Venezuela:
The Serpentine Road from
Bourgeois Revolution to Proletarian Emancipation
By Franz J. T. Lee
Home In
the third millennium the global
belligerent conquest of 'Humania South',
especially of the Caribbean, Central and South America, by the United
States of America, is in full
swing. However, on the historic world stage, in the wake of a possible
systemic capitalist collapse, an inexorable Pyrrhic war is raging that
is threatening to devour the super powers themselves. Poignantly,
in political
consonance with Rosa Luxemburg, Oscar Wilde has portrayed the
quintessence of the 'American Revolution' and of its disgraceful
aftermath:
"America is the only country that went
from barbarism to decadence
without civilization in between." 1)
About the revolutionary legacy of the
USA, Simon Bolivar hit the nail
on its head: "The United States appear to be
destined by Providence to plague
America with misery in the name of liberty” 2)
However, a specter is haunting the
United States of America and
Europe: -- the specter of the Bolivarian Revolution. All the great
powers "have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter":
Pope and Obama, Merkel and Sarkozy, Goriletti and Uribe. De facto
Uncle Sam has already invaded Colombia and has annexed it militarily.
Any sober mind could note that Venezuela
is next on the list of conquest. Precise bellicose preparations
for a full scale attack, organized internally and externally, are well
on
their way. The coming confrontation is not a skirmish between Obama and
Chavez, not ideological shadow boxing against the 'empire', not a
vendetta between Chavez and Uribe, no, it is the logical continuation
of the French Revolution, of bourgeois capitalist democracy, of social
intrasystemic reform, of global imperialism. For us in Venezuela, ever
since April 11, 2002, it was (and more than ever
still is) a permanent global anti-capitalist
war. It is the immediate urgency to defend and materialize our
planetary 'Matria', our emancipatory matrix.
Beyond doubt, in the name of our
Bolivarian Revolution much has been
done for the various social classes, due to well-known constraints, for
some less, for others more. Venezuela is still far away from becoming a
socialist country within a global emancipatory process.
As part of the
'gender' debate, true to Rosa Luxemburg, for us over the last decade,
social reform was a dialectical, quantitative, pertinent means
towards a qualitative end: world revolution, towards world peace. The
perilous revolutionary road towards the Rubicon, to cross it towards
emancipation, indeed is serpentine.
Bourgeois revolution brought about the
current productive and
destructive chaos and anarchy. The question remains:
can we poison the
black mamba with its own venom, with its nearly invincible weapon:
with revolution?
If not, then what is human
emancipation?
With global class struggles how could
we transcend,
'transvolve', from bourgeois / proletarian Revolution to Human
Emancipation?
In their 'Manifesto' of 1848, Marx and
Engels developed the first
theory of imperialist globalization and scientifically already
predicted the coming global capitalist anarchy, a direct product of
the European bourgeois revolution in its totality:
"Modern bourgeois society, with its
relations of production, of
exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic
means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no
longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has
called up by his spells. " 3)
But, what is 'revolution' all about in
the epoch of globalization, of the final collapse of capitalism?
Historically the only revolution which
radically transformed all
previous economic, political, social, philosophic, logical,
military, energetic, religious, moral, linguistic and cultural
structures and relations into a single mode of auto-destruction,
was (and still is) the global, bourgeois, capitalist democratic
revolution. This unique planetary process, this revolution outmoded all
previous modes of production. Currently, approximating the
Rubicon of earthly existence and human life, less than one-tenth of
humanity has already robbed 90% of human wealth. In its ravenous zeal
to accumulate extra profits this parasitic elite is striving to
materialize 'full spectrum dominance', is 'revolutionizing' its own
belligerent, technological self-demise. Daily it is producing arsenals
of mortal weapons of mass destruction, ranging from biological arms,
like AIDS, ebola, monkey, bird and swine flu, to HAARP, to
electro-magnetic weapons that could cut the planet nicely into halves
... or to station our only contaminated space ship near to Venus or
Jupiter ... and to hundreds of mortal nuclear weapons of all fatal
categories.
Except the bourgeois capitalist
revolution, ever since 1789, why did
all other revolutionary endeavors fail or why did we lose them?
Perhaps, is there something fundamentally strange about social
revolution?
Centuries ago the revolution
formed the conditio sine qua non for the coming into being of various
capitalist classes in
Europe; also for their decisive victory over all the antiquated ruling
lords, overlords and warlords. The success of its most effective
discovery, of a seemingly invincible arm of social combat against a
decrepit nobility and clergy, and later to be launched against
obstreperous labor classes, assured that the outmoded world powers
would never return again to stay and
that henceforth as 'turn-coats' or Quislings their ideologues and
mercenaries could be used freely
in the service of capital accumulation, of alienating the workers or,
if necessary, simply to be
disposed of as over-productive, archaic
flotsam and jetsam, by casting them onto the titanic capitalist
dung-heap of history. Till today this
is part and parcel of the intrinsic logic, the iron fist morality and
reality of
world
capitalist
revolution. Lately this happened to the Boer
ruling classes of Apartheid South Africa. Accompanied by a Nobel Peace
Prize this Herrenvolk was cast into eternal oblivion. What really got
rid of Apartheid in the 'Land of Sunshine' was corrupt 'Sun City', the
capitalist revolution towards total, totalitarian globalization,
towards global Apartheid. Nothing has revolutionized the world more
than the bourgeois accumulation of capital. Marx's 'Capital' describes the very
long history of
economic, capitalist revolution, inter alia, of its exploitation.
domination,
discrimination, terrorism and alienation. In the Mediterranean region
and adjacent territories, over more than
2500 years, the brutal unilateral accumulation of capital, wealth and
power, the 'master-slave' class relations, the systemic, dialectical
contradiction 'labor versus capital' and the forward march of homo
homini lupus, of history, expressed themselves in various modes,
appearance forms: in the French Revolution (1789),
Industrial Revolution (1830) and the first anti-colonial 'American
Revolution'
against
Britain. In reality, this was a colonial uprising against the British
crown. The 'Boston Tea Party' and the revolting slogan 'Taxation
without Representation is Tyranny!' formed part of the emerging
anti-colonialism which was being born in the Caribbean and America.
Only later it developed itself into a bourgeois
capitalist social
revolution per se, as part of the global capitalist revolution,
euphemistically called the 'American Civil War' or
'American War of Secession' (1861 - 65).
As Oscar Wilde pointed out, there was
nothing
'civil' or 'civilized' in this extension and globalization of
imperialism, as had already
been predicted scientifically in 1848 by
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their monumental 'Manifesto of the
Communist Party'.
American imperialist barbarism in Iraq
and
Afghanistan shows what the famous revolution was all about. More
than ever we have to
clarify, to conceptualize what is a social
revolution and what it is not. For classical socialism this is clear,
but things are changing very rapidly nowadays. Adjectives describe
essential appearance
forms (of a noun), phenomena of a thing, a concept, relation or
process.
Let us look at a simple example:
White snow. Snow is white.
It would be totally absurd to talk
about
boiling snow. With silvery, boiling water, we could make a delicious
tea, but we cannot make snow balls with boiling water. This is
independent of the fact that both could be the same thing, could be the
same chemical composition, H2O. It would be absurd to talk about
'national socialism' in Venezuela or about 'Christian socialism' in the
Vatican. How could the bourgeoisie that invented and made the
revolution with and against the proletariat now be confronted by the
proletarian revolution. Did the revolution change? Do we have to update
our arms?
This proletariat is a product of the
bourgeois
accumulation of capital, of capitalist economic, political and
social revolution. Because there is no living substitute
for healthy, human thinking and thought, isolated words, written
phrases, even language, do not think for us, they are just imperfect
social tools. Only Pavlov dogs, 'speaking tools', radio and TV
apparatuses, cell phones,
'think tanks', walking encyclopedia, Zombies and angels are
exempted from acting and thinking. They do not need to worry about
making the revolution or to emancipate themselves.
Surely we are free to call our
ideas, thoughts and acts, in any language, in
any words, by any name. Practice, ideology, freedom, socialism or
democracy are words that we often use in political life, but they could
become virulent breeding grounds, degenerate seeds of confusion,
propaganda, mind
and thought control; as such they lack stringent decision, incision and
precision. On the battlefield, in the 'war of ideas', they result in
sinister, anti-emancipatory, repetitive, reactionary, barren practices.
Concepts like 'revolution' or
'socialism' are superstructural historic
expressions of their specific age; different words could portray the
very same idea or thing; some words even change into their very
opposites. Fascist ideology and propaganda use semantic tricks to
confound the ordinary working people. For example, from the 'Manifesto
of the Communist Party' (1848) till the October Revolution (1917), cum
grano salis, politically the following words as described in socialist
literature were practically used as synonyms: a Marxist, revolutionary,
communist and Social Democrat. Today the former and the latter are
total
opposites, arch-enemies.
However, semantics is not the apple of
discord here. The
problem for Venezuela, for the Bolivarians, is scientifically to act
and philosophically to think the revolution, is to understand what is
its ideology and practice, and to surpass all these as praxis, theory
and 'human emancipation' (Marx).
This we have to do pretty fast, from
its Colombian military air bases,
the Yankee 'plague' (Simon Bolivar) is already pointing its arms of
mass destruction at Caracas.
Hence, continuing with our central
topic, what is the difference
between the general word 'revolution' in any language, and the
philosophic concept 'rivoluzione' or 'rivoltura'?
The latter were coined by the emerging
bourgeoisie during the
Renaissance. It is really all fair in love and war. Shakespeare's
Juliet
had a sweet taste of this theoretical dilemma: "JULIET:
'Tis
but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet ..." 4)
Names and words are not identical to
living, flowing contradictions,
relations and realities. In globalized imperialism there exists no
eternal, absolute truths to be learned by rote as quotes, proverbs,
catechisms, prayers or dogmas. In many educational institutions
and socialization centers we still are producing 'Pavlov dogs', we are
destroying the brains, the weapons, of our children; we are making them
easy prey to the fascist 'rainbow revolutions', to the Murdoch empire,
to the Mental Holocaust, to mind and thought control and
destruction.
Without thinking and thought no
emancipation!
The
bourgeoisie knew that it could not make its revolution with Zombies,
they needed their Maquiavelli, Adam Smith, Hobbes, Galileo, Kant,
Hegel, etc.
In the epoch of globalization, in
the mode of mass destruction, all scientific and philosophic working
class
struggles urgently necessitate 'praxical'
incision, theoretical precision and 'transvolutionary' vision.
These are the central arms to
emancipate ourselves: a new invisible
logic, invulnerable science, invincible philosophy, the novum per se.
Per aspera ad astra! Who does not aspire towards the unthinkable will
never reach it!
Historically, at least as dialectical
negation of capitalism, forming
real and true anti-capitalism, as socialists, we could learn much from
the stringent capitalist revolutionary
modus operandi and modus vivendi. They only understand their own
language, 'full spectrum dominance', the law of the guillotine,
decadent terrorism. If social reform, millions of prayers, peaceful
resistance and beautiful fraternal dialogues ever could stop
United States war planes from bombing us and thus would leave our
natural resources intact, then only 'military humanism', white
phosphorous bombs and depleted uranium ammunition would disappear from
the face of the earth. However, alas, war criminals always first shoot
and then ask questions. E contrario, emancipators are peaceful,
they
always behave civilized, that is why we have eternal peace talks,
everlasting dialogues and a shortage of coffins and graveyards. Now and
then David wins a battle against Goliath, but the price, the million
casualties, is too high, and thereafter? After such heroic battles what
is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam or Algeria today? Did we eliminate
capitalism? What is going wrong? Our Bolivarian Revolution, our ALBA,
quo vadis?
Worldwide in every respect we
have to be superior to world
imperialism, but ... how to acquire this proletarian strength and power
in a limited 'spacetime'? Should we change the latter?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gaza and
Falujah remind us of over five centuries of exploitative labor pain, of
bourgeois revolution. To construct the world market, the
Bermuda Triangle of 'unequal
exchange' (Samir Amin), no massacre, no genocide, no pillage were great
enough to
accumulate capital and profits, to satisfy power megalomania. Since
Miletus, the Periclean golden age, the Spanish Inquisition,
the European Conquest, no world religion, no ruling class ideology were
holy enough to destroy
millions of promising brains, to cast them into the Moloch of the
superstructural Mental Holocaust.
In his "Elegy Written in a Country
Church-Yard", Thomas Gray in elegant
poetic fragrance is reminding us of the immense cruelty of these
cardinal and capital crimes against toiling humanity who never had any
real future, who never had the chance to
blossom, who were nipped in the bud. Till today millions of hopeful
young persons are perishing in the toxic consumerist air. In 'favelas'
and
ghettos millions of 'lost souls' are vegetating in dire misery, eternal
poverty and are being rotted out by means of military man-made
epidemics and pandemics. What
tremendous human vis vitalis, eros, libido and orgone are concentrated
in billions of human beings, this creating, creative force
progressively is being annihilated by a small power elite. What the
masters most fear is that these masses, their 'speaking tools'
could
one day become class conscious creators and emancipators. Western,
European and Christian culture, civilization and colonization
guaranteed the success of capitalist revolution on a world scale.
Thomas Gray tells us about this hidden
human force: "Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean
bear: Full many a flower is born to blush
unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert
air." 5)
Now, what relevance does the
above have for us, for Venezuela,
for the Bolivarian Revolution?
Thomas Paine, for a long time an
'illegitimate', atheist founding
father of America, in a Cartesian doubting spirit, ... that could
also
be applied to the very ideology of the bourgeois revolution itself, ...
emphasized:
"A long habit of not thinking a thing
wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. " 6)
Yes, this is the repetition of
diatribal lies until the very authors
themselves believe in their own hoaxes, in the devil, 'terrorism', Bin
Laden or Al-Qaeda. In the critical spirit of Ludwig Feuerbach, Paine
was very clear about where to begin with the 'cultural revolution'; he
did not trust in the marauding golden calf, in the divine dollar. Long
before Karl Marx he stated:
"All national institutions of
churches, whether Jewish, Christian or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. " 7)
In the same bourgeois democratic
revolution Francisco de
Miranda was fighting to realize liberty, equality and fraternity. The
honorable inscription of his name in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris
demonstrates his relevance in word and deed towards revolutionary
enlightenment. Of course, the utopian and scientific socialists had
hoped that the revolution would not stop half way, would not be a
betrayal of the human rights of global workers. However, in the very
origin of the terms 'revolution' and 'revolver' we find the Janus-head
of bourgeois revolution itself, its anti-feudal and anti-proletarian
core, the suppression of workers' struggles. Ever since, the revolution
expresses the intrasystemic dialectics, the laws of motion, the process
of reckless accumulation of capital of this world order.
Now, revolutionary change can and must
come only from within, anything
else is 'terrorism', there is no exit, no exodus, no 'exvolution' from
globalization, from corporate imperialism. Capitalism is an anarchic,
chaotic closed mode of production.
Now we have a slight idea about
revolution. Finally, let us take an etymological sojourn through the
barren wilderness of bourgeois revolution. In words and concepts like
Religion, Reform, Renaissance or Recession,
generally 'Re-' means to return, regress, repeat, to come back in
circular or cyclic form; like a rat race on a spinning wheel. The verb
'volver' means precisely the very same motion. Hence revolution is a
double negation, a bodyguard of capital and a social guardian of the
imperialist status quo ante rem and of the corporate, establishment in
re.
During
the feudal Middle Ages, in the city-states of Northern Italy the verb
and concept 'revolver'
and 'rivoluzione' or 'rivoltura' were created to express the bourgeois
battle to gain political power against the outdated clergy and archaic
nobility, but also to suppress the revolts of the upcoming workers. In
the superstructure of the
Renaissance the social concept 'revolution' coincided with the economic
birth of 'labor houses', of the homo faber, of
primitive factories, of capitalism as a future dominant mode of
production. In the same way as the scientific and technological
revolution was advancing, the bourgeoisie by means of the Reformation
and mechanical materialism progressively was liberating itself from
religious obscurantism and began to formulate its own secular theories
of social revolution, as a desired, human, class act. After the
betrayal of the bourgeoisie, by casting the workers out of the
revolutionary benefits, the Industrial Revolution brought misery and
poverty to the European working classes. In 1848, in the midst of
various revolutions, Marx and Engels formulated the theory and program
of 'human emancipation', the Manifesto of the Communist Party'. This is
not a credo or dogma, it is a historic document to update, to renew, to
rejuvenate.
Now, this is enough 'praxical' food
for theoretical thought and enough
theory for emancipatory delicatessen. Here in The Andes, facing Pico
Bolivar, that is losing its snow cap, with reference to the above, to
the urgent 'transvolution' from bourgeois revolution to creative
emancipation we will continue with our critical opinions and analyses
next time. 8) ***** Footnotes: 1) http://www.quotationspage.com/quote26131.html 2)
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_united_states_ appear_to_be_destined_by/167529.html 3)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/
communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007 4) From
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1594. 5)
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/full_many_ a_gem_of_purest_ray_serene-the_dark/257029.html 6) http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ authors/t/Thomas_paine.html 7) ibid. 8) Meanwhile, also see: http://www.franz-lee.org/files/ pandemonium01037.html
. franz@franzlee.org.ve http://espanol-franzjtlee.blogspot.com/
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