One of the quintessential elements of the capitalist world system -- applied ideologically by the "Opposition" in the national and international mass media, to "divide and rule" the Venezuelan people -- is social discrimination, racism. In fact, racism is the ideological reflection of the world market, of the international division of labour, that is, of globalization, of the vicious global class struggle. In fact, Racism is Ideology par excellence. Its current, concrete reality is global fascism, is globalized Apartheid.

Social discrimination, racism, is an innate characteristic of any capitalist society, just like economic exploitation, political domination, destructive militarization and mortal alienation. All of them are intrinsic elements of our world system, to eradicate them, the whole exploitative labour system has to be annihilated. As ideology, there is no capitalism without racism, and vice versa; no matter what excuse we may have, who favours capitalism, sows racism; to eliminate any one of the two, we have to annihilate both. This also applies to all five capitalist essences.

Long ago, in Venezuela, Andres Eloy Blanco, demanded that somebody must paint "black angels" for him, indicating that the European Conquest, that Christianity, have already painted racism into our very sacred essence, into the very soul of Latin America. Concerning the Bolivarian Revolution, the clarion call, the "Diana" attack, has to be: Do not paint any angels for me, neither black angels nor white devils!

The worst that could have happened in Venezuela was when the oligarchs began to attack the black face - the expression of African slavery - of the Bolivarian Revolution, when they slandered President Chávez with racist, fascist diatribes. However, because of a colonial education for barbarism, although they experience it daily, very few Venezuelans know what is racism, what is social discrimination, and what is its relation to capitalism and imperialism. Thus, we will summarize the historical and social roots of racism here. We will under-line its ideological functions, to indicate that the Bolivarian Revolution does not need any ideology, or ideological education, rather it urgently has to develop its own scientific práxis and philosophic theory, to tell the world what is happening here in Latin America.

The Concept "Racism"

"Race", "racial prejudice", "racial discrimination" and "racism" are very vague, unscientific and polydimensional conceptions, which have caused ideological confusion and social disaster over the last three centuries. Although Arthur J. de Gobineau published a manifesto, The Inequality of the Races, and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made their manifesto public at about the same time, yet none of them dealt with the crucial question, namely, the relation of the so-called "race struggle" and the "class struggle", especially in the "Third World" context.

However, these authors cannot be dissociated from their intellectual environment; they are products of their epoch, no matter how critical and revolutionary they may have been. This also applies to us, when we kiss "Mi Negra", or make jokes about Africa: His name is "Negro", his surname is "Mierda"; just imagine what Nelson Mandela would think about us -- about this result of decades of "escualido", puntofijista education. Everything is fine with "Mi Negra", from the very heart of the Congo, however, when she is being presented to her future parents-in-law, then the real racist drama begins.

In the epoch of "discovery", Western Europe had experienced an unprecedented development in technology and science, which was accompanied by a strong feeling of "white race superiority". The social sciences bore the imprint of this arrogance, and anthropology, ethnology or sociology attempted to legitimize scientifically the hegemony of Europe and the supremacy of the "Aryan race". Already prior to the French Revolution, great philosophical thinkers like Montesquieu and Voltaire had paved the road for ascientific "racist" thoughts.

Although Karl Marx spoke about "barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones", and found a subject of derision in Lassie's "negroid" features, there is no reason whatsoever to define scientific socialism, as developed by him as being a "racist ideology". However, we must see our teachers within their historic context, and criticize them according to the limitations of their personal and historic knowledge; above all, one realizes how deeply "racism" has penetrated the very "soul" of human beings, living under capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.

Arthur De Gobineau was of the opinion that all ancient and modern "civilizations" and cultures were "the creation of white men, the only history being white history." Thus, because all history of "non-white" cultures were practically unknown before 1847 in Europe, we find the controversial statement in the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle". In a letter to A. H. Starkenburg, Engels even went so far as to state: "We regard economic conditions as the factor which ultimately determines historical development. But race is itself an economic factor."

These examples raise the crucial question: not whether "races" should be treated equally, not whether "races" are equal, but whether the category of "race", which is the base of "racial prejudice" or "racism", is scientifically a valid one. Now, "ghosts", "angels" or "demons" have not been proved to exist in physical reality, but nevertheless they exist intellectually and spiritually in the minds of millions of Latin American human beings. Similarly, "races" and "racism" are social realities of our epoch. The problem is not to show that they really exist, but that they are pseudo-concepts, part and parcel of bourgeois and oligarchic ideology, which operates with categories which are scientifically invalid.
In Venezuela, these are all necessary to rationalize oligarchic class rule, economic exploitation and to maintain the status quo of "white" hegemony - and nowadays, even "black" supremacy as well. Only when this point is clear can we analyse contemporary "racism" in all its shades and shadows, fired from Plaza Francia.

"Race", "Racial Prejudice" and Racism

The concept "race", in its current use, appeared for the first time in 1684. The French medical doctor and traveller Francois Bernier, wrote about "four or five races of people, whose differences are so obvious, that by right these should be used as the basis for a new division of the world." The real founder of the "race" doctrine, later developed as an ideology, was the Swedish natural scientist, Carl Von Linné. In the tenth revised edition of his famous book, "Systema Naturae", in 1758, he divided the human species into four major "races", according to physical, psychological and social features: Indians, Europeans, Asiatics, and Negroes.
Due to the contributions of Houston Chamberlain, G. V. de Lapouge and De Gobineau, eventually the "racist" ideologues settled for three major "race" groups: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. These were again sub-divided into various groups, including, for example, the famous "'Aryan race