It might be worthwhile considering that Great Man Theory isn’t real.
Oh ok so Delcy does not hold the power to give Venezuela’s oil to the US then?
Venuzeula is a pro-social project not a DOTP. The seeds of the DOTP are in the communes; that’s where the base for a vanguard is and for holding the PSUV (which as a whole is not an ML vanguard) accountable.
Ok so your position is that Venezuela is not AES and never has been AES.
We are starting from different positions. I hold the position that it is and has been AES ever since Chavez. As such I hold the position that Delcy is bringing about the end of that.
You hold the position that it is not AES and never has been. So you see this situation as just a new phase of struggle.
Our disagreement stems from different starting positions. My point here is that anyone who has ever made the argument that Venezuela is AES can not look upon Delcy’s actions and not see a traitor to that. She absolutely IS bringing about the end of what we called AES. A new phase of struggle will certainly begin, one against a capitalist state in the control of the bourgeoisie again.
We disagree with one another because we hold different takes on what Venezuela is and has been for many years in the first place. You will find that the people who you and some of your friends are calling the “ultraleft” are the people who have been using the term AES to defend it for a very long time now.
Oh ok so Delcy does not hold the power to give Venezuela’s oil to the US then?
“Delcy” is a function of a state and a system; what gives her power, and allows her decisions to be actionable is what such a system allows for.
…Venezuela is not AES…
I would define AES as a DOTP; a scientifically socialist state. States can transition and as Lenin puts it history moves in zigs-zags. We have the weight of history from Brest-Litovsk to the first 9-11 and beyond to draw those lines.
We disagree with one another because we hold different takes on what Venezuela is and has been for many years in the first place. You will find that the people who you and some of your friends are calling the “ultraleft” are the people who have been using the term AES to defend it for a very long time now.
It is immature to consider a cliquey paradigm to analyse geopolitics. Marxism is a science.
I do not think it is cliquey to say Venezuela was AES which is coming to an end because of structural failures to secure a DOTP and because Delcy chooses not to fight because she does not wish to end up like Maduro.
The reality of what is occurring here is that Maduro was willing to die for keeping socialism and Delcy is not.
I do not think it is cliquey to say Venezuela was AES which is coming to an end because of structural failures to secure a DOTP and because Delcy chooses not to fight because she does not wish to end up like Maduro.
The reality of what is occurring here is that Maduro was willing to die for keeping socialism and Delcy is not.
Venuzuelans aren’t your sacrificial lambs to meet your socialism-martyr-test especially when you got jack all to show for it on your domestic turf
Are the people in Britain my sacrificial lambs then since I reside here? Or the people of the Czech Republic for my ethnicity? Should I stop calling for and pushing revolution here? Is it only Britain that I am allowed to speak on? Seems like a nationalist argument.
If never calling for anyone to risk themselves is your position then surely I should also stop calling and pushing for it here? People will die if revolution happens. Who am I to say anyone should fight anywhere? Each individual should decide for themselves?
Or should I stop being an individualist and hold the position that sacrifice for the class is a necessary part of everything we are doing? And that the proletarian class holds far greater importance than any of us as individuals anywhere in the world?
Would you have made all of these same arguments about the end of the USSR? How about the end of all the african communist states that quickly reformed after the USSR fell? Were they doing the right thing or should they have fought to maintain and keep their freedom like the DPRK and Cuba?
Are the people in Britain my sacrificial lambs then since I reside here? Or the people of the Czech Republic for my ethnicity? Should I stop calling for and pushing revolution here? Is it only Britain that I am allowed to speak on? Seems like a nationalist argument.
If never calling for anyone to risk themselves is your position then surely I should also stop calling and pushing for it here? People will die if revolution happens. Who am I to say anyone should fight anywhere? Each individual should decide for themselves?
I don’t think you’re ignorant, to not know the difference between a strategy balancing risks and suicidal adventurism. I think you’re being malicious in an attempt to score internet points which is why you keep building up strawmen and even in attacking the strawmen you come off deeply bigoted. Be a better human being.
I’m not being malicious at all. You don’t want to answer any question I give you so you’re avoiding it and reverting to personal attacks. You are inconsistent in your views and principles. You do not apply them evenly and by highlighting that to you it has created a great amount of discomfort that you’re trying to avoid addressing.
Calling me a bigot when you just received all the information you needed to understand i’m an ethnic minority that receives racism daily in the country I reside in while saying “be a better human being” is fun though, gave me a chuckle.
I’m not being malicious at all. You don’t want to answer any question I give you so you’re avoiding it and reverting to personal attacks. You are inconsistent in your views and principles. You do not apply them evenly and by highlighting that to you it has created a great amount of discomfort that you’re trying to avoid addressing.
You keep setting up strawmen and to those strawmen you ask the questions. When I explain those aren’t the positions held you move on to the next strawman and repeat. It’s either malice, ignorance or both.
Then you have the tenacity after all that bad faith to cry your questions weren’t answered. I think you could be better and I would like to remind you that you chose to do this by starting with your drive-by commenting “coping”. You don’t get to claim any moral high ground now.
Calling me a bigot when you just received all the information you needed to understand i’m an ethnic minority that receives racism daily in the country I reside in while saying “be a better human being” is fun though, gave me a chuckle.
You have implicitly conceded that you haven’t proposed anything of substance that Venuzuela should do, having been held at gunpoint, that you expect to them die because you have romanticised what being an anti-imperialsit is. This bigotry, the expectation that Venuzueleans should die en-masse for your purity test, that that their bodies are cannon fodder for an idealist conception of resistance, reflects your class as a Westerner on the global stage.
Immigrants to western nations holding reactionary views despite discrimination against them personally is nothing new. It is partly how western hegemony works. We have latams in the US doubling down on their support on US imperialism while ICE is kidnapping and killing folks from south of the US border. We have in the UK politicians of African, West-Indies and Indian subcontinent origin, the folks whose peoples have most violently discriminated and butchered - from the victorian holocausts onwards- defending England as civil society engages in on-going pogroms, and the state arms a genocide.
Consciousness doesn’t make the social being, the social being makes the consciousness.
Going back to DR. I failed to see how her actions don’t look too different from someone who has been asked to make concessions under threat of torture and death of Maduro, and under threat of mass killing of Venuzuela.
My position, crudely, is that if Lenin had to do Brest- Litovsk, from a better position than Venuzuela is in now, that we should consider what it would take to survive under such dangerous circumstances. We have to consider then why when we won’t consider the gravity here. We have to consider what relative privileges we have to be shielded of the consequences of such perspectives.
You have as much information as I do (ie not much at all) on what’s really going on and latam society is clearly divided as we are on what’s going on but we are meant to be historical materialists here; one has to actually bring something to the table.
You have implicitly conceded that you haven’t proposed anything of substance that Venuzuela should do, having been held at gunpoint, that you expect to them die because you have romanticised what being an anti-imperialsit is. This bigotry, the expectation that Venuzueleans should die en-masse for your purity test, that that their bodies are cannon fodder for an idealist conception of resistance, reflects your class as a Westerner on the global stage.
No I haven’t? I’ve told you what Venezuela should do. Exactly what Maduro was doing. Not capitulating to the US. They should do it while keeping the leadership in a better place than a house with 20 guards.
Instead what they’re doing is capitulating to what the US wants via incremental salami slicing steps over time so as not to cause an enormous backlash that gets out of control politically. All the while you sit here and say “Yes that is good they need to do that because the alternative is what happened to Maduro”. You’re just a coward frankly, and so is she, and so are whatever faction she holds that supports her cowardice.
Immigrants to western nations holding reactionary views despite discrimination against them personally is nothing new.
Oh piss off. Now you’re assuming I’m a migrant. Can you stop making fucking assumptions about who and what other people are unless they explicitly tell you?
I was going to work my way through this and respond in line to every point but I’m really emotionally done with this shit. You’re just emotionally exhausting to talk to. This conversation has achieved nothing but making me think lesser of lemmygrad tbh.
The reality of what is occurring here is that Maduro was willing to die for keeping socialism and Delcy is not.
Strange statement. Neither is dead in the first place. Maduro was kidnapped and according to how the story goes (including from a lefty source I recall reading) the rest of the leadership essentially had a gun to their head. Suppose they had said “fuck diplomacy, here is my gun,” what would this have accomplished? The US could have continued blockading while patiently planning more decapitation operations of leadership, if need be (like even if the US threat was part bluff in that moment, they could still plan and plot to do more). Venezuela is not in a position like Iran is to make the US hurt for hurting them. They could defend themselves if invaded by making it very painful and not really worth it to occupy them, but this would still involve massive loss of life and sacrifice for a desperate cause.
If you consider it as:
The US really doesn’t want another Vietnam but does want to look like they’re still powerful and in control
Venezuela really doesn’t want their leadership annihilated or their people starved and has limited options for sovereignty through the sword
Then it starts to make sense, the dealing, the posturing, the placating. It starts to make sense why the outcome isn’t as simple as a coup and a dramatic change in Venezuelan policy, nor a principled stand against the empire. Neither side wants to pay the price of what could get them their idea of an ideal outcome, so there’s an element of kayfabe going on. The tension itself is real, the threats are real, but the appearances are (in this view) something of a diplomatic overlay to protect both from harsher realities underneath.
Neither side would benefit from a protracted war involving invasion and resistance. But if Trump can look like he’s good at dealing and make some capitalists happy, he’s happy.
The fact that Maduro is alive doesn’t change the fact that he was willing to die. That he was willing to stand by protecting socialism even if it meant the US doing what it has done.
The only difference between now and before his kidnapping is who is in charge.
Maduro was willing to be attacked by the US. Delcy is not willing to be attacked by the US and is giving up the country to avoid that happening.
That’s it. That’s really all there is to it. The will to fight.
If you’re calling me bad for supporting that then you must have also thought the same about him before then? Did you ever criticise him and say that he should give away Venezuelan oil and open up the country to bourgeois democracy in order to avoid war before the kidnapping happened? Even a single time?
You may be confusing me with the other poster. Pretty sure I have not called you anything. Though I do understand the perspective of the other poster because from the outside looking in, it can look like, “You are not willing to sacrifice [said from a position of not having sacrificed for any revolution anywhere].” The thrust of the argument there, as I see it, is not that the you in that scenario is “bad” but that it can come off like “why aren’t [people I have never met nor fought alongside] not risking their lives for something that I have not even risked my life for,” i.e. it can come off like armchair quarterback revolutionary takes, where the litmus test of someone being a “true revolutionary” is whether they are willing to do something that the person using that litmus test has never even done themself.
It’s possible this is invalid in your case. Perhaps you have risked death in a revolutionary context and we don’t know it. But it is not uncommon for people in the western english-speaking internet to have takes like this while not ever having done much in a revolutionary context.
Depending on how one looks at it, it might seem like this is beside the point. The principle-focused view might argue that it doesn’t matter who is making the argument, but that the principle was not followed and this is the problem. But that view would tend to see Lenin as a betrayer for the Brest-Litovsk treaty instead of a revolutionary making a difficult strategy call under threat. And the USSR went on to transform from struggling feudal conditions to a major industrial and economic powerhouse, including in its ability to defeat Nazi Germany and after, in its ability to become the primary bulwark against the western/white empire having global hegemony. Though it ultimately fell, it may have fallen far sooner had the prevailing view been principle over practicality of the moment. This is not to say the USSR of old is identical to Venezuela, but simply that some decisions are only proven through time and are hard to understand or agree with in the moment. It’s not like everybody loved Lenin’s decision there at the time.
The crux of it for me, and this is where I agree with others who have voiced the litmus test for them being the commune project staying intact, is whether the revolution as a whole is being supported. Whether the policies are allowing it to live on or threatening to destroy it. Decisions that are not ideal for its immediate advancement can sometimes be explained as a strategic retreat.
i.e. it can come off like armchair quarterback revolutionary takes, where the litmus test of someone being a “true revolutionary” is whether they are willing to do something that the person using that litmus test has never even done themself.
I could write you a list of the crimes I’ve committed for Palestine but I don’t think it would be very wise to do so. Like, this is an unrefutable position for anyone in an online conversation really. I can’t prove to you what kind of person I am, what I’ve done, what I’m willing to do etc etc. Best I can do is say that I agree with most of Sergey Nechayev’s Revolutionary Catechism, not all of it, but most.
The crux of it for me, and this is where I agree with others who have voiced the litmus test for them being the commune project staying intact, is whether the revolution as a whole is being supported. Whether the policies are allowing it to live on or threatening to destroy it. Decisions that are not ideal for its immediate advancement can sometimes be explained as a strategic retreat.
What do you think happens when the PSUV are no longer in charge though? That’s coming once they lay the groundwork for this “freedom” she speaks of. For now we’re just salami slicing through things so as not to cause a significant explosive backlash that threatens the current ruling faction to be removed and replaced by a more hardline one closer to Maduro’s own position that was previously untenable to the US.
I’m not gonna lie, Revolutionary Catechism reads like cult shit. Lines like this are especially unhinged:
The revolutionary can have no friendship or attachment, except for those who have proved by their actions that they, like him, are dedicated to revolution. The degree of friendship, devotion and obligation toward such a comrade is determined solely by the degree of his usefulness to the cause of total revolutionary destruction.
Or:
The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.
Basically dehumanizing one’s self.
But if that’s the kind of philosophy you go by, it’s no wonder we don’t see eye to eye. I can imagine the kind of material conditions where thinking like Revolutionary Catechism could derive from; very desperate, heavily repressed conditions (without any intent to be cult-like) and Czarist Russia was no spring picnic, but that doesn’t mean it’s effective organizing strategy that is proven to attain and maintain political power, especially through the complexities of running a country. Personally, I would much rather reread Liu Shaoqi’s How to Be a Good Communist or Mao’s Combat Liberalism, which cover some similar concepts without sounding like a cult manifesto.
What do you think happens when the PSUV are no longer in charge though? That’s coming once they lay the groundwork for this “freedom” she speaks of. For now we’re just salami slicing through things so as not to cause a significant explosive backlash that threatens the current ruling faction to be removed and replaced by a more hardline one closer to Maduro’s own position that was previously untenable to the US.
That’s a big if, not a when. So far, as far as I’m aware, not that much has changed beyond lip service and diplomacy appearances. That could still change, but so far it looks to me less like salami slicing and more like walking a tightrope from the moment the empire kidnapped Maduro and threatened the rest of the leadership.
It’s possible history will vindicate you (I don’t claim to know the future or be right about everything), but whichever way it goes, the best we can do is aid the anti-imperialist cause. In my view, it borders on falling for a psyop how much energy people are expending on whether Venezuela is compromised or held hostage. Versus energy spent on “how can we help with their sovereignty? with keeping the empire’s claws from digging in?” Thinking it all comes down to Delcy Rodriguez would be great man theory.
I’m not gonna lie, Revolutionary Catechism reads like cult shit. Lines like this are especially unhinged:
Oh it absolutely has unhinged parts. But pursuing revolution itself is slightly unhinged anyway.
But if that’s the kind of philosophy you go by, it’s no wonder we don’t see eye to eye.
It’s not just been an influence on me, we have it on good authority from Bonch-Bruyevich that Lenin liked Nechayev very much and insisted on making sure his complete works were published. Unless you think he was lying, which I see no reason to do so.
Che Guevara also referenced Nechayev and regularly read the Catechism.
Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader in the Black Panthers called it “his bible”.
Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide explicitly references Revolutionary Catechism.
Bobby Seale and George Jackson also cited it.
but that doesn’t mean it’s effective organizing strategy that is proven to attain and maintain political power
I don’t think the above crowd is the wrong crowd to be in. I think many in the left today ignoring these works are ignoring what a significant influence they have been on previous movements and - importantly - just how much commitment and self sacrifice is necessary to win. Are all of these people also unhinged? Yes, they probably were to some extent, I think it’s probably a necessary trait.
It’s possible history will vindicate you (I don’t claim to know the future or be right about everything), but whichever way it goes, the best we can do is aid the anti-imperialist cause. In my view, it borders on falling for a psyop how much energy people are expending on whether Venezuela is compromised or held hostage. Versus energy spent on “how can we help with their sovereignty? With keeping the empire’s claws from digging in?”
A fair point. Unfortunately from where I am there is little I can do materially. Hence my efforts focus on things closer to home, like Elbit.
Thinking it all comes down to Delcy Rodriguez would be great man theory.
No. This is an error. The levers of power are real and exist. It doesn’t matter whether it is Delcy or some other traitor, she’s not exceptional, but she is the traitor currently in the position.
The only difference between the conditions under her and the conditions under Maduro is who is occupying that role. The difference does lie with her. Under Maduro this would not be happening, he was willing to fight and sacrifice himself whereas she is not. That is fundamental to my entire point. She is a lesser committed person than he was and a more committed person would not be taking her actions.
“The reality of what is occurring here is that Maduro was willing to die for keeping socialism and Delcy is not.”
So Venezuelans should die in a horrific and (at best) pyrrhic campaign set in the backyard of the Empire, separated miles and miles by ocean from their biggest allies in the form of Russia and China, while their closest ally in the form of Cuba has been choked to near-death for decades since the 90s?
This is a strategic nightmare militarily. You can even see it in regards to the Zaptistas and the FARCs. Despite their best, the current geographic location absolutely does not help them in issues of foreign supply and advisory. Let alone the fact that Venezuela is on the east of the Panama Canal, which is under Comprador control practically. Either that or you go around the fucking continent. It’s a goddamn military nightmare in any form of doctrine. Cuba’s liberation was a real lucky shot (probably because they weren’t strictly Marxist-Leninist until after the revolution), but attempts to recreate such a revolution unfortunately did not go as planned in Bolivia, etc. Vietnam and Korea were literally touching the USSR and PRC, it was easy to organize foreign assistance and supply to these underdeveloped/ravaged places. You cant do that with Venezuela.
If they want to keep socialism instead of putting the proletariat back into capital’s chains? Yes. Doing otherwise is called being a traitor to the proletarian class. There is genuinely nothing else to call it.
[Cuba] weren’t strictly Marxist-Leninist until after the revolution
What do you mean by this? The revolution itself as a broad national liberation struggle of average people led by a vanguard of communists? Or do you mean that Fidel was not a marxist-leninist until after the revolution?
If you mean the latter, there is video of Che disputing it. When an interviewer said to Che that people in the US believe he “pulled Castro left” and that the revolution itself was pulled left by Che pulling the strings behind the throne, Che says otherwise. He says he likes this characterisation but his revolutionary and personal honesty must admit that Castro is “the most leftist man in Cuba and greatest danger to the US”, not himself. I do not believe that Che means this only occurred after the revolution because the interview question is specifically on whether Che pulled Fidel left. I’ve just spent a good deal of time digging up the specific timestamp for this, the question is at 23:01 of this video: https://youtu.be/hau5Rxkw-Wg?t=1375
My firm belief is that the idea they were not communists (and specifically Fidel) before the revolution was simply a clever play that worked to build a broad struggle and to reduce the chance of capitalist powers from intervening. Take note that in the following part where he is asked if Fidel was a communist at the time they met, he also says that he himself was not a communist at that time. I am quite certain they all became communists before the revolution was over, and quite probably had all become or at least flirted with such before it had fully began.
Oh ok so Delcy does not hold the power to give Venezuela’s oil to the US then?
Ok so your position is that Venezuela is not AES and never has been AES.
We are starting from different positions. I hold the position that it is and has been AES ever since Chavez. As such I hold the position that Delcy is bringing about the end of that.
You hold the position that it is not AES and never has been. So you see this situation as just a new phase of struggle.
Our disagreement stems from different starting positions. My point here is that anyone who has ever made the argument that Venezuela is AES can not look upon Delcy’s actions and not see a traitor to that. She absolutely IS bringing about the end of what we called AES. A new phase of struggle will certainly begin, one against a capitalist state in the control of the bourgeoisie again.
We disagree with one another because we hold different takes on what Venezuela is and has been for many years in the first place. You will find that the people who you and some of your friends are calling the “ultraleft” are the people who have been using the term AES to defend it for a very long time now.
“Delcy” is a function of a state and a system; what gives her power, and allows her decisions to be actionable is what such a system allows for.
I would define AES as a DOTP; a scientifically socialist state. States can transition and as Lenin puts it history moves in zigs-zags. We have the weight of history from Brest-Litovsk to the first 9-11 and beyond to draw those lines.
It is immature to consider a cliquey paradigm to analyse geopolitics. Marxism is a science.
I do not think it is cliquey to say Venezuela was AES which is coming to an end because of structural failures to secure a DOTP and because Delcy chooses not to fight because she does not wish to end up like Maduro.
The reality of what is occurring here is that Maduro was willing to die for keeping socialism and Delcy is not.
Venuzuelans aren’t your sacrificial lambs to meet your socialism-martyr-test especially when you got jack all to show for it on your domestic turf
Are the people in Britain my sacrificial lambs then since I reside here? Or the people of the Czech Republic for my ethnicity? Should I stop calling for and pushing revolution here? Is it only Britain that I am allowed to speak on? Seems like a nationalist argument.
If never calling for anyone to risk themselves is your position then surely I should also stop calling and pushing for it here? People will die if revolution happens. Who am I to say anyone should fight anywhere? Each individual should decide for themselves?
Or should I stop being an individualist and hold the position that sacrifice for the class is a necessary part of everything we are doing? And that the proletarian class holds far greater importance than any of us as individuals anywhere in the world?
Would you have made all of these same arguments about the end of the USSR? How about the end of all the african communist states that quickly reformed after the USSR fell? Were they doing the right thing or should they have fought to maintain and keep their freedom like the DPRK and Cuba?
I don’t think you’re ignorant, to not know the difference between a strategy balancing risks and suicidal adventurism. I think you’re being malicious in an attempt to score internet points which is why you keep building up strawmen and even in attacking the strawmen you come off deeply bigoted. Be a better human being.
I’m not being malicious at all. You don’t want to answer any question I give you so you’re avoiding it and reverting to personal attacks. You are inconsistent in your views and principles. You do not apply them evenly and by highlighting that to you it has created a great amount of discomfort that you’re trying to avoid addressing.
Calling me a bigot when you just received all the information you needed to understand i’m an ethnic minority that receives racism daily in the country I reside in while saying “be a better human being” is fun though, gave me a chuckle.
You keep setting up strawmen and to those strawmen you ask the questions. When I explain those aren’t the positions held you move on to the next strawman and repeat. It’s either malice, ignorance or both.
Then you have the tenacity after all that bad faith to cry your questions weren’t answered. I think you could be better and I would like to remind you that you chose to do this by starting with your drive-by commenting “coping”. You don’t get to claim any moral high ground now.
You have implicitly conceded that you haven’t proposed anything of substance that Venuzuela should do, having been held at gunpoint, that you expect to them die because you have romanticised what being an anti-imperialsit is. This bigotry, the expectation that Venuzueleans should die en-masse for your purity test, that that their bodies are cannon fodder for an idealist conception of resistance, reflects your class as a Westerner on the global stage.
Immigrants to western nations holding reactionary views despite discrimination against them personally is nothing new. It is partly how western hegemony works. We have latams in the US doubling down on their support on US imperialism while ICE is kidnapping and killing folks from south of the US border. We have in the UK politicians of African, West-Indies and Indian subcontinent origin, the folks whose peoples have most violently discriminated and butchered - from the victorian holocausts onwards- defending England as civil society engages in on-going pogroms, and the state arms a genocide.
Consciousness doesn’t make the social being, the social being makes the consciousness.
Going back to DR. I failed to see how her actions don’t look too different from someone who has been asked to make concessions under threat of torture and death of Maduro, and under threat of mass killing of Venuzuela.
My position, crudely, is that if Lenin had to do Brest- Litovsk, from a better position than Venuzuela is in now, that we should consider what it would take to survive under such dangerous circumstances. We have to consider then why when we won’t consider the gravity here. We have to consider what relative privileges we have to be shielded of the consequences of such perspectives.
You have as much information as I do (ie not much at all) on what’s really going on and latam society is clearly divided as we are on what’s going on but we are meant to be historical materialists here; one has to actually bring something to the table.
No I haven’t? I’ve told you what Venezuela should do. Exactly what Maduro was doing. Not capitulating to the US. They should do it while keeping the leadership in a better place than a house with 20 guards.
Instead what they’re doing is capitulating to what the US wants via incremental salami slicing steps over time so as not to cause an enormous backlash that gets out of control politically. All the while you sit here and say “Yes that is good they need to do that because the alternative is what happened to Maduro”. You’re just a coward frankly, and so is she, and so are whatever faction she holds that supports her cowardice.
Oh piss off. Now you’re assuming I’m a migrant. Can you stop making fucking assumptions about who and what other people are unless they explicitly tell you?
I was going to work my way through this and respond in line to every point but I’m really emotionally done with this shit. You’re just emotionally exhausting to talk to. This conversation has achieved nothing but making me think lesser of lemmygrad tbh.
Strange statement. Neither is dead in the first place. Maduro was kidnapped and according to how the story goes (including from a lefty source I recall reading) the rest of the leadership essentially had a gun to their head. Suppose they had said “fuck diplomacy, here is my gun,” what would this have accomplished? The US could have continued blockading while patiently planning more decapitation operations of leadership, if need be (like even if the US threat was part bluff in that moment, they could still plan and plot to do more). Venezuela is not in a position like Iran is to make the US hurt for hurting them. They could defend themselves if invaded by making it very painful and not really worth it to occupy them, but this would still involve massive loss of life and sacrifice for a desperate cause.
If you consider it as:
The US really doesn’t want another Vietnam but does want to look like they’re still powerful and in control
Venezuela really doesn’t want their leadership annihilated or their people starved and has limited options for sovereignty through the sword
Then it starts to make sense, the dealing, the posturing, the placating. It starts to make sense why the outcome isn’t as simple as a coup and a dramatic change in Venezuelan policy, nor a principled stand against the empire. Neither side wants to pay the price of what could get them their idea of an ideal outcome, so there’s an element of kayfabe going on. The tension itself is real, the threats are real, but the appearances are (in this view) something of a diplomatic overlay to protect both from harsher realities underneath.
Neither side would benefit from a protracted war involving invasion and resistance. But if Trump can look like he’s good at dealing and make some capitalists happy, he’s happy.
It’s not that strange.
The fact that Maduro is alive doesn’t change the fact that he was willing to die. That he was willing to stand by protecting socialism even if it meant the US doing what it has done.
The only difference between now and before his kidnapping is who is in charge.
Maduro was willing to be attacked by the US. Delcy is not willing to be attacked by the US and is giving up the country to avoid that happening.
That’s it. That’s really all there is to it. The will to fight.
If you’re calling me bad for supporting that then you must have also thought the same about him before then? Did you ever criticise him and say that he should give away Venezuelan oil and open up the country to bourgeois democracy in order to avoid war before the kidnapping happened? Even a single time?
You may be confusing me with the other poster. Pretty sure I have not called you anything. Though I do understand the perspective of the other poster because from the outside looking in, it can look like, “You are not willing to sacrifice [said from a position of not having sacrificed for any revolution anywhere].” The thrust of the argument there, as I see it, is not that the you in that scenario is “bad” but that it can come off like “why aren’t [people I have never met nor fought alongside] not risking their lives for something that I have not even risked my life for,” i.e. it can come off like armchair quarterback revolutionary takes, where the litmus test of someone being a “true revolutionary” is whether they are willing to do something that the person using that litmus test has never even done themself.
It’s possible this is invalid in your case. Perhaps you have risked death in a revolutionary context and we don’t know it. But it is not uncommon for people in the western english-speaking internet to have takes like this while not ever having done much in a revolutionary context.
Depending on how one looks at it, it might seem like this is beside the point. The principle-focused view might argue that it doesn’t matter who is making the argument, but that the principle was not followed and this is the problem. But that view would tend to see Lenin as a betrayer for the Brest-Litovsk treaty instead of a revolutionary making a difficult strategy call under threat. And the USSR went on to transform from struggling feudal conditions to a major industrial and economic powerhouse, including in its ability to defeat Nazi Germany and after, in its ability to become the primary bulwark against the western/white empire having global hegemony. Though it ultimately fell, it may have fallen far sooner had the prevailing view been principle over practicality of the moment. This is not to say the USSR of old is identical to Venezuela, but simply that some decisions are only proven through time and are hard to understand or agree with in the moment. It’s not like everybody loved Lenin’s decision there at the time.
The crux of it for me, and this is where I agree with others who have voiced the litmus test for them being the commune project staying intact, is whether the revolution as a whole is being supported. Whether the policies are allowing it to live on or threatening to destroy it. Decisions that are not ideal for its immediate advancement can sometimes be explained as a strategic retreat.
I could write you a list of the crimes I’ve committed for Palestine but I don’t think it would be very wise to do so. Like, this is an unrefutable position for anyone in an online conversation really. I can’t prove to you what kind of person I am, what I’ve done, what I’m willing to do etc etc. Best I can do is say that I agree with most of Sergey Nechayev’s Revolutionary Catechism, not all of it, but most.
What do you think happens when the PSUV are no longer in charge though? That’s coming once they lay the groundwork for this “freedom” she speaks of. For now we’re just salami slicing through things so as not to cause a significant explosive backlash that threatens the current ruling faction to be removed and replaced by a more hardline one closer to Maduro’s own position that was previously untenable to the US.
I’m not gonna lie, Revolutionary Catechism reads like cult shit. Lines like this are especially unhinged:
Or:
Basically dehumanizing one’s self.
But if that’s the kind of philosophy you go by, it’s no wonder we don’t see eye to eye. I can imagine the kind of material conditions where thinking like Revolutionary Catechism could derive from; very desperate, heavily repressed conditions (without any intent to be cult-like) and Czarist Russia was no spring picnic, but that doesn’t mean it’s effective organizing strategy that is proven to attain and maintain political power, especially through the complexities of running a country. Personally, I would much rather reread Liu Shaoqi’s How to Be a Good Communist or Mao’s Combat Liberalism, which cover some similar concepts without sounding like a cult manifesto.
That’s a big if, not a when. So far, as far as I’m aware, not that much has changed beyond lip service and diplomacy appearances. That could still change, but so far it looks to me less like salami slicing and more like walking a tightrope from the moment the empire kidnapped Maduro and threatened the rest of the leadership.
It’s possible history will vindicate you (I don’t claim to know the future or be right about everything), but whichever way it goes, the best we can do is aid the anti-imperialist cause. In my view, it borders on falling for a psyop how much energy people are expending on whether Venezuela is compromised or held hostage. Versus energy spent on “how can we help with their sovereignty? with keeping the empire’s claws from digging in?” Thinking it all comes down to Delcy Rodriguez would be great man theory.
Oh it absolutely has unhinged parts. But pursuing revolution itself is slightly unhinged anyway.
It’s not just been an influence on me, we have it on good authority from Bonch-Bruyevich that Lenin liked Nechayev very much and insisted on making sure his complete works were published. Unless you think he was lying, which I see no reason to do so.
Che Guevara also referenced Nechayev and regularly read the Catechism.
Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader in the Black Panthers called it “his bible”.
Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide explicitly references Revolutionary Catechism.
Bobby Seale and George Jackson also cited it.
I don’t think the above crowd is the wrong crowd to be in. I think many in the left today ignoring these works are ignoring what a significant influence they have been on previous movements and - importantly - just how much commitment and self sacrifice is necessary to win. Are all of these people also unhinged? Yes, they probably were to some extent, I think it’s probably a necessary trait.
A fair point. Unfortunately from where I am there is little I can do materially. Hence my efforts focus on things closer to home, like Elbit.
No. This is an error. The levers of power are real and exist. It doesn’t matter whether it is Delcy or some other traitor, she’s not exceptional, but she is the traitor currently in the position.
The only difference between the conditions under her and the conditions under Maduro is who is occupying that role. The difference does lie with her. Under Maduro this would not be happening, he was willing to fight and sacrifice himself whereas she is not. That is fundamental to my entire point. She is a lesser committed person than he was and a more committed person would not be taking her actions.
“The reality of what is occurring here is that Maduro was willing to die for keeping socialism and Delcy is not.”
So Venezuelans should die in a horrific and (at best) pyrrhic campaign set in the backyard of the Empire, separated miles and miles by ocean from their biggest allies in the form of Russia and China, while their closest ally in the form of Cuba has been choked to near-death for decades since the 90s?
This is a strategic nightmare militarily. You can even see it in regards to the Zaptistas and the FARCs. Despite their best, the current geographic location absolutely does not help them in issues of foreign supply and advisory. Let alone the fact that Venezuela is on the east of the Panama Canal, which is under Comprador control practically. Either that or you go around the fucking continent. It’s a goddamn military nightmare in any form of doctrine. Cuba’s liberation was a real lucky shot (probably because they weren’t strictly Marxist-Leninist until after the revolution), but attempts to recreate such a revolution unfortunately did not go as planned in Bolivia, etc. Vietnam and Korea were literally touching the USSR and PRC, it was easy to organize foreign assistance and supply to these underdeveloped/ravaged places. You cant do that with Venezuela.
If they want to keep socialism instead of putting the proletariat back into capital’s chains? Yes. Doing otherwise is called being a traitor to the proletarian class. There is genuinely nothing else to call it.
What do you mean by this? The revolution itself as a broad national liberation struggle of average people led by a vanguard of communists? Or do you mean that Fidel was not a marxist-leninist until after the revolution?
If you mean the latter, there is video of Che disputing it. When an interviewer said to Che that people in the US believe he “pulled Castro left” and that the revolution itself was pulled left by Che pulling the strings behind the throne, Che says otherwise. He says he likes this characterisation but his revolutionary and personal honesty must admit that Castro is “the most leftist man in Cuba and greatest danger to the US”, not himself. I do not believe that Che means this only occurred after the revolution because the interview question is specifically on whether Che pulled Fidel left. I’ve just spent a good deal of time digging up the specific timestamp for this, the question is at 23:01 of this video: https://youtu.be/hau5Rxkw-Wg?t=1375
My firm belief is that the idea they were not communists (and specifically Fidel) before the revolution was simply a clever play that worked to build a broad struggle and to reduce the chance of capitalist powers from intervening. Take note that in the following part where he is asked if Fidel was a communist at the time they met, he also says that he himself was not a communist at that time. I am quite certain they all became communists before the revolution was over, and quite probably had all become or at least flirted with such before it had fully began.