anything with real power to change the world--any movement, regime, or revolution that starts out with the 'divine spark'-- has real potential to become a 'klippa', a dogma, repressive or worse.  By the same logic.  When you unleash the forces implicit in questioning the basics of society, you don't know that what replaces it will be better, and because so much is in flux, it can easily become far far worse. 

 a great article, michael.  What do you think of Michael Ledeen ("The First Duce: D'annunzio and the free republic of Fiume")?

This is great. It should be a 10 page article in The Nation, but I'll take what I can get. I might only add that the Chavez/Ahmedinejad lovefest should garner suspicion from everyone, not just Jews. 

Portnoy, if you want more, I've got reams of it.  The depths of Weiss's indefatigability know no bounds.

Oh goodness. Chavez is a proto-fascist and the PUK are democrats? Compare and contrast the labour laws in V and Iraq. Look at what's been happening to the oil workers in Basra over the last fortnight. Ask yourself why the Baathist Labor Code of 1987 is still on the books. Have a look at the ILO's complaints about the 2004 decree that freezes the assets of Iraqi unions. Consider the repeated arrests of Kurdish members of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq by peshmerga loyal to the PUK and the KDP. Consider why the women's refuges set up by the party and the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq have repeatedly been attacked. Look at Venezuela, where both the old, declining CTV federation representing the labor aristcoracy and the new National Organsiation of Workers (UNT) exist independently of the state. There is nothing on the books in V that compared with the Labor Code that iraq's government has carried over from Saddam. As for Venezuela's revolution being top-down: how about the occupied factories movement, the land occupations movement, and the urban land committees? Socialism from below in action. Do you know why the enabling law was created in 2001, and what it was used for? Do you think that the revolutionary Land Law it ushered in has benefited or hurt ordinary Venezuelans? Do you think Lula has been more progressive than Chavez by siding with the latifundia against the landless peasans' movement, rather than facilitating the break-up of blocks of idle land? If the Enabling Law was a step to dictatorship, why did it expire on time in 2002? Would the UK or US have been as tolerant of Chavez's government of a TV station that facilitated a coup that abolished democracy and the constitution for 48 hours, and continued to call for the murder of the President even after the failure of the coup? Of course there are important criticisms of the Bolivarian revolution that can be made, and Chavez's praise for Iran should be criticised (as indeed it has been, by the UNT) but let's have some analysis rather than this shrill silliness. Trotsky would be embarrassed by this level of discussion. A good resource on Veenzuela is the clearing house at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com

'An old axiom of the Trotskyist Left Opposition held that in times of historical crisis it was allowable – necessary, in fact – for leftists to make alliances with conservatives against reactionaries, but it was forbidden for leftists to make alliances with reactionaries against conservatives.'

I'd like to see a source for this, too. What you're arguing for is a Popular Front with supposedly more 'progressive' capitalist politicians - is there anywhere Trotsky defends such a thing? He's famous for his critique of such an arrangement. Even if Chavez was a near-fascist and a representative of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, Trotsky would have defended him against a bourgeoisie democratic imperialist country like the US - have a look at the piece he wrote in the late '30s where he imagined 'fascist' Brazil and democratic Britain going to war, and said he would side (militarily, not politically) with Brazil:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/09/liberation.htm
Quote: 'In Brazil there now reigns a semifascist regime that every revolutionary can only view with hatred. Let us assume, however, that on the morrow England enters into a military conflict with Brazil. I ask you on whose side of the conflict will the working class be? I will answer for myself personally—in this case I will be on the side of “fascist” Brazil against “democratic” Great Britain. Why? Because in the conflict between them it will not be a question of democracy or fascism. If England should be victorious, she will put another fascist in Rio de Janeiro and will place double chains on Brazil. If Brazil on the contrary should be victorious, it will give a mighty impulse to national and democratic consciousness of the country and will lead to the overthrow of the Vargas dictatorship. The defeat of England will at the same time deliver a blow to British imperialism and will give an impulse to the revolutionary movement of the British proletariat. Truly, one must have an empty head to reduce world antagonisms and military conflicts to the struggle between fascism and democracy. Under all masks one must know how to distinguish exploiters, slave-owners, and robbers!'

had nothing to do with the Popular Front, but with the alignment of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev against Stalin, Bukharin and Rykov. As for the source, you may consult Isaac Deutscher's biography of Trotsky or any of the LO's writings, which used this same logic to entertain the possibility of siding with Stalin - still then impressionable with respect to 'left' or 'right' policies - over the more right-oriented Bukharin!

As for your question of when Trotsky might have sided with 'progressive' capitalist politicians -- well, have a look at his economic analysis of the Soviet Union in the 20's. In the wake of the spectacular failure of war communism, he was the first theorist to advocate loosening restrictions on private ownership and trade with capitalist countries; this is what eventually became the New Economic Policy, which was far more capitalistic than socialistic.

You accuse me of being promiscuous in my diagnosis of chavismo, but you're likewise playing fast and loose with ideological designations by equating national socialism with fascism. (There were stark differences between the political economies of Hitler and those of Mussolini, Franco and Mextases.) In fact, Trotsky once referred to Stalin's theory of 'socialism in a single country' - due to its unwillingness to bolster genuine working-class movements outside of Russia - as 'national socialism.'

Also, how would you compare Great Britain in the 1930's in imperialist terms to Great Britain in 2007? Do you think the founder of the Red Army, who spent his final years struggling with question of whether the revolution he led had yielded only a degenerated bureaucratic capitalist state, would fail to notice these and other historical differences?

Chavez forced through another Enabling Act in January of 2007 and plans to scrap executive term limits so he can fulfill his ambition of remaining in power until 2030. That would certainly make him, if not quite a dictator, then very much a de facto president-for-life. Do you think he'll shy from making further encroachments on legislative and judicial review because his "temporary" measures of rule by decree happen to expire on time? He doesn't seem to worry overmuch about simply passing more of those measures as they suit his proximate needs.

As for facilitating coups, do you forget how Chavez first gained popularity in 1992, attempting to establish his glorious Bolvarian regime with only the support of 1/10th of Venezuela's military? The plan to kidnap the democratically elected president as he returned to Milaflores seemed more characteristic of Pinochet.

As for tolerating an oppositional television station, the UK allows all manner of Islamist filth to be beamed in via satellite calling for the enslavement of women, the murder of atheists and homosexuals and promoting clerics who say they won't rest until the green flag of jihad flies over London.... An art house film depicting the future assassination of George W. Bush was recently screened, to warm critical reception, in the United States, and at least one novel, reviewed in the New York Times, has treated this same grim liberal fantasy in complete earnest. What do you suspect the assassination-obsessed Chavez's reaction to anything on this imaginative scale might be? He calmly reappointed Lucas Rincon Romero commander-in-chief of the army after Rincon was the one to announce Chavez's resignation from the presidency following the abortive coup in 2002. So he's mercurial in his punishment of old antagonists. Whatever you call this, it is not vaguely healthy or democratic.

of course there are common threads between so-called 'left' and 'right' wing extremisms... authoritarianism or revolution, with whatever ideology, can all too easily morph into totalitarianism, and co-opt whichever set of ideas works best whether fascist, communist, Jacobin, or Muslim.

Anyone here read Michael Ledeen's "The First Duce: Gabriel D'Annunzio and the Free Republic of Fiume [1919]"?  I think it's a must read for anyone interested in the intersection of radicalism and personality.  A great deal of what later became standard political tools for everyone from democrats to nazis and communists was invented by D'Annunzio, in one of the most bizarre revolutionary proto-states ever created.  It was anarcho-syndicalist, radically egalitarian with an unbelievably ahead-of-its-time ideology of freedom for all colonized peoples, rejected alliance with either communists or mussolini, and much more besides... the founding principle of the 'republic' was music, and every night they had opera and fireworks...

Nobody knows what Trotsky would say in 2007, though I rather doubt whether he'd be a booster for the dead-end exercise in neo-imperialism being run by Bush and Blair. Dustbins of history and all that. In any case, there's no point in treating the mighty dead theologically. Trotsky was wrong about some things, after all. But if you're looking to promote a Popular Front with 'progressive' imperialism against the 'backward' national bourgeoisies of nations like, say, Iran, and are interested in maintaining some intellectual credibility, it's probably not a good idea to invoke the most famous opponents of the Popular Front to help make your case. I'd try Joe Lieberman.

'Chavez forced through another Enabling Act in January of 2007 and plans to scrap executive term limits so he can fulfill his ambition of remaining in power until 2030. That would certainly make him, if not quite a dictator, then very much a de facto president-for-life.'

Only if he's re-elected every five years. Really, this is silly stuff. You might as well suggest FDR was a President for life. There's a reason why every group of international observers and the opposition accepted the result of last December's poll. If you want to find monstrous oppression in South America then you could do worse than shift your gaze westward to Colombia, where the Uribe has this week been shown to be complicit in the death squad killings of six hundred trade unionists and journalists over the past four years (that's six hundred more people than Chavez has killed: he's got a way to go to catch up with Uncle Joe and fulfil all the boilerplate rhetoric on right-wing blogs, hasn't he?)

There's also a reason why Chavez became a folk hero after leading the nationwide rising of 1992. That reason is called the Caracazo - it's also known as the Tianamen Square of South America. When a government massacres 5,000 of its own citizens it forsakes the right to rule. Just as there are just and unjust wars, so there are more and less justified military risings. The rising of 1992 belongs beside the Portugese rising of 1974, not the actions of Pinochet or the Pinochistas of 2002.

But let's hold the government of Iraq, and the PUK that support it, to the same standards as Chavez. If you think Chavez was wrong to attempt to get the state to oversee CTV elections in 2000, I can only imagine what fits of apoplexy you must be driven to by the treatment of Iraq's trade unions. Right? Or is the Baathist Labor Code, decree 8750, which freezes all union assets, the use of the army against striking oil workers over the past two weeks, and the arrest of trade unionists and cadre of the Worker-Communist Party by the PUK somehow permissible, in the same way that Lula's neo-liberal destruction of Brazil's pension plan and persecution of his erstwhile opponents in the Workers Party is acceptable? The decent left can be remarkably indecent at times.

My use of Trotsky in this piece was to counterpose his actual political philosophy with the warped and semi-literate interpretation of it by Chavez. Though I wouldn't deign to try and locate the Old Man on today's complicated spectrum, I doubt he'd agree with you that Iran constitutes a national bourgeois state. (Trotsky was at his most mordant in anatomizing and reprehending all forms of religious fundamentalism, from the Catholic Church's warm support for Franco to the smelly Eastern Orthodoxy of the Balkans and Russia.)

Your FDR analogy is also flawed given the U.S. amended its constitution to prevent such prolonged tenures of future administrations. Chavez alters Venezuela's for quite the opposite purpose, and you may choose to believe, if you like, that he'll go quietly if ousted by an election between now and 2030, but all indications point to 'not likely' on the Magic 8 Ball of third world prophecy. If he enjoys the kind of "folk heroism" you speak of -- Gramsci's term cretinismo eroico seems to me the apter one -- then why must he expand and pack a Supreme Court with loyalists to ensure zero resistance to his social and economic policies? And why the recurrent Enabling Acts, if the country and its legislative representatives are so firmly behind chavismo?

"If you want to find monstrous oppression in South America then you could do worse than shift your gaze westward to Colombia, where the Uribe has this week been shown to be complicit in the death squad killings of six hundred trade unionists and journalists over the past four years."

Well, if I were looking for monstrous oppression in South America, I'd need well over 2,000 words to report my findings, wouldn't I? But this piece was about poseur Marxists.

Your defense of justified military uprisings suffers from wishful historical revisionism. Chavez and his coupists were not needed to overthrow and imprison Perez, as the Venezuelan National Assembly did just that via parliamentary and constitutional means. Moreover, do you recall who (reluctantly) became the head of state, overseeing six provisional governments, after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal? Antonio de Spinola is hardly an ideal generalissmo for any self-respecting Bolivarian revolutionary to want to be identified with, so you do your crimson doyen small favor there, as well.

As for the Baathist labor law, this was carried over by Paul Bremer during his disastrous administration of the Coalition Provisional Authority. It was the only feature of the deposed dictatorship he found worth preserving, reasons for which should be self-evident to anyone familiar with his corporatist background and Kissingerian interests. One needn't support his proconsular follies to support the current Iraqi government, or at least its ablest members. If the law is changed, it will be done so by more than one man.

Trade unionists and the Communist Party are still consistently the moral seconds on the American and British-led reconstituion of Iraq, even while rightly criticizing the execution of stupid and immoral policies.

The Workers-Communist Party has, in the past, supported the PUK as the governing party of the KRG, such as it did, for instance, in demanding the arrest of Ansar al-Islam leader Mullah Krekar for his terrorist attacks against PUK officials in Suleimaniyah. It saw some merit in the former Kurdish leadership, however equivocal that merit might have been. Though, while we're on the subject of total opposition, the WCP is openly against Iraq's Oil Law and is affiliated with the Iraq Freedom Congress, which now boasts its own satellite television channel -- Sana TV -- devoted to the cause of civil resistance against religious sectarianism, the Maliki regime, and the U.S. military presence and "occupation." CTV might consider renting air time.

It's also unavoidable to note that Iraq, unlike Venezuela, is in a state of bloody civil war and its chief resource is being daily plundered and attacked by jihadist and Baathist and lumpen elements. If you defend Chavez's self-imposed "state of emergency" measures in peacetime, why so coy about their democratically decided counterparts in Mesopotamia? Should the army not do what it can to prevent the entire petrol-economy from grinding to a halt, the effects of which would be devastating for all political parties and the whole of Iraqi society?

The General Federation of Iraqi Workers, which you might also call "labor aristocracy," manages to protest both the army's heavy-handed actions against trade unionists, and support the cause of pluralist democracy, without hestitation.

The bottom line is that you are holding up as an exemplar of the authentic left a senior member of a government which has Saddam's labor law on its books, supplemented by Decree 8750, and which has just been using the army against striking oil workers, whom it has promsed to repress with - I quote comrade Mailiki - 'with an iron fist'.

You criticise Chavez for threatening to get the state to supervise the CTV's 2000 elections - an action he never carried through. Well, I agree with Lenin, contra Trotsky, that trade unions should always remain independent of the state, no matter what the character of the state. I have no problem, then, agreeing that Chavez was wrong in 2000. But this matter rather pales into comparison, doesn't it, beside legislation like the 1987 Labor Law, Decree 8750, and the persistent violent repression of trade unions and left-wing parties like the Worker-Communists by the government of your authentic leftist?

This sentence is perhaps deliberately vague, but if it is supposed to imply that the unions and the Communist Party support the occupation of Iraq, then it is contradicted by all the recent statements I've seen:

'Trade unionists and the Communist Party are still consistently the moral seconds on the American and British-led reconstituion of Iraq'

The Iraqi Communist Party's two members of parliament supported the recent cal for a timetable for withdrawal. Iraqi trade union leaders have been outspoken about the same issue for years. I'm with them rather than the government of Decree 8750.

This article is plain code for sophisticated anti-Goyism.

Chavez is a nationalist and therefore (rightly) anti-Jewish New World Order, anti-US Foreign policy that is put together by hate-filled anti-nation state Talmudic Jews who are then going to destroy the US when they are done with it.

Look's let be clear and rational about this. Yes Jews have suffered throughout history, but antisemitism is not going away, because there isn't a bigoted-inward looking irrational antisemitism. It is a response to Jewish activity. Sometimes that gets out of control with myths but actually there is a real basis for it.

Do you not understand, the Goy do not and will not live under a global government with this Judaism-by-proxy political system called Communism just so the Jews feel 'safe'.

If Jewish self-identity is solely about ethnocentric victimhood and Jewish denial of their own terrible crimes against humanity then the reality is the Jewish-self identity is the problem here.

The best thing for Jews is to just stop being Jews, just stop trying to destroy nations, stop trying to move the world to a global government, stop attacking the religious symbols of other nations and stop trying to enslave the goy.

regards

To: Elders of Zion
BCC: Jews
Subject: We have a breach

Someone by the name "Paul Denver" has uncovered the secret conspiracy to enslave the gentiles while simultaneously endowing Jews with plausible victimhood. As someone who stands in the way of the Judaism-by-proxy world government (which will launch alongside the iPhone), he must be neutralized.

Now I'm definitely getting an iPhone!

i'm inclined to agree with anonymous at least partially: the previous venezuelan regime was incredibly, hopelessly corrupt with zero credibility beyond the (whiter) elites it supported.  Chavez was and is a folk hero, and at least some of his land-reform and consensus-democratic reforms have greatly increased the people's empowerment.

That being said, he has at times shown authoritarian tendencies-- shutting the opposition TV down was a big alarm bell-- and his ignorant foreign policy friendships with Iran etc. sure do make him look like a buffoon or even an anti-semite.  Only because there actually was a failed US-sponsored coup attempt against him, do I sympathize with his desire to tweak America at every opportunity in his foreign policy dealings.  Keep in mind, though, through it all, Chavez' Venezuela has remained America's biggest or close to biggest supplier of oil, without any extortion on price.

Is 'poseur' now an accepted term of political analysis? In most of these comparisons, a somewhat (or extremely) absurd Left figure is compared to a someone who may have once been Socialist but isn't any more. Kouchner has had an impressive and commendable career, but we've yet to see how his governmental participation will turn out. I don't find it credible that Sarko's cabinet is going to bring France closer to achieving Socialism.

what's that?

 does anyone know or agree on what socialism IS?  France might be closer than most other countries, including Venezuela...

certainly no more of a democrat than castro, or ahmadi-nejad.

Reminds me of Mussolini

mmausner asks:

What's that?

It is a pipe dream concocted by Jew as a solution to the "Jewish Problem." It is based on the worst of Human Nature and yet promises to free us from same.

Who are Socialists?

Hard headed folk who, in spite of the repeated failure of Socialism to accomplish anything but the enslavement of those lower than the most equal, continue to await the "true" socialist state.

Salutes to you all
I'm Greek and I would like to lay down some thoughts. Excuse me in advance for my bad english.
I'd like to say that you all critisize socialism, by overlooking the war capitalism has done to it, since it's birth. You refer to the "fall" of socialism, as if there were nobody combatting it. Socialism is a great system, in theory, but it couldn't withstand the blows of the older and thus, more experienced, capitalism. Don't forget that when the going gets tough, it all comes down to war in one way or another. And capitalism thrives in war, while socialism is much more fragile. The end of WW2 saw USSR losing 20 million people, in the prime of their existence, and its workforce was shriveled. On the other hand, the WW2 made the US the first power in the world due to its manipulation of matters that come with war, i.e. low pays, social fear, arms trade etc.
I believe that countries such as Cuba and Venezuela are examples of U.S. political, economical and military harrassment. Yet you critisize them as if they were free to make any choices they wanted. As if they weren't living under the incessant threat of the U.S.
I think that even though most of you seem intelligent in the way you write, you have not completely rejected some parts of the U.S. propaganda that you have been fed against socialism all these years.
Excuse me again if I was expressing myself aggressively, but I assure you it's because my english isn't as good as yours. I would very much like to hear some thoughts. Thank you. Konstantinos

Perhaps Paul denver is none other that Noach Feldmann

You may be interested in reading this:

Forgetting Orwell's Lessons for the Left: Useful Idiots and Fellow Travelers in the 21st Century

http://newcentrist.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/forgetting-orwell%E2%80%99s-...

You can say whatever you want about Chavez, but just looking at those attacking him, I can say without doubt that the poor people of Venezuela are better off with him than with any other, specially the hyper corrupt politicians representing rich people.

If he thinks that Iran makes a good a partner, he is just using the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which has been used for centuries for all kinds of politicians, a notable trio being Roosevelt Churchill and "uncle" Joe Stalin.

As for Iran continuing developing of nuclear weapons, which coming from the "media" is probably as real as Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

I do not swallow all that crap. The only real thing here is oil which is the only thing that keeps American and Europeans in those otherwise mostly desert places.

Doesn't (or, now that he's abandoned all pretense, didn't) Mugabe style himself as a Marxist cadre? Alas, finding an antithesis of a Mugabe on the Dark Continent is problematic. Well, there's Botswana's Festus Mogae...

Real Marxists such as myself are not unused to Marxism being twisted and perverted to support genocidal capitalist ideologies, however we are genuinely perplexed by, although not surprised by, and almost always highly amused by the daunting number of Trotskyist-cum-neo-conservative parasites who in an aerobic feat of cognitive dissonance have reconciled the superficial and completely ornamental vestiges of their once quasi-revolutionary ideology with the naked support of neo-liberal capitalism they now indulge in as a desperate act of post-"Leftist" ennui and hobbyism. (However, it's of no loss to Trotsky, the counter-revolutionary white supremacist who gleefully suppressed the heroic insurrection of real communists in Kronstadt.)

While you are 100 percent correct in characterizing Chavez, Galloway, and Tariq Ali as being nothing more than fascists, (ie: right-wing populists) patriarchal totalitarian socialists collaborating with Christian, Islamic, and Hindu fascists in a desperate attempt at preserving and defending mercantile capitalism against neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism, all under the guise of "anti-globalization". But third positionism and social fascism are nothing new, and neither is the massive migration of petit-bourgeois armchair "socialists" united under the banner of Trotsky, from red-drenched monopoly state capitalism to naked capitalism, the disappointment of losing the bid to terrorize the Russian proletariat to Stalin being far too much for them to handle. You just take it to an unprecedentedly absurd extreme.

I really don't see how you have any right to complain about "hand-me-down Marxist kitsch", as you desperately try to drape your unabashed love of capitalist plunder and genocide in it. Das Kapital is "pro-globalization"? I'm assuming like the vast majority of self-described "Marxists" you've never actually read Das Kapital. If you have, could you please point me in the direction of the part that would lend itself to glorification of Kurdish fascism, the mass-extermination of Haitians and Iraqis by u.s. and u.n. soldiers, or national oppression of Palestinians by Iraeli settlers. In fact, it's inexplicable that anyone could conclude that Das Kapital supports any form of capitalist parasitism, regardless of it's stripe.

With the Chavez-Morales camp claiming that there's something remotely "Marxist", "socialist", or "communist" about support for the bloc that has emerged out of the alliance of neo-colonial "communist" China, Putin's autocracy, Islamist right-populism, Latin American neo-Peronists, and you Trot clowns claiming there's something remotely "Marxist", "socialist", or "communist" about support for the u.s./u.k/e.u./Israel bloc and it's random flunkies (I honestly think Kouchner, Lula, and Salih would be genuinely mortified if they found out someone was trying to characterize them as Marxists, but if all it takes for any capitalist dupe to become a "socialist" is to unenthusiastically participate in the do-nothing PR spectacle politics of bogus social reform and "humanitarian aid", what capitalist politican isn't a "socialist"?) it seems that the only thing that isn't communist these days is actual communism, that is, the revolutionary struggle for autonomy from all forms of capitalism, be it reactionary, conservative, liberal, Social-Democratic, or "socialist". Real communists believe in the daily struggle against the monopolization of the planet by people like you. In short, follow your leader

PS: It's in incredibly in poor taste the way you assholes manipulate the struggle for Kurdish national liberation as if your neo-liberal heroes give any more of a fuck about the self-determination of the Kurdish people now than you did when you were gunning them down in Turkey in the 90s. In short, follow your leader.

Ehem not willing to disturb, but the inherent structure of the former USSR, or even Tzarist Russia by those standarts, can not to any, logical extent be called national-socialism, even in technical terms (it bothers me that you can call mister docteur as a leftist as he may be one of the most opportunistic and telegenic soixant-huitards), given the multiple ethnic groups inherent to it.

Ehem Trostky was his own issue, a guy claiming he could not lead the USSR, because he was a jew...come on. The same dude slashing any thing or one not willing to obey his orders to win the Civil war, the same who ultimately finished the propellant force of the Bolshevik revolution by crushing Kronstadt? Siding with "luke warm reformists"! We're dreaming here.

As for democracy, wrong terminology plagues your article and intervention. There is no democracy into an elective process, neither is there in an narrowly entagled bipartisan system, so before preaching, lest just clean our own doorstep. 

I have followed these erudite discussions with interest. I have some sympathy with the view that the psychical forces unleased by the flux of revolution carry with them real dangers. However it seems to me that the course we are on makes these real dangers imminent and profound social turmoil inevitable. A world economic system of human proportions, that is to say an effectively socialized world economy is going to have to adopted by common consent to meet the challenges of resource depletion and environmental degradation. No amount of point scoring is ultimately going to deter billions of hysterical hungry people accross all the borders of all the states on this planet from making a planet that is unliveable for them unliveable for whomever has the resources to avoid their fate. If this sounds simple I guess it is because it is a heartfelt appeal to the wise. For all the rest of you simple peasants, here and elsewhere, until we are heard we shall weep together.

GH’s quote from Trotsky above shows that the old
revolutionary got it just about 100 percent wrong. The UK’s victory in the war with Argentina in
1982 led to the downfall of the military junta and its replacement by a democratic
regime. Had Galtieri won there is little doubt he would have been regarded as a
national hero, and the junta’s hold on the country would have been
consolidated.

weiss, please. you clearly know nothing about trotsky or his ideas other than a smattering of quotes and stories. it would be better to admit that GH corrected you than keep up this farce where you reconcile trotsky with 21st-century imperialism by means of a few misused historical references..