Friday, February 02, 2007

ENABLING LAWS AND THE BOLIVIAN REVOLUTION


Why Aren't You in a Hurry, Comrade?
by Michael A. Lebowitz

"What's the rationale for allowing Chavez to govern by decree?"

A single party, rule by decree -- isn't this the road to Stalinism and to the gulag?

...unified party of the revolution .... with Chavez's stress upon the need to build it from below and to make it the most democratic party in Venezuela's history...

..people active in communal councils in two Caracas neighbourhoods (one extremely poor)...(with)... frustration and anger of so many with local and ministry officials who were holding back change --

-- they agree with the need for speed...they are less interested in democracy as process than in democracy in practice.

...in a country with an enormous social debt, where people have basic needs for sewers, electricity, water, jobs, housing, etc. and where they are being encouraged to take things into their hands through communal councils, cooperatives, and other forms of collective self-activity --

and where everywhere they come up against the long-standing patterns of bureaucracy, corruption, and clientelism -- should we be surprised that the people are impatient?

The real question that needs to be posed is one to traditional Venezuelan intellectuals and their counterparts abroad: why aren't you in a hurry, comrade?

1 comment:

John Brown said...

Damn right, Comrade!

Did you see that he said Bush is "more dangerous than a monkey with a razor blade"!