Reflections on an Historic Election: Argentina Enters a New Crisis

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Historic vote: The Argentinian Workers Party newspaper celebrates 1.2 million votes for the Workers and Left Front in the October mid-term elections. Credit: http://prensa.po.org.ar

By Bob Lyons
New Socialist Webzine
November 3, 2013

The historic Argentinean mid-term elections of 27 October resulted in a breakthrough for the revolutionary left, and has exposed more clearly the outline of the tendencies emerging at the time of the primary votes held in July. The political, economic and social fissures revealed by the vote can be grouped around three themes:
1.    the end of the Kirchnerist experiment and the resulting strategic incoherance of the Argentinean bourgeoisie as a whole;
2.    the radical deepening of the economic and fiscal crises of the Argentinean state expressed as a loss of political legitimacy, and a series of policy cul-de-sacs;
3.    the growing presence of a workers and social vanguard determined to resist the consequences of the global crisis as expressed locally.

In what follows we will attempt to situate the election, and especially the results for the revolutionary left, within the context of the above themes.

The Defeat of Kirchnerism

That Kirchnerism, the political strategy of first Nestor and then Cristina is over is evidenced by the vote total obtained by the Front of Victory, the electoral apparatus of a renovated Peronism. In 2011 at the time of the presidential elections, Cristina Kirchner won with 54% of the national vote. Now a brief two years later she struggled to reach 33%. At a regional level, where the byzantine web of alliances between mayors, governors and national figures are expressed, Kirchner was defeated in the all-important province of Buenos Aires by the Renovation Front of Sergio Massas, the exponent of the neo-liberalism of the industrial and agrarian establishment, by a margin of more than 10%.

A Cuban Spring?

By Roger Burbach

NACLA News

Apr 29 2013

This is a fruitful period of experimentation and debate in Cuba. It is now almost seven years since Raúl Castro replaced his brother Fidel, first as interim president in 2006 and then as president in 2008. Under Raúl, the country is taking steps to transform the economy, and a critical discussion is erupting over the dismantling of the authoritarian Communist model. Julio Díaz Vázquez, an economist at the University of Havana, declares: “With the updating of the economic model, Cuba faces complex challenges . . . in its social and political institutions. . . . The heritage of the Soviet model makes it necessary to break with the barriers erected by inertia, intransigence, [and] a double standard.” He adds, “These imperfections have led to deficiencies in [Cuba’s] democracy, its creative liberties, and its citizens’ participation.”1

Among the most important changes that have echoed internationally is the decree that took effect January 14 allowing Cubans to travel abroad without securing a special exit permit. Also, homes and vehicles can now be bought and sold openly, recognizing private ownership for the first time since the state took control of virtually all private property in the early 1960s.



The government is distributing uncultivated land, which constitutes about half of the countryside’s agriculturally viable terrain, in usufruct for 10 years in 10-hectare parcels with the possibility of lease renewal. To date there are 172,000 new agricultural producers. Beyond agriculture, 181 occupations filled by self-employed or independent workers such as food vendors, hair stylists, taxi drivers, plumbers, and shoe repairmen can now be licensed astrabajo por cuenta propia—self-employment. As of late 2012, about 380,000 people are self-employed in a work force of 5 million.

In the war on the poor, Pope Francis is on the wrong side

In Latin America a new Inquisition has betrayed Catholic priests who risk their lives to stand up to tyrants – as I've witnessed

By George Monbiot
The Guardian,

Tuesday 19 March 2013

'Whatever the stated intentions of [the Catholic factions] who attacked and suppressed liberation theology, in practical terms they were the allies of tyrants, land grabbers, debt slavers and death squads.' Illustration by Daniel Pudles.

'When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist." So said the Brazilian archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara. His adage exposes one of the great fissures in the Catholic church, and the emptiness of the new pope's claim to be on the side of the poor.

The bravest people I have met are all Catholic priests. Working in West Papua and then in Brazil, I met men who were prepared repeatedly to risk death for the sake of others. When I first knocked on the door of the friary in Bacabal, in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, the priest who opened it thought I had been sent to kill him. That morning he had received the latest in a series of death threats from the local ranchers' union. Yet still he opened the door.

Inside the friary was a group of peasants – some crying and trembling – whose bodies were covered in bruises made by rifle butts, and whose wrists bore the marks of rope burns. They were among thousands of people the priests were trying to protect, as expansionist landlords – supported by police, local politicians and a corrupt judiciary – burned their houses, drove them off their land, and tortured or killed those who resisted.

Hugo Chavez, Brazil and the History of Social Exclusion

By Carl Bloice
Black Commentator
March 14, 2013

Dilma Rousseff

Last month, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff raised the monthly stipend of 2.5 million people in the country currently living below the poverty line and, according to Reuters, she did it “to make good on her promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Brazil, a nation with enormous income gaps between rich and poor.” Starting this week, she said, 2.5 million poor people would see their monthly income rise through the Bolsa Familia, or Family Grant program to the equivalent of $35. In making the announcement she said an interesting thing:"We are turning the page on our long history of social exclusion that had perverse roots in slavery.”

That statement is important for two reasons.

Chávez's Chief Legacy: Building, with People, an Alternative Society to Capitalism

By Marta Harnecker
MRzine
March 6, 2013

When Hugo Chávez triumphed in the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already floundering. The choice then was none other than whether to re-establish the neoliberal capitalist model -- clearly with some changes including greater concern for social issues, but still motivated by the same logic of profit seeking -- or to go ahead and try to build another model.

I believe that Chávez's chief legacy is having chosen the latter alternative. To name that alternative, he also chose to reclaim the word socialism, despite the negative baggage that the word had acquired, at the same time, however, clarifying that his was 21st-century socialism in order to distinguish it from Soviet socialism implemented during the 20th century, warning that we must not "fall into the errors of the past," into the "Stalinist deviation" that bureaucratized the party and ended up eliminating common people'sprotagonism, into state capitalism that put emphasis on state property rather than workers' own management of enterprises.

Hugo Chavez, undefeated

BY DERRICK O'KEEFE 

RABBLE.CA

MARCH 5, 2013

Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (July 28, 1954 – March 5, 2013). 

Hugo Chavez has died -- undefeated.

Yes, undefeated. Chavez, no matter how many times the corporate media and the cheerleaders of the status quo call him a dictator, was elected repeatedly with overwhelming majorities.

No matter how many times this slur is moronically or mendaciously repeated, people know the truth. No less than Jimmy Carter certified Venezuela's elections as amongst the most fair and transparent his organization has ever observed. And the voter turnouts that elected Chavez were usually far, far higher than those in the U.S.

Hugo Chavez Presente!

Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, dies in Caracas

Death comes 21 months after it was revealed he had a tumour, and he will be given a state funeral in the capital.

Academy Awards: When 'No' gets a 'Yes!' in Chile

Chile's film industry is excited about its first Oscar nomination for the controversial Pinochet-era film, 'No.'

By Steven Bodzin

Christian Science Monitor

February 23, 2013

When you click on the website of CinemaChile, the promoter of Chilean films around the world, you see a close-up of Mexican actor Gael García Bernal looking over his shoulder, a huge rainbow blurred out in the background. No one familiar with Chilean film needs the tiny caption. It’s from the movie “No,” released in 2012, now representing Chile at the Academy Awards as the country’s first-ever Oscar nomination.

With the Oscar ceremony set for Sunday evening,Santiago’s small but thriving film world is preparing for a late night — the broadcast will start at 9 p.m. local time. And the habitual local pessimism is yielding to a spot of hope.

Angola: Is this the country Agostinho Neto dreamt of?

By Abdulrazaq Magaji
PAMBAZUKA NEWS
2013-02-20, Issue 617

The southern African nation is now peaceful and petro-dollars are pouring in. Yet the greatest beneficiaries are the United States, Great Britain and Portugal, the evil triad that laboured in vain to abort the Angolan dream

It will be 34 years, come September, since the death of Dr. Agostinho Neto, Angola’s first president. Dr. Neto was the man who changed the face of Angola’s armed struggle against Portuguese occupation after joining the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). He had slipped through the claws of PIDE, the Portuguese secret police, in Lisbon from where he fled to join the liberation movement in Morocco. The Marxist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, popularly known by its Portuguese acronym, MPLA, was one of the three visible liberation movements in Angola. The other two are the Union of Total Independence of Angola, UNITA and the front for the National Liberation of Angola, FNLA, led respectively by Jonas Savimbi and Roberto Holden.

Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism

Roger Burbach, Michael Fox and Federico Fuentes 
Zed Books

Over the past few years, something remarkable has occurred in Latin America. For the first time since the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s, people within the region have turned toward radical left governments - specifically in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Why has this profound shift taken place and how does this new, so-called Twenty-First-Century Socialism actually manifest itself? What are we to make of the often fraught relationship between the social movements and governments in these countries and do, in fact, the latter even qualify as 'socialist' in reality?

These are the bold and critical questions that Latin America's Turbulent Transitions explores. The authors provocatively argue that although US hegemony in the region is on the wane, the traditional socialist project is also declining and something new is emerging. Going beyond simple conceptions of 'the left,' the book reveals the true underpinnings of this powerful, transformative, and yet also complicated and contradictory process.

Read more HERE.

A Bitter Anniversary: Remembering the Invasion of Grenada

By Kevin Edmonds
The Other Side of Paradise
October 22, 2012

Editor's note: I remember meeting with Vincent Noel, a trade unionist and prominent member of the New Jewel Movement. He was in Regina and met with solidarity activists here. He was humble, bright and full of enthusiasm for the new Grenada. He was among the first to be shot by Coard's thugs.- NYC

The second half of October is always a time of reflection amongst progressive forces in Caribbean, but especially so in Grenada. This is because October 19 marked the 29th anniversary of the death of Maurice Bishop, the Prime Minister of the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada. In addition, October 25, 1983 will mark the 29th anniversary of the invasion of Grenada—where the United States attacked the island’s population of 110,000 with 7,000 troops via land, sea, and air.

The right wing Heritage Foundation described the 1983 invasion as“The Reagan Administration's bold action to restore democracy and a free market economy to Grenada.” Ronald Reagan himself stated that it was “no invasion; it was a rescue mission.” Guyana’s Stabroek News was more precise, calling it “one of the most egregious examples of asymmetrical warfare in modern times, the United States of America, the world’s most powerful state, invaded Grenada, one of the world’s weakest mini-states.”

Given the context of the Cold War, the United States under Reagan had been busyundermining the revolutionary government in Nicaragua, aiding the right wing paramilitaries in El Salvador, and destabilizing the progressive government of Michael Manley in Jamaica. Reagan was also eager to score a military victory and restore the confidence that had been lost after the Vietnam War and the overthrowing of the Shah in Iran. This victory was to come at the expense of the Grenadian people, and the wider hopes of the Caribbean, in constructing a model of society based on social justice.

Huge Chavez confronts (neo) liberal democracy

By Murray Dobbin

October 11, 2012

There has been much written about the erosion of democracy in Canada under the Liberals but even more egregiously under the Harper Conservatives (and PLEASE don’t call these libertarians “Tories”). There is a very long list of grievances from the abuse of prorogation, to deliberate sabotaging of Parliamentary Committees, to election robo-calls, to the gagging of public employees.

But there is a more sinister anti-democratic undercurrent at play here and reading the media coverage of the Venezuelan presidential elections brought it home in spades. That coverage – in which reporters and pundits could barely bring themselves to recognize Chavez’s historic victory and his trouncing of the opposition – oozed contempt for Chavez and the 55% of Venezuelans who voted for socialism. They couldn't stand it: beside themselves with outrage over the result even though the voting process was impeccable and beyond criticism – indeed far more tamper proof than the American farce that passes for democracy.

Chavez Wins Venezuelan Election

Video: 5 Factories – Worker Control in Venezuela

DARIO AZZELLINI, OLIVER RESSLER
WorkersControl.net

In their second film regarding political and social change in Venezuela, after “Venezuela from Below”, Azzellini and Ressler focus on the industrial sector in “5 Factories–Worker Control in Venezuela“. The changes in Venezuela's productive sphere are demonstrated with five large companies in various regions: a textile company, aluminum works, a tomato factory, a cocoa factory and a paper factory. The workers are struggling for different forms of co- or self-management supported by credits from the government. “The assembly is basically governing the company”, says Rigoberto López from the textile factory “Textileros del Táchira” in front of steaming tubs. And machine operator Carmen Ortiz summarizes the experience as follows: “Working collectively is much better than working for someone else–working for someone else is like being a slave to someone”.

The protagonists portrayed at the five production locations present insights into ways of alternative organizing and models of workers' control. Mechanisms and difficulties of self-organization are explained as well as the production processes. The portrayal of machine processes could be seen as a metaphor for the dream machine “Bolivarian process” and the hopes and desires it inspires among the workers.

Marta Harnecker: activist, writer, teacher

Her views on the Latin American Left today  

By Eleonora de Lucena
lo-de-alla.org

September 2012

[Translation of an interview from Folha de São Paulo for August 28. See original here.]

She defines herself as a Marxist-Leninist “popular educator.” A Chilean, she was a student of philosopher Louis Althusser, a Catholic student leader and a member of the socialist government of Salvador Allende. She married one of the commanders of the Cuban revolution, Manuel Piñeiro or “Barba Roja,” and in the 2000s she became an adviser to Hugo Chávez.

Marta Harnecker says she has written more than 80 books. The best known, Conceptos Elementales del Materialismo Histórico (The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism), from the 1960s, has sold more than a million copies and is in its 67th edition. At 75, she travels throughout Latin America and says she is optimistic; the United States no longer does what it wants in the region and the concept of sovereignty has spread.

Living now in Vancouver, Canada, she considers Chávez “an essential revolutionary leader” but a “contradictory person.” “He is a soldier who believes in popular participation. The important thing is to see the fruits of this thing.” Venezuela is the least unequal country on the continent.

Since the Mexican debt crisis, 30 years of neoliberalism

By Jerome Roos 

RoarMag.org

August 22, 2012

Mexico’s collapse of 1982, and the radical policy response of the US and IMF, marked the birth of an elite consensus that continues to haunt Europe today.

As Nick Dearden, Director of the Jubilee Campaign for debt cancellation justwrote for the New Statesman, this week marks the “anniversary of an event of great resonance”. For this week it is exactly 30 years ago that Mexico temporarily suspended its debt payments to foreign creditors, thereby marking the beginning of what would eventually escalate into the first international debt crisis of the neoliberal era. Things would never be the same again.

What ensued was not only a tragic collapse of living standards throughout the developing world and a lost decade for Mexicans and millions of poor people in the Global South – most notably in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa — but also a historic shift in power relations between debtors and creditors in the emerging global political economy. Indeed, 1982 marked the global ascendance of Wall Street. As the famous geographer David Harvey put it:
What the Mexico case demonstrated was one key difference between liberalism and neo-liberalism: under the former lenders take the losses that arise from bad investment decisions while under the latter the borrowers are forced by state and international powers to take on board the cost of debt repayment no matter what the consequences for the livelihood and well-being of the local population.

Tariq Ali: ‘We must not lose Venezuela’

By Tariq Ali 

Green Left Weekly

Saturday, August 18, 2012 

The article below was abridged from Correo Del Orinoco International. 

Internationally-acclaimed author, activist, and intellectual Tariq Ali highlighted the importance of Venezuela´s Bolivarian Revolution and socialist President Hugo Chavez at a conference at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela in Caracas over July 27-28.

Speaking at celebrations for the seventh anniversary of Telesur, the Caracas-based Latin American news media, the respected British Pakistani historian told those gathered that “Venezuela must not be lost” as the October 7 presidential election approaches.

Discussing the leadering role played by Latin America in promoting alternative means of communication, Ali spoke at an event titled, “The Western Media: A Pillar of the State”, highlighting Venezuela´s struggle to democratise the media.

Ali said the world is suffering through “a prolonged war, implemented by the United States, which is aimed at dominating the world and maintaining US hegemony”.

Canada Continues to Support Right-wing Coups

By Yves Engler

Dissident Voice

August 11th, 2012

Six weeks ago the left-leaning president of Paraguay Fernando Lugo was ousted in what some called an “institutional coup”. Upset with Lugo for disrupting 61-years of one party rule, Paraguay’s traditional ruling elite claimed he was responsible for a murky incident that left 17 peasants and police dead and the senate voted to impeach the president.

The vast majority of countries in the hemisphere refused to recognize the new government. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) suspended Paraguay’s membership after Lugo’s ouster, as did the MERCOSUR trading bloc. Last week the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported: “Not a single Latin American government has recognized [Federico] Franco’s presidency.”

21st Century Socialism: Making a State for Revolution

By Lee Artz
Triple C
2012

Objectively speaking, movements, classes, and media must challenge power to be revolutionary. One cannot govern from below. There can be no grass roots social transformation without replacing existing power.  History has shown from Ghandi and Mandela to Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Lula in Brazil, neither the working class nor its charismatic representatives can secure any lasting accommodation with their patriotic capitalists. Negotiating better terms for the exploited while leaving the social relations of capital intact is not revolutionary, nor even defensible as pragmatic today. If freedom, democracy, and social justice are expected, there is no “third way” as Hugo Chavez and Venezuela realized after the media coup of April 2002.

In the 21st Century, it’s either global capitalism, with more human suffering and environmental collapse or it’s socialism with the working class and its allies building a democratic society of international solidarity. Venezuela provides a positive prime instance of this claim. In Venezuela, revolutionaries are changing society by taking power. This essay highlights the features and contradictions in this historic process, turning to media practices in particular to illustrate the dialectic of state and revolution. This contribution recognizes the need for revisiting and contextualizing the Marxist theory of the state, the role of the working class, and the relationship between culture and socioeconomic relations under capitalist globalization of the 21st century.

Read more HERE.

Five Reflections about 21st Century Socialism

By Marta Harnecker
SolidarityEconomy.net

June 18, 2012

The journal Science and Society devoted a special number in April 2012 [Volume 76, No. 2] to explore central topics in the current discussion about socialism. Marta Harnecker and five other Marxist authors from different countries were invited to participate in this reflection by the editors Al Campbell and David Laibman, who prepared a set of five questions. This paper written in July 2011 presents her contribution with some foot notes that does not appear in the journal. The following topics are explored: 1. Why speak of socialism today?; 2. Central features of socialist organization of production; 3. Incentives and the level of consciousness in the construction of socialism; 4. Socialism and the transition to socialism; and 5. The centrality of participatory planning in socialism.

1. WHY SPEAK OF SOCIALISM TODAY?

1. Why talk about socialism at all if that word has carried and continues to carry such a heavy burden of negative connotations, after the collapse of socialism in the USSR and other Eastern European countries?

2. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, Latin American and world leftist intellectuals were shocked. We knew better what we did not want in socialism than what we wanted. We rejected the lack of democracy, totalitarianism, state capitalism, bureaucratic central planning, collectivism that sought to standardize without respect for differences, productivism that emphasized the expansion of productive forces without taking into account the need to preserve nature, dogmatism, the attempt to impose atheism and persecution of believers, the need for a single party to lead the transition process.