Presentation
Initially, this edition of the International Courier was going to be dedicated once again to the one hundred years of the Russian Revolution. However, the course of facts in Venezuela led us to change the proposal and dedicate most of its content to the discussion on this country (No. 14, in December 2015 had also been dedicated to it). We believe that the importance of the Venezuelan process for the Latin American and world reality, the political influence Chavez and Chavism reached, and the intense debates within the left justify this definition.
We try to approach this subject from different aspects involved in it. The article “From the Caracazo to the current Crisis” goes over the Venezuelan history in the past decades and the role of Chavism in this context, in the framework of an oil rentier capitalist semi-colonial accumulation model.
A second article approached the actual social catastrophe lived by the Venezuelan people under the Maduro administration, while the UST (Unidad Socialista de los Trabajadores – Workers’ Socialist Unity) declaration analyzes the political situation of the coup done by the government through the anti-democratic Constituent Assembly. The picture of the Venezuelan reality is completed with an article of a young teacher who sympathized with Chavism and was forced to migrate to Brazil to help sustain her family in Venezuela.
In a different text we analyzed the submissive economic model applied by Chavism, particularly the handing over to foreign companies of extended territories in the eastern region of the country (near the Orinoco River) for mining and oil exploitation.
The following article analyzes the characteristics of the so-called Bonapartist Sui Generis regimes and their process of degradation and degeneration in Venezuela and other countries of the world. In the central pages, we approach the intense debates that the present Venezuela reality generates within Latin American and world left.
The Russian Revolution could not be absent and we dedicate two articles to it. The first is a debate with those who identify Bolshevism with Stalinism. The second is a vindication of Trotsky and the Trotskyists’ role in the struggle against Stalinism.
Finally, we with pride and joy we announce the premier in Buenos Aires (that will then present in Brazil and many other countries) of the film Peace, Land and Bread, produced by the IWL-FI in tribute to the 100 years of the Russian Revolution.
THE EDITOR
International Courier 18: Out With Maduro!
