Latin America & twenty-first century socialism: Inventing to avoid mistakes

Monthly Review

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 1-83

  Harnecker, Marta ^a   Duckworth, Janet ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 77955201528     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (176)

1. Marta Harnecker, Rebuilding the Left (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2007), 45 et seq.
2. A broader development of this idea can be found in Rebuilding the Left, 81 et seq.
3. Roberto Regalado, América latina hoy ¿reforma o revolución? (Mexico: Ocean Sur, 2009), ix.
4. Diego Sánchez Ancochea, "China's Impact on Latin America," Observatory on Chinese Society and Economy 11 (June 2009).
5. Diego Sánchez Ancochea, "China's Impact on Latin America," Observatory on Chinese Society and Economy 11, 2009. Ibid.
6. Xinhua, Santiago de Chile, May 27, 2009.
7. In 2004, for example, 83 percent of Latin American exports to China were of primary products or of industrial goods based on natural resources; in contrast, 89 percent of imports from China were manufactured goods not based on natural resources. Xinhua, 2009. Ibid.
8. ALCA is the Spanish acronym for Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas. It is known in English as the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA).
9. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) or ALBA is a platform for the integration of Latin American and Caribbean countries which, inspired by left doctrines, emphasizes struggle against poverty and social exclusion. In 2009, "Alliance" replaced "Alternative" (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America) in the organization's name.
10. A free trade treaty with Central America more commonly known as CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement). The Dominican Republic joined negotiations, in 2004, and the agreement was renamed DR-CAFTA.
11. Report from the Ministry of Internal and External Security of Ecuador.
12. Hernando Calvo Ospina, Siguen las tensiones entre Colombia y Ecuador (Continuing tension between Colombia and Ecuador), Le Monde Diplomatique Rebelión, June 29, 2009.
13. Página/12, December 16, 2008. The Rio Group was set up in 1986 as a successor to the Contadora Group, which mediated in the civil wars in Central America at the height of the Cold War. Counting Cuba, there are twenty-three members: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, Dominican Republic Belize, and other Caricom countries.
14. Mauricio Vicent, "La OEA levanta la sanción que excluye a Cuba desde 1962" ("OAS lifts punishment excluding Cuba in effect since 1962"), Havana/San Pedro Sula, June 4, 2009.
15. Aram Aharonian, "Latin America Today." Paper read at a meeting in the Centro Internacional Miranda on the International Situation and Twenty-First Century Socialism, September 30, 2009.
16. Aram Aharonian, Latin America Today, Centro Internacional Miranda on the International Situation and Twenty-First Century Socialism, 2009. Ibid.
17. La Jornada, September 28, 2009.
18. Oscar Ugarteche, "El banco del sury la arquitectura financiera regional" (The Bank of the South and the region's financial architecture"), Alai, December 12, 2007.
19. Emir Sader, "La crisis hegemónica en América Latina" in Raúl Jiménez Guillén, Elizabeth Rosa Zamora et al., El desarrollo hoy en América latina (Mexico: 2008), 18.
20. Latinobarómetro SeptemberOctober 2008, results released in Chile, November 14, 2009.
21. Up until June 2009, there were fourteen U.S. military bases in our region. The best known are : the Tres Esquinas base in Colombia, a country that has other bases, as well; Iquitos in Peru; Manta in Ecuador; Palmerola in Honduras; Comalapa in El Salvador, Reina Beatriz in Aruba; and Liberia in Costa Rica. Nevertheless, there is more and more resistance to their existence, such as that shown by the Brazilian and Argentinean peoples to prevent a base being setup in Alcántara, Brazil and one on what is known as the Triple Frontier, the point where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil all touch. What is more, Rafael Correa has ordered the Unites States to leave the base in Manta, Ecuador. Neither must we forget the heroic and successful struggle waged by the people of Puerto Rico against the U.S. base on the island of Vieques. Now we have to add to that seven new bases established in Colombia in open defiance of the Venezuelan government and two more new ones in Panama.
22. April 24, 2008, the U.S. Navy announced in a press release that it had redeployed the Fourth Fleet because of the immense importance of maritime security in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere.
23. Eric Toussaint "La roue de l'histoire tourne au Venezuela, en Equateur et en Bolivie," October 2009, http://ameriquelatineenlutte. blogspot.com/2009/11/ laroue-de-lhistoire-tourne-au.html.
24. Ana Esther Ceceña, September 2009,http://movimientonuestraamerica. wordpress.com/2009/08/15/honduras-y- la-ocupacion-dekontinente-ana-esthercecena.
25. Tenth Summit of the Rio Group in Santo Domingo, March 7, 2008.
26. Theotonio Dos Santos, "Las lecciones de Honduras" (The lessons of Honduras"), July 6, 2009, http://aporrea. org/internacionales/a81866. html.
27. Álvaro Montera Mejía, "Honduras: las trampas de la mediación"("Honduras: The Trap of Mediation") July 10, 2009.
28. "Honduras: ¿Un golpe de estado contra Barack Obama?" ('Honduras: a coup d'état against Barack Obama?"). This is the title of an internet article by Argentinean journalist Andrés Sal Lari, July 9, 2009.
29. His statements are based on the following information: "in the early hours of Sunday, June 28 two important State department officials, James Steimberg and Tom Shannon, contacted the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa and the U.S. military base in Palmarala to warn them of the coup and to tell them not to offer any kind of support" Nevertheless, the head of the base, who represents the Pentagon, encouraged the coup. This information was given during Venezuelan journalist and ex-Vice President José Vicente Rangel's television program on July 5, 2009.
30. Ceceña, "Honduras y la ocupación del Continente,' see note 24.
31. Hernando Calvo Ospina, "Siguen las tensiones entre Colombia y Ecuador," Le Monde Diplomatique Rebelión, June 29, 2009.
32. A maximum of 800 military and 600 civilian personnel, according to the Defense Co-operation Agreement ("DCA").
33. DCA.
34. Steven Kaufman, "Agreement on Colombian Bases does not increase U.S. Presence," October 7, 2009, http://caracas.usembassy.gov/?d=6182&lang= en.
35. Aharonian, "Latin America Today."
36. Roberto Regalado, "Es necesario construir una hegemonia popular," an interview on the website of Amigos de Vive TV, October 19, 2009.
37. Roberto Regalado, Es Necesario Construir Una Hegemonia Popular, 2009. Ibid.;
38. Beatriz Stolowicz defines them as post-liberal reforms. I recommend her excellent article 'El debate actual: posliberalismo o anticapitalismo," in America latina hoy ¿reforma or revolución?, 65-101. In this article, Stolowicz exposes what lies behind these reforms.
39. Aharonian,'Latin America Today"
40. Aharonian, Latin America Today, Ibid.
41. The "pragmatic left" includes President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Fidel Castro in Cuba; a multitude of big electoral parties, the main unions and peasant associations in Central and South America; the left electoral parties, the PRD in Mexico, the FMLN in El Salvador, the electoral left and the workers' confederation in Colombia, the Chilean Communist Party, a majority of Húmala, a Peruvian nationalist parliamentary party, some of the leaders of the MST in Brazil, the MAS in Bolivia, the CTA in Argentina, and a minority of the Frente Amplio and the workers' federation in Uruguay. Also included are the great majority of Latin American left-wing intellectuals. This bloc is called "pragmatic because it has not called for the expropriation of capital nor for the rejection of the debt nor for any kind of break in relations with the United States. See James Petras, "Latin America: Four Competing Blocs of Power," March 2007, http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo. php?p=1700.
42. The "radical left" includes the FARC in Colombia, some factions in the unions, peasant and neighborhood movements in Venezuela; the workers' federation, Conlutas, and some factions of the Landless Movement in Brazil; parts of the Bolivian Workers' Federation, the peasant movements, and the neighborhood organizations in El Alto; parts of the peasant-indigenous movement of the Conaie in Ecuador; the teachers' and indigenous, peasant movements in Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Chiapas, Mexico; factions of the nationalist peasant left in Peru; sectors of the unions and the unemployed in Argentina. It is a heterodox political bloc diverse and fundamentally anti-imperialist which rejects any concessions to neoliberal policies, is against paying the foreign debt and in general supports a socialist or radical, nationalist program. See Petras, "Latin America: Four Competing Blocs of Power."
43. See note 24 in Stolowicz, "El debate actual: posliberalismo o anticapitalismo," 99.
44. Harnecker, Rebuilding the left, paragraphs 117-21.
45. Beatriz Stolowicz, Gobiernos de izquierda en América Latina. Un balance político (Bogotá: Ediciones Aurora, 2007), 15.
46. We take up this idea again in Rebuilding the Left, 48.
47. Franz Hinkelammert, La lógica de la exclusión del mercado capitalista mundial y el proyecto de liberación (Costa Rio: DEI Publishers, 1995), 145.
48. Franz Hinkelammert, La lógica de la exclusión del mercado capitalista mundial y el proyecto de liberación , 1995. Ibid., 147.
49. Beatriz Stolowicz, Gobiernos de izquierda en América latina, 89-90.
50. The democratic regimes that aróse after the dictatorships in the Southern Cone and then expanded throughout the subcontinent are what some authors have called "restricted or wardship' democracies. See Franz Hinkelammert "Nuestro proyecto de nueva sociedad en América Latina: el papel regulador del estado y los problemas de autorregulación del mercado' ('Our Project for a New Society in Latin America: the Regulatory Role of the State and the Problems of Market Self-regulation"), PASOS, No. 33 (1991).
51. For a broader discussion of this subject see Marta Harnecker, La Izquierda en el umbral del Siglo XXI: Haciendo posible el imposible (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España editores, 2000), 183-90.
52. See Noam Chomsky, Como nos venden la moto (Barcelona: Icaria Editorial, 1996), 16. The term "the manufacture of consent" was coined by Walter Lippmann in his Public Opinion (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932). Chomsky, with Edward S. Herman, has also published a book with the title Manufacturing Consent.
53. Toussaint "La roue de l'histoire tourne au Venezuela, en Equateur et en Bolivie."
54. Valter Pomar, Las diferentes estrategias de la Izquierda latinoamericana (Mexico: Ocean Sur, 2009), 246.
55. Valter Pomar, "La línea del Ecuador," December 3,2008, http:/Avww.rebelion. org/noticia.php?id=77280.
56. Michael Lebowitz, "Venezuela: a Good Example of the Bad Left" June 1, 2009, Monthly Review 59, no. 3 (JulyAugust 2007) 38-54.
57. Alvaro García linera, speaking on the program 'El pueblo es noticia"on Channel 7 and Radio Patria Nueva, February 8,2010.
58. "[S]ome have spoken and written a lot about the Third Way, capitalism with a human face, Rhenish capitalism, Martian capitalism, and I don't know how many other kinds, trying to disguise the monster, but whatever mask one puts on the monster is a masks that falls to the ground destroyed by the facts. I myself must confess, there is no need to confess really, everyone knows, especially Venezuelans, I was going through a phase and talking about the third way." (Hugo Chavez, Speech at the Fourth Social Debt Summit February 25,2005).
59. Hugo Chavez, Fourth Social Debt Summit, 2005. Ibid.
60. Some authors, including Michael Lebowitz, prefer to call it 'socialism for the twenty-first century."
61. Diana Raby, Democracy and Revolution: latin America and Socialism Today (London: Pluto Press, 2006).
62. Although in his speech in Caracas' Teresa Carreño Theatre, during the Meeting for Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity, NovemberDecember 2004, he had already mentioned the subject
63. Hugo Chavez, "Opening remarks to the 4th Social Debt Summit" Caracas, February 24, 2005.
64. Tomás Moulian.Twenty-firsf Century Socialism: The Fifth Way (Santiago: Lorn Ediciones, 2000).
65. Empanadas are a typical Chilean food See Tomás Moulian "La Unidad Popular y el futuro" ("Popular Unity and the Future"), Encuentro XXI 1, no. 3;
66. Marta Harnecker, "Reflexiones sobre el gobierno de Allende, Estudiar el pasado para construir el futuro' ("Reflections on Allende's Government Study the Past to Build the Future"), Utopía, revista teórica del Partido Comunista de España, June 5, 2009,219.
67. Hugo Chavez, "Speech on Unity," Caracas, December 15, 2006, Ediciones Socialismo del Siglo XXI, no. 1, Caracas, January 2007,41.
68. The prophet Isaiah and many other prophets preached a message of equality that had a clearly socialist spirit See Chavez's "Speech on Unity";
69. Chavez quotes from the version of the Sermon on the Mount that appears in Saint Luke's Gospel, Speech on Unityibid., 42-43
70. Simón Rodriguez was Simón Bolivar's teacher and friend. The latter referred to the former as Robinson, hence the term Robinsonian; Chavez, Speech on Unity, Ibid., 51.
71. Chavez, Speech on Unity, Ibid., 46.
72. Álvaro García Linera, Luis Tapia Mealla, and Raúl Prada Alcoresa, Muela del diablo (Bolivia: Publishers Comuna), 46.
73. García Linera identifies four civilizing regimes in Bolivia. The first is the modern, mercantile, industrial regime. The second involves economy and culture organized around simple domestic-type mercantile activity, either craft or peasant (these activities account for 68 percent of urban employment). The third is communal civilization, and the fourth is Amazonian civilization, which is identified by the itinerant character of its productive activity, technology based on individual knowledge and industriousness, and the absence of a state. Altogether, two-thirds of the countries' inhabitants are in the last three "civilizing or societal bands,'46-47.
74. Civilizing or Societal Bands, Ibid., 48.
75. Chavez, "Speech on Unity," 48.
76. TTjhat party betrayed its nature and ended up being an antidemocratic party. And that the wonderful slogan, 'All power to the Soviets!' in the end became, in fact a completely different slogan: 'All power to the party! That regime turned into an elite regime which could not build socialism. That explains why, when socialism fell, the workers did not go out to defend it" Chavez, 'Speech on Unity."
77. V.I. Lenin, "Marxism on the State," http://marxists.org/ archive/lenin/ works/1917/staterev/index.htm.
78. Michael Lebowitz, Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006), 13.
79. The two following paragraphs are drawn from my paper "How Lenin saw socialism in the USSR,' given at a seminar sponsored by the journal América Libre, Sao Paulo, Brazil, December 2000. We found texts and proposals that are not very well known and that demonstrate that Lenin had no illusions about the difficulties of building socialism in the conditions in the USSR at that time.
80. V. I. Lenin, The Seventh (April) AllRussia Conference of the R.S.D.LP.(B.), http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/ cw/volume24.htm.
81. Marta Harnecker, Reflexiones acera del problema de la transición al socialism (Managua: Nevo Nicaragua, 1986), 23-35.
82. V.I. Lenin, the Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, http:// marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/ prrk/subservience.htm.
83. V. I. Lenin, The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It, http:// marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ ichtci/11.htm#v25zz99h-360.
84. Lenin, Our Revolution, http:// marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/ jan/16.htm.
85. Lenin Ibid. Our Revolution.
86. Lenin, Our Revolution Ibid.
87. V.I. Lenin, Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers,' Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies," Collected Works, Vol. 26 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 453-82.
88. I use this word in its strict sense. It is usually understood to mean that body (which can be composed of a president or prime minister and a variable number of ministers) that the constitution or the fundamental rules of a state awards executive duties or powers and that exercises political power over a society (definition taken from Wikipedia).
89. Marta Harnecker, "La lucha de un pueblo sin armas' (The Struggle of a People without Arms"), Encuentro XXI, 1995, http://rebelion.org/docs/ 95161. pdf.
90. Pomar, Las diferentes estrategias de la izquierda latinoamericana, 246.
91. Pomar, Las Diferentes Estrategias de la Izquierda Latinoamericana Ibid., 247.
92. Lebowitz, Build it Now, 67.
93. V. I. Lenin, first draft of The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power," Collected Works, Vol. 27 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 235-77.
94. Marta Harnecker, Los conceptos elementales del materialismo histórico (Mexico: Siglo XXI), 215;
95. E. Balibar, "Sur la dialectique historique (Quelques remarques critiques a propos de Lire le capital)" in Cinq études sur le materialismo historique (Paris: Maspero, 1974), 243. This article implies a radical change in the author's ideas about the problem of transition in comparison with those expressed in Lire "Le capital' (Paris: Maspero, 1965).
96. Miodrag Zecevic, The Delegate System (Belgrade: Jugoslovenski pregled, 1977).
97. This approach runs through all of Michael Lebowitz's work, and thanks to his influence, I have incorporated it into my work.
98. Michael Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010).
99. Kropotkin goes on to say, "At present it is the party committees, not the soviets, who rule in Russia. And their organization suffers from the defects of bureaucratic organization. To move away from the current disorder, Russia must return to the creative genius of local forces" (a letter from P. Kropotkin to V. I. Lenin, March 4, 1920, http://dwardmac. pitzer.edu/Anarchist-archives/kropotkin/ kropotlenindec203.html).
100. Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Chapter IV: Political Rights and Popular Referenda, Section One: Political Rights, http:// vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=6831.
101. Law of Municipal Public Power, Art. 234, May 17,2005;
102. Ibid. Law of Municipal Public Power, Art. 234, 2005
103. Ibid., Art 33. Law of Municipal Public Power, 234, 2005
104. In Venezuela, the municipalities are divided into parishes.
105. See Marta Harnecker, "De los consejos comunales a las comunas' ("From Communal Councils to Communes"), http://rebelion.org/docs/ 97085.pdf.
106. Hugo Chavez on his radio and television program, "Aló, Presidente" Teorico, June 11, 2009.
107. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863.
108. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, http://marxists.org/archive/marx/ works/1871/civil.war.france/ch05.htm. This concept was also applied in the soviets that existed in Russia in 1905 and again during the October Revolution, and became the base of the Soviet state in the early years of its existence. However, it became bureaucratized and lost all its original creativity; Socialist Yugoslavia managed to formalize a delegate system in its 1974 constitution.
109. See Zecevic, The Delegate System. Cuba, in its 1976 Constitution, established a political system where state power is exercised directly or through delegates to the assemblies of People's Power and other state organs that are under them.
110. Harnecker, Rebuilding the Left.
111. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 638.
112. "Productivism" is defined as the tendency to think that the solution to everything is to increase production of material goods without being concerned about the effects that certain production processes can have on nature.
113. On this subject we recommend Enrique Left, Ecología y capital: Racionalidad ambiental, democracia participativa y desarrollo sustentable (Mexico and Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1998). He argues: "Environmentalism is a radical critique of the needs imposed by the expansion of capital and over consumption which exhausts resources at an exponential rate. The concept of quality of life redefines human needs and repostulates the bases of the production process to satisfy these needs in a new social rationality," 284.
114. Michael Lebowitz, 'New Wings for Socialism," Monthly Review 11, vol. 58 (April 2007).
115. Ibid. Michael Lebowitz, 'New Wings for Socialism," Monthly Review 11, vol. 58 (April 2007)
116. On the concepts of ownership and real possession, see Harnecker, Los conceptos elementales del materialismo historico.
117. Lenin thought that big industry needed the existence of "a strict and absolute unity of will' to direct common work and that the task of the party should be to 'guide' the masses 'along the path of coordinating the task of arguing at mass meetings about the conditions of work with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, while at work." He stressed that democracy in public meetings should be combined "with iron discipline during working hours.' See V.I. Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" Collected Works, Vol. 27 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 235-77.
118. Michael Lebowitz, Building New Productive Relations Now, unpublished document December 2006.
119. Michael Lebowitz, The Logic of Capital Versus The Logic of Human Development, 54, communal council libraries, Venezuela.
120. Partido Socialista de Chile, "Elementos a considerar para la política de participación de los trabajadores en la empresa industrial" (Things to be taken into consideration for a policy of worker participation in industrial companies"), 1971.
121. I have taken the main ideas I develop here from Michael Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development, Chapter 7.
122. See Michael Lebowitz's analysis of the experience of co-management in Yugoslavia in the chapter entitled "Seven Difficult Questions" in his Build it Now.
123. 11"[U]nited co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production," Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, in the Appendix to 1903 edition of Belfort Bax, A History of the Paris Commune (Twentieth Century Press: 1895).
124. See Pat Devine, Democracy and Economic Planning; The Political Economy of a Self-governing Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
125. Noel López and I have written two documents on this subject: "Planificación participativa en la comunidad," http:// rebelión.org; and "Planificación participative en la municipalidad," currently undergoing final revision.
126. Marx, The Civil War in France.
127. István Mészáros, Beyond Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), 906.
128. On Lenin, Mészáros argues: "The main themes of The State and Revolution receded further and further in his thought Positive reference to the experience of the Paris Commune (as the direct involvement of 'all the poor, exploited sections of the population' in the exercise of power) disappeared from his speeches and writings and the accent was laid on 'the need for a central authority." Further on, he says: The ideal of autonomous working-class action had been replaced by the advocacy of 'the greatest possible centralization," (903-06).
129. Ibid.
130. V.I. Lenin, "10th Congress of the RCP(B)," Collected Works, Vol. 32 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 165-271.
131. V.I. Lenin, "How Should We Reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection," Collected Works, Vol. 33 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 481-86.
132. V I. Lenin, The Question of Nationalities Or 'Autonomisation," Collected Works, Vol. 36, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966).
133. V.I. Lenin, 'On the Role and Functions of the Trade Unions in the New Economic Policy," Collected Works, Vol. 33, 188-96.
134. Most of what follows has been taken from the introduction to Marta Harnecker, Cuba ¿Dictadura o Democracia? (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1979).
135. Fidel Castro, September 28, 1970, speech given for the 10th anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
136. Raul Castro, at a seminar for the delegates of the Matanzas Popular Power Assembly, August 22, 1974.
137. Jesús García, Gnco tesis sobre los consejos populares (La Habana: Revista Cubana de Ciencias Sociales, 2000).
138. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.
139. Ibid. The Civil War in France
140. Articles 16, 157, 1581, 85, and 269, Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, http://venezuelanalysis.com/ Constitution.
141. Marta Harnecker, ed., La descentralización ¿fortalece o debilita el estado nacional? {Does Decentralization Strengthen or Weaken the National State?), http://rebelion.org. This work includes papers presented by those taking part in a workshop organized by the Centro Internacional Miranda, September 23-24, 2008.
142. A company created as a state enterprise in the 1960s, then sold to foreign capital in 1997, and renationalized in April 2008 after an almost two-month strike by its 15, 000 workers.
143. Lebowitz, Building New Productive Relations Now. Most of the ideas I set out below are developed more thoroughly in that paper.
144. When those who govern Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela came to power, they promoted constituent processes. The new constitutions these assemblies drafted were then passed by a vote in a referendum. The Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela became law in December 1999, the Ecuadorian Constitution, on September 28,2008, and the Bolivian in February 2009. The Honduran president Manuel Zelaya also wanted to convene a constituent assembly but was overthrown by a military-institutional coup.
145. Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today.
146. Director General of the Venezuelan National Assembly's Department of Legislative Research and Development Marta Harnecker, La descentralizació n ¿fortalece o debilita el estado nacional? (Caracas 2009), http://rebelion.org/ docs/97088pd f. This book is an edited transcript of a workshop on this subject held at the Centro Internacional Miranda, September 23-24 2008.
147. It is not well known that the only high level coup-supporting officers who actually had troops under their command were Chief of the General Staff, General Ramírez Prez, and the Commander of the Army, General Vásquez Velasco. Backing the coup were several retired generals and about two hundred officers who in- duded generals, admirals, colonels, lieutenant colonels, and noncommissioned officers. Official statistics say the armed forces have 8000 officers. Eighty percent of serving officers backed the plan to rescue Chavez. The number may, in fact be even higher because communications were very difficult at that time.
148. Marta Harnecker, interview with Alvaro García Linera, March 2010 (work in progress).
149. Marta Harnecker, Militares junto al pueblo (Caracas: Vadell Hnos, 2003).
150. This can be corroborated by the biographies of the generals and officers interviewed in my book mentioned in the previous note.
151. Marta Harnecker, interview with Álvaro García Linera.
152. Indigenous, rainbow colored flag.
153. Marta Harnecker, interview with Álvaro García Linera.
154. "We have talked about two states here-one, the state that workers captured at the outset and that initiates despotic inroads upon capital, that is, the old state; and, two, the emerging new state based upon workers' councils and neighborhood councils as its cells. The starting point of course, is with the old state, and the becoming of socialism as an organic system is a process of transition from the old state to the new. But this means that the two must coexist and interact throughout this process of becoming." See Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development. Several of the ideas that I use below have been taken from this book.
155. Ibid. Lebowitz . Several of the ideas that I use below have been taken from this book
156. Ibid. Lebowitz. The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development
157. Feudal, Slave Owning, Tributary or Asiatic
158. Let us remember what Marx wrote In Chapter 31 of Volume I of Capital; The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production."
159. Harnecker, Los conceptos elementales del materialismo historico, Chapter 9.
160. Marta Harnecker. Haciendo camino al andar (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 2005), 334-35.
161. Karl Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne, http:// marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/ revelations/ch01.htm.
162. Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/mass-strike/index.htm.
163. Farruco Sesto, ¡Que viva el debate! (Caracas: Editorial Pentagráfica, 2009), 10-11.
164. Ibid., Farruco Sesto, ¡Que Viva El Debate 27-28. This statement by Alexandra Kollontai is along similar lines: "Fear of criticism and of freedom of thought by combining together with bureaucracy, often produce ridiculous results. There can be no self-activity without freedom of thought and opinion, for self-activity manifests itself not only in initiative, action and work, but in independent thought as well."
165. See Alexander Kollontai, The Workers' Opposition (1921), http://marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/ch03. htm.
166. Octavio Alberola, 'Etica y revolución' ("Ethics and Revolution"), El Viejo Topo, no. 19, (April 1978): 35. This reference and the one that follows are taken from Rebuilding the Left, 98 et seq.
167. O. Nún̄ez, La insurrección de la conciencia (Nicaragua: University of Managua Sociology Department 1988), 29;
168. Ibid., 60. La Insurrección de la Conciencia
169. Ernesto Che Guevara, "Socialism and Man in Cuba," in David Deutschmann, ed., The Che Guevara Reader (New York: Ocean Press, 2003).
170. Harnecker, Rebuilding the Left, 106 et seq.
171. Ibid., 354. Rebuilding the Left.
172. Ibid., 364.
173. An internal current in the Bolshevik Party that advocated greater internal party democracy; Kollontai, The Workers' Opposition, http://marxists.org/archive/ kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/ch03. htm.
174. Mao Zedong, On Coalition Government, April 24, 1945, http:// marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/ selected-works/volume-3/mswv3-25.htm.
175. Ignacio Ramonet Cien Horas con Fidel (La Habana: Publication Office of the Council of State), 677.
176. Ibid., 682-83.