Extracted from article published here https://links.org.au/venezuelas-presidential-elections-and-left-debating-democracy-anti-imperialism-and-sovereignty
.... The pro-Maduro left has replaced assessing the situation of the Venezuelan working class as the basis of left-wing analysis with the "geopolitics of oil". This binary geopolitics only sees the contradiction between imperialism and the Venezuelan state (undoubtedly a real and important contradiction). It is not dialectical enough to take into account the material and political situation of working class people, their aspirations and options amid a scenario of multiple contradictions. It is as if this were an ancillary issue, or a secondary contradiction. The "mantra" of the pro-Maduro left for omitting class analysis is the need to prevent the right from coming to power, ignoring the fact that Venezuela has a government that applies the structural economic recipes of the right, just with left-wing rhetoric. You only have to talk to the workers (not the bureaucracy of the Bolivarian Socialist Workers Confederation bosses) at Sidor and PDVSA, or with teachers and university professors to see the terrible material situation in which they live (a minimum wage of US$4 a month, an average salary of US$130 a month, made up of 80% bonuses), amid the worst loss of democratic freedoms in decades in terms of their organisation, mobilisation and struggle. The new geopolitics of progressivism look at the J28 elections in much the same way as the international mainstream media (CNN, CBS and others), but simply support the opposite side. They do not defend the interests of María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, but those of Maduro and the new bourgeoisie, behind the false axiom that Maduro equals the working class but without analysing his government's anti-worker and anti-popular policies. They fall into the trap of "legal fetishism" by limiting their analysis of the situation to the election results. The issue is not just that Maduro and the CNE have not demonstrated how the president won the J28 elections, but how this situation affects the framework of concrete democratic freedoms in which the working class operates and survives. If there is no transparency and legitimacy in the national elections, in which the registered candidates represented different shades of bourgeois programs, it is difficult to imagine restoring the minimum democratic freedoms that the working class needs to defend itself against capital’s offensive against it (the right to decent wages, the right to strike, freedom of association, freedom to mobilise, express opinions and organise in political parties). The working class is fundamentally interested in how the situation after J28 allows or restricts, in the short term, the freedoms it needs to express itself as an exploited class. But this contradiction does not enter into the logic and discourse of new progressive geopolitics.... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#31786): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/31786 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108070952/21656 -=-=- 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. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
