Interesting comment from Hexbear
There has been a complete continuity in Venezuelan leadership and in most ways in their policies. Many of the policies delcy has been criticized for are policies that maduro was already trying to do, but most of these people have never followed Venezuela until this year and have literally no background on the topic.
As a long time follower of the situation in DPR and LPR it feels very similar to how Ukraine was discussed after the SMO began. People have a small snapshot of several months but make really definitive statements about a country of 20 million people that has been under siege by the US since it became a Bolivarian Revolutionary project.
They have been trying to diplomatically get out of this siege the whole time under maduro and were openly willing to give similar concessions.
If it was a coup, it was only against maduro specifically, and they must have literally turned the entire PSUV party and grass roots communes against him, because so far it’s been over 6 months since maduro has been kidnapped and Venezuela has remained unified.
Knowing trump, it was clear the entire strategy was a “decapitation strike” which would serve as a headline for braindead people to latch on to and potentially allow for opposition to take over. They did the same thing in Iran, but Iran actually has armed opposition forces who were willing to try it, even though they failed.
For Venezuela after the decapitation strike, the elected vice president stepped up and everything continued as normal except the blockade on their biggest export was lifted. they sold a bunch of oil which they got paid for and immediately used for social programs and state operations, and we are witnessesing Venezuela be normalized as a state in the global stage again after years of being a pariah. No one rose up, no more shots were fired than the day of the kidnapping, no one was arrested.
This is all without having to have a regime change, change of rhetoric or ideological commitment, or restrictions on the grass roots organizing that already democratically and directly controls entire communities including means of production. If you know the whole context of Venezuela’s struggle and analyze it dialectically, they actually turned the kidnapping of maduro around on the US and came out in a stronger position than they were in before.
Trump admitted Venezuela has no real opposition to PSUV, and he has to work with them to get oil. If there is a split in PSUV, some accusations or information from chavistas in Venezuela, or mobilizations of communes against the PSUV/Delcy/the state, we will have the first evidence that there is actually a political crisis. Until then, they are trying to act like China in their statements and dealings with imperialists. Outwardly cordial and diplomatic while inwardly committed to their movement. Let trump have his PR wins, let people who gave up on thinking believe whatever Trump says, and let’s get the economy and infrastructure back on track to provide for our citizens after decades of seige.
Trying to initiate a hot conflict with the US clearly has never been an option, so what else are they going to do, hand the state over to the far right and step down? Declare their movement dead and tell everyone the communes are getting privatized? Stay in power and tell the US to go fuck itself and then have nothing to back up that position, get bombed to shit, and then have the far right take power anyway? One time I asked a resident ultra this and I was told they would have probably been killed, like okay I get that y’all have some kind of weird martyrdom complex where only dead people are revolutionary and everything living is too flawed to be supported, but actually if all you can come up with as a resistance strategy is dying about it, please fuck off and stop wishing for the death of actual people in Venezuela while imagining that it is you bearing the cross and for some reason getting off on that
💯
I get that y’all have some kind of weird martyrdom complex where only dead people are revolutionary and everything living is too flawed to be supported
Western “Christian” Marxism in a nutshell.
Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture - Jones Manoel:
Delcy should make usa genocide Venezuela so that the arms manufacturers can make more money before the oil companies steal the oil?
All the communists should get killed fighting usa so the collaborationist liberals can sell the country with no opposition?
This is ultra-leftist idealism.
Is that not happening now
No. Because its been the same as before Maduro practically.
Delcy already purged all the revolutionaries from the party ranks and hired her corrupt goon of a brother’s friends.
or maybe she just purged all the idealist fools who wanted to get millions of people killed in a fight that they would lose and that would not lead to a better future.
Who are ‘all the revolutionaries’ I keep hearing about? Because so far I’ve heard only one person brought up.
Ultras: Maintain sovereignty
Based real materialists: Sell out everything to the USA and give up and lie about what you’re doing
How is Venezuela getting bombed to hell going to maintain sovereignty? What do you expect them to other than get millions of people killed by american bombs? There is no path to sovereignty for Venezuela at present.
There is mass death and destruction or there is strategic retreat.
You are an ultra because you are not looking at the situation from a materialist perspective you are flouting idealist bullshit. Explain a path Venezuela could take that didn’t get millions of people killed.
That same reasoning can be applied to the entire world except Russia and China. The whole world should bend the knee to the almighty USA. Nothing they can do. You are an ultra if you do not call for total global submission
That is not the reasoning I am putting forth and it is incedibly childish and stupid to suggest that.
Again if you have a plan that Venezuela could enact other than getting bombed to hell please explain it. If not shut the fuck up and let the people who’s lives are in the balance decide their path forward.
What makes Venezuela so uniquely needing to be subservient to the USA that doesn’t equally apply to the entire world outside of Russia/China?
Proximity and a lack of air defense.
A b52 can fly from any base in the contiguous usa to Venezuela and back without refueling. usa may not have many standoff weapons or missiles but they still have hundreds of thousands of dumb bombs, enough to turn every town in Venezuela into a mirror of Gaza. They could do bombing runs all day every day for weeks and the pilots could go home to their families when they weren’t doing genocide.
Also true of Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay. Should they all give up on all morsels of sovereignty they have and give all their resources to the USA? Again, why is Venezuela the only country you think needs to do this? The precedent you are setting and arguments you are making means global dominance for the USA. It’s beyond cowardly and has nothing to do with socialism or class struggle, just Liberal moralizing and utilitarianism.
Probably, in a Latin American Telegram channel or their own organization channel fighting against each other in this 8 month old struggle session that has no end. Just like me.
Yes, I agree with you, people are very much divided on the Venezuelan question.
Communism has fallen. 😔
Or wait, no, Trump looks pretty weak in the Xi Jinping one. Guess capitalism has fallen.
None of the three countries sold out their natural resources and their gold reserves to the United States. Not the kinda Gotcha you think it is.
For months on and off, you’ve posted about Venezuela with low context and low effort and ignored every nuance people have tried to present to you about the situation. You even seemed to think it was funny that a thread of yours saying “Venezuela needs a revolution right now” got downvoted badly.
Now you post a clearly meant to be provocative callout thread that adds absolutely nothing to the discussion that hasn’t been said before and features an image of Delcy Rodriguez and Trump in a smiling picture together. As if this is itself evidence of Venezuelan leadership being compromised. So I gave you the reply that your rhetoric and level of effort deserved.
This thread borders on trolling and you don’t deserve the attention. But since you don’t listen to correction and don’t argue with more than a couple of sentences before leaving and moving on to make yet another thread on the same topic, if I’m going to give it attention, this is what it deserves. We don’t have to all be in agreement on everything here, but put some fucking effort in if you’re going to take a position that disagrees with detailed marxist analyses from multiple people, instead of trying to pick fights like this is a bar brawl.
I chose to not get involved in this thread, as I’ve said my view before. That being that in my opinion, Venezuela really doesn’t have the means to military resist the US, and if the leaders of the Bolivariam revolution believe this is the best strategy, I’ll hold my tongue.
I find it hard to believe that the Chavistas and the communes would be quite if they believe the revolution has been subverted. Though, frankly, I prefer to take the analysis of Latam Marxists, who seem to be divided, rather then single mindedly denounce Venezuela as if the counter revolution is fact.
Yet, it seems, the op has a bone to pick with my stance, as well as others who hold it, and if so that’s fine. I simply would rather not potentially contribute to regime change rhetoric as a westerner.
I simply would rather not potentially contribute to regime change rhetoric as a westerner.
That’s an important core of it to me. The people of Venezuela will struggle with it and do their best from the position that they’re in. Our task is to support them, not to romanticize power struggle and get caught up in rhetoric that suggests dramatic, sacrificial conflict is the only way for them to make it through this. Whether the evidence leans more in the direction of “Venezuelan leadership is compromised” or “Venezuela is held hostage”, is less important than whether international communists are supporting Venezuela in its liberation, such as in its commune projects and in its general sovereignty. The 1st one is obsession over “correctness of worldview” which has its value, especially for the people who actually live there, but ultimately can be a big nothing if it only amounts to one feeling like they are more correct than others. The 2nd means that regardless of what is happening with the 1st, they are getting help from international comrades.
Even in basic rhetoric, international comrades can support them insofar as emphasizing their sovereignty, the need for the empire to leave them alone, as opposed to positioning it specifically as “the people and government vs. the empire” or “the people vs. the government and empire.”
As it is, it may well be that it is simply more complicated than “compromised or hostage” and that trying to reduce it to a binary is itself a mistake. Binaries are convenient but don’t tell us the precise class dynamics of a town, a province, a region. They don’t tell us where things are doing really well and where they are lagging far behind. They feed into good vs. evil narratives and forget how complicated it is to transition a society from one mode of production and power to another, much less try to do this under the shadow of a brutal, global empire. The “compromised” narrative would imply the issue is mainly the response to the empire itself, rather than the strangling material conditions attached to being under its shadow. And though it’s possible more militant, more scientific, more seasoned (I don’t know, I’m just coming up with markers for competence) leadership would navigate this better, we can’t assume that’s necessarily the issue just because the outcomes aren’t ideal. The revolution is the whole organized struggle in the context of material constraints, not only the most prominent names and their willpower.
Honestly, leftists around LATAM are pretty divided. Most of the people around here say the revolution has been betrayed, however some say it was a tactical retreat.
There is a Chavista professor from Venezuela (Luis Bonilla-Molina) that says that since Maduro there has been a re-alignment of PSUV from the working class social base to a more middle class and petty bourgeois strata. This plan to normalize relations with the US is being cooked since the Maduro period and what we see with Delcy is an acceleration of the process.
However, some Marxists/leftists with transit within the Maduro/Delcy government still defend the tactical retreat angle, like Breno Altman and Diego Ruzzarin himself. The thing is, Venezuela wants access to their dollar reserves and want investment in new oil fields and refineries. Even if US is getting privileged access to Venezuelan oil right now, they will only be able to take advantage of Venezuelan oil in the future. Since the crisis in the US is escalating, Venezuela could take advantage of this relief in sanctions and investments later on.
So, most looking from outside are seeing a full betrayal while some people with transit in Delcy’s government talks about retreat. It’s very hard to deal with incomplete information, but IMHO, I’m more aligned with the betrayal POV. I have never seen countries ceding to US imperialism (other than China and Vietnam, which did actual socialist revolutions) and flipping the tables afterwards.
There is a Chavista professor from Venezuela (Luis Bonilla-Molina) that says that since Maduro there has been a re-alignment of PSUV from the working class social base to a more middle class and petty bourgeois strata. This plan to normalize relations with the US is being cooked since the Maduro period and what we see with Delcy is an acceleration of the process.
This to me makes sense and goes beyond some dumb great man theory betrayal narrative. If you seriously consider the implications of a Rodriguez betrayal, Maduro doesn’t look good at all and even implicates him in the betrayal as well.
Rodriguez’s cabinet, which is just Maduro’s cabinet, goes along with the betrayal without a single protest resignation, which means Maduro either is a traitor as well, couldn’t find anyone else within the PSUV who wasn’t also a sellout, or is just really, really stupid. If he couldn’t find anyone else within the PSUV who wasn’t also a sellout, the change in social base would be a good explanation, which would once again implicate Maduro since the shift happened under his tenure. Even the armed communes not rising up to overthrow Rodriguez over her alleged betrayal also implicates Maduro. Either Maduro was incredibly, incredibly stupid and just gave the communes a bunch of shitty Mauser bolt-action rifles or he simply lied about arming the communes because he doesn’t want the communes to have the means of defending themselves from the Venezuelan military.
In a weird way, the insistence of pinning the betrayal on Rodriguez without implicating Maduro is just cope of not wanting to face that their previous support of Maduro as a principled and competent socialist was a mistake. They don’t want to write the apology card to the PCV who were sounding the horn that Maduro betrayed Chavismo and even boycotted the results because they thought Maduro stuffed ballots.
Personally, I’m 70% that this is Venezuela being forced into unequal treaties and 30% that the rot started with Maduro or possibly even Chavez himself.
Thank you for saying this. This user really grinds my gears.
China and Russia both sell natural resources to the US. Venezuela’s gold reserves were stolen, not given away.
China and Russia both sell natural resources to the US.
And the revenue of those resources goes to China and Russia. Meanwhile this is what happens with the Venezuelan oil revenue 👇
Again, not the gotcha you think it is.
What is this supposed to prove?
That Venezuela is a not a sovereign country now.
Neither are Vietnam or Haiti but they got millions of people killed to get to the same place Venezuela is now.
You are right, why have revolutions or struggle. Ho Chi Minh should have listened to the astute minds here on this forum and surrendered immediately
That Venezuela is in the same economic position as occupied Iraq after the invasion, with their oil funds being controlled by America, and they will have to act in the same comprador manner due to this leverage (IE, Aligning with empire against anti-imperialists in their region - hence we see Venezuela turning against Cuba and towards USA/Israel just like we see the comprador Iraqi government aligning against Iran).
USA got the same outcome as the invasion of Iraq with a single kidnapping operation. Complete success, and they don’t try to hide it. Their glee is palpable, it led them into the Iran War because they were so high on their own easy victory. But unlike Venezuela, Iran has teeth and was seriously preparing its defenses against the imperialists.
So what?
So what? So what if a “socialist” nation turns Zionist and starts aligning with the global empire on geopolitics?
These three countries also have nukes, which allows them to not be pressured easily by the US.
Cuba doesn’t have nukes. They are still protecting the revolution even after Venezuela stopped their oil export.
Look… I know that you are bitter about this as plenty of people of both sides of this struggle session. However, we should avoid wording as “Venezuela stopped” because it hides the context of what is happening. This also takes away the blame from the actual criminal.
As a reminder, the criminal US regime is and has been doing a naval and diplomatic siege on Cuba that is expanding even to medicine and food supplies. They have stolen plenty of oil tankers from Venezuela which made the oil deliveries stop even before the kidnapping of Maduro.
Please. Stop shifting the blame from the criminal empire into Venezuela.
Only moralizers play blame games. At the end of the day, the oil from Venezuela to Cuba was stopped. That’s all that matters
There is nothing moralizing about studying the situation and understanding the cause of it which is the criminal US regime oil siege and open piracy. People that understand the situation clearly will always reach solutions that actually impact positively with the Cubans.
Maliciously avoiding the discussion regarding criminal’s actions leaves you no better than the Miami fascist that keeps victim blaming the Cuban gov’t for the outages and deaths caused by the genocidal blockade. Same old same old fascist talking point of rinsing the hands of the USA.
So you admit the defeat is real but just have an issue with the framing (ie, who to blame, ie a blame game)? Because most of the panglossians here are just in complete denial that there is a defeat whatsoever. When the USSR was destroyed, that was partially the fault of the USA as well, but it was defeated nonetheless.
The USA, and imperialists in general, are an existing force that has to be combated and defeated. Saying “Socialism would have worked if it weren’t for the imperialists” is only true on a surface level, imperialism has to be defeated. Socialism cannot succeed until it does so. Our projects must take into account this existing force and overcome it. Seeing projects succumb to imperialists is painful, but it shows weaknesses in those projects that the imperialists were able to do so. We have to study past failures to overcome mistakes and weaknesses, but instead the defeatists here would rather just state that US Imperialism cannot be defeated and you can’t do anything at all but succumb. That Venezuela played this as well as possible, but still lost, because America cannot be overcome. There’s nothing to learn from, no mistakes to be corrected, the US just wins and what can you do? :)
It’s worrying because it shows you learned nothing and will advocate to do the same thing again. Around and around we go the revisionist carousel. So many socialist projects have collapsed or failed due to exactly this type of “strategic retreat” to the IMF but we refuse to examine why or push against the tendency.
Please explain, without invoking hindsight, how you wouldn’t have screamed treason about Deng Xiaoping. And for that matter Mao-Nixon cooperation too.
Deng didn’t sell out his land and people to the Americans though. Why would I scream at him? Just like how I wouldn’t scream at Stalin for the M-R pact.
Tactical retreat: why the Bolivarian Revolution is still standing
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11003738
(by @rainpizza@lemmygrad.ml )
Hope that helps
Coping
Coping
No need for white-man’s-burden with sickle-and-hammer aesthetics; we are both on the outside looking in.
-
Not a man.
-
If it doesn’t matter you wouldn’t care so much about trying to convince people she’s not a rat.
- Not a man.
- If it doesn’t matter you wouldn’t care so much about trying to convince people she’s not a rat.
- That’s not what white-man’s-burden means. When we say TERF cis-women are holding up the patriarchy we are not calling them men.
- Projection
You would’ve defended Gorbachev too
Out of arguments already? Oh wait, you never had any to begin with.
Oh there’s a group of you communicating with one another? Interesting.
You would’ve defended Gorbachev too
More projection
Projection about… My secret support for Gorbachev?
Come on at least make sense
-
FYI they’re protesting at the UN in Venezuela right now but hey we’re ultras though.
why is she flipping the bird, or whatever that english gesture is called
She is doing the ✌️
but that’s supposed to be with the palm out, no?
Doing in inverse.
in terf island UK it’s a sort of lewd gesture meaning “up yours” i.e. private parts, I’m not a total expert on the subject and I’m gonna guess the comprador presidente is even less so. flipping the bird is the middle finger only extended
hey, look, a bunch of western leftists have ideas on how an existing socialist country should run. Well, we’d sure hope they’d have experiences, past struggles and examples of liberation to point to as a basis for this criticism right…? …Right?
Oh wait. It’s just FnB stalls, anarchist zines and great-man theory. Damn. Maybe some day western leftists can have their words actually mean something. Until then, I think the best thing you can do is explain the best you can and if that doesn’t work you should probably block them; not that they have anything worth saying anyways other than demanding AES put themselves in the grinder for purity-testing.
America is truly a funny place, sir.
Venezueala was never AES. Even during Chavez.
“A country decided to have a socialist experiment and as a Western leftist it wasn’t AES.”
surely, I must take what you say as serious. What socialist experiments have you done? Are you a part of a successful vanguard, socialist party or organization that has done anything?
Also taking what you said at face value, the communal system was never existing socialism? Yeah, sure. My grandma in her chair was a car, ya know.
Venezueala was never a dictatorship of the proletariat. That is what makes an AES.
You know what, if we’re using the “academic” (lack of a better word) term for AES; sure, you are correct. Colloquially, a few nations are considered AES without having DOTP. For example, these terms would be used differently if I was arguing with someone who is not a socialist, vs a M-L, vs a leftist. Talking to an M-L in a strict debate setting, yes, Venezuela is strictly not AES according to sources and information provided by ProleWiki. Plenty of M-Ls refer to Burkina Faso as “AES” outside of the strictest definition of the term, however, likely because they had CDRs which could be interpreted as a “vanguard” and were on the pathway to DOTP. Even at the time, strict hoxhaists in the nation disavowed this and refused to work with the government. Venezuela is very much the same here in that regard (no Volta hoxhaists in Venezuela, however.)
This is because it is colloquially used to refer to existing socialism, talking to a non-socialist or a leftist, Venezuela is AES as “AES” has connotations outside of just being a DOTP because it is used as a comparison for “existing socialism” vs idealism championed by western leftists. Simply, it’s easier to use that than writing a 4 paragraph statement about “Actually, it’s not Actually Existing Socialism and it originally comes from Brezhnev’s writings originally adopted from Lenin that the term was used, adopted and modified over the years in modern discourse to refer to nations with a DOTP so instead we should use ES as the proper term…”
Even in the writings in his letter to Schmidt the term has changed showcasing what intention Brezhnev had in mind using the source from Prolewiki and other writings he had:
“It is self-evident that a mature socialist society must rest on highly developed productive forces, on a powerful, advanced industry, on a large-scale, highly mechanized agriculture built on collectivist principles. Such today is the Soviet economy which, both in scale and technical capability, differs fundamentally…”
Not that you’re wrong, Prolewiki isn’t wrong, etc. Venezuela fits this description (At least in comparison to pre-Chavez and in the same letter Brezhnev compares the Soviet Union to 40 years ago) and in conversation with others I will likely refer it to AES unless I’m having a strict debate against another M-L to which then, yes, I am wrong.
Even regardless of all of this, Venezuela needs our support. It’s fine to be critical (I don’t like communalism at all), but abandoning the socialist experiment entirely and admonishing it while under the screws of the largest imperialist power while debating the strictest definitions of “AES” is just seems absurd to me.
Maduro would totally never have done something like this lol
** to implicate Delcy would be to implicate Maduro yet that never comes up in regards to this argument.
