processrepresents anything like a revolution, anyway. Obviously (1) will be a difference between me and your Marxist-Leninist friends, and maybe (2) is as well.
But even if I’m wrong about both of those points, I don’t think that’s a reason to uncritically side with or defend the particular acts of large-scale police repression of demonstrations that the Venezuelan government is engaged in right now, or to indulge in its tactics of instantly identifying any large-scale opposition or protest, no matter by whom or with what motives, by dismissing complaints against the security forces or by speaking of every protester as if they were an ally or dupe of golpismo.
If someone thinks the Venezuelan state is necessary, fine, we can talk about that later, but right now, it seems to me very important to remember that police and military forces in Venezuela are like police and military forces in every government; they are violent and when they are confronting large-scale protest they are typically at their worst. Even if you support a given government, that doesn’t mean that you need to be signed on for supporting it no matter what it does to people, and I think that radicals who see it as their job to defend the riot cops need to take a step back to think about what they’re doing.
A lot of Marxists commenting on Venezuela so far have struck me as simply unwilling to acknowledge basic facts about the reality of the situation, to the point of indulging in hands-over-ears dismissals of the most basic facts, e.g. that protest police often attack or arrest protesters, and instead they instantly change the subject to a discussion of how bad the right-wing opposition parties are, and how bad U.S. imperialism is. Well, of course, but that’s avoiding the issue, and sidelining the possibility not only of anarchist attacks on government as such, but even of the most moderate and politically sympathetic left-wing critiques of the Bolivarian government’s response to protest. And that strikes me as a dangerous precedent, and a serious problem for people who say that they want strong social movements to be able to hold those in power accountable.
]]>This may not be very satisfying, but in all honesty: I don’t know. I’ve never been to Venezuela and I don’t feel like I know nearly enough about the situation on the ground or the conditions faced by activists or by working folks to have anything very confident to say about strategy. I barely know what to suggest as strategy for the U.S. (radical movements are hard). I have my usual outline for how to think about solutions — avoid falling for electoral parties, oppose the police and military wherever they show up, build counter-institutions and try to pry existing spaces out of the grip of political parties. But that’s an outline for how to think about practical solutions, not a practical solution itself. What I’m trying to do right now is get caught up on the situation and in particular to find out more about what anarchists who live in Venezuela are thinking about where to go, and, eventually, try to take some kind of lead from that. I assume they know better than I do what’s possible and meaningful and what’s not.
I think for U.S. radicals, the best thing that we can do to keep Latin America from being constantly bombarded by the U.S. (E.U., et al.) is for us to organize against U.S. imperialism in our own country, and do our best to respond to practical requests for solidarity from the Venezuelan anarchist movement as they make them. I think it’s possible for us to do this without ignoring or making excuses for the Boli government’s conduct, or siding with one political party over another in the political struggle, or conflating some of the many movements in the streets (e.g., the student protests that launched much of the current round of conflict) with the worst parts of the opportunistic political opposition, all of which I think are not only mistakes but seriously dangerous to and a betrayal of solidarity with those independent social movements in Venezuela which the American Left has, so far, largely ignored.
I’ll know more about what to say when I know more about the situation.
]]>Your Marxist-Leninist friends are idiots and stooges for the Bolibourgeoisie. The Venezuelan state simply protects the privilege of the new oligarchs created by the ‘revolution’ against anyone who challenges their new found privilege.
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