Six years after the coup against the democratically elected government of Hugo Chávez was defeated by the magnificent mobilization of the masses, the contradictions within the Venezuelan revolution are as sharp as ever.

These contradictions have been more sharply expressed with the economic sabotage carried out by the opposition and the recent nationalization of SIDOR and other means of production.  Both revolution and counter-revolution rear their heads in these instances, and the only war forward is for the working class to take power in Venezuela. 

The top officials of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) recently manufactured a novel way to negotiate a contract.  Lie prone before management, grovel in the dirt, and then direct the workers to relinquish almost everything of value to the company. Beware!  This innovation might be migrating to the U.S. soon...

...The union officials have agreed, for example, to eliminate shop stewards, the people who are usually elected by the workers in each department so that when a worker or the union believes he or she has a grievance against the company, the shop steward is informed in order to trigger the grievance process.  Instead, there will be a single “employee advocate” for the entire plant where management will play a key role in this person’s selection.  The union officials have also given up a traditional pension plan in favor of some kind of company stock options.  The value of this alternative is that it introduces a level of suspense into the workers’ lives:  they never know for sure if they will have a pension when they retire since it will be entirely dependent on the vagaries of the stock market.  But the CAW concessions reach a stunning climax with their abrogation of the right to strike – EVER!

As early as 1936, Leon Trotsky predicted that the Stalinist bureaucracy that usurped power after Lenin’s death, would not be satisfied with its legal and illegal privileges, but would inevitably strive to replace the nationalized planned economy by privately owned monopolies. The capitalist counter-revolution in Russia, however, offers no way forward to the peoples of the former U.S.S.R.. It has been accompanied by a horrific collapse of the Russian economy, living standards and culture, as Trotsky predicted. If there is a country in the world where capitalism stands condemned, that country is Russia.

Originally published in the book Marxism and the USA, published by and available from Wellred.