On Mon, Jan 5, 2026 at 07:36 AM, hari kumar wrote: > > you and JBF claim that the Bolivarian attempt at socialism was a good > model. I was disagreeing.
I am seriously wondering if anyone on marxmail is interested in a story that I find fascinating. hari seems to have thought that the story boils down to me claiming the Bolivarian model was good when in fact the Soviet model, 1917-1953 was better. That wasn't my point. But, to put my point in context of hari's counter-claim, I will say that there is indeed more to learn today from the aspirations and failures of the Bolivarian model than there is to perpeturally rehashing the minutiae of the Moscow Trials. This is the point I am trying to make. Marx's Grundrisse was first published in the USSR 1939 but most copies were "recycled" as insulation or toilet paper. It was finally republished in 1953 and gradually led to several reassessments of Marx's analysis in Capital. Istvan Meszaros was one of the scholars who contributed to this reassessment, along with Moishe Postone, Andre Gorz, Martin Nicolaus, the Italian Operaistas, and others. Many writers, including Antonio Negri and Aaron Bastani, for example, made wild speculations based on, particularly, the "fragment on machines" in notebook VII of the Grundrisse. Meszaros was not one of the goofballs but conducted serious analysis of the late 20th century conjuncture in relation to the insights offered by the Grundrisse. Hugo Chavez was deeply impressed with Meszaros analysis but Meszaros's writing is notoriously difficult (one might say ponderous?) and he enlisted Michael Lebowitz help in translating Meszaros's ideas into concrete policy proposals. Although he professed great respect for Meszaros's thought, Lebowitz disagreed with one key aspect of it, so his "translation" reflected his views on that issue rather than Meszaros's. Lebowitz's "revisionism" may or may not have had any substantive consequence for the fate of the Bolivarian revolution. It does, however, have consequences for our historical understanding of that revolution. Moreover, in my view, it also has very important implications for the prospects of social revolution going forward. That was the point I was trying to make. No one replied to my post but hari, who thought my point was that the Bolivian revolution was better than the Russian revolution. So I am left with the impression that my further documentation of these matters would not be of interest to marxmail subscribers. If I am mistaken and you want the next installments of this story, please let me know offlist. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40049): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40049 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117080199/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
