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In reply to the discussion: Venezuela to create new workers militia [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)No, there are other schools of thought. But in Venezuela, it isn't about any of those. Chavismo isn't being resisted by anyone because of any alleged "totalitarian" acts(if it was totalitarian, they wouldn't keep having free elections), but solely based on class. A few working-class folks have gone anti-chavismo because the rich have deluded them into thinking that "free market" economics will give them a better life(despite the fact that free markets never benefit anyone BUT the wealthy).
The notion that the PSUV is a police-state party is solely an American-made myth. And nobody who is going on about "free speech" and "new elections" and all that actually cares about the poor. If they did, they wouldn't be obsessed with getting the PSUV out of power. The only reason anyone wants that is to restore the pre-PSUV old order. No one who uses the code words like "free speech" and "human rights" in the Venezuelan context ever does with any humane or egalitarian intent.
"Free speech",while admirable, doesn't really exist anywhere, and is never worth making life worse for the poor. Once the poor have lost ground once, they can almost never ever regain it....and conventional "democratic" politics, there as well as here, are always rigged against the poor and the workers. "Elections", in most countries are just a method to decide which faction of the austerity consensus administers the status quo. Elections are not about freedom or about giving anybody a truly better life.
What happened in this country after 2008 proves that.