Saturday, March 31, 2007
Marzo 31, 2007= Latin American News Report
Bloglink=
http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2007/03/marzo-31-2007-latin-american-news.html
http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2007/febrero/juev1/06raul-i.html
Havana. February 1, 2007
Raúl receives Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau
Cuba increases cooperation in health and education
GENERAL of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers, received Prime Minister Dr. Arístides Gomes of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, who is on an official visit to Cuba for the 13th Session of the Cuba-Guinea Bissau Joint Commission.
During their meeting, which took place in a friendly and cordial atmosphere, they discussed important issues of mutual interest related to the diversification of Cuban cooperation with that country, with a particular emphasis on the doctor training program and a pilot literacy program using the "Yo Sí Puedo" (I Can Do It) method.
Others participating in the meeting with the visiting delegation included Dr. Antonio Isaac Monteiro, minister of foreign trade, international cooperation and communities; and Arístides Ocanto Da Silva, minister of natural resources. On the Cuban side, they included Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, and Pedro Doña Santana, Cuba's ambassador in Guinea-Bissau.
BROADER COOPERATION BETWEEN CUBA AND GUINEA
Prime Minister Arístides Gomes presided over the signing of the final document of the 13th Joint Commission, which provides for broader social and economic cooperation between Cuba and the African nation over the next two years.
The documents in that respect were signed by Antonio Isaac Monteiro, Guinean minister of foreign trade, international cooperation and communities and Marta Lomas Morales, Cuban minister of foreign investment and economic cooperation.
Lomas summed up the agreements, via which cooperation is expanded to other areas. Work was already underway in health, which was ratified and deepened, in a cooperation arrangement under which Cuban doctors provide their services and at the same time train future Guinean doctors.
This new program began precisely in Guinea-Buissau, as an idea of Cuban President Fidel Castro. There will be more doctors and more students, and when the latter are in their last year of study, they will work together with the Cuban doctors.
Work is also underway on a literacy program; in agriculture; with Labiofam, to combat malaria; in mining; in oil industry consulting and personnel training, and other areas, the minister said.
(Translated by Granma International)
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070401/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_american_killed_5
Saturday, March 31, 2007
'Sexy' Latina site entrepreneur slain
By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia - An American entrepreneur who introduced foreign men to "young, sexy, exotic and beautiful Latin Women" via the Internet was killed in the western city of Cali by gunmen on a motorcycle, police said Saturday.
Robert Marshall Vignola, 50, of Hamden, Conn., says on the Web site http://www.latinwomenconnection.com that he founded the Cali, Colombia-based company in 1999. The site says the company "has assisted hundreds of clients in the search for the Latin Woman of their dreams."
In addition to offering contact with women pictured in bikinis for $20 each, the Web site promoted vacation packages to Cali including a "private tour" accompanied by Vignola for $600 per day plus airfare.
The site also sold a book penned by Vignola entitled "Secrets of Romancing Latin Women." It describes Latin females as "the type of women that make a man's heart race, blood boil and libido accelerate into overdrive."
Vignola was shot and killed Thursday night by two men on a motorcycle while driving to Cali's airport, police said. His 33-year-old Colombian wife, Beatriz Ramos, was hospitalized with bullet wounds in the shoulder.
Cali's police chief, Gen. Alberto Moore, told The Associated Press on Saturday that authorities did not know why he was killed but had ruled out robbery.
Cali, home to Colombia's dominant cocaine cartel in the 1990s, remains among the country's most violent cities.
In addition to the "matrimonial service," Vignola had a casino in Cali that went bankrupt, leaving him with considerable debts, Moore said. "So it's said that possibly people could have been demanding money, and he didn't pay and so they took this reprisal."
Moore said Vignola had financial problems in the United States but said he had no details.
Relatives of Vignola in Connecticut, where according to his personal Web site he practiced law and offered assistance in obtaining mortgages, would not comment.
"We're in mourning right now so please don't bother us," said a man who answered the phone at Vignola's father's home.
A friend of Vignola in Cali who spoke on condition he not be identified said Vignola only visited the city three or four times a year.
The Web site describes Vignola as its "former owner and original founder" and recounts how he met his wife in Colombia after deciding he had "almost no chance of finding the woman of my dreams here in the United States."
___
AP Writer Carlos Gonzalez in Bogota contributed to this report.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070401/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_air_traffic;_ylt=AjNjjpe1PRmZDK8MBPnHBAi3IxIF
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Brazilian air traffic strike ends
By PETER MUELLO, Associated Press Writer
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Air traffic controllers protesting working conditions ended their one-day strike Saturday after the government agreed to their demands, but Brazil's president said the controllers went too far when they paralyzed flights across the nation.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who gained fame as a union leader, said it was unacceptable for the controllers to cause chaos that left thousands of travelers stranded and prompted the military to send in troops to control unruly passengers in the capital of Brasilia.
"People that perform a service considered essential must have more responsibility than others," Silva told reporters in Washington before meeting with President Bush. "When I was a union leader and wanted to order a strike in companies, there were certain sectors that we decided wouldn't stop work, because it was important for the production of the service that was essential."
Controllers were protesting a decision by the Air Force command, which oversees Brazil's air traffic controllers, to transfer top workers to other cities. They saw the transfers as retaliation against strikers for slowdowns that they staged periodically during the past six months.
All 67 commercial airports in Latin America's largest country were closed for takeoffs on Friday in another wave of air travel chaos that has plagued Latin America's largest nation for months.
Flights were taking off again Saturday, but confusion remained in airports. Stranded passengers who spent all night in airports tried to reach their destinations and competed for seats with passengers embarking Saturday. Lobbies were packed, and many flights were delayed or rerouted.
In Brasilia, Army troops were called to the airport after a group of passengers invaded the tarmac when their plane for the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte was rerouted to a different city, the Globo TV network reported.
Cabinet ministers met overnight and agreed to give controllers a bonus, review the promotions system, change the military status of at least some to civilian and cancel all transfers made over the past six months, the government news service Agencia Brasil said.
Silva declined to blame only the controllers, saying the problem was "structural" and would require cooperation between the Air Force, the Defense Ministry and air controllers. But he said it also was "a problem ... for Brazilian society, which can't be a victim of certain attitudes."
Brazil's travel headaches began last year when Brazil's one-time flagship airline Varig nearly disintegrated under crushing debt, causing mass cancellations in Brazil and abroad. In March, more than 30 percent of flights from major airports were delayed, following a failure in air traffic control in Brazil's heavily populated southern and central areas.
The slowdowns by controllers protesting working conditions followed the Sept. 29 collision between a Gol airlines Boeing 737 and a Embraer Legacy executive jet that killed 154 people, the deadliest air accident in Brazil's history.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070331/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_dry_easter;_ylt=Aqo4Qu8tZbBTbjfdSdFeWQW3IxIF
Sat Mar 31, 2007 @1:41 PM ET
Venezuela bans alcohol sales for Easter
By JORGE RUEDA, Associated Press Writer
CARACAS, Venezuela - For beer and whiskey-loving Venezuelans, Easter this year won't be an alcohol-soaked drinking fest.
President Hugo Chavez has imposed a ban on alcohol sales during Holy Week in an attempt to reduce accidents and crimes, prompting a run on liquor stores.
The decree prohibits alcohol sales on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday next week. A more limited ban — restricting sales to between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., including at restaurants and bars — went into effect Friday and will last through April 9.
The sudden, unprecedented measure confused many Venezuelans who raced to stash up before Friday, thinking that would be their last chance to buy for more than a week.
"People are desperate, above all because the majority found out at the last minute," said Jose Manuel Fernandes, a liquor store owner in Caracas, as he struggled to meet the demands of dozens of customers yelling for bottles and cases of their preferred drink.
Industry figures show that Venezuela is among the top producers and consumers of beer in Latin America, while whiskey and rum are also popular spirits. Despite laws that prohibit the consumption of alcohol in public areas, Venezuelans can often be seen drinking on street corners or sometimes even driving with a beer in hand.
Close to a hundred deaths and thousands of injuries are reported every year during the Easter holiday, which authorities attribute largely to alcohol consumption.
Chavez has a tendency to enforce his views on the public: Enraged by the sight of children unloading beer crates in the slums, he ordered beer trucks off the street last year. Some suspected the latest measure has more to do with Chavez's friendly ties with Iran, where Islamic law forbids alcohol.
"I got nervous. I thought Chavez had prohibited the sale of liquor seeing how he talks about Cuba, socialism and the (Iranian) ayatollahs," Enrique Salazar, 67, said Friday after buying three bottles of whiskey to last him through the holiday.
"I don't drive so I'm not a danger to anybody," Salazar said. "Instead of prohibiting (sales), they should throw drunks who drive in jail."
Police rarely crack down on public alcohol consumption or screen drivers for drinking.
The majority of Venezuelans show strong support for Chavez, who has said he wants to lead a socialist revolution in the country. But they have been less enthusiastic about his attempts to curb drinking, including his announcement in October banning the beer trucks that sell alcohol directly on the street.
Chavez reassured the public at the time he had no plans to forbid alcohol in Venezuela, but he passionately warned about the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption, blaming it for a degeneration of society.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070331/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guatemala_indian_power;_ylt=AsEVCbM.hcW5b08JlUEIG5a3IxIF
Sat Mar 31, 2007 @10:54 AM ET
Nobelist shows spread of Indian power
By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer
GUATEMALA CITY - Rigoberta Menchu's spacious modern home blends seamlessly into this gated upper middle-class neighborhood on the edge of Guatemala City. But behind the walls and guards, there are chickens and rabbits and a flower-bedecked Mayan altar.
It's an apt setting for a former peasant girl-turned-Nobel Laureate who straddles two worlds and is running for president of her deeply divided country, on a continent where Indians like herself have suffered centuries of poverty and discrimination.
Even though Menchu trails behind the three leading candidates in the Sept. 9 election, the fact that she's running is indicative of the political rise of Indians across Latin America, highlighted by the 2005 election of Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Menchu says democratic politics will open a new chapter not only in her own sometimes controversial life but for the 42 percent of Guatemala's 12 million people who define themselves as Indian.
"I have the great honor of being able to open up this space," Menchu, a matronly 48-year-old in flowing, multicolored clothes, said in an interview with The Associated Press at the home she shares with her husband and 12-year-old son.
"Things will never be the same here again."
But it remains to be seen whether Guatemala, with its wealthy male power structure, is ready to be led by an Indian woman.
It would be a huge shock to the establishment, said Estuardo Zapeta, a Mayan intellectual and newspaper columnist. "For many it would be like the servant trying to take over the country — that's the mentality."
He also wondered whether politics would sully her saint-like status among Indians.
"She is a symbol of success for Indian people here, and I worry that if she is crushed by this process, that she will then become a symbol of failure," he said.
Menchu has lived at the center of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, during which the Indian community was devastated by massacres and forced disappearances. Her father and other Indian activists occupied the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in a protest in 1980, and were among 37 people who died when the building was set on fire, allegedly by government agents.
Her nonviolent work on behalf of oppressed Indians won her the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize.
The war ended 10 years ago, and Menchu calls her candidacy a "thermometer" measuring Guatemala's progress in battling racism and building democracy.
But Guatemalan Indians, millions of whom live on just a few dollars a day, are politically inert compared with other Latin American countries, and the U.N. Development Program says they suffer "historically racist attitudes" so extreme that the country could become ungovernable.
Only about a dozen Indians have seats in the 158-member Congress and none has ever been president.
Menchu herself has felt the toxic combination of racism and sexism. In 2003, after she spoke out against letting former dictator Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt run for president, a politician told her to "go and sell tomatoes at the market, Indian."
She fought back, using a 2002 anti-discrimination law to prosecute the politician and four others who joined in the abuse. They were convicted and fined nearly $9,000 each.
"Guatemala has been ready to have a Mayan president for more than 200 years," says Menchu, who promises to represent all Guatemalans.
Menchu grew up and farmed with her family in the tiny Indian village of Laj Chimel in Guatemala's northwestern mountains. The photos decorating her present home show her wedding, her husband laughing as their son whispers in his ear, her handshake with Pope John Paul II.
She promises to clean up corruption and reform the military and police forces, but it's a daunting challenge. Traffickers in Colombian cocaine have the upper hand in the drug wars, criminal gang members deported from the U.S. run rampant, and death squads from civil war times allegedly still lurk inside the nation's police forces.
She vows to review Guatemala's new trade agreement with the United States, suggesting she could cancel it if she feels it doesn't benefit the Guatemalan majority. The party of Bolivia's Morales, a fierce critic of the U.S., congratulated her on her presidential candidacy, but she says she does not seek to ally herself with him.
Nor does she take sides in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's tussles with President Bush. "We are tired of waging others' wars and worrying about others' interests," she said.
But Menchu's candidacy has revived old questions about her credibility, first raised in 1999 in a book by American anthropologist David Stoll, which claimed her autobiography, "I, Rigoberta Menchu," changed many elements of her life or borrowed stories from others.
She remains deeply defensive about those claims, and it's that reaction — rather than the story itself — that most bothers Stoll.
"If she really thinks she can bat down honest questions by saying the questioner is racist or an American CIA agent, that's not going to make her a very good presidential candidate," said Stoll, who teaches at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Menchu dismissed the debate as trivial, compared to the atrocities of war her book described, and disrespectful to the 200,000 people who died in the violence. The book is filed as evidence in the case she brought before a Spanish court charging eight Guatemalan former military and government officials with setting the embassy fire.
"If you want to debate, I ask you to go to the mass graves, go to the area where there are the remains of our dead," she said. "I ask for respect for my father who was burned alive and my brother who was tortured."
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http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=28519
Published: March 21, 2007
Bolivias Morales backs Guatemala candidate
MenchuPresident Morales is sending aides to Rigoberta Menchu in her bid to become the first indigenous woman head of state in Latin America.
Menchu, a defender of Mayan victims of Guatemala's bloody 1960-1996 civil war, will run in Guatemala's Sept. 9 presidential election backed by a left-leaning party and a coalition of indigenous leaders.
Santos Ramirez, an influential senator from Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party, said this week that the party will send delegates to Guatemala on Saturday to advise Menchu.
"We have decided to send an envoy to that brother country (Guatemala) to accompany and support comrade Menchu in her bid (to become president)," Ramirez told reporters in statements published late on Tuesday.
Morales' spokesman Alex Contreras said on Wednesday that Morales may visit Guatemala on March 30 to attend an international summit of indigenous peoples.
Morales in 2006 became the first Indian president in Bolivia, where most of the population is of indigenous descent, on campaign vows to stamp out discrimination against Indians and tighten the state's grip over natural resources.
Both Menchu and Morales have been champions of the poor and indigenous in their countries, where they suffer discrimination despite being a majority.
One of Menchu's main rivals will be retired Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who has been accused of war crimes by human rights organizations but also was key to the 1996 peace deal that ended the war.
In a recent poll, about 20 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for Menchu, putting her in second place behind another leftist, Alvaro Colom. Perez Molina was in third place in the poll.
Menchu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her human rights work, was born in the Quiche area, one of the hardest hit by army and paramilitary massacres during the war, when an estimated 200,000 people were killed, most of them Maya Indians.
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http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2001
Monday, Mar 26, 2007
Book Review: Build It Now
'Two, Three, Many Bolivarian Revolutions!'
By: Stuart Munckton - Green Left Weekly
Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century
Monthly Review Press, 2006
US$14.95, 127 pages
"I recommend this good book, booklet to go by its size, but the content is big", Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez said on his television program Alo Presidente on January 21. He was speaking about Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-first Century, written by Michael Lebowitz.
On the same show in April last year, Chavez had commented "Michael Lebowitz sent me a good work, a chapter of a book about Venezuela [entitled] 'The Revolution of Radical Need'." Agreeing with Lebowitz's key argument, Chavez insisted: "A revolution has to satisfy people's needs in a radical way — that is at the root. And therefore this revolution has to become more and more radical … I stress Michael Lebowitz's concept … because we are in a hurry."
This recommendation of the latest book by Lebowitz, a Canadian Marxist academic, by the central leader of the Bolivarian revolution is reason enough to read this book. Lebowitz is active participant in the revolution. He currently lives in Venezuela, where he has previously worked as an advisor for the Chavez government. He works as an advisor with the Miranda International Centre, which seeks to promote discussion and debate both in Venezuela and internationally on revolutionary ideology. Only the book's final chapter deals specifically with Venezuela, but as Lebowitz explains in the introduction: "Although the essays in this book come from various sources, most relate in some way to Venezuela, a country which at the time of writing embodies the hopes of many for a real alternative to capitalism."
The concept in the book's title, of "socialism for the 21st century", originated in Venezuela. Chavez first raised the concept in 2005, urging an alternative to the horrors of capitalism that avoided the errors of the Soviet Union. Lebowitz explains the first half of the title is inspired by a slogan of the South African Communist Party: "Socialism is the future, built it now!" He says, "Regardless of the practice of the SACP, I've always felt that the slogan is profound — precisely because that slogan simultaneously recognises the need for a vision that can guide us … and also stresses the need for activity, the need to struggle for that goal now."
This combination of vision and struggle captures Lebowitz's central point about how a better, socialist, society can be created: "In the struggle to realize the vision of a new society, we not only change the old society, we also change ourselves, and, as Marx commented, make ourselves fit to create the new society."
Lebowitz begins by pointing to the need for an alternative to capitalism, writing that "the whole system revolves around profits and not human needs … we see everyday what capitalism produces. The blatant waste in advertising, the destruction of the planet, the starvation of children alongside the obscene salaries of professional athletes, the despotic workplace and the treatment of human beings as so much garbage … these are not accidents in the world of capitalism". Rather they are inevitable in a society organised according to the needs of the capitalist, not human development.
However, Lebowitz argues that the attempts to build a post-capitalist society in the 20th century also failed to create a system "in which the worker's need for self-development dominates". Lebowitz claims much of the alternatives to capitalism in the 20th century focused on the expansion of the productive forces "leaving little room for the exploration of the relevance of the social relations in which people live". Sidestepping the debate about how best to categorise what he calls the "20th century alternative", Lebowitz says the key thing is to "recognize that what emerged last century was definitely not the concept of socialism that Marx envisiged".
Instead, Lebowitz returns to Karl Marx's concept that the aim of socialism is to create a system that could "unleash the full development of all human potential".
Lebwitz provides a very useful introduction to Marxist economics in the first chapter, entitled "The Needs of Capital Versus the Needs of Human Beings" and explains how it is that the capitalist system serves only the needs of capital, not humanity. Lebowitz points to the division between the small minority that own the means of producing wealth, the capitalist class, and the rest of society, who are forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists to survive — the working class — as the key contradiction that needs to be resolved if we are to develop a society that puts human needs first.
Lebowitz explains how the needs of the working class come into conflict with the needs of capitalists to increase their profits by increasing the exploitation of their work force. This occurs at the same time as capitalism dramatically expands productive capacity, leading to the contradiction between the potential to resolve world hunger, while greater numbers of people are condemned to starvation.
In the second chapter, Lebowitz, pointing out that "Economic theory is not neutral", demolishes the theory behind neoliberal economics, with its near-religious belief in the power of the "free market" to solve the needs of society. Lebowitz reveals how neoliberal economics "justifies" freeing capital from any restriction in order to better subjugate the rest of society to capital's interests.
He also reveals the key weakness in the Keynesian alternative, traditionally promoted by social democrats. Lebowitz points out that the key problem with social-democracy is political — it assumes, like neoliberalism, that the economies can only be run on a capitalist basis. Therefore, while there may be a role in times of crisis for the state to stimulate the economy via investment, the provision of welfare, and ensuring decent wages, when the capitalists decide they no longer need such measures, social-democracy inevitably backs down.
However, Lebowitz shows how, if you realize that it is workers, not capitalists, who ultimately possess productive capacity, there is no reason to back down just because capitalists threaten to revolt. If capital refuses to invest or goes on "strike" a government can either "give in or move in". If the state is willing to organize production when capitalists refuse to, not only is the threat of economic crisis removed, but also the space is opened to begin to build a post-capitalist alternative. However, social-democracy refuses to take this road, as Lebowtiz uses his personal experience as a policy advisor to the social-democratic government in British Colombia during the 1970s to show.
The rest of the book is dedicated to exploring how the socialist alternative of a system based on resolving the needs of people rather than capital can be constructed. In opposition to the bureaucratic, dictatorial model associated with Stalinism, Lebowitz strongly emphasizes Marx's arguments about the centrality of the self-activity of working people themselves as the road to emancipation.
In particular, Lebowitz puts enormous weight on the role of workers' management over production as a tool both to allow production to be organised along pro-people lines, and just as importantly allow working people through their own experiences to develop themselves into "new people", capable of constructing a new society based on the principles of collective rather than individual interests.
However, Lebowitz doesn't argue that simply introducing a model involving workers' management is enough to change society. He polemicises against the anarchist academic John Holloway, who argues against seeking to win state power to achieve change. Lebowitz points out that this argument "has been refuted in two clear ways". First of all, looking at the experience of the Venezuelan revolution, he argues: "Can we even begin to imagine the changes that are occurring here now without the power of the state?" Lebowitz refers to Marx's arguments on the need for workers to win state power to transform society, explaining that it needs to be a form of state power fundamentally different to the capitalist state, organised democratically as the self-government of working people.
It is the final chapter, delving in depth into the Bolivarian revolution, where the book really shines. It is here that the preceding arguments are playing out in reality. Lebowtiz provides an extremely useful overview of the history and dynamics of the revolution. He explains how it is that the process, begun by Chavez's election in 1998, didn't begin with the aim of constructing socialism. Rather, it was based on contradictory aims, captured in the constitution adopted in 1999, of attempting to develop a new society that would put people's needs first while capitalism would remain the main economic framework.
Lebowitz explains how the capitalist class launched a revolt against the measures of the Chavez government that sort to resolve the needs of the poor majority, launching first the military coup in April 2002, then a bosses' lockout in December that year. The Chavez government had to chose between continuing to see capitalism as the framework to develop the Venezuelan nation, or else relying on poor majority themselves and breaking with capitalism to continue develop the goals in the constitution that promote human development. It was this that led the revolution to promote "socialism for the 21st century".
Lebowitz provides a detailed discussion on the attempts in Venezuela to create badly needed economic development along lines that put the needs of people first. In particular, he looks at the experiments in cooperatives and workers' co-management as means by which working people can get control of the economy and through the process transform themselves into revolutionary subjects. He presents some of the key debates on the way forward for the Bolivarian revolution, giving special attention to the debates surrounding experiments in workers' co-management. He puts his view on the necessity to develop the means by which working people can increasingly run the economy in order for the revolution to advance.
He puts large emphasis on the need for a political and cultural revolution in Venezuela, to accompany the economic changes. The need is both to empower working people, which he sees possible both through co-management and the new grassroots communal councils, and simultaneously create "new values" that mean that working people use this power not in their narrow self-interest but according to the needs of society as a whole. He argues, "Without democratic, participatory and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces". However, simply giving people the power without seeking to transform their consciousness will not lead to a better society, as he uses recent examples in Venezuela to demonstrate.
This captures the essence of the struggle Chavez is pushing forward, especially since his victory in the December presidential elections. Two of the key struggles he has since announced are an "explosion of popular power", via the communal councils, and a revolution in education in order to create a new socialist morality. This explains why Chavez has promoted Lebowitz's book so enthusiastically, and why anyone who wants to understand the direction of the Bolivarian revolution should read it.
The book has some weaknesses, most notably the way Lebowtiz conflates the various experiments in creating a post-capitalist society in the last century into gross distortion of socialism that was Stalinism, tying it all up together in the concept of "20th century socialism". One consequence of this is that the book completely ignores the example of Cuba, which, while influenced by the Soviet Union, avoided degenerating into a bureaucratic dictatorship. As a result the Cuban Revolution, despite its limitations as a poor, blockaded island, has been able to show inspiring examples of the sort of pro-people logic Lebowitz advocates. This omission is especially notable given the crucial role Cuba has played in assisting the Bolivarian revolution. Cuba's provision of tens of thousands of volunteer doctors and teachers to start the social missions, a product of Cuba having broken with the logic of capital, were essential to the revolution advancing.
Also, while Lebowitz understandably and quite rightly, puts a big emphasis on the self-activity of working people in order to create the "new human" capable of building a different sort of society, this only deals with one half of the problem. The other side is the question of leadership, and constructing out of the daily struggles of working people a political instrument capable of leading the struggle, which are not touched on for most of the book. However, the actual experience of the Bolivarian revolution highlights the signficance of solving this question, and Lebowitz rightly raises this as a key question in Venezuela.
Lebowitz uses the Bolivarian revolution to tie the book together in his conclusion. He argues the Bolivarian revolution "has reminded us that socialism is not the goal. Rather, the goal is the full development of human potential. Socialism is the path to that goal. The only path." Importantly. Lebowitz also notes that "the Bolivarian Revolution has also put Marxism back on the agenda. But not just any kind of Marxism." Rejecting the mechanical "Marxism" that only sees increasing economic growth and material wealth as its goal, Lebowitz argues the Bolivarian revolution has placed at its center an understanding that "real wealth is human wealth".
Lebowitz argues "most of what stands out about the Bolivarian Revolution has little specifically to do with Venezuela. The struggle for human development … the understanding that people are transformed as they struggle for justice and dignity … that socialism and protagonistic democracy are one — these are the characteristics of a new humanist socialism, a socialism for the twenty-first century everywhere."
At the end of the book's introduction, Lebwotiz argues that "The choice before us is socialism or barbarism. Which one shall it be?" Lebowitz paraphrases Che Guevara to provide his answer at the end of this inspiring read: "So, today, let us say, 'Two, Three, Many Bolivarian Revolutions.'"
From: Cultural Dissent, Green Left Weekly issue #704 28 March 2007.
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