Russia which is an imperialist state on the same level of
China which is a capitalist but not imperialist state.



His definition what is imperialism is ridiculous liberal definition: Seeking
power for power sake. He says: "On one hand, the United States' approach to
the Western Hemisphere really hasn't changed that much since the Cold War.  Now
the rubric is anti-terrorism rather than anti-communism, but we still see
the same formula of counter-insurgency wherever US interests are perceived
to be threatened.  Yet the basic fact of Russia's incursion into the Western
Hemisphere by a military means really comes on the heels of Russia's
incursion, and China's incursion, into Latin America in terms of trade and
investment.  So, I think really that the military component of all this
should not be allowed to overshadow the trade and investment"



Where from all this nonsense  ? from is need to justify the fact that
Russia Draws Closer to Venezuela and the attitude that the enemy of my enemy
is my friend. If we will take his seriously for a moment, than the
implication is that we have to defend Russian imperialism. Since it is
impossible to pretend any more that Russia is a kind of a socialist or a
workers state it became now  an oppressed nation. However in the real world
Russia was an imperialist state even before the Bolshevik revolution. It
became an imperialist state once again not in 1992 in  a peaceful transition
 as some anti Leninist claim, but already on the eve o the WWII when the
workers state apparatus and the Bolshevik party was murdered
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