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Trump versus the Venezuelan Revolution
By Shamus Cooke
August 15, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Trump’s threats against Venezuela escalated recently from the economic to the military: after announcing sanctions he threatened that all military options were “on the table.” Trump’s actions were perfectly timed to lend support to the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela, whose ongoing violent rebellion aims to topple the government of democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro.
The apex of violence was focused on stopping the recent elections to the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), convened by President Maduro to rewrite Venezuela’s constitution with the goal of resolving the current social-economic crisis.
The ANC was tasked to become the most powerful governmental body while in session. Part of Maduro’s motivation in convening the ANC was to break the political deadlock that started when the U.S.-backed opposition gained control of the Venezuelan parliament, the National Assembly.
Stalin Pérez Borges, LUCHAS: La salida a la crisis del proceso venezolano tiene que ser democrática, revolucionaria y socialista
11 de junio de 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Entrevista con Stalin Perez Borges, militante de LUCHAS (Liga Unitaria Chavista Socialista) y del Consejo Consultivo de la Central Bolivariana Socialista de los Trabajadores y Trabajadoras (CBST)
Is Maduro taking Venezuela down the authoritarian path?
By Lucas Koerner
May 23, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Venezuela Analysis — Venezuela is once again dominating international headlines as violent opposition protests bent on toppling the elected Maduro government enter their seventh week. The demonstrations have claimed to date at least 54 lives since April 4, surpassing the previous wave of violent anti-government protests in 2014, known as “the Exit”. However, this time around, the unrest coincides with a severe economic downturn and a transformed geopolitical landscape defined by the return of the right in Brazil and Argentina as well as an even more bellicose regime in Washington.
The Chávez hypothesis: vicissitudes of a strategic project
By Chris Gilbert
May 23, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Counterpunch —What does Chavism really stand for? What are its main accomplishments and its main failures? What was the soldier-become-president Hugo Chávez trying to achieve, and how far did he go in achieving it? Most often it is taken for granted that Chávez, who was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, began with an anti-neoliberal project that became, with time, anti-imperialist and then later aspired to socialism. It is also usually argued that, unfortunately, Chávez went very little of the way to achieving the latter goal. Chávez’s project suffered, this story goes, because it was only discursively socialist; that is, it proposed socialism as a goal but could not really begin the transition, being unable to go beyond mere discourse to concrete social and economic facts. That being the case, a part of the Left praises the Venezuelan leader for what it sees as an essentially verbal achievement. This group contends that Chávez fulfilled an important task for humanity by merely recovering and promoting the word socialism after the fall of the Eastern bloc. Others, generally from the so-called Hard Left, are more skeptical. They highlight Chávez’s failure to significantly alter the structure of the society or the economy.
Standoff in Venezuela
May 12, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal / Green Left Weekly — Venezuela has been rocked in recent weeks by almost daily protests and counter-protests, as right-wing opponents of socialist President Nicolas Maduro seek to bring down his government.
While the media portrays these events as a popular rebellion against an authoritarian government, supporters of the pro-poor Bolivarian revolution initiated by former president Hugo Chavez say the country is witnessing an escalation in what is an ongoing counter-revolutionary campaign seeking to restore Venezuela’s traditional elites in power and reverse the gains made by the poor majority under Chavez and Maduro.
Federico Fuentes interviewed Steve Ellner, a well-known analyst of Venezuelan and Latin American politics and a retired professor at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente, to get his views on recent events.
What is to be done in Venezuela?
By Greg Grandin
May 12, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Nation — The news from Venezuela is grim: A “fall in oil prices, soaring interest rates…have intensified an already deep-rooted recession. The country is being pauperized. It has the highest inflation in Latin America, increasing unemployment and more than 40 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty.” With economic immiseration comes political violence: Over the course of one year, “security forces killed 126 people, 46 in extra-judicial executions, and 28 when they were in police or military custody. Authoritarianism and repression are growing. Of 13,941 arbitrary detentions, 94 percent occurred during anti-crime operations mainly in poor neighborhoods.… Violent death has become a feature of Venezuelan life. On Monday mornings, the newspapers carry a grim roll call of those killed in stabbings and shootings in the city’s slums. The figure often reaches 40 or 50, mostly young, male and poor.”
Steve Ellner: 'There is much to learn from the positives and difficulties of the Venezuelan experience'
By Lucas Koerner
October 21, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Venezuela Analysis — Distinguished Venezuelan history and politics professor Steve Ellner visited Caracas from September 26 to October 7 to teach an intensive seminar at the Venezuelan Planning School, titled “The Role of the Venezuelan State in the Transition to Socialism”. VA sat down with the long time Universidad de Oriente professor to discuss a range of pressing issues facing Venezuela, including the country’s current economic crisis, the recall referendum, the future of the Bolivarian process, the efficacy of state social programs such as the CLAPs, rentierism and the Maduro government’s controversial Mining Arc, as well as the role of international solidarity.
Venezuela: a turning point for Latin America?
By Stuart Piper
January 25, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Resistance with the author's permission
“They hit us in the stomach. The revolution, and we as social movements, haven’t been able to deal with the problem of food.” Marisa, community activist in La Vega, a day after the election.
Confrontation inside and outside parliament
On the morning of Tuesday, 5 January, a few thousand supporters of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition gathered around La Hoyada metro station in central Caracas. Most had travelled in from the better-off neighbourhoods to the east. The mood was euphoric, but tense. They would march the short distance west to the National Assembly, in the company of their newly elected representatives who were about to be sworn in.
Is South America’s ‘progressive cycle’ at an end? Neo-developmentalist attempts and socialist projects
Rightists’ election victory poses major threat to Venezuela’s advances: Can People’s Power save the Bolivarian Revolution?
President Nicolás Maduro addresses Chavista supporters on December 7, following election defeat the previous day.
By Richard Fidler
January 13, 2016 - Life on the Left, reposted on Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with author’s permission - Seventeen years after Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s President for the first time, the supporters of his Bolivarian Revolution, now led by President Nicolás Maduro, suffered their first major defeat in a national election in the December 6 elections to the country’s parliament, the National Assembly.
Coming only two weeks after the victory of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina’s presidential election, it was a stunning setback to the “process of change” in Latin America that Chávez had spearheaded until his premature death from cancer in 2013. The opposition majority in the new parliament threatens to undo some of the country’s major social and economic advances of recent years as well as Venezuela’s vital support to revolutionary Cuba and other neighboring countries through innovative solidarity programs like PetroCaribe and the ALBA fair-trade alliance.
Chavez non c’è più ma il Chavismo è destinato a restare
[English at http://links.org.au/node/4546.]
Di Federico Fuentes4 agosto 2015 -- ZNet Italy -- Se Hugo Chavez non fosse morto nel 2013, l’ex presidente venezuelano il 28 luglio avrebbe compiuto 61 anni. Tuttavia, anche se Chavez non c’è più, la sua impronta indelebile sul panorama politico del Venezuela, sopravvive.
Il 6 dicembre i venezuelani andranno alle urne per la ventesima volta da quando Chavez era stato eletto presidente per la prima volta nel 1998. L’elezione di dicembre per l’Assembela Nazionale si avvia a diventare un’altra fondamentale battaglia tra le forze che per 15 anni hanno appoggiato o si sono opposte a Chavez.
Per le forze chaviste, la vittoria è vitale per la difesa e l’intensificazione della loro “rivoluzione bolivariana.”
Per l’opposizione, il successo rappresenterebbe un passo importante verso la rimozione del successore di Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, o tramite un referendum prima della scadenza del suo mandato nel 2016 o per mezzo del possibile uso del parlamento per metterlo in stato di accusa.
Nella maggio parte dei paesi, le persone in carica devono fare i conti con un prevalente umore anti-politico riflesso nella maggiore mutevolezza dei votanti e nei più rapidi cambiamenti di governo. Anche l’Australia, relativamente tranquilla, ha visto quattro diversi governi nello scorso decennio.
Venezuela: Chávez elment, de a chavizmus megmaradt
[English at http://links.org.au/node/4546.]
Írta: Federico Fuentes
2015. augusztus 06 -- Green Left Weekly/Latin-Amerika Társaság -- A 2013-ban elhunyt Hugo Chávez egykori venezuelai elnök és forradalmi szocialista július 28-án lett volna 61 éves. Bár Chávez eltávozott, emléke a venezuelai politikai színtér kitörölhetetlen része maradt.
December 6-án Venezuela huszadik alkalommal fog az urnákhoz járulni azóta, hogy Chávezt 1998-ban először elnökké választották. Eközött a két időpont között a szegénypárti átalakítási folyamat jelentősen visszavetette a szegénységet és hatalommal ruházta fel a szegény többséget.
Komoly akadályokkal is felmerültek, amely akadályozzák és veszélyeztetik a „bolivári forradalom” – ahogyan a Chávez által vezetett folyamatot hívják – fennmaradását.
A decemberi nemzetgyűlési választás egy újabb kritikus ütközetet jelent azok között, akik 15 éven keresztül támogatták vagy ellenezték Chávezt.
A chavista erők számára létfontosságú a győzelem, hogy megvédjék és elmélyítsék a forradalmat.
Venezuela: Chavez gone, but Chavismo here to stay
For more on Venezuela, click HERE
By Federico Fuentes
August 5, 2015 -- Green Left Weekly, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Had Hugo Chavez not passed away in 2013, the former Venezuelan president and revolutionary socialist would have turned 61 on July 28. However, though Chavez is gone, his indelible imprint on Venezuela’s political landscape endures.
On December 6, Venezuelans will go to the polls for the 20th time since Chavez was first elected president in 1998. Between then and now, a process of pro-poor transformation has significantly cut poverty and empowered the poor majority.
It has also confronted serious obstacles blocking further advances and threatening the survival of the “Bolivarian revolution”, as the process pushed by Chavez is known.
The December election for the National Assembly is shaping up to be another critical battle between forces that for 15 years either supported or opposed Chavez.
For the Chavista forces, victory is vital to defending and deepening the revolution.
Venezuela: Millions vote in socialist party primaries
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro at the campaign close for primary elections for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, June 26, 2015. Photo: AVN.
For more on Venezuela, click HERE
June 28, 2015 -- TeleSUR English, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Millions of members of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) hit the ballot box on June 28 to vote for the left-wing party’s candidates for parliamentary elections to be held in December. "Here are these candidates, they are men and women who come from the people, they were nominated by the grassroots (of the party), now it is up to you to choose,” stated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on June 26 during an event to celebrate the close of campaign.
El dilema populista, el pragmatismo y la izquierda en el poder en Venezuela
[English at http://links.org.au/node/4439.]
Por Steve Ellner
02-06-2015 -- Rebelion -- Los izquierdistas en Venezuela han formulado varias explicaciones sobre los retos actuales, y el descontento creciente que enfrenta el país, el cual aumenta la posibilidad de que la oposición se apodere del control de la Asamblea Nacional en las elecciones al final de este año. En la lista de explicaciones está la comparación desfavorable de las cualidades superiores del liderazgo de Hugo Chávez con las inferiores de su sucesor Nicolás Maduro. (Este mismo razonamiento es utilizado frecuentemente por los miembros de la oposición, quienes –explícita e implícitamente – atribuyen las deficiencias de Maduro a sus orígenes obreros.) Una segunda explicación es que funcionarios corruptos son los responsables de la crisis económica actual, que incluye la escasez aguda de productos de primera necesidad y una inflación galopante que ha llegado a tres dígitos.
Venezuela: Chavismo on the horns of a dilemma
Over three months in the early part of last year, Venezuela was subjected to a campaign of violence and disruption known as the guarimba, organised by elements of the right-wing, US-backed opposition.
For more on Venezuela, click HERE and more by Steve Ellner HERE.
By Steve Ellner
May 22, 2015 -- VenezuelAnalysis, posted at Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- Leftists in Venezuela put forward a number of different explanations for the pressing economic difficulties and growing discontent that has beset Venezuela and increases the possibility of an opposition takeover of the National Assembly in this year’s elections.
Venezuela: After Chávez, has the Maduro government stalled the revolution?
For more on Venezuela, click HERE.
By Steve Ellner
December 24, 2014 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Nearly two years after the death of Hugo Chávez, the key question that many on the left are debating, in Venezuela and elsewhere, is whether his successors have been true to his legacy, or whether the “revolutionary process” initiated more than a decade ago has now stalled or even been thrown into reverse.
The recent emergence of a number of pressing problems has convinced some Chavistas that the revolution has either been betrayed or, at best, that President Nicolás Maduro is severely lacking in Chávez’s political acumen.
Venezuela: Chavista leader Robert Serra assassinated in likely right-wing terror attack
Robert Serra.
By Ewan Robertson, Merida
October 2, 2014 -- Venezuelanalysis.com -– Robert Serra (27), a legislator of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and the National Assembly's youngest parliamentarian, was found dead in his Caracas home on October 1.
Authorities confirmed that Serra and his partner Maria Herrera had been murdered in their residence. According to daily newspaper Ultimas Noticias, unofficial reports say that Serra’s body showed signs of torture before he was killed.
The minister of interior affairs Miguel Rodriguez Torres informed state television VTV that an investigation had been launched into the murders.
“They were horribly assassinated in their house … a motive still hasn’t been determined, what we can assure is that there is a specialised team at the site to investigate who is responsible for this act”, he stated, while asking PSUV members to “remain calm”.
Serra was a rising figure within Chavismo, and had been a prominent student leader in the PSUV. Originally from the western city of Maracaibo, the law graduate and criminologist also spearheaded initiatives to tackle violent crime in Venezuela. He was elected to the National Assembly for the PSUV in 2010.
Mehr als 'Pragmatiker kontra Radikale'
[In English at http://links.org.au/node/3968.]
Von Federico Fuentes, Übersetzung Christian Klar
August 4, 2014 -- Portal Amerika21.de -- Die Veröffentlichung eines gegenüber der Regierung des venezolanischen Präsidenten Nicolás Maduro höchst kritischen Dokuments, verfasst von einem der dienstältesten Minister in der Regierung des früheren Präsidenten Hugo Chávez, hat eine beispiellose Debatte unter den venezolanischen Revolutionären ausgelöst.
Jorge Giordani ließ die Bombe am 18. Juni platzen - einen Tag, nachdem er als Planungsminister ersetzt wurde. Dem ging seine Entlassung aus dem Vorstand der venezolanischen Zentralbank und aus der staatlichen Ölgesellschaft PDVSA voraus. Er hatte den Posten fast ununterbrochen inne, seit Chávez erstmals 1999 an die Macht kam.
Viele sahen Giordani als Hauptarchitekten der Wirtschaftspolitik der Chávez-Regierung und als Vertreter einer orthodoxen marxistischen Linie im Kabinett. Seine Absetzung ist als Beweis für eine Vergrößerung der Kluft zwischen "Pragmatikern" und "Radikalen" in der Regierung dargestellt worden.
Giordanis Zeugnis
Venezuela: A chavisták vitája többről szól a pragmatisták és radikálisok nézeteltérésénél
[In English at http://links.org.au/node/3968.]
Federico Fuentes megvizsgálja a chavizmuson belüli, a bolivári projekt gazdasági irányvonalára vonatkozó vitákat, amelyek a korábbi tervezési miniszter, Jorge Giordani a Maduro-adminisztrációval szemben nyilvánosan megfogalmazott kritikái után indultak el.
2014. július 22 -- Latin-Amerika Társaság -- Az Hugo Chávez kormányában a leghosszabb ideig szolgált miniszter által jegyzett, és a venezuelai elnök, Nicolás Maduro kormányával szemben nagyon kritikus dokumentum példátlan vitát váltott ki a venezuelai forradalmárok között.
Jorge Giordani nagyot robbantott azután, hogy június 18-án leváltották a tervezési miniszteri posztról. Ezt megelőzően már felmentették a Venezuelai Központi Bank, és az állami olajvállalat, a PDVSA vezetőségéből is. Ezeket a pozíciókat 1999 óta, Chávez első elnöksége óta megszakítás nélkül töltötte be.
Sok tekintetben Giordani volt a Chávez-kormány gazdaságpolitikájának főépítésze, és a kormányban az ortodoxabb marxista vonal képviselője.
Leváltását úgy állítják be, mint ami bizonyíték a kormányon belüli pragmatisták és radikálisok közötti szakadék kiszélesedésére.