In Venezuela, theoretically, within the current process of "deepening" the "revolution within the revolution," more and more, the subjective factor is playing a decisive role.

Bolivarians, compatriots, revolutionaries or "chavistas" do not just sprout up overnight like fresh mushrooms from the objective fertile soil of Venezuela and Latin America.

In any social revolution that radically wants to change the decadent mode of production, the exploitative tools of production, the primitive, energetic resources of production, the economic forces of production and the dominating, socio-political relations of production, as conditio sine qua non, necessitates a social, class, subjective factor, its own, free choice ... its liberum arbitrium.

It was originally discovered by Epicurus ... and in most recent times was developed further by the bourgeois, capitalist thinkers of the Enlightenment; later it was scientifically and philosophically refined by Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, Che, Fidel and Ernst Bloch.

In Venezuela, why is the subjective factor, revolutionary theory, so indispensable?

In Latin America, why should revolutionary praxis, the concrete making of the revolution, be guided by free choice, by free will?

Why should the political vanguard of the Bolivarian Revolution consciously liberate itself from the ideological and religious shackles, from the colonial and neocolonial chains of illusion and fantasy, long ago produced by a master-slave mentality, by a carefully planned, global mental holocaust?

Internally, within the Bolivarian movement, one of the most serious problems turning up in the current "deepening" of the revolutionary process is the fact that some real, transformative, subjective, human factors, that should give permanent impetus to the revolution, in many spheres are simply lethargic or absent.

Occasionally, in various urgent meetings concerning organization, this precarious, subjective dilemma drove even our generally so very militant and optimistic President Hugo Chavez Frias sometimes towards real despair.

Similarly, as a result of the counter-revolutionary effects of a certain sloven political heritage from the puntofijista past ... that definitely decelerates the emancipatory process, the numerous planned projects and institutions ... many serious compatriots are already approximating the very limits of revolutionary patience, endurance and tolerance. This negatively affects the internal coherence, cohesion and contradictory unity of the emancipatory process.

Beyond doubt, this is an important element of the Venezuelan "revolution in the revolution"; namely, the subjective factor, social theory, that merits urgent, immediate attention.

In general, what are the basic reasons for this situation?

Firstly: they concern what we on previous occasions have determined as the "Mental Holocaust," the Mind and Thought Control, produced by the Master-Slave exploitative and dominating relations across the ages.

Secondly: it is important to note that the various European ruling classes have generated this Mental Holocaust precisely to destroy free choice, free will, subjectivity, theory, self-determination. Already Plato, in his Republic had suggested the necessary political application of big lies to rule the masses, in other words, the institutionalization of an ideological holocaust; Maquiavelli and Hobbes refined its social functions, and Hitler openly revealed its fascist nature: "If you want to control a people, control its education."

Thirdly: the "war of ideas," the disinformation campaigns, the big lies of the international mass media, are not modern novelties, they are as old as Methuselah. This mental holocaust launched since centuries by the European Conquest all over America ... and which was heinously continued by all the oligarchic rulers of the past ... has caused the central problem now encountered by revolutionary education in Venezuela.

Fourthly: till today, the metropolitan countries are not exporting their latest, highest, productive technological know how to "Third World" countries, on the contrary, they download all their stinking, lethal rubbish around us, including atomic, radio-active junk.

What they bring to us serve their capitalist, imperialist, corporate interests. They never ever brought anything human, humane and humanist to Latin America, that was not at first blessed by capitalist profits.

Fifthly: a very, very delicate question: Did it never occur to us why Spain and Portugal had introduced their official State Religion, Roman Catholicism, as it was generated by the Dominican Order, and the Inquisition, into Latin America?

And what happened to our own religious, sacred, autochthonous and indigenous beliefs, customs and traditions? Surely, to find ourselves again, belated, now we have to rescue the latter from the current fascist fangs and Nazi pangs of North American Imperial Conquest.

Finally, all the things that we have in our reigning, ossified colonial and neocolonial superstructures, in society, religion, prayers, holy scriptures, law, morals, customs, traditions, etc., contain mind control capitalist venom and thought control imperialist strychnine.

How can we attack all the current material atrocities of capitalism and imperialism, for example, in Fallujah, and just simply forget the corresponding religious and intellectual holocaust that came with them?

* These are the things that cause destructive fatalism, ideological confusion, passive despair, total capitulation and myopic triumphalism in the decisive stages of our revolution.

How can we decide freely, can we by our own choice determine our future, make the revolution, if our minds are still enslaved, chained to European and North American ideological and religious illusions about our human essence, existence and transcendence?

During the past five years of the Bolivarian Revolution, fighting for survival, against barbaric internal and external attacks, surely there was no time, were no opportunities available, to tackle this immense, central task against reigning oppressive ideologies and the alienating effects of absolutist, repressive, global State religions.

In spite of this new phase, of the new violent attacks, of political assassinations, revolutionary theory is a strategic element for our self-defense, for human survival.

As we stressed time and time again, without scientific and philosophic "Critique of Ideology" and "Critique of State Religion," we can impossibly develop a fundamental "Critique of Imperialist, Corporate Society" of the "Fourth Empire" ... that is, we cannot launch true, real Revolutionary Praxis and Theory.

In other words, we will have immense problems to make a genuine, original, new, victorious World Revolution. If we neglect the subjective factor, viz., Philosophic Theory, we will nip ourselves in our historical bud, will neglect our germinating, historical, class consciousness.

Yes, Knowledge is Power. To do and to know, are definitely two different, dialectical, contradictory sides of the very same thing, of Revolution.

* Currently, Knowledge itself has become a North American Weapon of Mass Destruction, and Ignorance is being elevated to Heavenly Bliss.

Progressively in true Orwellian style, "Big Brother" is plotting and blotting out our individual and social minds and memories. This is the reason why the subjective factor, thinking, thought and theory, have become so central within the current revolutionary process in Venezuela and Latin America.

***
Franz John Tennyson Lee, Ph. D (University of Frankfurt), Author, Professor Titular & Chairholder of Philosophy and Political Science, University of The Andes, Merida (Venezuela) -- http://www.franzjutta.com ; http://www.franz-lee.org ;http://www.geocities.com/juttafranz/publications00001.html

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