Category: Book Review

Review of "Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle"

Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle presents a highly critical account of the Chavez regime as populist, militarist, and collaborationist with international capitalism. Uzcategui utilizes Guy Debord’s concept of spectacle as a means of explaining how it is that the Venezuelan population and leftists on the international stage buys into the “protagonistic” democracy. The thesis is at time very compelling, though at times not so much. In the latter case, it’s usually not for the information itself but due to the context of Uzcategui’s analysis.

One of the main reasons for Chavez’s categorization as a “spectacular fool” for international capital is his decision to pursue mixed ownership enterprises, as per Article 112 of the Constitution, within the extractive sector rather than outright nationalizing the process. While the, it seems to overlook Chavez’s basic recognition that to outright nationalize the industry would lead to the type of bloating that dragged down the company previously. Allowing market logic, albeit partially controlled by Chavez’s appointment, thus allows for Chavez to have greater amount of profits with which to spend on discretionary projects rather than increasing the membership of “the state within the state”. Chavez does, however, seem foolish in Uzcategui’s accounts of the ridiculous floating-monetary policy with it’s various prices, thus allowing some people with government access to make large amounts of money for doing no real “work”. A relation of this to the need for the government to stem capital flight would have made this section more compelling.

Uzcategui criticisms of the mission is some of the most compelling writing of the book. The missions are not novel but replicate many of the former spending pattern prior to the lost decades of the 80s and 90s, have duplicated processes, obfuscated formerly clear issues and have often not matched up to their aspirations. With regards to the housing problem, simply put not enough has been made. To address this issue, the government has passed out accumulated leaflets on how to “properly” build barrios – a rather poor option considering the potentially non-informal jobs that could give a boost to the economy. As regards Mercal, there have been a number of irregularities found in distribution lines, there’s been shortages of food, the workers there are still without contract and there’s been little investment in the facilities thus leading to spoilage. The Mission Barrio Adentro has not kept up with it’s goals for creating primary health care modules and has often faced shortages of medicines and supplies.

In regards to Chavez’s populist, militarist character Uzcategui lays out the appointment of many members of the armed services within both the PDVSA and various government enterprises. While Richard Gott saw this as a means in which Chavez could maintain a certain level of oversight over potentially opposition-sympathetic political actors, Uzcategui sees this as an atavistic return to the militaristic tradition in Venezuelan culture with its cult of Bolivar. Because of this, the language against perceived enemies is very antagonistic (or in the usage of Chavistas “protagonistic”) and polarizing, has lead to an organization of society along military lines (seen in the various popular militias). These are issues that are important in the assessment of the Chavez regime, however they are then placed along with claims that a brief increase in the armed forces budget signifies that the government prefers military expenditure to social enterprises. This is done so by making comparisons between national defense spending and sports and also not contextualizing the region. As a percentage of expenditure of GDP, Venezuela is behind Peru, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia. This wrong emphasis should not, however, take away from the Uzcategui’s insight on how it is that Chavez’s strong role in the delegation of duties and delineation of policy had a negative effect on the political culture. By the overwhelming polarization which occurred and his enlargement of political power through quasi-legal means has meant that the PSUV has a certain level of disconnect from it’s base. Steve Ellner’s Rethinking Venezuelan Politics complicates this simplification, but the general co-optation of the social movements by the state and subsequent prioritization of the states needs over previous organizational actions seems valid as other commentators point this out.

The constitutional planks recognizing Venezuela’s indigenous population and their allowance of them to organize politically at a movement was widely seen as being a positive, progressive aspect of the new Bolivarian constitution. Uzcategui, however, shows how it is that these people have at times been forced to face relocation in order to fulfill various extractive or transportation endeavors. While the Wayuu were not forced to move from their homeland, they were offered large buyouts, an allowance not likely to have been given to them under previous regimes, and their

A particularly amusing and insightful section included the author’s recounting of a visit by “parecon” economist Michael Albert. I, like Diogenes Laerties was, am very much interested in the “lives” of modern thinkers and so found Uzcategui’s description of Albert insisting that his brief period with the government gave him more insight into the goings on in the country than the activists he was with and that his book being widely distributed in Venezuela would assist in the revolution. For one, it’s a compelling scene of the manner in which international leftist activists have turned the heart of the matter into a tabula rasa in which to read their own aspirations and as it shows the intellectual febrility of Albert when faced with counterfactuals.

One of the recurring problems of Uzcategui’s analysis is the placement of subjective factors normally attributed as outside the realm of government control as emerging from their authorship. For instance the high number of trade unionists killed in the country for reasons speculated to emerged from workplace issues is seen as he fault of Chavez’s government. He alludes to this but does not specifically say that this is a conspiracy. This is just one of several examples of the contrast between the how objective information to be found in the book about circumstances in Venezuela is often shown through a decontextualized, anti-statist prism that gives too much credit to the government in causing some of the problems that are functionally explained in other ways. Considering the author’s embrace of Bakunin’s theoretically model of the state this isn’t surprising, however one can’t help but wonder what the old plotter and revolutionist would actually say about Chavez.

A final thought, unrelated to Uzcategui’s general take on Venezuela, is the idea that the author seemingly wants to “investigate and punish those materially and intellectually responsible for these crimes” (45). While the point made in the quite relates to workplace crimes, it’s mentioned earlier as it related to the Amparo massacre. In there two places the punishing of those “intellectually responsible” for the crime is a legalistic burden of proof, that for an anarchist, is a rather strange one. The case of the Haymarket martyrs ought to come to mind, being that all those that were placed under indictment and later judged guilty were all known to not be involved in the actual bombing but were the bombers “intellectual inspirers”. While the author likely means that those that are acting against the interests of el pueblo should be held accountable, as a legalistic doctrine it is of course very dangerous and something the other should consider jettisoning given it’s historical misuse.

Review of "Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida"

Gary Morimo’s Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida is concerned primarily with the manner in which Florida transformed from a barely inhabited region in 1900 to the state with the fourth largest population in 2000. Connected with this story of growth is the manner in which Florida formed a distinct identity distinct from its northern, more established neighbors. To accomplish this Morimo shows how it is that since the 1960s “Florida was more climate controlled, technologically inclined, and also older, more ethnic, more religiously and racially diverse, wealthier, whiter and less agrarian than the rest of the south” (7).

Florida’s beaches were early recognized as a place of beauty to be areas of repose and restoration by elites, leading to various real-estate booms and busts in Miami, the lack of transportation infrastructure, the real threat of hurricanes and the fetid and mosquito filled natural environment meant that most of the states economic activity in the beginning of the 20th century was agricultural and located in the interior of the state.

It was not until the onset of World War II that the conditions would be present that would lead to Florida’s rapid coastal development. First was the transition to Fortress Florida. Federal investment into the region for military bases brought with it service sectors, better roads and infrastructure to be used by the counties after they abandoned it. The many barrier islands were ideal for practicing amphibious assaults, such as the ones that would occur in the Japanese peninsula, and it is the state closest to the Caribbean. It thus was ideal as the base for operations to quell communist organizing in places such as the Dominican Republic following the capture of Cuba by Castro.

Morimo additionally illustrates how new technologies shaped the patterns of habitation, economic investment and culture of Florida. The creation of refrigerated rail cars and that capacity to make juice concentrated enabled agricultural barons to expand their market share and their income. Interstate highways led to the decline to smaller tourist attractions and restaurants and the increase of large tourist operations and chains. Air-conditioning made Florida an acceptable place to live year round to more people, while dredging operations made more land available for housing. It was not just technological innovation that helped create the state, but financial innovation as well.
Much of the mid-twentieth settlement of Florida was accomplished via financial instruments that made paradise affordable to northern retirees. Low down payments on homes facilitated a gray invasion of retirees while insurance policies were founded on political rather than economic rationales. Later came the Marielitos and shortly after them narcos, crooked bankers, dictators and their cabals from South and Central America brought with large amounts of money and a distinct culture that helped distinguish South Florida from “the south”. These factors that shaped modern Florida continue to do so and in ways that are not always clear – be they environmentally devastating or otherwise – however the image of Florida as an aspirational place to live continues despite it’s many peculiarities.

Review of "The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century"

The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century by Iain Bruce is a predominantly first-hand, journalistic account of the former BBC’s authors time in Venezuela as witness to the changes going on in Venezuela at the time. The author visit a number of the social economy collectives, workplace councils and some of the sights of the co-operative networks. By giving a first hand account of them, he seemingly seeks to show how it is why Venezuela and Chavez is an inspiration to many on the Socialist left. It is in this area, the framing of Marxist debates over the policies of the Chavez government that Bruce does his best. In so doing he will advance quotes by Gramsci, Trotsky, Luxemburg, et al., but stays away from substantive analysis following such the theoretical pronouncements that applies to a specific situation. Unfortunately this sympathy seems to inoculate Bruce from the circumstances as he presents them as his depiction of a sufficiently “revolutionary” Venezuela shows an economy insufficiently productive if truly wishing to shake itself from some amount of the import dependency that so distorts their country.

Besides an initial and compelling account of the normalization and legalization of much of the barrio dwellers occupied housing, the author’s major investigations on the functioning of Nucleus for Endogenous Developments (NUDEs). In so doing he presents three failures and a limited success. The author first goes to Fabricio Ojeda nuclei, the first constructed of these NUDEs which combines space for health, education, leisure and economic activity. The obvious problem with citing the first, “model” construction of such a facility is that, like the “model” regions displayed by the USSR to foreigners, is that it provides a non-typical experience. While people there did do work for PDVSA, it is clear that were the high oil price to be gone so would they. Recognizing this the author travels to other similar developments and is not met with as compelling a location or circumstance.

In Cabimas, the NUDE there is not centered on clothing production but assisting local fisherman. The idea is that through the production of a space similarly described above and with attendant financial assistance from the government the capacity for the local fishermen to compete with larger, pre-existing, better capitalized local fisherman will reduce the cost of fish to the community. The project, however, is then described as being dropped due to the amount of time it takes to organize. Several other attempts at NUDE formation are described which also flounder amidst lack of interest, financial irregularities or charges of corruption.

The one successful example, besides that of Fabricio Ojeda, is in the service industry and is a combined restaurant and taxi-company that provides patrons with a ride to and from the waterside dining establishment. Hardly a model for nationwide development. While all of the above described experiments are indeed novel, as a whole the study of the “real” Venezuela shows many of the failings of the Chavez government policies to diversify the economic base. The author clearly shows how it is that the NUDEs are dependent on PDVSA, haven’t organized production to a very high standard nor sufficiently train their “employees” enough so as to be able to do export quality work.The economic foundation of their production stems from relationships that can be called at best social welfare at worst corruption.

In the case of ALCASA, Bruce shows how the attempts at co-mangement have failed given an individualistic culture and lack of state support in relations with management, how the state is unwilling to reinvest in new equipment to increase production and thus protect workers safety, not to mention how now workers fear talking about these issues in public lest they be sacked for criticism against the government. Additionally, as the traders an transporters of the goods they were producing were not in a similar situation, they were able to increase their profits through speculation and wage negotiation on the open market. In effect, the workers had their wages cut and their protections diminished – hardly the stuff of a socialist paradise. Towards this effect is perhaps also worth mentioning that the Cuban advisors vote against such an undertaking, as “they are at the factory to work and not to make votes” and that a second attempt to co-manage the factory has since occurred, and also failed. Whether this is due to the inefficiency of such an organization or is due to something else cannot easily be determined, however the brief depiction of the situation which Bruce supports the claim by capitalists that they should have the prerogative of how to organize labor lest production devolve into the situation illustrated in the old soviet joke “You pretend to pay me, I’ll pretend to work”.

These criticisms on the part of the author or those put into the words of other’s mouths are often de-emphasized in the face of enthusiasm over an alternative to capitalism and the unmistakeable growth of a leftist political culture. The author clearly seeks to raise more questions about our Anglo conceptions of political correctness in the face of such inequality, but seemingly doesn’t think it’s worth functionally analyzing the results yet. To this reader this presents a rather unusual situation, wherein we can see that the NUDEs and CLPP’s create big problems, but these are explained away as just steps in el processo.

Review of "Miami"

Joan Didion’s book Miami is a New Journalism account that delves into the relationship between the large Cuban exile and Anglo communities in Miami and Washington D.C. While the type of political assassinations that were making headlines at the times of the book’s first publication is no longer a normal occurrence, the book is still insightful for understanding Miami’s official as well as their “underwater” history. As a caveat, however, Didion also engages in an unfair essentialization of Latins by framing their exile politics, as anyone familiar with 19th century radical exile politics London knows is always full of passion and intrigue, as being “Spanish” and a product of a hot environment. Her connection of their militancy to these, in the end, imperialist and orientalist notions is a mar on an otherwise compelling work.

The notion of the underwater narrative refers to the manner in which Cuban-American’s interact with the Federal government, specifically how the state deals with a body of foreign nationals which seeks to overthrow a neighboring country’s government during the Cold War epoch. Didion doesn’t examine many archival documents or policy proscriptions, but instead infers the underlying beliefs of policy advocated by the Cuban community and the American’s tasked with handling them. Handling their passionate excesses is seen as “disposal problem”, especially following the Mariel boat lifts when tens of thousands of refugees, normal, mentally disabled and criminal, were now considered “American citizens”. This problem of disposal is both one of housing, a la the tent cities created in the parking lots and empty spaces along stadiums, as well as how to deal with groups that, now free from the Cuban police, want to provoke a war between the two countries by attacking Soviet bloc ships in the Miami port and hit-and-run incursions into small Cuban ports. The solution to the first problem, how to house tens of thousands as fast as possible, isn’t mentioned but the latter is given an accounting. Simply put, the militants that left are given further training at the Ejercito Cubano Anticomunista camp in Homestead and other places around the Everglades.

At this point, the US backing of a foreign for to ostensibly invade another county, runs into a problem with this style of writing. Specifically, the paucity of sources allows for subjective inferences which may be far from the objective reality. While Didion can correctly claim that JMWAVE existed, that in the early 1960’s Miami the CIA had assembled the third largest Navy contingent of battle and retro-fitted ships in the event that they wanted to invade Cuba, she also states that there may have been anywhere from 15,000 to 150,000 anti-Castro operatives fielded by the CIA. While it is unlikely that she would have access to actual numbers so close to the time period she’s writing, the result is that the account only gives a small picture of the events rather than a larger, more coherent narrative. She drifts from inference to inference in a highly suggestive manner that feels true to life, but it’s still hard to say how much of it is true and how much of it is a reading of her own fears of the situation onto it. Instead of deep investigative reporting that gives detailed descriptions of the actors involved, she relies mainly on what is reported in the newspapers and is “known on the street”. People drop in and out of the book, only mattering insofar as Didion is able to get a point she wants to make across – usually how this group of exiles has led to a third-worldization of politics in Miami. The picture that she presents is one filled with conspiracy, martial ideas of political behavior, killing of people open to dialog with Castro and wealthy Cuban’s fundraising for la causa. It is a dark, paranoid and ultimately tragic portrait, but one can’t help but wonder if the focus on a small, sensational and militant contingent of people leads to a distorted view. Because while Didion shows that this group is able to gain a significant modicum of local political power and can gain access to upper-level bureaucrats in Washington DC, the latter’s instance on IR realism always checks the “poeticism” and volunteerism of the Cubans.

One of the poetic metaphors that Didion uses several times that I found fitting was the the manner in which Washington D.C.’s vacillating policy towards Cuba, indeed all of Latin America, leave traces on the board. People, the moving pieces on the board, end up resenting and feeling antagonism to their handlers for their perceived lack of commitment. This is especially clear in the section detailing the manner in which media strategy has come to dominate the presidency. This need to address the variety of issues prevalent in the United States disallows the type of intensive attention and concern that the Cubans would like to see given to their sense of purpose. As Cuban-American and American interests overlap only at limited points, especially towards a stable government widely perceived as legitimate by their own people, the American willingness to act is seen as weak as their capacity to act and change the government is seen as definitive. Such sentiments are shown in Didion’s excerpt from conversations with the elite, in the volunteering and fundraising for the Nicaraguan contras compartmentalized in the slogan seen on stickers at anti-Castro businesses “Hoy Nicaragua, Manana Cuba”. Additionally, these traces are visible in the varied treatment of the policing apparatus to Omega 7 and Alpha 66. Sometimes they are considered acceptable and given access to advanced military training and weaponry while at other times the membership is prosecuted for crimes. Salon has an article on their website that updates some of Didion’s writing. Most important as it relates to Didion’s work is the manner in which these groups changed when no longer coddled or assisted by the CIA and the American government’s prosecution of individuals in the United State which were arrested for attempting to gather information on these groups to prevent their action or to help arrest and prosecute them following actions.

Another interesting point that Didion makes is in hinting at the similarities between the former ruling class of Cuba’s beliefs and those of Castro. Perhaps it is because of an unrecognized fear of retribution that she is never heavy handed in pointing it out, but at several scenes the parallels between them are clear. The violent retribution against collaborators and the disruptive counter-demonstrations to silence “non-Cuban” speakers highlight the qualities which the exiles exhibit yet claim as cause for the Cuban regime to be overthrown. This dissonance finds itself in other places as well. One of the ways in which she speaks of correcting Castro’s unacknowledged or repressed presence is in the corrective she makes to other’s claims by pointing out that Castro has had a big if not one of the biggest effects on the development of South Florida as a community. As none of the people she interviews would likely be there if not for him, she does this to show how it is that their ideology has scrambled their worldview to the point that the conditions which lead to the revolution and his role in it is simply transformed into a target that, once killed, would solve all of their problems.

Review of "The Savage Detectives"

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño recounts the lives of two aspiring poets, Ulisses Lima and Arturo Bolaño, along with their circle of poets that, for poets, spend a surprisingly small amount of time writing or publishing poetry. Despite the paucity of presses willing to accept their work, however, the poets still continue in their roles as seekers and the narrative takes the two protagonists on a series of trips or varying adventures.

The first and third sections of the book are set in Mexico City and told from the third person while the substantially larger middle portion of it approaches those characters from the perspective of strangers and friends, not always in chronological order, which they encounter in Spain, Nicaragua, France, Israel and Monrovia. The split sections are not just changes of style, but in time as well. Chronologically the first sections is first, the third section is second and the second section is the third. This break-up of the events is at a significant point, just after the boys have spirited away a prostitute from her pimp, and the results of this, which surely inform the subsequent chronology, isn’t learned until the end. I’ve not normally liked the results of the authors that have written in such a vein, what immediately comes to mind is Nabakov’s Pale Fire, Bolaño’s work isn’t as purposively alienating though he too does have his moments of seemingly excessive erudition.

Moving from this issue of time and going back to the protagonists, Lima and Bolano’s lives, just like those that in one way or another look up to them, are tragic. It’s not just the poverty of many of the characters, such as Luscious Skin who lives in a shack on the roof of an apartment building, but the manner in which they all seek for a truth leads them to be so far alienated from those around them. They are tragic people, largely outcasts from society with limited capacity to feel connected to it, they have tragic loves, obsessing over people that they can’t have, they are tragic actors, who flirt with death and wandering as a coping mechanism over their variance and even antagonism to official Mexican culture and preference for the classical and avant garde. It is in fact their love for the latter that informs the name of the poetry group that consolidates around Lima and Bolano. They call themselves the “visceral realists”, as an ode to another group of Mexican poets who went by the same name forty years before and they connect it to the Flores Magon, Tristan Tzara and the stridentists.

Lima and Bolano are seekers after poetry in a religious sense. Their obsession is not just with reading the works of various famous literary circles but in learning all of the history between the authors. This is evident later in Belano’s life in his deep reading of the Generation of ’98 once he is in Spain, but is first seen with his concern in learning about and interviewing the surviving members of the Mexican stridentists and seeking to learn about one of their members Cesarea Tinajero. The search for her takes up the majority of the third section and is almost a quixotic tale as for all intensive purposes she has published only one poem in a small run journal and this poem consists solely of three lines without text – a straight line, a wavy line and a jagged line. The energy which they exert and the results they end up getting is highly telling of their tragicomic embrace of the literary arts. As such a polyphonic work ought to suggest just by such a categorization, their perspective is not the only one highlighted and this anomie and aimlessness, at times excruciating detailed in Belaño and Lima’s account outside of Mexico highlights their general aimlessness and anomie following the discovery of Tinajero, and they are contrasted with several other poets of people whose politics is not limited to poetry. There are numerous Trotskyites, the fault them for their lack of real political commitment, there are the peasant poets, followers of Octavio Paz, publishers and just normal people for whom the literary world is not so much of a drive which all mock them for their pretensions and posturing.

Having just read The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide before this I completely agree with James Wood’s comments on the novel that despite these divergences from character and form it is in Many ways like Gide’s work in that one of it’s major themes is what exactly does it mean to be a writer. Chapter 23 specifically, is where I believe that Bolaño accomplished some of the best of his writing in this regard, not as letters to a young poet a la Rilke, but as Diogenes Laetrius. Bolaño even puts in a Marxian-Hegelian twist in the ending of all of their stories by rewording the famous “first as tragedy, second as farce” line in what I think is one of the most compelling sections of the book. Here we can see not just fragmented details of the journey of the spirit of these two poets, but how it is that the others writers relationships to society, their notion of truth, etc. informs their station in life.

Review of "The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States"

Terry Lynn Karl’s book The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States , a part of University of California Press’s series in the Studies in International Political Economy, is a comparative study of Petro-states with a primary focus on the manner in which oil impacted Venezuela’s state development and political culture. Karl’s statement of theoretical principles is to operates in-between structuralism and rational choice theory – a program which she calls structured contingency. Such a viewpoint may appear as methodological individualism, however her subsequent analysis shows the effects of contingency are generally more compelling on actors than they would like to admit and thus the dominant of this binary. In the case study of Venezuela that follows, this is most evident in the recurrent inability for the state to formulate a decisive economic policy not wholly dependent on the oil revenues and then stick with it despite opposition. Instead, coalitions for changes become bought off and incorporated, thus bloating the state even more while discouraging domestic ingenuity.

Such a preview is meant to hint at 16th century Spain, a similarly formed mineral-extraction economy that which Karl does not just allude to but provides a brief case study. The Spainish political elite of the time pursued policies of rampant rent-seeking rather than state consolidation, bureaucracy professionalization and failed to construct a legitimize taxing authority with a wide structural base. They choose instead to rely upon extractive wealth futures to pay for outstanding debts, leading to a minimization of commodity circulation in the mainland, the potential division of labor, innovation in production and a general stagnation in agriculture. Slaves in the colonies and peasants in Spain were constant elements of surplus extraction that in the variable international market hamstrung their capacity to deal with balances of trade.

The combination of these factors leads to the economy suffering from “Dutch disease”, a condition indicating that the countries increasing debts starting to take over revenues, rising rates of inflation, a shrinking export sector, and increasing domestic consumption. The state is unable to balance it’s external payments as the elite, grown accustomed to not paying is averse to beginning to do so and can threaten, as a class, the stability of the state. The lower classes, who also don’t have the capacity to take up the slack, can also do say, as is seen in Venezuela. As Karl shows in her later comparison to other new states like Venezuela, the results of this is devastating to the economy and leads almost to the negation of the wealth that had previously entered the country.

The 1922 Petroleum law in Venezuela was a crucial moment for the construction of the state. It effectively limited private property to places which did not have access to oil deposits, causing the state to be the sole negotiator with the oil companies. Because of this the state itself meshed and in a very real way approximated itself to the structure of the then largest international capitalist corporations. This was compounded and expanded by the 1943 Hydro-carbons Law. With the passage of this bill all noting of a minimalist, diversified state was put aside and instead an intensification of policy that “sowed the petroleum” back into the country was pursued.

This focus on oil incomes had the effect of disincentivizing agrarian production. From 1928 to 1944 agricultural exports declined from by two-thirds.Oil companies and wealthy landowners bought or obtained rights to vast land holding, which disrupted subsistence and small capital agricultural production and led to mass migration to the cities. This imposition of the rentier logic robbed the state of “the opportunity to benefit from the skill and talents that arise from the penetration of public authority to the far corners of a territory in search of revenue” and made it wholly dependent on the international oil market (91).

While Venezuela has had relative political peace in comparison to it’s Latin American neighbors, the price from which this has come is high. Oil incentives the political classes to engage in a form of politics which is excessively focused on party factionalism and personalism rather than the manifestation of good policies, the purchasing of opponents groups allegiances with promises of a share in the spoils, and semi-corporatist networks directing the course of policy rather than limited democratic representation. As the contradictions between this policy and that propounded by the left turned into civil war, the moderates continued this policy. Venezuelan politics took the shape of pactismo and, once the contradictions inherent in it became more extreme, presidentialism. The attempts by the state to “change course” was limited to what it knew, nationalizations of other industries and raising the percentage of revenues from oil. Concomitant with these grand schemes was the proliferation of new government agencies and rules that hampered the state’s performance and with each boom made it likely that in a bust period extreme social unrest would develop as the borrowing during this period could only go on so long, disproportionately affected the lower class and, due to the general lack of professionalism, would also mean that corruption scandals came to light and divested the state of a hegemonic notion that it was legitimate. This is indeed what happened following the partial imposition of the FMI’s adjustment plan and was in large part the cause for the disintegration of the “democratic” institutions and ascendancy of anti-party candidate Hugo Chavez Frias.

The closing, comparative section of the book illustrates variations on the theme of the petro-state as it formed in Algeria, Indonesia and Norway. Karl’s assessment that new states unduly focus on the oil industry to compose the state’s budget is shown as true across the board. New, ex-colonial state lacking diverse administrators with some area of specialized knowledge and income to pay them look to their natural wealth as a the source of their trouble. The above framework is repeated with variations based upon the degree that states bureaucracy’s were older (Norwary) and to a lesser extent those which had some level of continuous technocratic control of the market (Indonesia) rather than political control (Algeria, Nigeria, etc.).

Review of "Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown"

Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown is a firsthand account by the primary organizer of the short-lived Umoja Village, Max Rameau. The opening chapters recount the general context of the Miami housing market for African Americans: the city was founded on and organized by racial principles, reinforced by economic inferiority and attempts at changing anything other than the symbolic order was met with police repression or co-optation of movement activists. The results of these policies encouraged local black entrepreneurs to leave or be subsumed by better capitalized competitors in other racial groupings and local black activists entering politics to act as the principals of local capitalist interests rather than that of the community which was locked into place as a result of their low wage, menial jobs with little to no opportunity at upward mobility. Such a socio-economic composition resulted in a slow downward spiral for Miami blacks as their political and purchasing power declined.

On a lower level of abstraction, the Hope VI program authored by the Miami-Dade Housing Agency (MDHA) offers a prime example of this. Funded by the federal government to the tune of 106 million dollars, the program was to address the paucity of affordable housing by providing increased quality and number of public and mixed-enterprise housing within the African American community of Miami. The actual results, however, were such that whites and Hispanics were steered to newer units closer to tourist areas or given rent vouchers while black families were placed in older housing and in unincorporated sections of Miami. As a result of these MDHA policies the city had to pay out in a legal settlement, however the pressure to adjust the housing was limited as people then had housing. The campaign for the Umoja village occurs in the aftermath of this settlement when the aforementioned housing projects that consisted of 850 housing units occupied by blacks were scheduled for demolition and replacement by a 462-unit project. If displacing this large number of occupants in order to halve the available housing wasn’t bad enough, more problems were to follow. Those ejected from their homes were offered first occupancy of the units to be built, which was made a meaningless offer as following the demolition they were never built due to the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners (MDBCC) restriction of MDHA funding due to “new priorities”.

The Miami Herald would later publish an expose on this situation in its House of Lies series, however the subsequent political backlash was marginal as the gentrification in question affected primarily an impoverished, politically disenfranchised community. To combat this specific problem and the general embrace by the MDHA of the gentrification process, Rameau and the activists he recruits begin to operationalize a plan to help the homeless occupy public land. Following the “Pottinger precendent”, any “life-sustaining activities” taken by homeless people was legal and police could not force them to halt or remove them from said location. Take Back the Land’s political action core was formed, outreach to local churches and NGO’s involved in similar “justice” campaigns made and after a location was chosen Rameau reached out to a group he refers to as “The Lake Worth Kids” to help him do the actual building of the shantytown.

Max had met this group of activists, actually organized around the name Lake Worth Global Justice, during the Anti-FTAA protests in Miami 2003. Amidst the flying canisters of tear gas, buzzing of rubber bullets and batons hitting the bones of protestors that has since come to be called the “Miami Model” approach to policing at international trade conventions, they’d exchanged contact information and, upon hearing his plans, agreed to assist. The account that follows relates to co-ordination of food, housing, news coverage, dissentions between the activists and the occupants over what came to be “self-rule” and other issues related to maintaining a shanty-town. Four major actionable areas are developed in consultation with the people living in the village: “deepening roots on the land; expand(ing) our political reach beyond the land; provide resident services; and promote resident development” (106).

Max moves back and forth from an on the ground description of what’s going on to reflections on the implications of it for questions of leadership, political agency and politics in general. While there are moments of drag, inevitable in any sort of close account of actions, the depiction of the various political actors and their attempts to contain, co-opt, or destroy the purpose of the village does make for generally compelling reading. While supportive of the need to bring attention to collusion between Miami developers with the City government and the corruption that ensues with such a relationship, I take issue with Rameau’s choice of land and housing.

Rameau states that his choice to Occupy the Land is practical and symbolic. The first rationale is that it provides housing for people that have been placed within a precarious economic situation exacerbated by aforementioned capitalist-government collusion and the second rationale is that it draws attention to the dehumanizing contradictions of capitalism undergirded by such a corporatist model of governance. That said, while land/housing is important, it is a single manifestation of Capital and once it is “taken,” the daily problems connected with their maintaining it quickly subsumes the greater struggle for the generalized improvement of conditions for the marginal black community. At moments Rameau seems to recognize this fact in his expressions of exasperation on the large amount of unexpected time and energy that must be directed towards maintaining the political core and the homeless groups cohesiveness rather than furthering their agenda. It’s also visible in his positive comments about, General Rashid, a member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in American, (N’COBRA) who also binds the immanent need to help people marginalized and by gentrification politics but also extends it to reparations for the category of “Black people”.

Without digressing into a topic that requires more attention than what I am willing to give it here, ie. the impractical aspects of the federal government disbursing eight trillion dollars, or roughly 200,000 dollars for each black person currently alive in the United States; the variegated origin of “black people”, especially in South Florida, as well as the problematic construction of “white people” as an essentialist historical category considering the large scale of immigration that occurred following the emancipation of slaves, etc. I am sympathetic to the need for redistributionist/restorative measures to assist in the amelioration of the historical, institutional disenfranchisement of African Americans. However lacking a broader coalitional base and focusing solely on the “undeserving poor” without including the working poor, the large number of low-wage service sector blacks that have housing, greatly limits their options for political action. Thus while the symbolic aspect is indeed significant, the practical side is weak due to the small constituency involved in the political actions. Rather than a housing movement, it is instead a spectacle of housing.

To bolster my point, it’s worth citing a counterfactual to the confrontational, “adversarial” politics that Max Rameau advocated that would subsequently take form as the Occupy Wall Street movement to show how such a “movement” would exist. The group Lake Worth Global Justice (LWGJ), cited by Rameau as the core which helped him build the housing structures and co-created the culture of self-rule, has morphed from predominantly protest actions to gaining representation within their local government and expanding civic associations. Rather than simply creating a precarious spectacle, members of this group have been able to petition the Federal Government to assist low-income families without resorting to illegal squatting. Cara Jennings, mentioned in passing in Rameau’s account, was elected to Lake Worth City Commissioner in 2006, and was one of the sponsors for the formation of a Community Redevelopment Agency that subsequently applies for and obtained millions of dollars in federal funds [1]. With control over this money the members of LWGJ are able to monitor and direct spending to conserve and beautify traditional low-income housing areas and fund projects that benefit the whole community rather than just a cabal of developers. Additionally they have created programs of educational and legal outreach to marginalized Hispanic communities around the downtown core and further managed, through constant community involvement, to keep developers interests within the bounds of the community’s wishes through political agitation and referendum. The way Jennings and other in LWGJ have been able to do this is by following the rulebook of Civil Rights activists, ie. by making up for domestic deficiencies in funding and assistance due to economic marginalization by relying upon national entities, such as the Sierra Club, AFL-CIO, etc. for support. Her message, once able to be heard by voters with the assistance of these groups, thus was able to increase the pace of progressive change within the area. Issues of race and the different scale between Lake Worth and Miami are certainly factors of great importance, but so to is the non-essentially antagonistic relationship to the local and state government embodied by this approach.

These criticisms made, the book is still an insightful account of the short-lived movement whose operational presumptions have since been adopted by other political groups concerned with similar issues. Not only does it provide insight into the material realities of the abstracts of gentrification, corruption, co-optation, and others but it is also written in a clear, vernacular style.

[1] A particularly interesting aspect of the race was that Jenning’s “business-oriented” opponent printed and circulated through the mail flyers calling her a “radical anarchist” and his other opponent, former FAU professor, Andrew Procyk a Marxist.

Review of "Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chavez Phenomenon"

Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chavez Phenomenon by Steve Ellner combines bottom up Venezuelan history with institutional analysis that shows that the components of Chavez’s policies are long-standing and endogenous to Venezuelan politics. By highlighting this common thread, Ellner shows how Chavez Frias doesn’t represent a break, but a continuation of various struggles. Additionally, he does this through the framework which states that beneficial social change is such that political movements best serve the people by combining to achieve four goals” as opposed to one or two of them to the exclusion of others.” These goals are  “(1) the struggle for social justice; (2) the struggle for democracy; (3) the effort to promote national economic development; and (4) the adoption of economic and political nationalism.” From this vantage point he is able to access the relative success or failure of the Chavista project.

Following the military and AD supported coup against Medina Angarita, presumably for not passing democratic legislation fast enough, began the period known as the trieno, which from 1945-1947 was characterized by rule of a seven person Revolutionary Junta that was charged with the transition to democracy. This was a period of intense political conflict between the four major parties AC, PCV, COPEI and URD with the first two as the major protagonists. Ellner describes the reason for the coup, which was supported by members of the United States Defense Department, as growing fear of the possibilities unleashed by fear of an increasingly radicalization that could lead lead to a militant Communist takeover.  Open conflict between the groups led to another military coup, by Marcus Perez Jiminez, that had nationalist policies such as the subsidies for new states companies and elaborate development plants, but was repressive against the very real possibility of a leftist takeover. Considering Venezuela’s role as oil exporter to the United States in the Cold War context and the CIA’s role in creating social chance in Arbenz’s Guatemala, this could be seen as the manifestation of a desire to be free of stronger American influence. Regardless of why, the political assassinations and non-democratic rule united the formerly antagonistic parties together to form the Junta Patriotica to overthrow Jimenez.

This was not, however, the only overthrow. The AD moderates, with increased access ability to get financial support from business interests, were able to gain control of the party, to impose strict ideological restrictions and expel various groups as being “too radical”. They kept up the classification of the PCV as an illegal group and following their legalization in 1958 were allowed on the ballot. While they represented a small percentage of the vote, their organizational force was key in various union movements and they were again outlawed by Romulo Betancourt.

The nationalization of the iron and oil industry happened in 1975 and 1976, while full employment for all Venezuelans was proclaimed as a basic social right in 1983 by the then not yet neo-liberal president Carlos Andres Perez. His populism, however was of a strictly elitist variety and he refrained from any sort of populist mobilization of political and community organizations. This organizational lacuna combined with large, unfulfilled expectations led to a disillusioned population and his replacement. The subsequent decade is also one of general dissatisfaction with the government. Disconnection of the party with the rank and file and the popular classes came from a social disconnect from the non-elites and this formed s preference for the needs and desires of the business class and groups such as FEDECAMARAS. This, combined with the new logic of the Washington Consensus, the need to repay IMF-backed projects which failed to adequately deal with the source of Venezuelan property (land reform, oil dependence), government negligence which allowed 244 bankers to leave the country with billions of dollars and the massive transfer of public funds into private hands as a result of botched currency policies made the immiseration which resulted from the neo-liberal policies especially harsh.

Following the policies of Chavez once he has taken power, we see how he started to turn back the decentralization policies that has decreased government efficiency and increased corruption, pushed forward the consideration and ratification of a new constitution and actively sought to incorporate marginalized communities into a sympathetic relationship with the government rather than the antagonistic one it once had. Ellner claims there are four steps in Chavez’s transition from a center-leftist to a “21st century socialist” and shows how this is a result of a series of attempts at his removal from political power by the domestic opposition backed by the United States and the maintenance of electoral power as a result of his constituents defending their elector. Also worth pointing out is that Chavez has taken a largely pragmatic approach to all of his nationalizations and even when dealing with occupied companies. Rather than simply seizing foreign owned properties and complexes, as a government is within it’s rights to do, it has forced sales such as to take the sting out of their ejection.

The various hard and soft line currents within the Chavista movement are parsed through, and some attention is even given to the marginal but influential Trotskyists such as Orlando Chirino. Ellner cites four major points of contention within the hard and soft liners – policy within the MVR party, the Chavista Labor movement, the state-run oil industry and what the role of parallel structures should be over time. On this last point, those familiar with the various debates centered around societal transformations emerging from parties or from social movements will find the chapters five through severn particularly compelling as Ellner presents Venezuela as consisting of a synthesis of the two. The party of the MVR is illustrated as being pushed forward, pulled back and dealing with rank and file radicalism that goes beyond it’s stated objectives. The grassroots/institutional dialectic presented by Ellner suggests syncretic models are better suited to understanding the developments in Venezuela rather than an either/or model.

The short assessment of Veneuela’s foreign policy reiterates what many other academics have stated and what American news commentators have not – that the foreign policies are logical extensions of Chavez’s desire to create a multi-polar world not organized solely around capitalist imperatives. Considering the limitations to uni-polar military interventions and IMF and World Bank style economic restructuring in such a world would have to the United States, the demonstration effect that his “socialistic” policies have makes it more understandable why it is that he was so thoroughly derided in American main stream media.

Review of "We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution"

We Created Chavez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution by George Ciccariello-Maher is a bottom up approach to comprehending the still ongoing Venezuelan revolution. This is not a history of Chavez or the Venezuelan state, though they do of course make numerous appearances, but of the many social movements, radical unions, revolutionary organizations, as well as the indigenous, Afro-Venezuelan, women, barrio and students groups who have long organized and fought for the manifestation of their political will in the face of an oligarchic opposition long before Chavez. The purpose of the book is thus to re-orient discussions on Venezuela’s politics away from discussions about Chavez (is he an autocrat?! is he a populist?!) and turn towards the long history of actors and movements that first came to constitute his voting constituency and would later defend him from opposition attempts to buck the Bolivarian leadership. Such a horizontalist approach to understanding the power dynamics in Venezuela does not, however, exclude the vertical, institutional powers as many of those actors who in the sixties and seventies were fighting against the government would come to enter it under Chavez. More importantly, by highlighting their struggles the tensions embodied by the current government comes to the forefront and the myth of a charismatic leader “misleading” the people comes to be seen as the fiction it is.

One of the first, popularly misconceived notions which Cicarrielo-Maher seeks to dispute is the notion of Venezuela as an exceptional democracy following the death of Juan Vincente Gomez. The puntofijismo system dominated by Accion Democratica (AD) and COPEI was predicated on the institutional incorporation of all political organizations and the repression of those unwilling to be co-opted by it. Student and campesino organizations who in their mind over reached were expelled from positions of influence and repressed, with the latter class also facing losses of potential influence and power due to the huge demographic shift that saw urbanization quickly and steadily increase. Romulo Betancourt, via the influenced of the labor-leaders in the AFL-CIO, also began a a series of political expulsions of communists, socialists, and other radicals that would eventually form the Movimiento de la Izquerda Revolucionaria (MIR) and take up arms against the Venezuelan state. This was, of course, following the success of Castro in Cuba and unfortunately for the guerillas, they studied it not from the historical experiences in Cuba but through the lens of Debray and his notion of foquismo. The notion that this highly mobile band of avant-gardist fighters would be able to move around, sans connection to a peasant base led to movement alienation and inefficacy. With the initiation of a guerilla pacification and reintegration projects by the state, targeted assassination of leaders and their legal front counterparts (Cantaura y Yumare massacres), the guerilla movement dissipated. This does not mean, however, that they left no trace on subsequent politics. Their legacy of militancy lived on and, recognizing the failure of the guerillas, informed new activists to focus their studies on their own institutions rather than looking to outside examples of how to achieve political power.

Breaking from interviews with former guerilla leaders and movement activists, Ciccariello-Maher pauses to limn a series of qualitative political transformations – the 1989 Caracazo, Chavez’s 1992 coup attempt, the April 11th 2002 coup attempt and restoration of presidential power two days later, as well as the oil strike of 2002-2003 which present radical transformations of constituent and constituted power. The first two events are cited as evidence of the last gasps of the puntofijismo system. Government corruption and neoliberal reforms were not just rejected but the entire system of government. The latter two moments are presented as dialectic whereby the new state could either deepen or shirk it’s commitment to a radical transformation of Venezuelan society. The choice to strengthen the allies to the left, as Robespierre and Toussaint L’Ouverture did not, deepen the process of social, political and economic transformation but also brought to the forefront a new set of contradictions. Now that the new constitution was in place and changes to it were made in order to address the historical imbalances created by dependent development, tensions between the latifundistas and campesinos, informal and formal workers, were made more intense. Additionally, since many of the student radicals had left the universities in the 1980s in order to do community organizing (in a manner reminiscent of the Narodniks but here being welcomed), the student movement had turned to the right, creating several “events” that were miscontextualized within the international media.

The issue of the informal economy occupies another interesting aspect when dissecting the Bolivarian revolution. With the grow overcrowding, many Venezuelans reproduce through marginal, informal employment and have little representation. As a whole in Latin America unions aren’t powerful due in part to the extremely high number of people within the reserve army of labor. Incorporating these people into the government apparatus, despite their demonstrated allegiance to Chavez during the 2002 coup attempt, is difficult due to their marginality. Their lives are shown to be mediated through barrio culture (pueblo pequeno, inferno grande) and thus are tied to a politics of location yet the claim that these nomad workers are the most genuine product of capital’s global chaos and this possibly it’s most genuine gravediggers as well strikes me as one of the points at which I disagree with Ciccariello-Maher. While agreeing with his assessments of the dangers of excluding them from the revolutionary process and the assessment that the buhoneros y motorizados ought to receive some of the wealth coming from their lands oil, it seems as if there should be some attempts at integrating them into other modes of economic reproduction. Here, perhaps, is where the role of state as entrepreneur and investor in social capital could come into play. Given the book’s focus on movements rather than the state, however, not delving into the issue raised is not problematic but, as I believe Ciccariello-Maher intends to be a topic for further investigation and debate.

Another of the problematic issues with the deepening of the revolution and the dynamics of the state reaching down to groups that have typically been against the state rather than seeking merely to reform it results in a melange of variously oriented sects. Because of Ciccariello-Maher’s access to these people, the political actors speak for themselves, providing welcome understanding that while many are “for Chavez”, it is not absolute. They are critical followers and in reality more for “la processa” and are willing to act against him if necessary. This is most clear in the early exposition of the 23 de Enero barrio, but is a recurrent theme throughout. The willingness of the people to contest his rule or the opposition when necessary, in fact, is cited as one of the main reasons for the deepening of the revolution. The book closes with meditations on the dual power process being created in Venezuela and shows in reality Chavez, “el pueblo” and the new constitution are really empty signifiers being filled by Venezuelans. Their struggle to create a revolutionary society when there are still corrupt and reactionary elements in the government waiting to be unmasked and ejected is in contradistinction to the normal conception of “seizing power”. There is of course the further tensions between those on the anti-statist left, such Jesse Blanco, who see the loss of movement autonomy as a driving concern rather than the institutionalization of the movement. This is understandable given Venezuela’s political history, but those that have “reconciled themselves to institutional power see instead an increased pace of progressive change.

Addressing an issue raised by another reviewer of the book, in Todd Chretien’s review, he claims that Ciccariello-Maher doesn’t adequately define vanguardism. While there may not be a concise, positivist definition, the categorization of several groups under that heading shows the significance of it in the Venezuelan context. Ciccariello-Maher narrates how guerrilla groups, such as the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional and later the Partido de la Revolucion Venezuela and Bandera Rojas all entered into the 23 de Enero neighborhood and provoked conflict with the police and DISIP. The result of this engagement was to invoke massive repression not just against those involved with the group but the community members. As a result of growing disillusionment with these groups and the community support, they dispersed or faced organizational deterioration or transformation as they were no longer welcomed in as harbingers of positive community development. On the last potential for transformation we see that as a result of this guerrilla and pueblo encounter the growth of the Venezuelan Tupamaros (no relation to the Uruguayan Tupamaros, they were given this name by the police in order for “respectable” citizens to distance themselves from them), or armed community activists seeking to keep out the drug trade and self-police the community from ladrones y malandros. The avant-gardism, which Chretien correctly cites as a lingering top-down political orientation, thus has various attributes depending on the groups aims and tasks and is not limited to the list of groups just mentioned. As a concept, however, this is meant to highlight the leadership disconnection from the purported “base” of the struggles. This can be the prioritization of the urban struggle over the campesino struggle, the failure of guerillas to co-ordinate with non-explicitly socialist campesino groups, the prioritization of insurrection over the organization of barrio services, and the general lack of concern to the informal economy due to the use of dogmatic encrustations of Marxism related to the category of the lumpenproletariat.

Finally, for those interested in a presentation on the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela by Ciccariello-Maher, check out this video on YouTube.

Review of "Dependency and Development in Latin America"

Dependency and Development in Latin America is former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto’s historical materialist account of the preconditions and conditions of economic development in Latin America. The preface and introduction flatly rejects a narrow empiricism and particularism and instead adopts a holistic, dialectical, historical-structural approach.

As subsequent historiography illustrates, the forms taken on by a dependency varied considerably based upon the social-political context, the goods available for export and the level of capital investment and social infrastructure required to extract them, the political capacity following the cessation of the war for independence as well as more mundane concerns such as terrain and communications capacity. Despite the centers incapacity to operate as the political power within the periphery, still exercised immense control as their productive capacities were in essence enclave economies. Put another way, peripheral economies were still dependent upon their former colonial masters to take in their exports, which was predominantly raw materials. Because their capital goods sector wasn’t usually not quantitatively large enough and they lacked a domestic market, the importation of capital intensive, manufactured goods continued. This coincidence of interests meant that in many ways that thought the wars of independence had been fought and won such that they were no longer under the thumb of the Iberian peninsula, the same manner of control was and dependence existed.

Dependent economies were at an additional disadvantage as the banking system had previously been administered by ejected colonial groups, making potential colonial capitalists at another disadvantage. Lacking access to European markets, reliant upon foreign bankers, unable to profitably exploit their own domestic market, accelerated urbanization with concomitant expectations for political liberalism and with a ruling class that often idealized and sought to imitate their former oppressors combined to create the conditions for social conflict. In the emphasis on the materiality of the countries in question, Cardoso seeks to undermine the facile notions proffered by modernization theorists such as W. W. Rostow which hold that the imposition of universalistic economic qualities on an economy can create development.

At such a point it’s worth noting that Cardoso highlights at several points the role of the bureaucracy. It’s various incarnations are worth discussing as a counterfactual to modernization theory’s economic “bridging” and as shortly following the books release the epoch of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes began. History illustrates that it is possible for a society to go through profound alterations in its system of production with the formation of a center for bureaucratic decision making. The creation of a “political sphere”, concomitant social institutions and the composition of character implies a level of complexity not alway existent. Following the nascent struggles, they are either able to serve their creator’s interests, the dominant route, act to benefit some lower class groups goals of (predominantly socialist or communist) development or able to blend the two within a nationalist sentiment. The various powers within this are tied to the level of capital development, however was already mentioned above in relation to the enclave economy of dependent countries, it is not just that there are times when large land-holders and domestic capitalists have an interest in policies that prioritize their maintenance of existing social relations despite the fact that a marginal adjustment might spark internal capitalist development – but that this is the default state of affairs.

The historical analysis which follows and provides examples of this is, as a relative neophyte to Latin American politics, admittedly beyond my scope. However I would not that Marjory Urquidi’s review of the book in The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 60 No 1, noted that while aspects of it could be problematized it was largely lacking any major flaws. What I am able to comment on is Kenneth Robbert’s quick dismissal of the purported datedness of Cardoso’s “socialist” language. From the previous analysis, and tellingly written at the beginning the “lost decade”, it is clear that given the capacity of the upper class to deal with financial burdens that it’s better in the long run for them to assist workers rather than resist their demands. Class conflict, like welfare and job training programs, both cost money but only one of them assists the capitalists once the opportunity presents itself.