VHeadline commentarist, University of The Andees (ULA) Political Sciences Professor, Franz J.T. Lee writes: A hypothesis first argued by Parmenides (540-470 BC) of Elea (present day Italy), who as we know had a profound influence on Platonic idealist philosophy, and therewith on Christianity, has caused across the last millennia a cancerous intellectual and time barrier in the realm of real, creative emancipatory endeavors.Like in the case of the faked, anti-African-Arab racist 'discovery of America' by Christopher Columbus the following formal logical 'absolute truth' has become the cornerstone of progressive political domination, has turned out to be the greatest ideological and systemic hoax of all times: Nothing comes from nothing, in Latin form: ex nihilo nihil fit.
In other words, only the great gods have created everything, even themselves, out of nihil, out of Nothing, out of Nothingness.
Consequently, we should not and cannot enter nihil, it is the 'Holy of Holies'; globally the arch-angels of the accumulation of capital watch us, guide us towards the green pastures of toil, of labor pain. The holy oligarchs see to it that we do not mess around with divine creation. As explained in the Holy Scriptures the originators of the universe are pleased with their construction out of Nothing, and that is all that really counts in capitalist alienation.
In brief, in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Latin America, cultural imperialism still teaches us that there is no escape from the universal labor process, from exploitative ruling class history, from the wrath of Jahwe, from capitalism, from human alienation. We should better capitulate and resign from class struggle; as Jesus Christ predicted, we will always have the poor with us. As global racists desire, we will always have superior whites and inferior blacks, poor workers and rich capitalists, in essence, always masters and slaves.
Across the last centuries this is what colonial education in the South was all about.
Also in Venezuela and elsewhere many of us still fall victim to these capitalist ideological tricks and illusions, innocently we mistake them for true revolutionary and emancipatory deeds. Thus, according to corporate ideology and reformism, the universal, closed system, the world order can only be changed from within, by means of evolution and revolution; alternatively,which is the very same thing, the status quo can only be improved by endless prayers, forgiveness (for all the perpetrated ruling class mental and bodily holocausts which have already devoured hundreds of millions of precious lives across the millennia), by genuflections, secret devil pacts across class lines, anti-proletarian gentlemen agreements, truth courts, class consensus and treacherous alliances.
- Such reformist recipes also include: eternal faith, hope, love and charity; anything else, for example, proletarian creation, transvolution or exvolution, is tantamount to so-called evil, tyranny, dictatorship and international terrorism.
- Such new concepts that express the emancipatory spirit of tour apocalyptic time do not even appear ion the horizon of contemporary political and philosophic language, erudite scholarship and global emancipatory life.
All this is bourgeois, is outdated, it cannot fight corporate globalization, it is not new, not innovative; its capitalist vices date back to Francis Bacon and Destutt de Tracy. Marx and Engels already criticized "The German Ideology" before the 1848 revolutions in Europe, later they formulated the "Communist Manifesto" for a human exegesis out of this vale of tears, towards "human emancipation" (Marx).
Obviously Marxism itself has urgently to globalize, to update itself. This is precisely what we are doing here.
In Venezuela, in the epoch of globalization, of global fascism, we need a praxis and theory much more powerful than an obsolete bourgeois revolution, we necessitate the real new, a new emancipatory (wo)man whom the world has never seen before: we necessitate urgently an "exvolution"; an exodus of capitalist bondage. This is a mighty global task, not a one man or family endeavor. It needs a real and truly functioning praxico-theoretical Fourth or Last International.
However, to continue with this gigantic transhistoric task, we would need a creative, creating exegesis, , that is, an emancipatory "ex-systemic" manifesto or guide towards the outside, towards something that never happened before, never ever existed before. As the Marxist philosopher of hope Ernst Bloch reminded us, in the same degree as we approach emancipatory creation and creativity (natura naturans and natura naturata) creativity itself will come nearer to us, will become truly human, humane, creative.
Yes, comrades, emancipation is a tremendous life long task.
This reminds us of Marx who stated: not only thought should approximate objective reality, reality itself must approach thought. In fact, this is oscillating, dialectical praxis and theory. Hence our departure in the Bolivarian Revolution towards socialism can only be scientific praxis and philosophic theory, and not ossified ideology and repetitive, automatic consumer practice.
Furthermore, Ernst Bloch taught us that thinking is venturing beyond, is surpassing, is exit; he wrote: The cat falls on its four paws, but the human being who has not learned to think falls into eternal yesterday.
Hence, to march straight forward let us ask some categorical, answering questions, which will illuminate the weakest link of the chain of revolutionary illusions. Some of us nurture the reformist fallacy, the formal, logical belief, that social change can only come from within, from within capitalist globalization, from capitalism with a human, humanist face.
Well, dream on, ignorance is bliss! It is folly to study real, ruling class, modern history.
- * Without offending anybody in particular, by the Sun God, by the Zodiac, by Jahwe, by Apollo, by Jesus Christ, really, after dozens of millennia of 'cultural and civilized' exploitation of nature and human labor are we really still so naive, so blind, ... are we really still sitting in ivory towers, in total obscurity, in spite of scientific and philosophic socialism, ... are we politico-economically really so illiterate?
- * What went wrong with the world revolution, with our own beautiful and peaceful revolution? With our revolutionaries? Are we really still on track, do we have a vanguard, a socialist party, and what is its quo vadis? Do we care about the future at all? Do we have a one man revolution?
Without theoretical reflection of the above in a global, class conscious, proletarian manner we cannot seriously develop revolutionary praxis and theory in Venezuela, least of all, unprepared could we embark on realizing human emancipation in the 21st century at all. Presently, in a true socialist party, guided by revolutionary Marxism, we have to liberate ourselves from the ideological fangs and practical pangs of ruling class superstructural opium and ideological strychnine. If not, sad to say, like many other revolutions the very popular mass base of our revolutionary party will fade into oblivion. Therewith the few sparks of human emancipation against global fascism will also gradually die out.
- * The 'strong billion bolivar' question: politically, as so much critique of our Bolivarian socialism try to make us believe: politically, definitely is something going wrong somewhere in Venezuela? Do we have a crisis?
On the contrary, politico-economically there is a crisis in the White House, either it must try to save its coming fraudulent, undemocratic elections, or to risk a hidden internal fascist military take-over or externally it will have to fake a nuclear war.
In Venezuela it is not a ruling class ethical question, it is not even a formal logical dualistic 'right or wrong' issue, since centuries it is a dialectical matter of life and death. Also in Latin America, it is a titanic world class war against merciless capitalist destruction and death; currently in Venezuela and Bolivia it is an inexorable continental class struggle, it is neither pacific nor beautiful. As Marx and Engels have pointed out in their 'Communist Manifesto', global class struggle has raged since millennia already.
We repeat: class struggle is not obsolete, on the contrary, it never has been so topical, so indispensable like today. Arguments like the eternal litany, that the conditions are not yet ripe for socialism, we can just counter this reformism by asking: why are all the conditions for exploitation always mature? Why never for socialism? What do the eternal lovers of capitalism concretely and immediately fear most? When they see Chávez or Evo, why do the oligarchs shiver in their bloody army boots in Bolivia and Venezuela?
What happened in 2002-3 in Venezuela? Class struggle or playing cops and crooks with the Caracas Metropolitan Police and the snipers of the Death Squads?
- * Are we "advancing" backwards towards the last millennium, towards 1998? Under the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) will the awakened working masses (of 2002 and much earlier) really attain a higher revolutionary class consciousness, more emancipatory creativity, socialist people's power?
- * In the Latin American emancipatory drama are the working classes not the main actors and heirs of socialist revolution, of class struggle, of human emancipation? Are we as Venezuelan workers not part and parcel of the global proletariat in its historic march towards emancipation against colonialism and imperialism? Must we first find the revolutionary subject and then make the revolution? Over the last decade Venezuela has advanced to the most politicized country in the world, but this is not identical with the acquisition of a permanent proletarian class consciousness. Independent of all this, in latency and tendency the class struggle will continue in Venezuela. As long as the democratically elected government of President Chávez incorporates the deepest proletarian aspirations, it will have massive working class support. If any future Venezuelan government should develop into a bourgeois, democratic, capitalist State with anti-proletarian class interests to defend, well, then something will really go "wrong·with Venezuela. It happened already between April 11 and 13, 2002. It should never happen again!
Within the context of the current fascist pillage of global strategic and energetic resources and of the North American industrial military complex to plunder Venezuela to their heart's content, who else has Hobson's choice, that is, in international politics, who else can only choose between the devil and the deep blue sea? In fact, it is really a choice between two dialectical extremes, between Orwellian corporate barbarism and creative, human anticipation.
We in Venezuela have to decide between capitalism and socialism. Either our revolution is pregnant with scientific, philosophic socialism or it is not? There is no quarter, half way or fifty-fifty pregnancy in nature. No matter how we try to Christianize it, formal logics teaches us that the revolution is either socialist or it is not, that is, it is bourgeois capitalist. We should not try to fool ourselves.
The proof of the pudding we will relish in a very short period of time, at the end of November 2008, when the full reactionary blast against Venezuelan democracy will be launched again, this time from the inside and the outside. As President Hugo Chávez Frías so often underlined: the people, the working masses are wise. In the last elections, for the first time, on December 2, 2007, we lost over 3 million votes. Why? The answer we will know at the end of this year.
Now, to place the Bolivarian Revolution into scientific and philosophic focus, let us look at the long view of contemporary history, of revolution and emancipation. As Bertolt Brecht precisely explained, the few human beings who fight (and fought) for living, creative emancipation all their lives, have already verified scientifically that they belong to the real indispensable, optimistic and militant heroes of humanity, especially of the billions of unarmed toiling slaves and wage slaves on earth.
Over the last decades, for those comrades in Venezuela who still can sense and think reality, can understand what is dialectical negation of capitalism, it is clear what has to be done. We do not have problems with praxico-theoretocal inspiration, aspiration and anticipation. Many of the Venezuelan youths, not consumed by artificial capitalist needs and desires, are daring to take a long walk, to take a break, to break out of the normal war chant, out of ordinary commonplace. Some break through the savage capitalist quid pro quo.
President Chávez heads this youthful vanguard, which still preserves the revolutionary spirit of April 13, of the deepest anti-capitalist desires of the real daydreams of the working masses. As such, in America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere we can reach out for the stars, per aspera ad astra. We can go for the extraordinary, the unknown, the real new, in a nut shell, for an anticipatory outing, an emancipatory exodus.
At the moment the Russians also say No to Euro-Yankee imperialism, but it is not the No of the October Revolution. They say till Georgia and not a millimeter further, however, this No is intra-capitalist, it is not a negation, it is not an anti-capitalist dialectical negation.
Our Bolivarian revolution urgently necessitates a dialectical working class consciousness, a categorical Negation of capitalism and imperialism, to elevate itself on a higher anti-capitalist plane. If we cannot achieve this we will fade away into the revolution of the now globalized and finalized French Revolution. Till now, to eradicate systematically and principled forever capitalist exploitation in Venezuela, has not yet been the main historic task.
Over the last century, many a social revolution was nipped in the bud, has failed because of this mortal mistake.
Socialist revolution has many immediate tasks, but anti-capitalism is its heart beat. We have not yet tackled the internal evil at its very roots, we are not radical enough as yet. However, time and space on Mother Earth are running out ... what are we waiting for? For the revolutionary conditions to come? They will not come by themselves, that is why revolutions are being thought, are made.
Are we waiting for the Second Coming of the Inquisition or the Conquest from the North!
One thing is sure, also in Venezuela the renaissance of a vivid, valiant working class struggle will definitely accelerate the world revolution, will heat up its five revolutionary motors to acquire cruising emancipatory temperatures. That a revolution is raging in Venezuela, in Latin America, is crystal clear, in fact, we already had a century of revolutions all over. The real problem concerns scientific identification: Are we making a retarded French Revolution here or its Negation? As explained elsewhere, Marx called the alternative: Human Emancipation.
In the field of educational enlightenment to draw up an emancipatory exegesis, in Venezuela and in Latin America logically a gigantic intellectual praxico-theoretical battle against obscurantism, alienation, idealism, ideology and cultural imperialism must be launched, must be organized, as part of an extensive political program. This is a conditio sine qua non for scientific, socialist theory and praxis.
What is meant by taking a long, sober view of capitalist history?
It means that we have to break loose from the superstitious and religious shackles of the humming consumerist main stream. By means of eleven electoral victories in a row, we tried to leave the political maelstrom of eternal ideological correctness. However, our valiant efforts were not sufficiently anti-capitalist, not radical enough; we did not uproot the seedlings of corruption and bureaucracy, the strychnine of exploitation, domination and discrimination in our hearts and minds. In the titanic class struggle some of our revolutionary seeds fell on the wayside, on the rocks of consumerism; they were immediately devoured by birds of prey, by the capitalist arch-evils of accumulation, theft and profits.
However, never mind all the brutal reactionary, reformist onslaughts all over many of us are surviving as socialists, scientific and philosophic pathfinders, as Marxists. Even President Chavez is underlining the necessity of studying scientific socialism and learning from Marxism. Armed with a new world outlook, in Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Haiti, Nepal and elsewhere we are venturing beyond the hill, the mountain, the sea, the horizon, towards other, towards another realities and possibilities...
At last, we in the South, can challenge the ideologically infested arguments that the laws and sciences of galactic motion were created exclusively for the defense of the "master race", for the "chosen people", for the corporate moguls, for their private property of the means of production, absurd wealth accumulation, racist privileges and fascist power. At the same time, we detest the formal logical defeatist attitudes which argue that capitalism is eternal, will never perish, that social change can only come from within, and consequently, that objective, subjective and 'transjective' conditions to realize socialism will never ever come, would never ripen.
Faced with such ignorant bliss, philosophically we may just ask: how can socialism, as radical anti-capitalist possibility, as anticipated emancipation fail? According to the famous German objectivist idealist philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel, an expert in dialectics, only realities, like capitalism, which long ago already came into existence merit to pass away. Possibilities do not exist, they are only latent and tendential, hence they cannot fail, pass away. Who only lives on possible bread alone in real life will surely die of hunger.
World capitalism, including State capitalism, had its turn, across centuries for billions it just brought misery, exploitation, alienation and death. World socialism, its dialectical opposite, cannot bring forth the very same, else it will not be its opposite, will not be socialism; it never was given the real chance to convert its possibility into global reality. This is our immediate task.
Some related, relevant questions:
- * If possible socialism permanently is being repressed by Stalinism, Zionism, Apartheid, that is, by global fascism, then what has failed in reality? Is it not capitalism?
- * What is currently in a severe crisis which threatens to ignite a genocidal world war?
- * In the White House, is not bourgeois democracy, in reality, fascism in crisis ? Is fascism not the real grimace of world capitalism in crisis?
- * What is currently in a severe crisis which threatens to ignite a genocidal world war?
Anyhow, who still dreams that socialism was practiced in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe or in "Communist" China does not have the foggiest notion what is a caricature, what is the dialectical negation of capitalist exploitation, domination and discrimination and what is a dominant world capitalist mode of production. We repeat, for the sake of political clarity, to avoid ideological confusion, capitalism is a global plague, it cannot be eradicated locally on a single island,regionally in a single country, continentally in a bloc: already decades ago, Trotsky has explained all this in his theory of permanent world revolution.
Obviously, after millennia of valiant attempts to change the exploitative world system from within the labor process, from within ruling class history, we in Venezuela at the eleventh hour have to look for a real transcendental emancipatory exit out of this vale of workers' tears, out of this mortal systemic cul de sac. We ourselves have to create an exit, we have to succeed, to exceed, excel; it is a pertinent matter of urgent global human emancipation, of the preservation of planetary life in its totality or of a mental holocaust, of nuclear entropy and of a hellish galactic slow death.
If we know this, social reality will become fine in Venezuela.
Now, with the Marxist Ernst Bloch let us venture beyond, let us not walk in the shadow of death, approximating hell or heaven. In broad daylight let us exit, let us make an exciting, "exvolutionary" exodus. A little while ago, here in Venezuela, who knew anything about the existence of Ossetia? In which way does the future of Ossetia, Georgia and Poland affect our earthly existence?
- For a change, transcending common logics and ideology, let us try philosophically to capture the global meaning of the coming Orwellian War between "Eurasia and Oceania", between gigantic transnational imperialist corporations.
Our human trinity: our objective limitation, our subjective possibility, our 'transjective' anticipation
In Venezuela, like elsewhere, millions of us are confined to the immediate realm of the goddess Gaia. Exploited and violated Mother Earth marks the concrete everyday objective limits of our cosmic essence, of our human being, of our actions, work and 'pleasure'. Surely, belligerent capitalist technology now and then allows a very few of us scientifically to escape Geo for a little while; physically, as NASA astronauts we can penetrate the formal-logical, spatial-temporal external barriers of our natural habitat; theoretically we can even investigate the upper layers of our azure solar existence. Sometimes "Pentagon Aliens", members of the highly specialized technical intelligentsia, do have the perilous task to hop along on the moon or to perish next time in a spaceship secretly heading towards Mars.
In the darkness of such fleeting moments, at the turn of the millennium, here in Merida, Venezuela, at the University of The Andes, as natural scientists suddenly we did jump off our normal, boring, universal rat carousel and discovered the new: a small planet rotating in the obscure outskirts of our solar systems, beyond Pluto, namely Jayu. At the same time, in April 2002, by means of unique, popular class praxis within 47 hours we saved our kidnapped president, Hugo Chávez Frías, from the claws of bloodthirsty coupsters and returned him safely to Miraflores. A few months later, within record time, we rescued the very country from a severe oil plot and a national economic sabotage, launched by reckless oppositional plotters and their respective imperialist, corporate Yankee bosses in Miami, Washington DC, and in Europe.
Hence, theoretically, in Venezuela, in Latin America, and elsewhere in the South, we have already stuck our noses through the metropolitan bars of exploitative universality. Since more than a decade already we are breathing fresh transvolutionary air, free exvolutionary creative oxygen. The Lilliputian myopic global elites could bomb the whole fatherland to blazes, could destroy all private property of the means of production, could reduce all commodities to radioactive ashes, but they cannot stop the authentic new, the coming of human spring, of creative trinity, that is, of emancipatory human essence, existence and transcendence.
As Ernst Bloch stated: they cannot stop the human experiment, the experiment world, experimentum mundi. In spite of all the dangers of globalization, imperialism cannot halt the inexorable, sublime, majestic thunder of the galactic, crimson-red dawn of natura naturata and natura naturans, of creative nature and created nature. We have to free ourselves from the religious cobwebs, from the divine curse ranging from genesis to apocalypse, and venture scientifically and philosophically far beyond.
In the spirit of our epoch, in its zeitgeist, as pointed out before, we are surpassing the physical bars of ruling class traps, pot-holes and hoaxes. We see that we are vegetating in a closed system, in a closed rat hole. Within the Bolivarian revolution we are beginning to think seriously, to theorize with scientific transcendence; philosophically we are leaving the heliocentrist world outlook. We have to create a new logic, a new mode of action and thought, a new science and a new philosophy; we have to renovate ourselves anew.
Capitalist militarism is already in search for new forms of life elsewhere; life which mercilessly could be violated and destroyed by ruling class moguls again. We need not jump over the moon in order to know what is happening in the realm of the goddess Selena. The ancient hylozoist philosopher Anaxagoras already knew that Luna was a big 'rock'; for this blasphemy (asebeia) against ruling class controlled and sanctioned holy, absolute and absolutist truths, he was declared a persona non grata and was ostracized from Athens. Here we see already the danger of true science and real philosophy for the ruling class establishment.
As long as we as consumer bees hum in our cell phones, as long as we swim along with stream, devouring main stream propaganda, myths, hoaxes and lies, we will never know that we are languishing in a closed capitalist world order, that we are physically and mentally locked up in.
Ever since the First Conquest, since the 'discovery', Christianization and military occupation, the absolute majority of us in Asia, Africa, America and Oceania are living in a "democratic" dream jail, in a "peacefully" fortified world system, in a globalized graveyard totally stockpiled with tons and tons of mortal arms of mass destruction which could destroy the very planet itself.
In fact, as explained by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) already, the so-called globalization is the realization of the French Revolution. In this sense, it is the dialectical agony, the intrasystemic apex of capital accumulation, of monopolization, of merging, of capitalism itself. Also in Venezuela we are on the crossroads of capitalist production and destruction, on the Rubicon: also for the Bolivarian revolution it is either scientific, philosophic socialism or 'neoliberal' reformist barbarism. But, it could also be: neither socialism nor barbarism: that is, creative, creating emancipation.
- At any event, we should not sink with the capitalist Titanic, by means of an exvolution, we have to get off this fascist ship of State.
On the world market, the intelligentsia, the 'intellectual laborers', using machines and computers are driving millions of physical workers out of existence. Less than two percent of the global, globalized working classes , the intellectual workers produce about 80 percent of the major goods, mainly traded among metropolitan States; 50 percent of these products are bellicose merchandise, concern all types of arms of mass destruction.
As predicted by Marx in 'Capital', over the last decades, the geometric progression of pauperization on a global scale, is now even devouring the middle classes of the USA and Europe. In addition, the organic composition of capital has escalated dramatically. Inexorably living physical labor forces are being replaced by machines, computers and chips, this means that our use- and exchange-values in the South have depreciated by leaps and bounds; millions of us are being thrown onto the streets to perish as a result of famine, poverty, misery and plagues.
This means that also here in Venezuela we survive and vegetate in a heavily guarded "free"world order, in reality, in a closed labor hell, in the capitalist process of human production, in imperialist destruction, in fact, in universal, unilateral corporate history.
What we cannot achieve objectively as billions of individual physical beings, we can reach as subjective social beings and existences. Ernst Bloch said it in the following manner: Thinking is venturing beyond. As actors and thinkers, objectively and subjectively, as human beings and existences, as a class conscious proletariat, we, the Venezuelan workers, we, the 'wretched of the earth' could break out of our "
This is why the Bolivarian revolution was born more than a decade ago, why we have launched Bolivarian socialism. It is a social revolutionary mass upheaval against already existent globalized barbarism. Now, those of us who encounter ourselves at the vanguard of social and socialist revolution, immediately sense when we are getting off track. In the epoch of globalization, in such trying and dangerous times, in the fierce class struggle, very easily we can fall in potholes, can get entangled in the ferocious tentacles of corporate imperialism.
The Bolivarian revolution, the struggle to establish socialism on a world scale, is a gigantic task.
It necessitates critical revolutionaries in word and deed...
There is one world outlook, namely, scientific, socialist, sapient socialism, Marxism, that is not afraid of self-critique, of the truth ... it is the only living philosophy within global fascism that still could guide us towards real human emancipation.
Franz J.T. Lee
blackdiamond@franzlee.org
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