At 13:36 03/11/2006, Doug wrote:
On Nov 3, 2006, at 12:25 PM, michael a. lebowitz wrote:
At 11:04 03/11/2006, Doug wrote:
I interviewed Tariq Ali the other week for my radio show, and finally
got to broadcast it last night; it'll be up on my web archive today.
Tariq speaks with Chavez fairly often, and says that Chavez regularly
says that we are not living in a revolutionary epoch, and all we can
accomplish now is a left social democratic set of reforms. "We cannot
leap" beyond history, he says - and Castro reportedly agrees. This is
what Chavez means when he talks about 21st century socialism.
Doug
Bunk.
Could you elaborate? Tariq says he got this directly from Chavez.
Doug
You could start by looking at 'The Revolution of Radical Needs:
Behind the Bolivarian Choice of a Socialist Path', the concluding
chapter of my 'Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century'. Suffice
it to say that Tariq wrote about the basic New Dealism of Chavez way
back (Venezuela being a wonderful Rorschach test in which the casual
visitor gets to see what he wants), and it is certainly possible that
Chavez has said something like that in a conversation with Tariq
(he's a very agreeable guy). But you need to know a bit more before
you say, 'This is what Chavez means when he talks about 21st Century
socialism.' Of course, for foreign consumption (especially before an
election), spreading the word that we're all just chickens here,
boss, can't hurt much.
michael
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela.
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