++
Members of Venezuela’s Bolívar and Zamora Revolutionary Current meet to discuss how to best organize, democratize and radicalize "communes" within the context of the Bolivarian Revolution (Source: CRBZ)
Socialist People's Power: An Essential Feature of Any Revolution
By Bolivar and Zamora Revolutionary Current - CRBZ, February 4th 2011
An interesting phenomenon, this one of recent days. It appears that the faucet has finally been opened, allowing the free flow of opinions, critiques, and self-criticisms in the Revolutionary Bolivarian camp.
The debate now open revolves around the essential features that should characterize the Revolutionary Party, the counterrevolutionary role that is played by bureaucracy (though from high-up positions they define this as a subaltern problem), the necessary and irreversible protagonist role of Socialist People’s Power as the new emergent institutionality – all of these are topics that we now find being discussed daily within the responsible debate that little by little begins to take form in the Revolutionary Bolivarian Collective.
Hardly had Comandante Hugo Chávez announced his request for a new Enabling Law, when the conscious People, organized and mobilized, its collectives in plenitude of diversity, went out in support of the measure that without a doubt has an emergency characteristic – and obviously not only because of the human and material damages left behind by the inclement rains.
We are also on alert because, once again, the counterrevolution is coming after its privileges like Cerberus (the multi-headed dog of Greek and Roman mythology that guards the gates of hell). They return to the National Assembly disguised as the “clean and democratic caste,” while what they bring with them are conspiratorial and seditious plans elaborated by the Empire.
The visceral hatred of the old dominant class is expressed through its corporate and political instruments: the bosses’ unions; the hierarchy of the Catholic Church; the alienating and fascist means of communication; the university enclaves they control; the few spaces of Power that are still maintained by the dying oligarchy’s institutionality; the NGOs; and finally, the Political Parties.
Once the day clears, once we emerge from the collective trauma imposed by “natural disasters,” as well as a certain “peace” enjoyed by the Venezuelan family during these end-of-year festivities, then the real face of class struggle will appear with fury. They are the counterrevolution, and we are the patriotic revolutionaries (it is well worth the redundancy) – we are the prisoners of a political moment that imposes the rules of the game, on the courts of representative democracy, and all arrows point to 2012.
It’s within this line of thought that we permit ourselves a recommendation for Comandante Hugo Chávez: A great deal of serenity and consultation at the hour of decision-making, for example, when considering the possible rise in the IVA (Value Added Tax).
In our leadership that decides on matters of political economy, we have thus far lived a siege of contradictions. Many of their decisions of recent years have tended to hit the popular sectors of society hardest, this by way of regressive measures. We recognize that with Dr. Giordani some degree of coherence has been achieved – a coherence that did not exist in the leadership of economic finances before – but measures continue to be insisted upon with clear monetarist characteristics that chiefly affect labor over capital.
This is a government that above all else represents the Venezuelan People, the Poor. As such, it’s a question of continuing to improve the People’s quality of life, its access to quality food, education, health, recreation, work, and housing. It’s a question of making the distribution of wealth all the more equitable, breaking the historically narrow and exclusive pyramid that was built by the rentier capitalist model, a model built over the last one hundred years.
Inflation continues to be an enormous and dramatic problem to resolve. A problem that, without a doubt, is fed by the counterrevolution which seeks to minimize the wage recovery that the government attempts to apply each year; a problem, which affects almost exclusively, our People, the Poor, and to a lesser degree, the middle classes.
We believe that an increase in the IVA (without being economic experts) will only increase speculation and make even more difficult the control of inflation – and this is a key component of the conspiratory plans designed to sustain a policy of attrition against the Chavista electoral base, with sights set on the events of 2012.
The rich in Venezuela have money to give and gift away. When will the day arrive that a tax be imposed on rent, the day in which those who earn more, pay more? This would affect roughly 20% or less of the population, and would generate a great deal of resources. Or for example a tax on luxuries, on the use or acquisition of sumptuary goods such as whiskey, aged 12 and 18 years, the delicacies consumed by the rich, those “of Kind David” and others.
Our “silent” private banking system: How much money is stored there? Why indebt the state abroad, and in dollars, when the private banks have immense amounts of capital? Couldn’t taxes be applied to financial transactions or to the IDP?
In the end, all we want is to participate in the debate and to suggest that – at the moment of making economic decisions – not only technical criteria be applied, but also political and economic criteria. The economic cabinet should not decide things based on the cyclical cash flow, or on the holes that could exist here or there. The opinions of the revolutionaries should also be taken into consideration, without, of course, turning this in to a “democratic-istic commotion” in which extreme horizontal-ism puts the breaks on necessary decision-making.
As always, we will accompany and defend the decision made by the Comandante – whatever decision that might be – because we are loyal soldiers of the historical project that he incarnates and directs. But we will continue to insist on the necessity of deepening and extending the debate on revolutionary strategy and tactics, on themes such as the necessary industrialization of Venezuela and the construction of a Productive Nation with an elevated culture of work, definitively overcoming our monoproductive rentier model. And this debate should include the relentless struggle against the monopolies and oligopies, the struggle to achieve food sovereignty and security, to define with greater precision a revolutionary economic policy for this phase of the transition towards Socialism.
FOR THE DEMOCRATIC RADICALIZATION OF THE REVOLUTION
¡THOUGHT AND ACTION FOR PEOPLE’S POWER!
BOLIVAR AND ZAMORA REVOLUTIONARY CURRENT
~~~
Translated by Venezuelanalysis.com
++
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5978
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Humane-Liberation-Party Blog
http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/
Humane-Liberation-Party Portal
http://help-matrix.ning.com/
@Peta_de_Aztlan Blog
http://peta-de-aztlan.blogspot.com/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please keep comments humane!