Venezuela

Chris Gilbert — To frame the ecological promise of Venezuela’s communal project, it is useful to consider some of its main features, and contrast them with the capital system.

Venezuela is the target of a brutal economic blockade. Gregory Wilpert helps us understand why.

Pablo Stefanoni discusses the situation in South America after the Brazilian elections, the challenges posed by the far-Right, the impact of the Ukraine war and prospects for the Left.

Venezuela entered a profound economic crisis beginning in 2014. There are many heated debates about its origins and causes. Among the most recent contributions to these debates is Malfred Gerig, a young researcher who has written extensively about economic and political issues. His soon-to-be-published book La Larga Depresión Venezolana [The Long Venezuelan Depression], pinpoints the origins of the crisis in a closing cycle of capital accumulation that was based on oil exports.

June 1, 2022 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Monthly Review — It is a strange and interesting story how the longstanding and ultimately two-way relationship between revolutionary Venezuelan politician Hugo Chávez and Hungarian intellectual István Mészáros came to exist. It is a tale of elective affinities. On one side, we have a kid who grew up in the Venezuelan llanos in a household too poor to buy tableware. As a boy living with his grandmother, the young Hugo sold candy in the streets but wanted to play baseball, inspired by a namesake pitcher (el Látigo Chávez) on the team Magallanes. He entered the armed forces hoping to become a pelotero, but soon discovered that the army offered him a school for studying politics and history, along with a privileged vantage point from which to observe the injustices and contradictions of Venezuelan society. On the other side of the story, we have Mészáros, a full generation older than the former Venezuelan president. Mészáros grew up poor in Budapest, worked with Georg Lukács, emigrated to Italy following the 1956 uprising, then moved to England, where he spent most of the rest of his life.