Hugo Chavez
![Istvan Meszaros and Hugo Chavez](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail_medium/public/2022-09/Istvan-Meszaros-and-Hugo-Chavez.jpg?itok=hVYlgmju)
Mészáros and Chávez: “The Point from Which to Move the World Today”
By John Bellamy Foster
June 1, 2022 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Monthly Review — István Mészáros was a global thinker strongly committed to anti-imperialist struggles. In this respect, he allied himself with those fighting for socialist transformation in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. He argued that in the descending phase of capitalism there was a “downward equalization of the rate of exploitation,” by which he meant a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, enforced by a global system of monopolistic competition.1 In 1978, he edited and introduced a book consisting of thirteen essays by the great Filipino historian and political theorist Renato Constantino, titled Neo-Colonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness: Essays in Cultural Decolonisation, in which Constantino developed the concept of counter-consciousness into a powerful philosophy of cultural liberation.2 Mészáros took great interest as well in Brazilian developments and struggles over the state, supporting various socialist movements there. But his most singular contribution to struggles in the Global South was the role he was to play in his strong strategic support of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution.
![Hugo Chavez and Istvan Meszaros](/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail_medium/public/2022-09/hugo-chavez-istvan-meszaros.jpg?itok=MkWKIsAp)
Mészáros and Chávez: The Philosopher and the Llanero
The Chávez hypothesis: vicissitudes of a strategic project
![](https://venezuelanalysis.com/files/imagecache/images_set/images/2017/03/chavez_plaza.jpg_1718483346.jpg)
![](https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/styles/16x9-large/s3/venezuela-16dec16.jpg?itok=dv8R32r7)
What is socialism for the twenty-first century?
![](http://pe.org.rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Michael-A.-Lebowitz-FOTO-Delavsko-Punkerska-Univerza.jpg)
[21세기사회주의 컨퍼런스] 마이클 레보위츠 인터뷰: 오늘날 라틴아메리카 신자유주의 대안 만들기
![](http://www.socialismforthe21stcentury.org/sites/default/files/field/image/michael_lebowitz_web.jpg)
Building alternatives to neoliberalism in Latin America today: An interview with Michael Lebowitz
![](http://www.socialismforthe21stcentury.org/sites/default/files/field/image/michael_lebowitz_web.jpg)
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Venezuela: a turning point for Latin America?
![](http://i2.wp.com/socialistresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/vene-Chavistas-decepcionados-800x533-0011.jpg?resize=700%2C210)
By Claudio Katz, introduction and translation by Richard Fidler