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"This repertoire of autocratic rule is of course not new; what makes it novel is its concerted and combined use by elected rulers – Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán, Trump, Maduro, Duterte in the Philippines and Modi in India – who are quite clearly engaged in a rapid, purposive and common project to hollow out democracy". I have a lot of time for Mason and follow his twitter account avidly. But I note his list of dictators includes Maduro along side the likes of Orban and Duterte. what this shows is how successful the "velvet revolution" tactic has been In Venezuela. I am inclined to read the present conjuncture as one where the decay of the Neoliberal Centre is such that we are in the midst of the struggle to create a new centre. Corbynism would give us, or attempt to give us, a quasi-Keynesian Centre. And, to be frank, I would settle for that in a heart beat. But of course I am not saying that the ruling class would accept it as well. Nor do I believe for one minute that the capitalist class can simply be legislated into civility and decency. A Corbyn government will be a crisis government. For me Venezuela represents a more likely path. My reading of it is that the events in Venezuela are about doubling down on the old neoliberal centre. Pinochet played a vanguard role in creating the neoliberal centre that spread around the world. The opposition in Venezuela could do the same and herald in an era of quite vicious reaction. comradely Gary On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 10:12 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > > > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/31/democr > acy-dying-people-worried-putin-erdogan-trump-world > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt > ions/marxism/gary.maclennan1%40gmail.com > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com