To know what is socialism is to know what is capitalism, it is the dialectical negation, it is anti-capitalism.

By Franz J. T. Lee

On Thursday evening June 11th, 2009, President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela hosted the first of his TV series of Socialist Theory, which intend to explain what is socialist revolution, in contradistinction to isolated episodes or descriptive debates of current daily problems and events. Really these series are most welcome, it is a pity that we had to wait a whole decade for their revolutionary coming into existence.

Sitting there looking at and listening to the eloquent and poignant theoretical analysis of very complex transhistoric processes, a typical intellectual don of Chavez, really reminded me of so many talks, opinions, addresses and lectures that I have given and voiced in word and deed across Venezuela over the last three decades in constant favor of socialist revolution in America and elsewhere. Chavez's speech reminded me of the immense arduous task and difficulty of revolutionary theory to grasp the subjective imagination and objective fantasy of the toiling workers of the world and to transform them into praxical "creation of the masses", a faculty which until now has only been reserved for the divine, for the 'on high'.

Thanks to Chavez to return socialist theory, communal praxis, creative powers and emancipatory fire to the real creators of humanity, wealth and power, in particular to the working classes of Venezuela, the Caribbean and South America.

We may differ in our opinions as to what revolution or socialism should be in the epoch of globalization. We could consider that Jesus Christ has been the first true socialist or that Karl Marx has been the first real Christian. This is an inalienable human right. The iron test and scientific verification of such individual theories is ever changing social praxis. Across the last decade we have listened to nearly all the addresses and talks of Chavez. We could follow his amazing capacity to read, to study, to learn, to approximate socialism.

Once the German philosopher Ernst Bloch has celebrated Karl Marx as the greatest student of all times. I may safely state that currently President Hugo Chavez Frias is the greatest student of the epoch of globalization, of 'Humania del Sur'.

If only the working masses of Venezuela, the conspiring 'opposition' and the propagators of corporate fascism would really know what an exceptional president we have, then we could confirm dialectically that Chavez deserves his people, and that the people deserve their Chavez.

Except in the good old days of Fidel, with exceptions like Evo, where on earth can we still hear a presidential address like last Thursday.

To all that was deliberated, we may add some food for thought. To know what is socialism is to know what is capitalism, it is the dialectical negation, it is anti-capitalism.

* Subjectively socialism is revolutionary theory, social class consciousness.
* Objectively socialism is existent social classes in conflict, also in Venezuela; it is permanent, concrete class struggle, is socialist praxis.
* 'Transjectively', it is 'transvolutionary', that is, for the very first time it is emancipatory, creative 'creation of the masses'.

In previous writings we have explained the global quintessence of capitalism, of the accumulation of capital across 25 centuries, which have led to the current debacle, to the recession and depression, to the collapse of the capitalist system.

Capitalism is:
* Natural and social economic exploitation;
* Local, national and global political domination, the State;
* Social discrimination, machismo, racism, master-slave relations, Apartheid, Zionism;
* Global and Space colonization and militarization, genocide, 'magnicidio', fascism, terrorism;
* Total alienation, maleducation, dissocialization, denaturalization, mental holocaust, mind and thought control, war of ideas, media terror, full spectrum dominance.

What is socialism?

Exactly the opposite of every single trait of capitalism.

Any society which still fosters any one of the above pandemic plagues is not socialist. Also, anybody who nurtures the above evils is not a proletarian, socialist revolutionary.

We impatiently await more 'praxico'-theoretical historic lessons of President Chavez, so that not only thinking and thought should approximate Venezuelan reality, but that objective reality, active praxis, should become a material force and push towards socialist theory, towards socialism, towards human emancipation.