20 Dec

The Left and Its Ideological Distortion.

Publicado por Yuyalikgua-orinok

By: Freddy Marcial Ramos. Nueva Prensa

Monday, March 26, 2007

Since the left structured itself as a political organization in our country, Venezuela, back in the 1940s, and was legalized in 1947 with the emergence of the glorious Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), which will soon celebrate its 60th anniversary, its historical trajectory has unfolded through legalization, proscription, and clandestinity to the present day. This political organization has always existed under the unconditional defense of Russian communism, conceived and developed by Lenin, inspired by the theory of Scientific Socialism proposed by Karl Marx. However, thinkers such as Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, and others introduced an ideological diversity within the interpretation of socialist thought, which ultimately led to the fall of the socialist bloc and the collapse of most socialist or communist governments worldwide. In my opinion, this entire historical situation has prevented them from seizing governmental power, whether through insurrection or the democratic option of winning the popular vote. There were many reasons that prevented them from achieving power, among them the grand strategies planned and executed by the US Pentagon and its powerful Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The world's largest economic power, the USA, spares no expense to prevent "humanist socialism," which is the antithesis of capitalism that exploits human beings, from taking hold in Latin America and the rest of the world, depriving them of what they have always considered their backyard. Throughout history, the vast Latin American geographic area, with the complicity of a subservient, traitorous leadership, has allowed them to acquire enormous capital wealth that has swelled the coffers of the US empire and its European partners, subjecting the humble Latin American people to the most terrible prospect of poverty and preventing them from achieving economic development.

Dear readers, I apologize if I make any political or ideological errors in this simple historical analysis of leftist ideology in Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. I am neither a political scientist nor a sociologist, much less one of those so-called prominent partisan political leaders. I am simply an educator concerned about the political events that have affected the society in which I have lived. I once belonged to a socialist party, where I spent 23 years of my life. When I belatedly realized the debacle that arises from the ideological diversity within socialist thought, I understood that I didn't understand how politics was done in my country. Therefore, I decided to leave and become an independent advisor who has tried to convey the most objective message possible to those who wish to read or hear my opinions.

The Venezuelan left is no stranger to all that has been discussed above. Since the government of Rómulo Betancourt, at the beginning of the 1960s, outlawed the Communist Party and the rest of the leftist organizations and decided to pursue an insurrectionary struggle to seize governmental power—an armed struggle waged in rural areas and known as guerrilla warfare—the emergence of ideological diversity began. It is important to remember that not only the Communist Party participated in the armed struggle, but also the "OR" (Revolutionary Organization), a Trotskyist-leaning organization; the "MIR" (Revolutionary Left Movement), which emerged from the first split within Acción Democrática after the dictatorship; and the "BR" (Red Flag), which arose from the extreme leftist division of the PCV (today a strange ally of the Venezuelan right and far right). This continued until the Special Amnesty Law was declared during the first government of Dr. Rafael Caldera, and from then on, the left was divided. The Venezuelan left decided to abandon armed struggle to join the democratic participation process. From then on, the legalization of these political organizations began, and others emerged as a result of successive divisions within the much-diminished political groups, such as the Socialist League, the Movement Towards Socialism, the Communist Vanguard, the People's Electoral Movement, the third major division of "Democratic Action," the "PRIN" (second division of AD), and finally the "Radical Cause." This last organization arose from the supposedly leftist labor union struggle, but it was actually an ideological hybrid lacking clear doctrinal aspects. Nevertheless, it managed to gain regional power in Bolívar state when the AD and Copei parties began their decline.