Dear Eva,
I have some points to make and would greatly appreciate your comments. Therefore I do it with an open letter, not an e-mail which could be lost in the deluge of spam. I really “have no secrets” (Bob Dylan) and anyway our “best friends” in the CIA can read all e-mails they wish to.
First, I do enjoy translating into Russian and posting at my blog http://correodelorinoco-ru.blogspot.com the articles of my choice from the „Correo del Orinoco International“. Thank you very much for your consent and approval. I do this translation work in a professional way, so that phrases which were botched in the English
(e.g.: „Here we are, 40 years later in the eye of the hurricane, in the middle of a peaceful and democratic revolution in which you aspiring cadets will have a very important role“ in the recently published article „A jogging Chavez advances towards 2012 reelection, reminisces“)
remain botched in a similar way in my translation into Russian.
Now, here is my request: please publish in the COI more translations into English of authentic Chavez speaking to the people, say, after audio files posted at the RNV site. I enjoy listening to his plain way of speaking - for example, his recent speech about his intention to launch the new Mission „Madres del Barrio“ containing the pun: „A socialist dare not be a machist, a socialist must be a feminist“. It is really good and Russians should get his authentic words. But it is far too much for me alone to try to make a transcript of some low-quality audio record in Spanish (where sometimes I cannot tell the words) and then to translate it into Russian.
The next point is political. You know that the West and USA in particular are growing more and more shameless, brutal and criminal in waging wars of aggression against independent states (the last example being the rape of Libya). Now the same gang of fascist thugs (USA-Israel-NATO) threatens Syria and Iran. I have no doubt that the same „humanitarian“ massacre is also being planned against Venezuela.
What I think could help to stop this imperialist state terrorism is mobilizing decent people of the World in a global grass-roots campaign „Yankee go home“ - the way the protesters against Vietnam war did it in the 1970-ies, when these words were adorning walls and fences all around the world. The same clear demand everywhere: „Yankee+NATO go home“, to counteract mass-media lies. It would be great if this proposal appears in COI.
And at last, the most important point: it concerns the things Marxists call „ideology“. For me (being a behaviorist-socialist) „ideology“ is nothing but empty talk, therefore I address here not „ideology“ but the behavior of people and the technology of modifying it (social engineering). I hope you could kindly put the following to the attention of Mr. Chavez:
I.m.h.o., his approach to dealing with the capitalists and all other enemies of socialism is more like that of late Mr. Allende of Chile than that of Mr. Castro of Cuba. This tolerant approach in emergency needs a lot of active and efficient support of his government by the people, as the horrible fate of the Unidad Popular and personally Mr. Allende demonstrated quite clearly.
I am afraid that such support is not secured by the present one-way relation between the Chavista government and the people which is somehow akin to the relation between Santa and kids. Certainly, oil revenues make it possible, but is the welfare state the same as the socialist society? I hate to tell you that it is not. As it was quite correctly expressed in the „Venceremos“:
„Sembraremos las tierras de gloria,
socialista sera el porvenir,
todos juntos seremos la historia:
a cumplir, a cumplir, a cumplir...“,
viable socialist society is everyone’s active participation, working and giving in/for/to the common new way of life, and this behavior should be actively reinforced (in the behaviorist meaning of this word) by the government.
Contrary to socialism, the welfare state means for the people to be passive recipients of dole and gifts distributed by the bureacracy. As it seems to me, it is what unfortunately happens in Venezuela now: poor individuals get handouts from Good Santa Chavez, go shopping and then crawl into the solitude of his/her cabin to munch arepas. And obviously it will be the same with the „Madres del Barrio“ benefits. OK, you can give poor single mothers money - but don’t forget that some of them are drunkards... and the money given will do no good to their kids.
Money benefits should be used only as a conditional reinforcer, as an incentive and reward for active socialist work for the good of the community (barrio) and the country as a whole. Socialist work should not be considered as „wage employment“ simply because its fruits go largely to those working! There can be a lot of useful community projects where socialist work can be applied, instead of hiring business contractors. Everyone can propose plenty of them, but nothing is being done because wage earning make people unwilling to work „for free“, so that there should be (at least initially) some extra incentive which can later be thinned out (this procedure of variable-rate reinforcement was studied in detail by Prof. B.F.Skinner).
This is the only way the operant framework of socialist society can be built. Behavior research established without any doubt that non-conditional reinforcement (i.e. handouts with no strings attached) is the most dangerous misunderstanding of socialism. It makes people passive, idle and expecting to get more - for nothing. It is the behavior science that proved that the „self-help“ view of socialism developed by Proudhon and Owen is practicable, whereas the Marxist blind faith in „class consciousness“ leads to utter failure and inevitable dead-end, as the Soviet experience has demonstrated.
You know, there is one thing kids need very much which we had in the Soviet Union. Namely, we had „Palaces of Young Pioneers“ (in big cities) and „Houses of Young Pioneers“ (local). It was the Soviet version of „Scouts“. You could go there every day after school and do all sorts of things - sports, mechanical and electric engineering, DX-radio, car driving, robotics, music, chemistry, biology (gardening, pets etc.), etc. under the tutelage of professionals who were paid a small salary. For us, kids, it was totally free.
It was many years ago and we had no computers, but now kids can (instead of playing moronic computer games) use them for many fascinating activities: searching through „Wikipedia“, making pen-friendships via e-mail with kids all around the world... certainly, under the guidance of knowledgeable instructors. I do not like the antieducationalist rhetorics of Ivan Illich, but he was right saying that kids need the opportunity and encouragement to explore the world, not the compulsory school „education“. This is what I believe should be done for all kids in Venezuela, and especially for the kids from poor families (certainly, after making sure that they are not hungry).
That’s all for today.
Yours very sincerely,
Alex (behaviorist-socialist)
