PRAGOTI

President Hugo Chavez's recent victory in Venezuela's presidential elections is another step in making the path to socialism irreversible in that country. Whether Chavez will manage to heed some of his leftist critics and allies and evolve further reforms that broaden the scope of the socialist project remains to be seen, but the signs are promising.   

An attempt is made to ask some basic questions with respect to the 20^th Century Socialist experiments and see what it holds for the socialism of the present century. This note is organised in the following format. It begins with posing two theoretical questions viz. the stage-theory interpretation of Marxism and the principle of democratic centralism, both of which have had effects on the current praxis of certain communist parties. To draw a contrast with this theoretical understanding of Marxism and the consequent praxis, of which China is an apt example, we present the case of alternative forms of socialist experiments being tried in the Third World, particularly in Latin America. To locate them in a historical context, a brief overview of the neoliberal model and its devastating impact on these countries is presented to show where they first derived their strength from. Following this overview, a somewhat detailed political-economic analysis is made of the countries which could be a starting point for the road map for the 21^st Century Socialism. 

On April 13, more than 30,000 Bolivarian Militants took oath to defend the revolution till the last breath,in Venezuela.

"Hugo Chávez has won yet another victory in the referendum to amend the constitution and pave way for the removal of term limits for the election of a person to all the elected posts. The "yes" vote secured 54.4 percent of the nearly 67 percent votes polled on February 15, 2009. That means 6.31 million people of Venezuela had voted "yes." The "yes" vote triumphed by over eight percent vote, a remarkable margin considering the fact that this amendment was one of the 69 articles that were put for referendum in December 2007 and narrowly defeated.",writes R. Arun Kumar.