Chavez: Socialism or Death

From an interview between ahora.cu and Professor James Cockcroft:

Ahora: President Chavez has said "Either capitalism finishes us or we build the other road demanded by the world: Socialism." Theoretically, is Venezuela building socialism?

Cockcroft: "Not theoretically, and not in reality either, because Venezuela still has a capitalist economy. The important thing in Venezuela is that it is carrying out a revolutionary process starting from the beginning, with a very intelligent and capable leader who owes his life to the social movements that saved him during the April 11-14 military coup (sponsored by Washington) and Pedro Carmona's short lived regime.

This revolutionary process is opening the way to a new society, with more than 8,000 cooperatives and many factories occupied by their workers who under new self-management systems are working better than during the purely capitalist period. It is a society in transition towards something new, but we still can't clearly see what the future of socialism in Venezuela will be like or that in Our America, the united Latin America that Bolívar spoke about and now Chavez. But it is true what Chavez says, 'socialism or death', because capitalism is destroying us."

Ahora: There is talk about new types of socialism. What characteristics should they have, keeping in mind that there are reforms that don't affect the structure of capitalism?

Cockcroft: "Nobody knows in fact, because socialism will be different in each country according to the historical, cultural and current conditions. Fortunately, the time of a "correct" version is weak. If the reforms don't affect the structure of capitalism, as they are starting to do in Venezuela, the process doesn't move toward socialism."

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Tags: socialism, Hugo+Chavez, Chavez, Venezuela, Cuba