Thursday, July 12, 2007

I Gave My Heart To Hugo Chávez

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24876.shtml

During the first years of the presidency of Hugo Chávez did give any label to the Venezuelan process and only regarded to it as "Bolivarian". It was on 2005 during the Social Forum in Brazil, Chávez went as far as saying that the Bolivarian process was the XXI century socialism. However, it is not clear what this new socialism mean. How is it different from other socialist models? Why did it take 6 years for Chavez to talk of socialism? In fact, Chávez seems to have changed his mind at least a couple times since the beginning of the process. What are the goals of the Bolivarian process? Where is Venezuela going to? What is life like in the new socialism? When Fidel Castro was asked about his mistakes on the last few decades, he answered that one of his mistakes was to think that somebody knew how to build a socialist system.


An interesting article. Puts forward the idea that to bring about change in a society requires evolutionary change based upon principals rather than revolutionary change based upon ideals.

The Endless Circle Of Drudgery That Is Capitalism

A tale of two acronyms: TGIF and TINA

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's famous response to a question about challenges to capitalism was TINA -- There Is No Alternative. If there is no alternative, anyone who questions capitalism is crazy.

Here's another, more common, acronym about life under a predatory corporate capitalism: TGIF -- Thank God It's Friday. It's a phrase that communicates a sad reality for many working in this economy -- the jobs we do are not rewarding, not enjoyable, and fundamentally not worth doing. We do them to survive. Then on Friday we go out and get drunk to forget about that reality, hoping we can find something during the weekend that makes it possible on Monday to, in the words of one songwriter, "get up and do it again."