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  • Monthly Review Essays
  • Marta Harnecker (Archive)

    Venezuela — after the elections: what is to be done?

    Originally published: Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal on July 3, 2018 (more by Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal)  |

    Marta Harnecker examines the post-electoral context from a broad historical perspective.

  • Marx Library

    Reading Marx’s Capital Today: Lessons from Latin America

    Marta Harnecker

    One hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx published his book Capital, an intellectual effort of great breadth, with the aim of revealing the logic of capitalist production and providing workers with theoretical instruments for their liberation. Having discovered the logic of the system, he was able to foresee with great anticipation much of what is happening in the world capitalist economy today. But, we cannot mechanically apply what is outlined in Capital to the current reality of Latin America.

  • Prime Minister Fidel Castro 1961

    Fidel, Today and Forever

    Marta Harnecker

    You always understood that politics was not the art of the possible—a conservative vision of politics—but rather the art of making the impossible possible, not through voluntarist actions but by understanding that politics is the art of building a social, political, and military correlation of forces that allows us to transform the existing conditions of struggle and make possible in the future what seems impossible in the present.

  • New Paths Require a New Culture on the Left

    Marta Harnecker

    Speech accepting the 2013 Libertador Prize for Critical Thought, awarded for A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-first Century Socialism, Caracas, Venezuela, August 15, 2014 I completed this book one month after the physical disappearance of President Hugo Chávez, without whose intervention in Latin America this book could not have been written.  Many of […]

  • Learning About Participation Without an Instructor: Introducing Documentary Videos Produced by MEPLA, the Center for Research on Popular Memory in Latin America

    Marta Harnecker

    “Here I would like to talk especially about the documentaries that we have produced about the participation of people in communities and how to produce videos for educating grassroots community leaders who in general do not have any formal education but are interested in working in communities.” — Marta Harnecker English Español Marta Harnecker is […]

  • Chávez’s Chief Legacy: Building, with People, an Alternative Society to Capitalism

    Marta Harnecker

    When Hugo Chávez triumphed in the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already foundering.  The choice then was none other than whether to re-establish the neoliberal capitalist model — clearly with some changes including greater concern for social issues, but still motivated by the same logic of profit seeking — or to go […]

  • “We Must Take Public Criticism into Account.  Criticism Is Good and Should Help the Process”

    Edwin Herrera Salinas and Marta Harnecker

      What is the characteristic of the Latin American Left today? 20 years ago, when the Berlin Wall fell, there was no revolution foreseeable on the horizon.  However, it didn’t take long before a process began to emerge in Latin America with Hugo Chávez.  We have gone on to form governments with anti-neoliberal programs, though […]

  • Excessive Centralization Creates Inefficiency and Prevents Authentic Popular Protagonism

    Marta Harnecker

    1. There Is No Popular Protagonism without Decentralization Popular protagonism becomes a mere slogan if people do not have the opportunity to make their opinions known and take decisions in areas where they participate: (geographic spaces, workplaces, educational establishments, interest groups).  If the central state decides everything, there is no room for local initiatives and […]

  • Ideas for the Struggle #4 Should We Reject Bureaucratic Centralism and Use Only Consensus?

    Marta Harnecker

    This is the fourth in a series of articles on “Ideas for the Struggle” by Marta Harnecker. 1.  For a long time, left-wing parties were authoritarian.  The usual practice was bureaucratic centralism, very much influenced by the experiences of Soviet socialism.  All criteria, tasks, initiatives, and courses of political action were decided by the party […]

  • Ideas for the Struggle #3 To Be at the Service of Popular Movements, Not to Displace Them

    Marta Harnecker

    This is the third in a series of articles on “Ideas for the Struggle” by Marta Harnecker. 1.  We have said before that politics is the art of constructing a social and political force capable of changing the balance of forces in order to make possible tomorrow what appears impossible today.  But, to be able […]

  • Ideas for the Struggle #2 Not to Impose But to Convince

    Marta Harnecker

    This is the second in a series of articles on “Ideas for the Struggle” by Marta Harnecker. 1.  Popular movements and, more generally, various social actors who are engaged in the struggle against neoliberal globalization today at the international level as well as in their own countries reject, with good reason, actions that aim to […]

  • Ideas for the Struggle #1 Insurrections or Revolutions? The Role of the Political Instrument

    Marta Harnecker

      This is the first in a series of articles on “Ideas for the Struggle” by Marta Harnecker. 1.  The recent popular uprisings at the turn of the 21st century that have rocked numerous countries such as Argentina and Bolivia — and, more generally, the history of the multiple social explosions that have occurred in […]

Also By Marta Harnecker in Monthly Review Magazine

  • A New Revolutionary Subject October 01, 2019
  • ‘A New Revolutionary Subject’ April 01, 2017
  • Social Movements and Progressive Governments January 01, 2016
  • Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes July 01, 2010
  • I. Latin America July 01, 2010
  • II. Twenty-First Century Socialism July 01, 2010
  • Conclusion July 01, 2010
  • Hugo Chávez on the Failed Coup September 01, 2005

Books By Marta Harnecker

  • Planning from Below: A Decentralized Participatory Planning Proposal June 24, 2019
  • A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism January 08, 2015

Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Lost & Found

  • Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the New Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution
    Hugo Chávez Mural of Chávez in Caracas. (Univision)

    On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

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