Venezuela: current historical context of the emancipatory future of our Bolivarian Revolution

VHeadline commentarist and University of Los Andes (ULA) political sciences professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: On August 30, 2008, Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, writing for the Asia Times, gave us an excellent description and analysis of the critical bellicose state of affairs from an Eastern point of view.

As we noted in previous commentaries, the current military apex of globalized capital accumulation is engendering a titanic life and death intra-imperialist struggle for world economic, political and social hegemony.

At the moment it seems that 'Euroamerica' versus Eurasia, represented by the United States of America and Russia, have entered into the Orwellian world arena, and are generating an apocalyptic maelstrom which eventually could draw the whole world into the voracious epicenter of a nuclear holocaust.

Inter alia, Bhadrakumar underlined the following major ingredients within this capitalist burning crucible. Its corporate terrorism, which endangers the lives of billions, is being spread by a wild bush fire and it is being stoked by the United States war mongers, by the global oil giants and their respective industrial military complexes.

* In spite of the attempted NATO military encircling of Moscow (and even of
Beijing), Russia still remains a Black Sea power. "Kazakhstan, the
Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand
shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia's de
facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated."

* He explained that if the war conflict in the Caucasus ever was over oil and the NATO agenda towards Central Asia, then "the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia's de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated."

* Obviously, in the gigantic global power struggle, in the brutal metropolitan conquest of remaining natural resources, like oil, gas, biodiversity and water, a limit was set for the Yankee bully. This is not happening because of anti-capitalism, on the contrary, this is brought about by the tendential laws and profound contradictions of the dialectical development of capitalism, of imperialism, of globalization, of competition, centralization and monopolization. The USA desperately is struggling to retain world hegemony, but the inexorable Hegelian dialectical law, "everything that comes into existence merits to pass away", also is catching up with Uncle Sam. At the moment he is still uniting and inviting the guests to attend his capitalist corpse-feast, also he has become his own grave-digger.

In a press conference in Dushanbe, Russian President Medvedev underlined that his counterparts in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), including China, "showed understanding of the Russian position."

* Among the Russian friendly guests who are being invited to the macabre coming burial of North American global terrorism are: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

* Of course, these are not small poorly armed nations like Grenada, Haiti or Afghanistan to be bullied at the whim and caprice of the White House. Kazakhstan, for example, is the "richest energy producer in Central Asia and is a regional heavyweight. It borders China. The entire US regional strategy in Central Asia ultimately aims at replacing Russia and China as Kazakhstan's number one partner. American oil majors began making a beeline to Kazakhstan immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - including Chevron, with which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was associated."

* Furthermore, Kazakhstan shares a 7,500 kilometer border with Russia, for Russian security it would be fatal if NATO were to capture and divide Kazakhstan. In fact, according to Bhadrakumar, "the US strategy had targeted Kazakhstan as the prize catch for NATO in Central Asia. The US aimed to make a pitch for Kazakhstan after getting Georgia inducted into NATO."

Now, how do these developments affect us, in Venezuela, in Latin America?

Ever since April 11, 2002, it seems that nothing is evident in the Americas; even that everything is possible, however, how to put anything into emancipatory reality is another question.

Our real problem is a decaying mode of destruction, a mode of destructive production, a global corporate, imperialist war economy. It is an already raging Big War which is Big Business and vice versa it is a Big Business which is Big War, in brief, it is the business of Halliburton and Exxon Mobil, it is about how to make a billion dollars profit a week, and much more.

Marx explained to us what is surplus value, that it is being produced by the economic exploitation of natural resources and human labor forces. In a recent speech President Chavez called this making "Super Plusvalía". Surplus value is the matrix of profits, of billions of dollars.Our oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, PDVSA, does not make huge sums of capitalist profits out of divine nectar, it is a capitalist business company, one of the world's biggest oil companies.

Just a few days ago, President Hugo Chavez informed us that Venezuela "has raked in 4.3 billion dollars from a tax on windfall oil profits it started collecting from state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela in mid-April, 2008." Furthermore, on the average Venezuela produces 3.3 million barrels of oil per day; of which about 2.7 million are sold as exports. At the current high price for a barrel of oil, we make immense profits, expressed in capital, as billions of dollars per month.

Obviously this is the Caracas connection to Big Business and Big War, and therewith to Big Brother, whom we call the "Empire". Also for the Big War we are already preparing ourselves.

VHeadline Venezuela News Editor Patrick J. O'Donoghue reports: "President Chavez has announced that he will continue to strengthen Venezuela's national defense system by purchasing arms from the Russian Federation, which, he reiterates, is a strategic ally in the process. More combat planes from Russia and others from China will soon be purchased. Another addition arriving shortly is an anti- air defense system with missiles with a range of 200 km. During his visit to Beijing in September, the President is expected to sign an agreement to purchase training planes and complains that he waited more than three years to purchase spare parts from Brazil for Tucano training fighters, but they never came because the US opposed the deal."

Surely this is the global context in which we have founded our Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV) and in which we intend to introduce Bolivarian Socialism.

Within this historical context of Orwellian fascist wars the emancipatory future of our Bolivarian Revolution will be determined.

Franz J.T. Lee
blackdiamond@franzlee.org

____________________________________

Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

HELP US TO KEEP BRINGING YOU THE TRUTH
http://tinyurl.com/n4fg