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On 2017/06/08 04:07 AM, DW via Marxism wrote:
... what people were standing online for in truly massive numbers: toilet paper, soap, food, clothing, medicine, etc. ... At the end of the day...how could what is happening in Venezuela today *not* happen??? Anyone?
Today I happen to be in Beirut with eco-social (and a few eco-socialist) activists who are fighting mega-project maldevelopment, fossil fuels, pipelines and all sorts of environmental injustices - our network is connected through https://ejatlas.org/
What often emerges from these local battles is a fairly clear choice for a state: investment in extractive-oriented infrastructure with vast subsidies that typically benefit multinational corporations, displace local residents and wreck the eco-system on the one hand, or on the other, shift state resources towards meeting basic needs, including infrastructural backlogs in water and sanitation, household electricity, clinics and schools.
Finding the proper balance is vital, including nationalisation of commodity production and processing, for the sake of planning, retention of value and leaving resources underground when necessary, such as fossil fuels. (If you want one of the worst cases, I can tell you loads about South African ruling class choices along these lines.)
On the basis of a couple of visits to Caracas (2007-08) and discussions with people like Michael Lebowitz, Marta Harnecker and their allies (including a one-time planning minister) at the Centro Internacional Miranda, I was quite convinced of Chavez' desire to do the latter. Amazing radical hospitality was on display at CIM in those days, especially with Marta and Michael interpreting the complex shifts in power within the revolution.
However, there is a body of work by Edgardo Lander and his "Beyond Development" allies at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Quito office that suggests far too much emphasis was placed on extractivism, with all that that entails in terms of a political resource curse eating away at Chavez' legacy.
Edgardo was offering a comradely critique of this self-destructive extractivism well before the 2008 and 2015 oil price crashes, and I hope more comrades become familiar with his approach. At RealNews, Paul Jay did a fine 9-part interview with Edgardo: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=11723
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