Anti-Maduro demonstrations in Venezuela

The Aljazeera report quoted above says

This is one, and only one, version of what happened. Other news reports talk about armed opposition activists as responsible for the deadly violence.

says a summary of news reportson the Venezuanalysis website, a generally pro-Chavista source. Dutch press basically says that both sides blame each other for the violence.

There is, I think, no telling who did at the moment. What is clear is that this is a very right wing opposition movement, against a government that tends to treat any opposition, right and left, as a halfway house to sedition and treason. Not much sides to be taken for anarchists, I would say..

Yeah, I was just about to post in the forums asking if anyone knew more about this, after seeing this photo gallery:
http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTX18PJY#a=1

does anyone know more about the make-up of the protests? The official "opposition" are reactionary of course, and looking at the photographs the only visible symbols are the national flag, which is never a good sign…

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/20/venezuelas-poor-protests-ch...
Venezuela's poor join protests as turmoil grips Chávez's revolution

Angry, young disenfranchised proletarios stirring up an insurectionary moment

I hope you're joking.

you hope who is joking about what?

Protests, whatever their politics, are only going to grow in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez may have been fun at times as he tweaked Uncle Sam's nose, but he was a populist, demagogic egomaniac who squandered Venezuela's oil assets on various self-serving international political gestures and left the economy in a growing shambles. Venezuelan oil for Cuban medicine and other such policies may have temporarily benefited the poor, but the economy has lost its base, and reaction and popular unrest can only increase.

And now we have Maduro, who seems to be the essence of a stooge. This is probably going to get really ugly.

Wait, what?

You guys seem to have a different viewpoint on Chavez than I do. I reject the idea that his policies or party are ideal, but I have always had a soft spot for him because the statistics seem to indicate that he did, in fact, dramatically reduce poverty.

Likewise, my understanding is that the current riot mobs are mostly right-wing extremists and fascists, the same brand that had tried overthrowing the Chavez government in the past with US backing. I have been looking at them with the same suspicion with which I am looking at the demonstrators in Ukraine. That is, I do not support the state's violent repression (I also heard they cut internet today), but I am weary of the goals and demands of the demonstrators themselves.

Do you guys believe that the demonstrations in Venezuela are based on some kind of legitimate economic grievances, and if so, what are they? Is there a case to say that this is a reactionary, right-wing nationalist/fascist uprising, as Maduro is claiming?

www.youtube.com/user/Anarquistas3

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AES, Thanks for the info, which pretty much assessed the situation in Venezuela as I had perceived it. What a mess! I checked El Libertario, too, which turns out to be a reliable source. So what is the Revolutionary Independent Venezuelan Left going to do, stuck as it is between the "left" hack, Maduro, and the growing diverse but ultimately right-wing forces "Maduroism" and a failing economy is generating?

As an example of Maduro's seeming complete lack of any real left theory or understanding, I offer his recent tirade against Venezuela's violent television soap operas in which he charged them with responsibility for Venezuela's spiraling murder rate. How idealistic of him! As a Marxist, I would have thought that the high murder rate and the consequent violent television shows would be a reflection of material social relations.

I identify with Drakula25's lament concerning the situations in the Ukraine and Venezuela. Western imperialism will have a harder time having its way in the Ukraine with Putin next door, but there is no such "protection" for Venezuela, and the various imperialist intelligence agencies have got to be licking their lips and working their asses off on this.

Well, I won't cry when Western imperialism gets Maduro, as I did when it destroyed Allende, but I sure empathize with the left chavistas who seem stuck in the middle of this mess with no place to go.

Mr. Natural,

I don't share your disregard for Maduro (or Allende). I might feel more like that if we were talking about Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi, or the like, but I think Maduro/Chavez and Allende were fairly worthy alternatives so long as the anti-state left groups in Chile and Venezuela continue to, well, remain practically non-existent. They have no base, and I'm guessing they are rife with the same kind of incoherent politics that is found among many other anarchist outfits. Barring their success, why shouldn't we eye Maduro with our (only) hope?

Because communist politics isn't about choosing the "best" political actor to get behind in a given situation, it's about supporting the working class in it's struggle for it's own independent interests.

fixed.

This is Western propaganda. The Venezuelan economy is exactly where it was when Chavez was first elected in 1998: a poor, high inflation, oil dependent (shipping chiefly to it's imperialist master USA) neoliberal economy. Even the state sector of the economy, the bastion of all social democrats, is a smaller percentage of gdp today then it was before Chavez, not to mention the 1970's at the height of right wing reaction. If the Venezuelan government carried out some foreign inverter demands like devaluation and agreed to fully submit itself to the US then you'd be reading puff pieces about how prudent and pragmatic the socialists are like the press describes conservatives such as Morales in Bolivia. Or that piece of crap ex-Tupamaro Jose Mujica gets a new pr spread every month or so in the Western press -as in the Guardian, NYT, Daily Mail- doing his Dalai Lama routine about how "humble" and benevolent he is and the Economist magazine gives his country the best of year award (his terrorist group killed the US ambassador!), meanwhile Tupamaros in Venezuela are "thugs", "colectivos" - a favorite tactic of of the Anglophone media to leave untranslated words relating to enemy factions, like "janjaweed or "shabiha," to make them sound foreign and hence dangerous- whose deaths in clashes with/attacks by anti-government protests are to be regarded as deserving if not celebrated.

What does Allende got on Maduro?

And if Western imperialism gets Maduro you shouldn't empathize with left chavistas, who have been the main mediators of workers political and economic subjugation, but for the Venezuelan working class because the when the liberals come to power they're going to devaluate and implement austerity to re-stabilize the economy, unlike Maduro's endless vacillation.

You're comparing Maduro to Stalin? Is thst to make Maduro sound bad or Stalin sound non-genocidal?

I feel like this article is very relevant right now: Ciccariello-Maher-An-Anarchism-that-Is-Not-Anarchism.pdf

"This pernicious dynamic continues well into the present, making Venezuela a notoriously difficult subject for anarchists to even discuss, much less to discuss coherently and in a principled manner. The danger arises from self-identified anarchists of wealthier countries identifying themselves automatically and uncritically with the self-identified anarchists of the Third World countries. This is something that I have observed on countless occasions: a U.S. anarchist visits Venezuela to get an understanding of the political process, seeks out Venezuelan “anarchists,” and thereby establishes a closed circuit in which what is learned about Venezuelan politics was what one sought out in the first place."

"The two sides of this closed circuit together constitute what I call “anarchist imperialism,” but this phenomenon is not limited, as we saw as well in our discussion above, to the word “anarchism.” The first implication, as we saw above, is the danger of U.S. and European anarchists identifying a priori with the “explicitly anarchist viewpoint,” i.e., those who self-identify as “anarchists.” In the Venezuelan context, the danger of such a gesture is exceptionally potent: due in part to the relative absence of such self-identified anarchists, the mantle of “anarchist” belongs to a very small number, including the small group operating around the newspaper El Libertario, who—by virtue of the attention granted by foreign anarchists—enjoy far more influence internationally than their domestic organizing would merit. And beyond the group’s utter lack of a social base, it is worth noting the reactionary positions they assumed in the past: while millions were pouring into the streets to organize popular resistance to the coup that briefly overthrew Chávez in April of 2002, El Libertario refused to support Chávez’s return to power (thereby driving out many of their more radical comrades)."

"This damning error of political judgment, moreover, was not accidental but was instead closely related to the “critique of all oppressions” logic dissected above. This is perhaps best expressed in the statement by an associate of El Libertario that “we are neither for Chávez, nor for Fedecamaras or the CTV or the Coordinadora Democrática.” It is incomprehensible on either a theoretical or a practical level to draw any sort of equivalence between the Chávez government and its quasi-fascist opponents, but it should not surprise us when dogmatic anarchists insist on doing so. While the editors of El Libertario are quick to insist that their position of “uncompromising opposition to Chavismo is not simply the result of a mechanical application of anarchist theory,” this denial reveals more than it convinces. What is necessary instead is, as we saw with the question of race, to understand the historical and strategic relationship between both sides and the potential to organize for revolutionary change."

"Which brings us to a second and arguably more threatening face of anarchist imperialism. If we have seen that a fidelity to the word anarchist often leads U.S. and European anarchists into closed circuits of occasionally dubious allies, then the flip-side of this is the silencing of many truly revolutionary voices and the erasure of radical antistate practices. The best example of this in contemporary Venezuela is the “Tupamaro” phenomenon. Put in the briefest possible terms, the Tupamaros are revolutionary neighborhood organizations and militias which simultaneously seek the radicalization of the Bolivarian Revolution and the assertion of local power and self-defense. Their view is one in which the state as it exists will be fundamentally dismantled, and yet their voices are rarely recognized by anarchists in Venezuela or elsewhere, and this is because of their seemingly paradoxical relationship to the state and Chávez. As the leader of one such militia group, La Piedrita, explained to me: ferocious autonomy notwithstanding, he considers Chávez the “maximum leader” of the process and “the only one who can prevent a civil war in Venezuela.” But this is in reality no paradox: it is the expression of a strategic understanding of the path the struggle in Venezuela is taking, one which entails that revolutionary organizations offer their support (to quote Chávez’s own historic words against him) “for now"."

"Thus the danger of what I call “anarchist imperialism” is one which is intimately connected with fidelity to anarchism as identity rather than as a series of practices which undermine and attack the state as a structure of inequality. In privileging nominally “anarchist” voices and erasing others, this approach can lead us to miss the antistate forest for the anarchist trees."

And this one: “Open Horizons”: An Interview with Roland Denis

“The problem in Venezuela is not a lack of organization. Rather it is how we organize ourselves to struggle against the cooptation of power by the leadership, which is corrupt, bureaucratic, and useless.”

While it is unwise to compare Maduro to Stalin or any other genocidal tyrant, the fact remains that there is nothing new about anarchists or libertarin socialists being slated for criticising leftist or so called progressive governments. Likewise, the wilingness of leftists to leap to the defence of whatever left capitalist regime is nothing new. Same goes for labelling anarchists as 'incoherent'.

Maduro is deflinitely the titular head of a "left" capitalist regime, but that doesn't mean the mobilization against the government is anything other than counter-revolutionary, or let's say preemptively counterrevolutionary, as the economy (remember that?) can no longer support the luxury of being "left" and "capitalist" at the same time.

The demonstrations are similar to 2002, with the "right" unleashing gunfire during demonstrations and then blaming the Chavez supporters, and the police.

Doesn't mean we support Maduro, or any left capitalist government, we do not-- but we do support, and organize for workers, in cities and rural areas where goons and thugs have operated against the poor for years, to mobilize against counterrevolution and the origins of counterrevolution by separating the bourgeoisie from their property, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

teh wrote:

Well yes and no. Not exactly where it was. Life expectancy as a whole has improved to a point that is the longest or near the longest for any country in Latin America. GDP was growing rapidly through 2007 (yes, oil dependency), and GDP per capita adjusted for inflation is still 25% above what it was in 2004, despite the years of negative/slow growth since then. Infant mortality (under 1 year of age), child mortality (under 5 years of age) and prevalence of child malnutrition have declined since 2004.

Still the "economics" of Chavez, and Maduro, have been little different than the old "sowing the petroleum" ideology of every Venezuelan leader of the past 90 years-- Chavez actually did it-- but with results destined to be undone sooner or later as the worsening economy made for stronger discontent.

Now is the sooner and the later for the bourgeoisie.

Funny response by a leftist:

I'm not defending the oppositions in any of these countries and their outlook (I'm not too up-to-date in many of these cases), but some of these leftists actually believe only people in the west have a reason to resist but not those living under other 'non-western' capitalist states. Apparently, Chinese capitalism is so glorious only people under the control of external, conspiratorial forces can end up protesting in the streets.

dp

Fair enough.

You'll love this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVK7BC3uiq4

See: http://libcom.org/forums/general/how-post-youtube-videos-101-31082013

I once carried on a very public feud with Caleb while a friend of mine was his roommate. It was really awkward. I saw him at a Stauaghton Lynd talk and walked up to say hello to him to make it more awkward. Im mostly glad he doesnt live in my town anymore but sometimes I miss encountering him at various liberal left things going on about North Korea.

can't stop laughing at the "hands off DPRK" bit

(although now I've started thinking about how horrible it must be to actually live in DPRK...the laughs have stopped)

HOPE THE LIBCOPS DON'T COME IN HERE TELLING ME STOP DERAILING TEH THREAD

but if they do ima say, "it's pretty clear that the bosses are really upset with Soapy"

statement by the ICC's section in Venezuela, unfortunately not translated yet, and a leaflet from a sympathiser denouncing the repression of the demonstrators by the Chavist regime. Offers to translate gratefully received.

http://es.internationalism.org/ccionline/201402/3996/la-indignacion-se-m...

Apparently supermarkets are using the protests to advertise scarce goods