Franz J.T. Lee, February, 2009

Venezuela: Rumors, rumors, rumors ... where truth is in a world of contradictions!

There we go again! Rumors, rumors .... conspiracy, arrests of paramilitary forces, secret meetings in Puerto Rico and Margarita, student 'guarimbas,' dangerous marches, workers strikes, killings, clandestine arms factories, fascist propaganda machines, bad weather in the hottest and driest season, heavy rains, permanent headaches...

In La Florida (Caracas), Globovision informs us, that unknown persons threw a hand grenade at the office of the opposition party Action Democratica (AD) -- some say that it was AD itself, others claim that it was the marauding 'terrorist' Bolivarians.

This is a world of contradictions in Venezuela, where truth itself is a flow of contradictions.  Seven policemen and four civilians were detained as the result of attacks on the Jewish synagogue in Caracas last January 30 ... what are all these about?

Yes, this is symptomatic, in Venezuela ... we have elections again ... a referendum to amend certain articles in the Constitution.

The issue: to achieve something that is has been both democratic and normal in many countries for decades ... in Britain, Germany and elsewhere ... for leading public and government figures i.e. the possibility to be re-elected freely by popular vote for as long as the sovereign people deem it necessary.

The 'real' problem for the deposed 'opposition' is: No! Chavez must go! We are chosen to stay forever in power!

The 'solution' for 'chavismo': Yes! Chavez must stay!  Elected by free and democratic popular vote

And, what is the talk of the town?

"The extreme right is agreeing (or meeting) with the extreme left!"

Comrades, no matter what euphemistic or 'revolutionary' interpretation we give to such a political statement, it is extremely dangerous and could easily be understood in a counter-revolutionary way. Such un-scientific declarations indicate a serious theoretical question within our ranks, even within the Bolivarian Revolution itself: and that is a logical, theoretical dilemma.

On the one hand, such a world outlook is formal logical to the Aristotelian extreme: 'A' always = 'A'; it should never be changed by any extreme, not from the right, not from the left, not from above, not from below, not by anything radically different than 'A'.

This leaves no room for social, socialist revolution to surpass the third law of formal logics.  Such an ideology cannot operate within relative directions, within changing extremes; it nurtures static illusions, it conserves the status quo, it cultivates 'peaceful, non-violent,' eternal, structural, intra-systemic exploiting reforms and dominating reformism, it simply does not serve the existential class interests of the global toiling workers. 

In a word, it is counter-emancipatory.

On the other hand, such an attitude negates contradiction, theory and dialectics, the logical science of motion, of change, of revolution. Who denies contradiction, who cannot identify unity, the dialectical unity of 'unity and contradiction', who cannot contradict 'unity and contradiction', well, he or she will have great difficulty to act and think in the real labor and capitalist world, to develop praxis and theory, because our current problem is a global contradiction of multiple contradictions, of a myriad of quantitative and qualitative changes.

To know what Yes and No are all about in the coming referendum of February 15, below a revision of simple dialectical logical terms.

The two extremes, the two sides  of any process, of one and the same process, are its limits of existence, of growth, its Affirmation (its 'Sí'), and its Negation (its 'No') An Affirmation without a Negation, and vice versa, is plain nonsense. To be a subject you need an object and vice versa. To make a revolution you need a counter-revolution, to vote for a Yes, you need a No! Both of them reflect the true reality of current Venezuelan economics and politics.

In reality, in modern bourgeois, capitalist states, why do the rulers fear the 'extremes', radicalness and class violence (alias terrorism)? The answer is very simple: The modern bourgeois State (for example, the United States of America) has the monopoly of all these horrors; it has to preserve and conserve its master-slave extreme, must make propaganda for the 'democratic, peaceful' middle, for the middle classes.

When the State is in crisis, like now, it shows its extreme, rightist, imperialist grimace: fascism. Logically as the result of the fierce global class struggles, the workers movements and their leadership become more radical, more 'extreme' in their demands. To identify this as the honeymoon, for example, of Hitler and Trotsky, is really the apex of historical obscurantism and social ignorance. Worse even, this kind of identification leads to the Moscow Trials of the late 1930's and to the casting of socialists, communists, Blacks, gypsies and Jews into Bantustans,  concentration camps and gulags in which millions perished across Europe and elsewhere.

To equate a Trotsky or Ernest Mandel with Hitler or Mussolini, comrades, is extremely dangerous. Apartheid South Africa used this segregationist equation and meeting point to murder thousands of the best sons and daughters of Africa, and many people across the globe did not care, after all, they were just communists, Trotskyists, radicals, extremists, terrorists. There are no 'ex-Trotskyists' who have transformed themselves into Neo-Cons. Surely, leftist lip service costs nothing. Condoleezza Rice never ever understood anything about Permanent Global Revolution or anything about the dialectical even, uneven and combined historical process of global emancipation. Who claims to be a Trotskyist and does not know and not practice the above is a caricature, is not a revolutionary Marxist. All his life Trotsky himself negated such fair weather 'Trotskyists'. In Paris, even Marx said: I am not a 'Marxist'.