Chavez and 'post-mortem leftism'

March 9, 2013 at 8:21 am (democracy, Latin America, liberation, Marxism, populism, Roger M, socialism, stalinism)

Roger McCarthy writes:

This 2010 piece from M.A. Torres in Platypus Review #25 on Chavez is excellent, and concludes thus:

The question stands: If authentic internationalist Marxism is dead,  from what standpoint does one launch a critique of Chavez and his  followers without joining the Venezuelan opposition nostalgic for  neoliberalism? The only answer is history: The consciousness that the  present has fallen short of what once seemed politically possible, and  that this possibility could once again become available. The knowledge  that there was once such a thing as an international Left that was able  to intervene, transform, and lead social movements around the world in  the direction of the overcoming of capitalism. The awareness that the  mass politicization of the Bolivarian Revolution, which has put the word “socialism” on the lips of hundreds of thousands of working people,  will end up as yet another wasted opportunity if such a Left is not  reconstituted.

Admittedly, this standpoint is not much to start with. It is clearly  not as immediately gratifying as the self-deceiving “optimism” of  supposedly Marxist publications such as the International Socialist Review and the Monthly Review. But the game they are playing is no more than a spectator sport.  Cheering for team Chavez is a way for such post-mortem leftists to hold  on to dear life. It is how they justify their existence and convince  themselves that they are still serving a purpose: The good fight is  still being fought; even if they are helpless, they can be complacent in this helplessness, since they can always look at the next populist  strongman or, even better, wait for the next American invasion of a  Third World country to give them a new lease on life. But if we are to  reconstitute an international revolutionary Left, the first step will be to stop kidding ourselves. People continue to struggle, but the  struggle to overcome capitalism has not really been sustained.  Revolutions with a hope of actually overcoming capitalism around the  world are now a distant memory, at best. The current changes in  Venezuela cannot contribute to any real revolution until a genuine Left  challenges the regime that has instituted them. But such a feat will be  impossible if we do not finally get it into our heads that the  fatalistic slogan, “¡Patria, socialismo o muerte!” means the exact  opposite of the visionary words, “¡Proletarios de todos los países,  uníos!”

‘Post-mortem left’ is an extraordinarily useful term…..