[Marxism] Chavez facing political setback in referendum?

[Fred Feldman]

Venezuela en Vivo says the vote is "too close to call."  Their reports
suggest that the reforms might currently be behind by one or two points.
Wilpert is suggesting that Chavez may have tried to do "too much, too fast"
in the measure. (I am not CRITICIZING him for saying this, just reporting
it.)

Electoral processes in a capitalist country -- which Venezuela is -- are
bourgeois and the bourgeoisie has a lot of organic advantages.  

One thing that has often occurred to me quite often to me in recent weeks is
that a vote on a new social system that the struggle has not yet created in
life is necessarily a very shaky thing.  Venezuela clearly, one way or the
other, has some very serious popular and class struggle ahead to create
realities that cannot be created by votes.  Here I am not talking about a
rush to socialism, which was not being proposed, but broader social changes.

Here I tend to agree with my friend Joaquin in his response to Rene
Courtemarche, where he questioned whether the referendum in itself could be
a decisive turning point.  If I ever put everything I disagree with my
friend Joaquin about into writing, it would amount to a book -- maybe a
useful book, and I don't promise never to write it.  But his analyses on
questions like this, like Nestor's, tend to be sound.

Whether the reform wins or loses at this point, the outcome is going to be
hailed by the opposition and their masters in Washington as a great victory.
I doubt that it will amount to that in the current context.  

I worry more about the impact in Bolivia than in Venezuela, but all will be
decided in struggle as long as our side is ready to fight. 
Fred Feldman