- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Venezuela's Hope

In Reply to: Reasons to be cheerful... posted by Farinata on December 22, 1999 at 14:23:53:

Let's also not forget the SOLUTION to Venezuela's problems, the new President, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias. The Colonel led an usuccessfull coup in 1992 but was elected five years later with an overhwelming majority. Chavez has re-established state control over the oil industry, has guaranteed social security, unemployment insurance, education and health care for everyone, has opened up the doors for a greater sttate role in the economy, and has made it possible for corrupt officila sto be immediately voted out by the populace. He hads openly supported Cuba as the beacon of justice in teh Americas, and proudly boasts that he was denied a US visa. In short, he has wall street running scared, as well as the Venezuelan capitalists, and that's good enough for me. Venezuela is on the road to socialist democracy, though if you ask the Trotskyists about Chavez, they airily refer to him as "a right wing populist in the Cardenas mold."

(Cardenas was the social democratic Mexican leader whoo nationalized the oilfielkds during the tenure of FDR.)

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