Against Chávismo
Posted on July 22, 2008
The microsect Workers’ Liberty is prone to scatty sectarian outbursts (how do you spell ‘jealousy’?) and general dottiness — revolutionary poetry anyone? However, we find little to criticise in their adoption of Orlando Chirino’s characterisation of Chávismo as a ‘bourgeois’ and ‘Bonapartist’ political current, which is undemocratic and suppresses independent workers’ organisations.
The Socialist Party’s and most especially Socialist Appeal’s unfortunate enthusiasm for Chávez and a ‘revolution’ which isn’t and a ’socialism’ from above consisting of empty phrase-mongering and cheap populism, continues unabated. They have failed, or are perhaps unwilling to see through the veneer to the Caudillo beneath. Chávez is cosy with repressive, sunshine Stalinist Cuba and courts the reactionary Mullocracy in Tehran and clerical fascists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and he is not averse to a little good old-fashioned antisemitism:
The world has enough for everybody, but it happened that some minorities — the descendants of those who crucified Christ … took possession of the riches of the world. A minority appropriated the world’s gold, the silver, the minerals, the waters, the lands, the oil, and has concentrated the riches in a few hands.
