After weeks of what amounts to be propaganda against a sovereign state benefiting it's working-class people it has come this: New York Times posting a Op-Ed from the Son of Chavez himself.
-----------
CARACAS, Venezuela — THE recent protests in Venezuela have made international headlines. Much of the foreign media coverage has distorted the reality of my country and the facts surrounding the events.
Venezuelans are proud of our democracy. We have built a participatory democratic movement from the grass roots that has ensured that both power and resources are equitably distributed among our people.
According to the United Nations, Venezuela has consistently reduced inequality: It now has the lowest income inequality in the region. We have reduced poverty enormously — to 25.4 percent in 2012, on the World Bank’s data, from 49 percent in 1998; in the same period, according to government statistics, extreme poverty diminished to 6 percent from 21 percent.
We have created flagship universal health care and education programs, free to our citizens nationwide. We have achieved these feats in large part by using revenue from Venezuelan oil.
While our social policies have improved citizens’ lives over all, the government has also confronted serious economic challenges in the past 16 months, including inflation and shortages of basic goods. We continue to find solutions through measures like our new market-based foreign exchange system, which is designed to reduce the black market exchange rate. And we are monitoring businesses to ensure they are not gouging consumers or hoarding products. Venezuela has also struggled with a high crime rate. We are addressing this by building a new national police force, strengthening community-police cooperation and revamping our prison system.
Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/opinion/venezuela-a-call-for-peace.html
------------
It's clear that the US Government does not want a successful Socialist government in Latin America. Think about it: What if the coup that occurred Chile in 1973 failed? Socialism would spread from that country to Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and possibly all the way to Mexico. It would not be a one-party state but a democratic socialist state, ruled by the working-class public and not bureaucrats. And if the American public had any ideas, it would be game over and they would have to concede, or turn reactionist which the Venezuelan opposition has eventually devolved into.
Despite the massive gains the Venezuelan Government has accomplished there is much to be done. Primarily with the labor movement and democracy. The Venezuean government is in a state of market socialism or the 1st stage of socialism. The second step of socialism is to allow workers to own and control the means of production and their workplaces and with the PDVSA and government owned businesses: Keep them under government ownership but must allow workers to control the means!
The only thing left to do then is deal with the relics of deficient (bourgeois) democracy, as Venezuela has already innovating with participatory democracy. Expand participatory democracy and you'll replace this so called deficient democracy with a revitalized one!
No comments:
Post a Comment