On 10/29/06, Patrick Bond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> CARACAS, Venezuela Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised Nobel
> Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus as a helper of the poor and called
> the Bangladeshi economist and microcredit pioneer a friend.
> Chavez paused during a televised speech Friday night to read a news
> report on Yunus' selection for the prize along with his Grameen Bank.
> "Let's give a round of applause to our friend," Chavez said, calling
> him an "example in the fight against poverty."
Yoshie, you ruined my day...
26 October 2006
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 275: NIGER DELTA: BEHIND THE MASK
<snip>
BEYOND MICROCREDIT EVANGELISM
Patrick Bond
What if microcredit were extended not by a private-sector bank that
must become self-financing but by a government and weren't conceived
as a cure-all for poverty but as one of many policy instruments?
On 10/29/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
With all due respect to the Nepalese CP, so favored by John Mage and
others at MR, and to Hugo Chavez, I have my own ideas about things
whatever "today's revolutionaries" believe.
Sure you do. We just have to be open-minded about how other people do
things in other countries.
The concept of a dictatorship of the proletariat seems fairly
central to Marxism, doesn't it?
If a dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't command enthusiasm even
among Marxists outside the West, let alone among broadly defined
leftists inside the West, there is a historical reason for it. While
rejecting gross distortions and exaggerations peddled by professional
anticommunists, we have to reckon with the record of democracy, or
lack thereof, under formerly and actually existing socialist
countries. It seems to me that revolutionaries in Venezuela and Nepal
are trying to avoid the errors of the past in this respect.
Moreover, today in many countries in the world, including Venezuela,
regular workers in the formal sector are a smaller, most privileged
sector among working people than those who manage to make a living one
way or another in the informal sector. And it is those who get by in
the informal sector, living in urban slums, that are the most ardent
supporters of the Bolivarian Process. That, too, gives the process in
Venezuela a special character, different from Nepal and different from
most revolutions in the 20th century which were driven by peasant
grievances and opposition to colonialism. Given a rapid pace of
urbanization and a huge growth of the informal sector in many
countries, the Venezuelan experience can tell us more about the wave
of the future than classic socialist revolutions in the past or
Marxist texts that came out of them.
If Yoshie does not think that works like "State and Revolution" are
relevant to today's world, she should say that.
As I mentioned earlier, Gramsci and Amin, from the Marxist tradition,
are probably the most useful theorists who can help us understand the
nature of actually existing struggles today.
However, it does not impress me to hear that Chavez has kind things
to say about the Grameen Bank. He also thinks that the CIA organized
9/11 but I am under no obligation to agree with him on that.
Not at all, but it's not necessary for a leftist to go on a warpath
whenever other leftists have this or that loopy idea either, whether a
loopy idea is held by Chavez or anyone else.
Taking a snapshot right now and saying "This is Venezuela" would be a
mistake. There is a long way to go and let's let history draw the
final conclusions.
Sure.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
