SolidarityEconomy.net

by Gabriel Ash

Venezuela is changing. Fast. No other word captures the speed and magnitude of change as well as that weighty word–‘revolution.’ This is indeed the word used by many of the Venezuelans I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing during ten days in March. Venezuela is undergoing a ‘Bolivarian’ revolution. But what does ‘Bolivarianism’ entail? . . .

Contrary to the image often portrayed in the foreign media, Chavez has gone overboard in seeking to include as many as possible in the Bolivarian state. He has time and again extended an olive branch to his enemies. (more…)

by Lori Mcleod- Financial Post

Thursday, March 29, 2007–Gold Reserve Inc. stunned a skeptical market yesterday after winning a key permit to mine a significant gold-and-copper reserve in Venezuela, sending its stock up nearly 49% in heavy trading.

The news killed fears the foreign miner might never get the green light for the mine from socialist President Hugo Chavez, which it won after making rigorous commitments to invest in the area and its residents that will extend long after the mine is exhausted and Gold Reserve has packed up and gone home.

“I grew up in Canada and lived in small mining towns, and you always have to ask the question ‘What happens when the mine is gone?’ ” said Gold Reserve president Doug Belanger. (more…)

by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net

Globalization opens the door on many possible futures. The fundamental changes taking place creates a host of contradictions played out at every level of society, all interlinked and simultaneously affecting one another. The integrative force of global production, finance and technology has qualitatively changed social relations along with culture, politics and the way we see the world and ourselves. Globalization, as a mode of accumulation and wealth has achieved a hegemonic position but its social structure and nationally defined characteristics continue to be formed. This is particularly true of its political expressions and the role of civil society.

Therefore far from a determined and certain future multiple alternatives exist, all dependent on human agency and struggle. On one extreme is the possible collapse of globalization into a world defined by reactionary nationalism, fundamentalist theologies and environmental collapse. Another future may be a long period of relative stability and capitalist transnational hegemony, punctuated by periodic crisis’ that are resolved by the institutional structures that come to characterize the globalist era. The habits, ideas and relations formed during the rise of nation states and (more…)

Cuba’s 50-year defiance of US attempts to isolate it is an inspiration to Latin America’s people

by Philip Agee, The Guardian

There is a wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean after the many lonely years in which Cuba held high the torch, with free universal healthcare and education, and world-class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won’t find a Cuban today who says things are perfect - far from it - probably all would agree that compared with pre (more…)

[From SolidarityEconomy.net editors: While there’s been plenty of coverage of Chavez’s ‘ruling by decree,’ little has been said about the matters concerned and how its part of his country’s legal system. It also gives an idea of how something like ‘Economic Democracy’ might be brought into being in other countries as well.]

By Venezuelanalysis.com, Caracas, January 17, 2007

Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a resolution yesterday, according to which the legislature would declare emergency sessions for the approval of an “enabling law,” which will allow President Chavez to pass law-decrees on specific issues in the next 18 months. The National Assembly (AN) will begin deliberations on the law tomorrow. (more…)

Interview with Heinz Dieterich
By Cristina Marcano, Rebelion.org

Q. Professor Dieterich, did you invent the concept of “Socialism of the 21st Century”?

A. Yes. I developed it, beginning in 1996. It has been published with its corresponding theory in book form, from 2000 on, in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Central America, Brazil, and Venezuela, and, outside Latin America, in Spain, Germany, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, and Turkey. Since 2001, it has been appropriated all over the world. Presidents like Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa use it constantly, and so do labor movements, farmers, intellectuals, and political parties. (more…)

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

“Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth, because of my curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it’s African.” – Hugo Chavez, Democracy Now, September 20, 2005 (more…)

by Christopher Toothaker

President Hugo Chavez snubbed a U.S. overture for dialogue, saying Tuesday he doubts Washington sincerely wants to improve relations.

Chavez, who overwhelmingly won another six-year term in elections Sunday, said if the U.S. really wants to take meaningful steps, it would halt the war in Iraq and extradite a jailed Cuban militant who is wanted in Venezuela for a 1976 airliner bombing.

“They want dialogue but on the condition that you accept their positions,” Chavez said at his first news conference since Sunday’s vote.

“If the government of the United States wants dialogue, Venezuela will always have its door open,” he said. “But I doubt the U.S. government is sincere.”

(more…)

By Steve Mather, VenezuelaAnalysis.com

With punches being thrown and the odd chair flying through the air it was clear there was a good old fashioned labor union debate taking place. The different factions or currents within the National Union of Workers (the UNT, the pro-Chávez confederation of labor unions) had fallen out over priorities. Should there be a leadership election now or should that wait until after the Presidential election in order to devote all energy to that? While that is an accurate portrayal of the dispute at the II Congress there was much more to it than that. Under the surface a more dangerous quarrel is simmering away that could have consequences for the government and its revolutionary credentials. What is up for grabs is the meaning of XXI century Socialism and the UNT’s role within it.

On the surface the Bolivarian Revolution, internally, is sound: the flagship social missions, participatory democracy at the local level and occupied factories under partial worker’s control are empowering Venezuelans and are examples of which the government is proud. People come from all over the world to offer support, solidarity and to learn from the experience of Venezuela. (more…)

By Mike Locker and Dave Hancock

Venezuela is currently attempting to break the iron grip of the United States and the multinational corporations that continue to play a dominant role in its economy. The long term goal is to create an alternative international system that promotes social development over profit promotes productive sovereignty and bilateral cooperation over the short sighted demands of international finance. In order to shift the global balance of power and fuel the economic development of Venezuela in the interests of its own people, Chavez seeks to forge strong international ties with other developing nations to secure the necessary capital, technology and expertise traditionally provided by the multinational corporations and institutions he is looking to neutralize. Venezuela’s growing strategic relationship with China is but one example of this emerging trend.

Moving in this direction, China and Venezuela have recently announced the signing of at least eight major agreements in (more…)

The heat and the noise are almost unbearable in the casting room of Line 3 at Alcasa. This is one of two big aluminium plants in the south-eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, where most of Venezuela’s basic industries are concentrated.

It is also the test bed for a new experiment in co-management, which President Hugo Chavez says is a key step towards a “socialism of the twenty-first century”.

Alcides Rivero, who works here as a maintenance electrician, says co-management means that for the first time in this company’s 37 years of existence, the workforce has control.

“It’s us, the workers”, he says, “who decide on questions of production and technology, and it’s us who elect who will be our managers.”

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Can the revolution outlive its leader?

Late one Friday afternoon in March, a crowd gathered for a rally in downtown Havana to denounce an incident that had occurred the previous evening in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During a game between Cuba and the Netherlands in the first international Baseball Classic, a spectator held up a sign to the television cameras which said “Abajo Fidel”—“Down with Fidel”—and shouted similar sentiments to the Cubans on the field. Among them was Antonio Castro, an orthopedic surgeon, who is the Cuban team’s doctor and one of Fidel Castro’s sons. A Cuban official angrily confronted the protester, whereupon Puerto Rican policemen detained him. He was released after receiving a lecture about freedom of speech. Cuba won, 11–2, but the following day, in a tone of high umbrage, Cuba’s official Communist Party newspaper, Granma, decried the “cynical counter-revolutionary provocations” of U.S. and Puerto Rican officials.

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I am waiting to board the train in San Diego when I notice the Border Patrol agent making his way down our line. He stops by each person who looks ‘Latino’ and asks them to present their legal documents. As the people standing next to me rummage for their identity papers, I stand by, angry, embarrassed and ashamed. In that moment, I don’t know what to say or do to protest.

My mind suddenly travels back in time. I ‘remember’ what it must have been like during slavery for Black people who made it to the North. If they had no papers, they were doomed to live each day in fear. If they were ‘legalized’ by free papers, they still always needed these documents, no matter who they were or how old they were or how long they had lived in their community. These papers were all that stood between them and being ‘deported’ and returned to their slave status.

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“Let’s try to imagine what Karl Marx would be doing today.”

It was Sunday, May 21st, and my host posing the question was Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly. It was Alarcon’s 69th birthday, and I was having difficulty understanding why he had pressed me to fly down for a visit. The purpose was nothing more than “two old guys talking,” according to his daughter Maggie, a thirty-something single mom and formidable interpreter of Cuba to many North Americans.

Looking back today, I don’t know whether or not Alarcon already knew that his longtime comrade Fidel was diagnosed as needing serious surgery. The question would become a “state secret,” at Castro’s wish. Alarcon is third in line to succeed Fidel after Raul Castro, although it is more likely Alarcon will blend into a collective transitional team.

The prospect of three days’ conversation with Ricardo Alarcon reflecting on his long revolutionary experience was too important to put off, and our interviews may be of greater value during the current rampant and reckless speculation over Fidel’s status. Few individuals alive have the range of Alarcon’s experience, from being a Havana student leader during the (more…)

Five Worker-controlled Factories in Venezuela

This article first appeared in Venezualaanalysis.com

Beyond the misiones and the Bolivarian process (el proceso Bolivariano) of empowering working people and the poor, two of the most significant initiatives of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela have been the restarting of closed factories under workers’ co-management with the state, and the rapid expansion of the cooperative sector of collectively-owned and collectively-operated enterprises. For it is these transitions in the social relations of production that will play a pivotal role in determining the future of the Venezuelan state – whether it develops along a capitalist, state capitalist, statist, socialist, or some as yet undetermined path. Case studies of five worker-controlled factories in Venezuela were presented in a documentary film by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, 5 Fábricas – Control Obrero en Venezuela (81 minutes, Spanish, 2006). While these factories illustrate some optimistic beginnings, it is necessary to view them in historical context in order to understand their socio-economic potential.
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