On 2/16/21 8:45 AM, John Reimann wrote:
And it's not for nothing that the term "bolibourgeoisie" is common there. As Trotsky showed in his criticisms of the Soviet bureaucracy, one doesn't have to support US imperialism to be critical of a regime. That's especially so in the case of Venezuela, where capitalism hasn't even been overthrown.
The implicit meaning of your attack on Maduro is that there is some escape from the contradictions of world capitalism. Any nation that attempts to break free of imperialism is always thwarted by forces beyond its control, just as when trade unions are defeated in a major struggle such as Little Steel in the 30s or P9 in 1985. In the class struggle, the relationship of class forces is the determining factor going back to the Paris Commune.
It is relatively easy to imagine an aroused working class in Venezuela taking on Maduro and the "bolibourgeoisie" and creating "socialism from below". People like Sam Farber and Dan La Botz have made a hobby out of it, just like stamp collecting and folk dancing. I was the president of the board of Tecnica that had close ties to the Nicaraguan government in the 80s. We got regular reports on the economic crisis that compounded with the war made life intolerable. I read articles in the cult Militant newspaper about the need for the FSLN to "follow the Cuban road" as if the USSR was ready to throw its weight behind a country with fewer people than Brooklyn and a GDP less than what Americans spend on blue jeans per year. A socialist revolution would have alienated the European social democracies that Nicaragua relied on and brought the country to total ruin.
In the current epoch, it has become much clearer that socialism can only succeed if it takes root in a country that has the technical, economic and military prowess to stand on its own. Unfortunately, Venezuela was not one of those countries.
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