“Neither in Venezuela nor in Bolivia, nor in any of the countries that turned to the Left over the past twenty years, has the bourgeois state been totally transcended nor has capitalist rule been overthrown. The revolutionary processes in these countries had to gradually create institutions of and for the working-class alongside the continuation of capitalist rule. … Any attempt to fully transcend capitalism was constrained by the power of the bourgeoisie — which was not undone by repeated elections, and which is now the source of counter-revolution; and it was constrained by the power of imperialism — which has succeeded, for now, in a coup in Bolivia, and which threatens daily a coup in Venezuela. … Nonetheless, both Venezuela and Bolivia experienced the full thrust of a ‘hybrid war’ — from sabotage of physical infrastructure to sabotage of the ability to raise funds from capital markets. Lenin suggested that after capturing the state and dismantling capitalist ownership, the revolutionary process in the new Soviet republic was difficult, the stubborn class struggle alive and well; imagine then how much more difficult is the stubborn struggle in Venezuela and Bolivia.” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Ana Maldonado, Pilar Troya Fernández, and Vijay Prashad wrote a letter to intellectuals who deride revolutions in the name of purity: it’s worth reading.
25 November 2019