Published: Monday, July 30, 2007 Oscar Heck: Venezuela is paradise … and the USA is Hell in comparison... VHeadline commentarist Oscar Heck writes:   I think it is time to remind us all once again of the atrocities which the US military has been committing against their invented enemies … before they decide to invade Venezuela.

A few days ago, on 'The View' ... a US-based morning television talk show watched by millions of Americans and Canadians and whose main anchor person is Barbara Walters. I almost fell off my chair … what?   … millions of Americans and Canadians are now going to believe this because it came from the mouth of Barbara Walters!

What?   … but then I captured my balance and my brain began to question.

The first question was “  What has Venezuela done to the USA to deserve being called an enemy of the USA?”   But wait!     What has Cuba done?     How about Iran?     What about Syria and North Korea.

North Korea, Syria and Iran are essentially very far away from the USA … and I don’t seem to recall North Korea or Syria or Iran having attacked the USA in any fashion … or am I dreaming?

Am I the only fool that has missed something?

And what has Cuba done to the USA?    Cuba is a very small island, mostly rural, with a very small population and almost no weapons.   Why would Cuba be an enemy of the USA?   I must be hallucinating! Hey, if I am not hallucinating, then who is? If most of the people of the USA, including a supposedly intelligent and experienced journalist like Barbara Walters, believe that these five countries are the enemies of the USA, then what kind of magic mushrooms are these people on?

Maybe I should acquire some as well … and in some strange altered state of consciousness I will be lucky enough to experience a revelation that will also lead me to conclude the same.

Really though, it is more likely that the USA is experiencing a massive increase in serious cases of advanced paranoid-schizophrenia (hallucinations and paranoia) … and these millions upon millions require immediate medical attention.

I doubt that anyone in this world could ever provide even the minimal rational proof that these five countries are the enemies of the USA, and most particularly Venezuela.

Most Venezuelans ... even the violent anti-Chavez opposition ... do not want to live anywhere else but in Venezuela.     Why would attacking the USA be of any interest? Venezuela is paradise … and the USA is Hell in comparison. No Venezuelan in his/her right mind would ever consider living in the USA.     So why is Venezuela the enemy of the USA, I ask the question again?

If the USA believes that Venezuela is one of their enemies, then must Venezuelans expect an attack by the USA?     What do you think?     Iraq was an enemy of the USA … and look what happened … even though any normal human being can still not figure out exactly why Iraq was an enemy of the USA in the first place.

I pulled out some information published by Associated Press (AP) regarding some (and only some) of the atrocities committed against innocent Iraqis in recent times by the US military.     I also have a list of thousands of Iraqis, names, dates, ages, locations, etc., most of them innocent civilians (and many of them children and old people) who where assassinated by the USA military in the ongoing criminal invasion of Iraq.

I was going to make some comments about this list (not provided in this article) and about the following information … but I decided not to.    Here below is the AP information (July 2006)… judge and compare.

I, like most Venezuelans do not want to ever see the USA invade Venezuela.

And … if we think that the recent kidnapping and assassination of South Korean Christian missionaries in Afghanistan is horrible, read the following … compare, make deductions. (What the heck were Christian missionaries doing in Afghanistan anyways?)

— Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban convicted of killing severely wounded 16-year-old Iraqi during fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. Sentenced to one year's confinement, demoted to private and given bad-conduct discharge.

— Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr. pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in same case as Alban.     Sentenced to three years in prison, had rank reduced to private and given dishonorable discharge.     Horne's prison sentence later reduced to one year.

— Cpl. Dustin Berg convicted and sentenced to 18 months in military prison for shooting death of Iraqi police officer.

— Spc. Rami Dajani convicted of making a false statement following fatal shooting of Iraqi translator.     Sentenced to 18 months' confinement and given a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.

— Spc. Charley L. Hooser convicted of involuntary manslaughter in same case involving Dajani.     Hooser sentenced to three years in prison and given a reduction in rank and bad conduct discharge.

— Capt. Rogelio "Roger" Maynulet convicted of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter in shooting death of wounded Iraqi.     Dismissed from armed forces.

— Pvt. Federico Daniel Merida pleaded guilty to killing 17-year-old Iraqi soldier after the two had consensual sex.     Sentenced to 25 years in prison, given a reduction in rank and dishonorably discharged.

— Marine Maj. Clarke Paulus convicted of dereliction of duty and maltreatment in case stemming from death of Iraqi prisoner who was dragged out of holding cell by the neck, stripped naked and left outside for seven hours in June 2003.     Paulus, who commanded the Marine detention facility Camp Whitehorse in southern Iraq, was dismissed from the service.

— Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins acquitted of involuntary manslaughter in alleged drowning of Iraqi man but convicted of assault for forcing the man and his cousin into Tigris River. Sentenced to six months in prison.

— 1st Lt. Jack Saville pleaded guilty to assault and other crimes in same incident as Perkins. Sentenced to 45 days in military prison.

— Pfc. Edward Richmond convicted of voluntary manslaughter for shooting Iraqi in back of head. Received three years in prison.

— Sgt. Michael P. Williams convicted in court-martial of one count of premeditated murder and one count of unpremeditated murder in deaths of unarmed civilians during operations near Sadr City.     Sentenced to life in prison and given a reduction in rank.     Sentence later reduced to 25 years.

— Spc. Brent May convicted in court-martial of one count of unpremeditated murder in same incident as Michael Williams.     Sentenced to five years in prison.

— Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer convicted of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty in death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush after an interrogation at a detention camp.     Restricted to his home, office and church for two months.     Charges against three others dropped. (Information — above — compiled by The Associated Press News and Information Research Center.)

Film:
War On Democracy

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Tube travel Venezuelan style

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

Venezuela: Going Beyond Survival, Making the Social Economy a Real Alternative

August 11, 2006
Socialist Project E-bulletin, No. 31 - 2006-08-10

The growth of human capacities

Firstly, what constitutes a real alternative to capitalism? I suggest that it is a society in which the explicit goal is not the growth of capital or of the material means of production but, rather, human development itself — the growth of human capacities.

We can see this perspective embodied in the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela — in Article 299's emphasis upon 'ensuring overall human development.' In the declaration of Article 20 that 'everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality.' In the focus of Article 102 upon 'developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society.'

Not the logic of capital

Logic of profit rather than satisfaction

(1) Any discussion of structural change must begin from an understanding of the existing structure — in short, from an understanding of capitalism. We need to grasp that the logic of capital, the logic in which profit rather than satisfaction of the needs of human beings is the goal, dominates both where it fosters the comparative advantage of repression and also where it accepts an increase in slave rations. (2) It is essential to attack the logic of capital ideologically. ...That capital is the result of the social labour of the collective worker. The need to survive the ravages of neoliberal and repressive policies produces only the desire for a fairer society. And the search for a better share for the exploited and excluded. Barbarism with a human face.

(3) A critical aspect in this battle of ideas is the recognition that human capacity develops only through human activity. Only through what Marx understood as 'revolutionary practice,' the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change. Real human development does not drop from the sky in the form of money to support survival. Or the expenditures of popular governments upon education and health. Nor is it fostered by the petty tutelage and hierarchical decision-making of statist societies. The conception which challenges the logic of capital is one which explicitly recognises the centrality of self-management. In the workplace and self-government in the community as the means of unleashing human potential. i.e., the conception of a social economy — a solidary economy, indeed, of socialism for the 21st century.

Something different has been happening in Venezuela

(This is a perspective crystallized in the statement of the social democratic Premier of British Columbia in Canada at a time when I was Party Policy chairman — 'We can't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.') While it is too soon at this point to judge the course of developments in Bolivia, let me suggest that something different has been happening in Venezuela. I want to turn to that now — both what has happened and the current struggles.

The Venezuelan Path

The Bolivarian Constitution does not only stress the goal of human development. It also is unequivocal in indicating that human beings develop their capacity only through their own activity. Not only does Article 62 declare that participation by people is 'the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective,' but that Constitution specifically focuses upon democratic planning and participatory budgeting at all levels of society. And (as in Article 70) upon 'self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms' as examples of 'forms of association guided by the values of mutual cooperation and solidarity.' With its emphasis upon a 'democratic, participatory and protagonistic' society, the Bolivarian Constitution definitely contains the seeds of the solidary economy, the seeds of socialism for the 21st Century; and, those particular elements continue to inspire the Venezuelan masses. Yet, that constitution also guarantees the right of property (Article 115). Identifies a role for private initiative in generating growth and employment (299). Calls upon the State to promote private initiative (112). That constitution, in short, supports continued capitalist development, and this was precisely the direction of the initial plan developed for years 2001 to 2007. While rejecting neoliberalism and stressing the importance of the State presence in strategic industries, the focus of that plan has been to encourage investment by private capital — both domestic and foreign. This by creating an 'atmosphere of trust'.

An 'atmosphere of trust'

To this was to be added the development of a 'social economy' — conceived as an 'alternative and complementary road' to the private sector and the public sector. But, it is significant how little a role was conceived for the self-managing and cooperative activities by which the 'complete development, both individual and collective' of people was to be achieved. Essentially, this was a programme to incorporate the informal sector into the social economy. It is necessary, the Plan argued, 'to transform the informal workers into small managers.' Accordingly, family, cooperative and self-managed micro-enterprises were to be encouraged through training and micro-financing. From institutions such as the Women's Development Bank. And by reducing regulations and tax burdens. The goal of the State was explicitly described as one of 'creating an emergent managerial class.'

Venezuela's pampered oligarchy fully supported by US

Class struggle, however, nurtured the seeds of that social economy so that it increasingly was seen as the alternative to capitalist development. Even though the initial measures of the government to allow it to pursue its 'Third Way' orientation were not an attack on capitalism as such, the response of Venezuela's pampered oligarchy (supported fully by US imperialism) — first through its coup of April 2002 and then through the bosses' lock-out of the winter of 2002-3 — mobilised the masses in workplaces and communities and drove the Bolivarian Revolution along a path moving away from capitalism. As government revenues revived in the latter part of 2003 (with the effective re-nationalisation of PDVSA, the state oil company), new missions in health and education began to demonstrate the real commitment of the Bolivarian government to wipe out the enormous social debt it had inherited. Mission Mercal, building upon the experience of government distribution of food during the general lockout, began in early 2004 to provide significantly subsidized food to the poor (and continues to expand at the expense of the capitalist sector). Yet, the question remained — how were people to survive? How could the growing confidence and sense of dignity felt by the exploited and excluded as they emerged from the education programs be nurtured rather than disappointed?

New cooperatives fostered and nurtured

The answer in part was the creation in March 2004 of Mission Vuelvan Caras (Turn your Faces), a programme for radical endogenous development oriented to building new human capacities both by teaching specific skills and also preparing people to enter into new productive relations through courses in cooperation and self-management. And, the context in which this was occurring was one in which President Chávez was directly attacking what he called the 'perverse logic' of capital. And stressing the alternative: social economy whose purpose is 'the construction of the new man, of the new woman, of the new society.' While productive activity under these new relations has been expanding — With the number of cooperatives increasing from under 800 when Chávez was first elected in 1998 to almost 84,000 by August 2005). How much of an alternative to capitalism can this provide? The new cooperatives fostered and nurtured through Vuelvan Caras are destined to be small and not likely (certainly at their outset) to be major sources of accumulation and growth. Nevertheless, in their emphasis upon replacing the system of wage-labour with one based upon cooperation and collective property, they are a microcosm of an alternative to the logic of capital. And, since the general lock-out, they have been complemented by a drive for self-management and co-management on the part of workers both in state industries and also in closed factories.

A change

In the last year, solidarity rather than self-interest has become a major theme in discussions of the social economy (now renamed socialism for the 21st century). Drawing upon Istvan Meszaros's discussion (in his Beyond Capital) of Marx's conception of the communal society, President Chávez a year ago called for the creation of a new communal system of production and consumption. One in which there is an exchange of activities determined by communal needs and communal purposes. "We have to build," he announced in his July 17, 2006, 'Alo Presidente' programme. "We have to build this communal system of production and consumption, to help to create it, from the popular bases, with the participation of the communities, through the community organizations, the cooperatives, self-management and different ways to create this system." At the heart of this conception is protagonistic democracy — the combination of democratic development of goals at the community level and democratic execution of those goals in productive activity. New communal councils (based upon 200-400 families in existing urban neighbourhoods and 20-50 in the rural areas) are a critical part of this process. These institutions are now being established to democratically diagnose community needs and priorities.

With the shift of substantial resources from municipal levels to the community level, the support of new communal banks for local projects and a size which permits the general assembly rather than elected representatives to be the supreme decision-making body, the new communal councils provide a basis not only for the transformation of people in the course of changing circumstances but also for productive activity which really is based upon communal needs and communal purposes.

Not perversion that became the USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

On the side of production, there is a substantial expansion of new state companies. The introduction of co-management in basic industry beginning in the state aluminum firm ALCASA. The creation of a new institution — the Empresas de Produccion Social (EPS). The concept of these new companies of social production is that they both make a commitment to serving community needs and also incorporate worker management. Drawn from a number of sources: Existing cooperatives (now committing themselves to the community rather than only collective self-interest). Smaller state enterprises and private firms anxious to obtain access to state business and favourable credit terms. The logic of the EPS is to reorient productive activity away from exchange value to use-value — by linking to the community and to the state sector as part of production chains as suppliers and processors. The goal, in short, is to move progressively away from the separation of the collective worker inherent in commodity production to a concept of solidarity within the society. When you look at this picture, you understand better Chávez's statement at the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre about the need to 're-invent socialism,' the need to develop new systems that are 'built on cooperation, not competition.' Capitalism, he stressed, has to be transcended if we are ever going to end the poverty of the majority of the world.   'But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union.   We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.'

Which way Venezuela?

It should be apparent from the premises with which we began that only in Venezuela is there at this time a real challenge to capitalism. As opposed to fostering survival strategies and negotiating new terms in the implicit contract with capital. Is Venezuela succeeding? Certainly, there is an attempt to understand the logic of capital, the effort to attack capitalism ideologically in a battle of ideas and development of the conception of an alternative to capitalism.

What about the actual creation of that alternative? In Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century, a book which will be published next month, I state about the Bolivarian Revolution: The economic revolution, in short, has begun in Venezuela. But the political revolution which began dramatically with the new constitution also requires the transformation of the state into one in which power comes from below. And the cultural revolution, which calls for a serious assault on the continuing patterns of corruption and clientalism, lags well behind. Without advances in these two other sides, the Bolivarian Revolution cannot help but be deformed.

Succeeded in providing enormous hope and dignity for the poor

While the Bolivarian Revolution has definitely succeeded in providing enormous hope and dignity for the poor, it faces many problems and its success will only occur as the result of struggle.

Not only a struggle against US imperialism, the champion of barbarism around the world, which is threatened by any suggestion that there is an alternative to its rule. And, not only against the domestic oligarchy with its capitalist enclaves in the mass media, banks, processing sectors and the latifundia. Those are struggles for which the Revolution must be prepared and for which solidarity with that revolution is essential. The really difficult struggle, I suggest, is within the Bolivarian Revolution itself. Many problems have their origin in one question: who are the subjects of this revolution?

Principal beneficiaries

It is clear who have been the principal beneficiaries — the poor (and especially women) and, thus, its most passionate supporters. Yet, the further development of the revolution requires that not only the needs of people but also their transformative activity drive the revolutionary process. In this respect, the creation of the communal councils is an absolutely critical step in this process because it creates the space for the self-development of revolutionary subjects. At the same time, however, worker management in what are called 'strategic' state industries has moved backward, and these reversals have demoralised revolutionary workers; confining them to the adversarial role that they play in capitalism. It reinforces all the self-oriented tendencies of the old society.

Without democratic, participatory and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces. Further, if state firms remain characterised by hierarchical decision-making, how long before producers in the companies of social production (EPS) articulated in production chains with them discover that they are themselves little more than associations of collective wage-labourers? Where, then, is the social economy as an alternative to capitalism?

Which way Venezuela?

Chávez's 'citizen militias' on the march

By Mike Ceaser

Film:
War On Democracy

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