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From Lemmygrad
Anyone believing this nonsense still is genuinely fucking coping. Delcy is a rat handing over the country's resources to the US and laying the foundations for liberalism to take over the country and undo everything socialism has achieved.
kind of disgusting to call a global south socialist leader a "rat" for making concessions at gunpoint. i guess fuck lenin for brest-litovsk and nep, selling out to the germans
Personally, I try to view the Chavistas themselves, who the commune movement is supporting, and who is most actively opposing Delcy Rodriguez as my way of viewing the situation. I begin with the class struggle as it actively exists in Venezuela, with the PSUV in charge of what has never been a consolidated revolution. Class struggle is incredibly sharp in Venezuela, with a powerful bourgeoisie that at the moment stands in opposition to the PSUV, while the PSUV still holds support on the ground from the commune movement.
This, to me, spells the actions of the PSUV post-kidnapping as a survival tactic and strategic retreat to hopefully prevent a ground invasion. I do not have a clear-sighted view, but I do have more trust in the fact that on the ground, the commune movement supports the PSUV, while the bourgeoisie still opposes the PSUV. If the PSUV collapses and/or alienates the communes, then we will know that this strategic retreat was incorrect. For now, that moment is not here.
Venezuela is not socialist. It never has established a dictatorship of the proletariat. What it has is a progressive party and an incomplete revolution, one that at the moment most lives on in the commune movement. The PSUV plays a progressive role as long as it continues to have connection with that commune movement and help progress it, essentially forming dual power. This is what makes the Chavista revolution so unique, it's a combination of a reformist party needing to actually rely on revolutionary dual power structures to continue existing.
All she has done is promise elections at an undetermined point, which as others have said is consistent PSUV policy.
i completely agree with you. very good summary
Thanks, comrade! I also see this as a particularly interesting revolution because I expect it to have many lessons for the US if the DSA ever took power, which is relevant to me as someone organizing in the US. We know reformism is a dead-end, but what if groups were building dual power and established ties with the DSA? What should Marxist-Leninists do if the wave of DSA support continues, when we know it cannot establish socialism within the capitalist state apparatus?
The lessons from the Chavista revolution can help inform movement in the US. Obviously conditions are vastly different. There's no empire pressuring the US, and there's no dual-power movement either. But studying the Venezuelan experience with the sort of reform-revolution going on right now gives us a glimpse into what one potential future of organizing in the US Empire itself may look like.
Again, I'm not a reformist, nor am I advocating for the DSA.
yes its very inspiring to people in europe as well. LFI, melanchons party in france, is thinking of a similar strategy of using presidential power to create room for bigger mobilizations and dual power.
the party im is is pretty classically marxist-leninist, but we advocate for learning from all movements. and in the french 2027 presidential elections it has been a big topic of conversation.
Interesting, thanks for your perspective from across the pond!
Lenin didn't hand over the whole ass country.
If Anna Louise Strong is to be believed, they tried.
https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/this-soviet-world/ Chapter 8: The Struggle for Peace
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Critical support to president Wilson for fumbling to tear the USSR apart I guess.
read about what kind of things left-coms were saying about him then. maybe it gives some perspective
You would be in the same group of people that thought Gorbachev wasn't laying the foundations for the end of the USSR.
It sadly seems to be the consensus for a vocal cohort in the newsmega: https://hexbear.net/comment/7483074
If anyone says anything except that Delcy is doing right by Venzuela, just carrying on in the face of imperialism and doing what Maduro would have if he could have, they get labeled an idealist ultra who can't understand material analysis, or a doomer without any revolutionary optimism. I've lamented it in the past.
And look at the kind of responses this post got only a few hours ago: https://hexbear.net/post/9624864
why must so many comrades be on cope like this?
Have you ever held power? Had any kind of actual responsibility? Or are you just a spectator in the power struggles of other people like every other western leftist? An audience to power and responsibility where politics basically just resembles fantasy sports?
It's not cope if you are actually listening to what real chavistas, people who are in the game and who this shit affects directly, are saying. Literally just shut up, stop complaining, and listen. It's not that difficult.
Yes, that's the exact attitude I was referring to, what has turned the newsmega from once a great source into being completely unendurable. A clique of pollyannas and panglossians. "Shut up and stop complaining. Oh and listen to chavistas[sic], but really just listen to us, because we know exactly what all of them say because they're a monolith and agree with our analysis, and are all universally happy about how things have gone down in their country. What, you disagree? You must want them all to get shot and bombed, you doomer ultra!"
When did I say everything was fine? That things were going just dandy? Where have the chavistas ever said that? You wouldn't know because you clearly haven't read them or what they are saying about this. Actually cite my arguments. Actually cite them and their arguments. Quote anything that isn't some imaginary dialogue that only occured in your head. How is what you are doing anything other than spectator chants and chauvinism from the peanut gallery?
I would maybe take you even slightly more seriously if you didn't have this penchant for asinine literary comparisons as if because you reference Voltaire means that you are better than a liberal who references Harry Potter, and for putting words in my mouth.
The reality is that the Venezuela issue is a litmus test for who on the left have ever politically organized and who is exclusively a leftist on the internet. Anyone who has actually spent years earnestly and sincerely struggling with the masses against our oppressors know that the task is arduous and you will often fail. The history of communism is mostly a history of failure, bad decisions, mistakes, tentative alliances and agreements with objectively bad people. Tactical retreats and even losses are the norm, not the exception. Survival of the project in the long term is the only path forward, and no one here who is criticizing delcy has even once out forward and idea of what could have been done differently to put Venezuela in a better situation than they are currently in. Only vaguely hand waiving and saying "resist." Like a liberal at a no kings rally. No strategy, no analysis, just empty headed critiques founded in a fictional reality completely detached from the material world
those real chavistas had better be mobilizing because in spite of your "assurances" i have enough sense to see where the wind is blowing which isn't difficult it's true. it takes the thinnest fraction of a self saving maneuver for venzuela to go from this proclamation to gas station under a neoliberal puppet and no lack of experience disqualifies me from saying that out loud
I'd say our lack of experience entirely disqualifies any of us from having any real kind of opinion on this. This is basic Maoist bullshit. We are getting all of our opinions in the situation through whatever journalists are willing and able to publish.
This is not real knowledge of a situation. This is a spectacle of a situation. We don't know where the wind is blowing, we can only get an abstract sense of it. There is nothing scientific about anything we are doing here.
Stop making predictions and proclamations and sit, wait and listen. This isn't sports.
Then why the hell do you get to be the one to tell others to shut up and stop complaining? If none of us know, then neither do you.
If you really do think that literally all of us should just "shut up and listen" without pushing your own opinion (an insistence that everything happening is obviously great and for the best) as the only Correct and True Materialist Analysis, then you are in the minority of the clique that usually tells anyone concerned about what's happening in and with Venezuela that they're ignorant ultras, or worse.
no one is saying that!! maybe try to actually listen
I am not the one making predictions! I am not claiming to know what is going on!
Don't just spout 'one true materialist' memes at me. That is absolutely reductive and reactionary. You aren't an ultra.
Look at what I have said on this topic elsewhere. This is a critical junction point for this government. We will have to see and wait for what happens. Not what is said, what actually happens. We cannot be proclaiming that the sky is falling and socialism is doomed because of a speech. Socialism is not made from public addresses.
It seems like the natural extension of existing problems in the community's ability to assess geopolitics that it would decay into standpoint epistemology but for Gorbachev.
Comrade, Gorbachev isn't a good comparison. Venezuela has never been socialist, it has never completed its revolution. Reformism has hard limits. The commune movement in Venezuela is best compared to a still-developing dual-power movement, and is where the revolution actually lies. Protecting the budding dual-power movement and preventing fascists from retaking the state is what's unfortunately necessary when you do not smash the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and replace it outright.
If the PSUV takes aim against the communes, then we know for a fact that it's indeed a failed revolution, not merely one struggling for sovereignty with the Empire on its neck. Framing this as "standpoint epistemology" is reductive. Further, this has never been an ideologically consistent website. Doomerism and superficial understandings of Marxism, anarchism, and geopolitics plague this site, and of course I count myself as guilty of this as well. This is not a party, there is no democratic centralism here. This is a necessary consequence of being a shitposting site, for better and worse.
Demcent or lack thereof isn't especially relevant to the issue here. The issue is radlib bullshit masquerading as enlightened radicalism. I do I guess need to agree that there actually is consistency rather than "decay" as I put it, with HBs being able to correctly identify some backwards policy while doing endless apologia for whatever revisionist bullshit is comfortable for maintaining broad support for their preferred sports team (state-level actor), but we used to have more people who pushed back on it and were better received, like XHS.
The entire debate is clearly not just standpoint epistemology, but many of the arguments being made very clearly are. They provide no basis for criticism, no threshold for falsifiability, they just tell you to "sit and listen". It literally is that you are not allowed to contradict it because you are the wrong type of person to be able to say anything, so no I am not being reductive.
And how has this community done previously on the whole geopolitical spectrum? There hasn't been a decay. It was always a vibes based crap shoot, our percentages were just slightly better than the liberals are because we aren't literally just slurping the English media propaganda.
Pretending this is a decay into standpoint theory is absolutely hilarious, as if this community ever had any kind of consistency in theoretical application and understanding. It's a shit posting forum.
And even then, we lost big on not betting that Russia would invade Ukraine while the Anglo-media slurping libs did.
People just need to relax. You're not going to get every prediction right. You're not the head of an intelligence agency with field agents nor an international news media conglomerate with undercover reporters. You should expect to be wrong most of the time frankly. The fact that the new mega overall outperforms Western MSM is a mark against Western MSM, not a mark for the news mega. It's "wow, how can Western media be this fucking stupid" not "wow, the news mega is filled with super geniuses who can see the future with dialectical materialism."
We have reached purely metaphysical thinking on the allegedly Marxist website. Too bad all these oracles and sages of the Internet aren't the scheming viziers of the people who actually have things to lose in this situation
stochastics has a physical basis. we've seen politicians like her before, and i'm either going to be pleasantly surprised or not surprised at all
You've seen a vice president of a revolutionary project become president after the president was kidnapped by a foreign government? What did that person do ? What are the relevant details that are comparable to this one ?
It's sad, but all they have now is copium. Rodriguez, Machado... All the same shit.
chief, i know how it feels, but cut your losses, don't get bogged down in this godforsaken shit, we lost this one. there's no re-framing it, nothin good will come out of it
what are you calling "godforsaken shit" ? a country attempting socialism under the boot of US imperialism?
they're not attempting it any more
are the communes dissolved? is all social spending suspended? is the PSUV not a dominant party anymore? Are chavistas systematically jailed?
you know what i meant, we are in a post regarding a very specific event. i am commenting on that event. in the spirit of dialogue i will clarify what i meant; they attacked the state, the state lost, now the state answers to Marco rubio and the american's demand. whatever attempts toward socialism they were doing are no longer in the works. that is the ''godforsaken shit'', that we lost, there's no positive angle to be found. you're barking up the wrong tree if you think i like this
The commune movement in Venezuela is where the actual revolution is, it's essentially building dual power. Venezuela has never been socialist, and has never had a dictatorship of the proletariat. When you claim the battle is lost because the reformist party friendly to the revolutionary communes is forced to make dramatic concessions and retreats, you're ignoring the fundamental revolutionary process going on that is steadily growing to replace the old bourgeois state power in Venezuela.
The communes are the revolution. The communes are building dual power. The communes have not lost. The PSUV is not an active obstacle to the communes. Anyone that was expecting the PSUV to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat through reformism has a critical misunderstanding about the nature of the capitalist state and the necessity of smashing it and replacing it. It's more like if the Provisional Government was won by a social democratic group, and the Soviets had not yet built dual power to challenge its legitimacy.
you seem very sure of that
what i think is that you and other commenters here are very quick to give up on socialist projects. declaring them "lost". lost to whom? being cannonfodder for the western left? the venezuelan communes have not declared the revolution to be lost and i think it is for them to decide when to completely split with the government, abandon all the gain since 1990 etc. and that would for sure be in the news.
my point is not "ah there is a positive spin to this". not everything has to be positive in a revolution! if you organise for more than a week you will encounter setbacks. its not all sunshine and roses.