University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: In historical retrospective, very often it is sane and healing for us revolutionaries to recollect, to re-assess, to deepen that what we have done, what we have said, and to see whether our actions and thoughts were within the main stream of human emancipation.

In many commentaries, over the past six years, we have followed the revolutionary sparks and trails of the Bolivarian Revolution toward a still possible Socialism, towards real Human Emancipation.

In fact, since 25 years already, here in Venezuela, as university professor of political science and philosophy, having taught numerous active Bolivarians today in key positions, I am doing precisely this in revolutionary deed and emancipatory word. Already in 1986, at the University of The Andes, Mérida, Venezuela, in my text-book, Teoría-Práxis de la Revolución-Emancipación, I taught my students about the socialist basics of the coming Bolivarian Revolution.

To demonstrate how near we are to the audacious drums of the Bolivarian Revolution, allow me just to quote some encouraging thoughts that already haunted many a counter-revolutionary in Venezuela, on Internet and elsewhere. On August 15, 2003, I explained:

"Exactly because of the desperation of the national 'golpistas', of the urgency for the USA to have "regime change" here, and officially trying to connect Chávez to 'terrorists', to the guerrilla forces in Colombia, and even to 'Arab terrorists', and probably having supplied the golpistas with all the necessary funds, arms and technological equipment, this time, the correlation of forces spells a fierce, violent confrontation, that will verge on civil war, exactly what the USA and the 'opposition' need for foreign military intervention."

Already then sensing the historic current of the Bolivarian Revolution, I continued:

"Until now, the government intelligently has evaded this scenario, this trap, however, when full spectrum dominance is hell bent on annihilating a most dangerous opponent, a paradigm for the oppressed world, then, the enemy himself chooses the weapons of "peace", the forms of violence, and the only thing left for Venezuela is full spectrum self-defense, with its democratic constitution in the hands of millions of people. Thus, friends, beware, we are entering a decisive era of Venezuelan and Latin American history. Jacta alea est, the fascist dice are cast. "

Already a few months before, on Labor Day, May 1, 2003, in "A specter is haunting the Fourth Reich -- the specter of Chávez!", I urged that we should "learn to act and think the revolution", in other words that we should develop our own revolutionary praxis and theory:

"Creatively, the Bolivarian Revolution has to be acted, be thought, be formulated transhistorically, it needs a Práxis-Theory, that considers political economy, social class differences, the labor struggle, its internal, intensive "class struggle", a philosophy that surpasses all forms of global lies, ideology and mind control".

That the USA has planned long ago to intervene in Venezuela and Latin America, with military power, should it be necessary for its own economic, imperialist survival and struggle to retain world hegemony, is scientifically sure, there should not be any doubts about this issue. Within the very Bolivarian movement, it is counter-revolutionary to use this threat as an instrument to brake the deepening of the revolutionary process.

As Simon Bolivar had warned already, this Yankee plague is simply there, it is our daily bread; as long as the Bolivarian Revolution exists, and is advancing towards global emancipation, so long the Damocles Sword of North American Fascism will hover over our revolutionary heads.

On August 8, 2004, in a VHeadline commentary, I explained this reality, that is, "The Emancipatory Quintessence of the Bolivarian Revolution", as follows:

"In the short term, before the total world economic collapse, the brutal conquest of the remaining reserves of oil, water, oxygen and biodiversity is a top priority for the well-being of the Super Power, for the USA; also this is relevant with reference to its possible competitors for world hegemony, Europe, China, India, etc."

We explained that all these, reflected in Bush's current global economic and military "new wars", directly accelerate the Bolivarian Revolution toward higher dimensions of armed self-defense and popular resistance:

"All these affect the Bolivarian Revolution, are globalizing its revolutionary efforts, make it an emancipatory paradigm for the world. Its praxis becomes the totality of global workers' resistance, its theory is permanent revolution.

• This can be verified in its educational, political, economical and social projects, can be seen in the ferocious attacks of the global mass media, in the conspiracies, in the danger of violent US intervention."

Logically, I concluded:

"However, global fascism will have to annihilate the whole iceberg, in order to stop its "NO" on August 15, 2004 .... and all that what will follow thereafter: the still possible Emancipation of Humanity."

In his new book, "The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective". Alan Woods, introduced by Rob Sewell, confirms the above analyses, indicating that currently the Bolivarian Revolution finds itself at the crossroads.

He writes: “Right from the beginning we have pointed out that the Venezuelan revolution has begun, but it is not finished, and it cannot be finished until the power of the Venezuelan oligarchy is broken”, states Alan Woods. “This means the expropriation of the land, banks and big industry under workers’ control and management. It means the arming of the people. It means the setting up of action committees linked up on a local, regional and national basis. It means that the working class must organize independently and strive to place itself at the head of the nation. And it means that the Marxist tendency must strive to win over the majority of the revolutionary movement.”

Rob Sewell describes that what we have called the Bolivarian tip of the global ice-berg of permanent revolution, as follows:

"However, without doubt Latin America is currently in the vanguard of world revolution, and within the Latin American continent, Venezuela stands out sharply as the country most affected by this process. It would be no exaggeration to say that Venezuela is now the key to the international situation and the developing world revolution."

Yes, indeed, in agreement with Woods and Sewell, we are crossing the bourgeois, national, democratic revolutionary Rubicon, as vanguard of the exodus out of capitalism and imperialism, via our own socialism, toward global, human emancipation.

However, this path does not exist as yet, as we near our emancipatory goal, the path is being created, gradually our socialism comes into being and existence.

This President Hugo Chavez Frias formulated as follows: “I am convinced, and I think that this conviction will be for the rest of my life, that the path to a new, better and possible world, is not capitalism, the path is socialism, that is the path: socialism, socialism.”

However, there is no easy walk to freedom, the serpentine path toward Socialism, how to make and think the revolution, how to get rid of private property of the means of production and of communication, how to realize world socialism, Marx and Engels already have explained to us in 1850:

“... it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one.”
(Address to the Central Committee to the Communist League, March 1850).

Franz J. T. Lee
franzjutta@cantv.net

Cumana in eastern Sucre State, Venezuela
Photography: Santiago Padilla