This message is to Roger. I do not want to give a lecture in Marxism here. There are a lot of activists at this site, and I am only one old passive observer , as it sometimes called sympathizer, which was observing and following Marxists thinking and activities for more than 50 years, more recently , when I have more free time and access to internet. My knowledge of Marxism is not deep, and I react only when I see basic misunderstanding, and I was astonished that after so much history, experience and so many failures, there are still some repeating things which should be forgotten, left to historians, but should not be part of the contemporary movement. We should ask ourselves why Marxist parties are not attractive to the mass audience when capitalism is in an obvious crisis, especially to the working class or those who are working for wages. Marx sometimes can give us the answers to present questions but working class or proletariat is now in different position, it is not concentrated in big numbers in large factories , that give them special power and role to play in the society , and that will be less and less concentration of worker powers, with automatization, AI, robotics. There are different tasks in front us , how to prevent that only owners of robots or AI are deciding the future, how those robots or Ai would be used, to serve needs of all, or just owners. We can see now that Bill Gate, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are making important decisions which will affect us all. That was a digression of what I want to tell Roger.. My Rosa Luxembourg quotations were intended to Lenin, about the situation in Russia after the successful October Revolution, at least that part , taking power of the Russian state by Bolsheviks, , and they are relevant to all so coled socialist countries inspired by Leninism as China, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia. She was not talking about democracy in Capitalist countries. She was talking what to do or what kind of political life or democracy is expected in a socialist country and her emphasize is on freedom, importance of free thinking.Informed yourself better about political life there . Maybe Louis could give you some guidance. Here something about Cuba from someone which I am not fun of but because he was from my former country he got my attention, like Djokovic.https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-left-fidelity-castration-slavoj-zizek-fidel-castro-cuba-che-communism or video version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weunZbpP3dw Dictatorship of proletariat in Venezuela, Cuba , Bolivia or they are close to it ?? I said that I want lecture but inform itself , first what is dictatorship of proletariat and second of the real situations in those countries. "For Marx and Engels, from beginning to end of their careers and without exception, ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ meant nothing more and nothing less than ‘rule of the proletariat,’ the ‘conquest of political power’ by the working class, the establishment of a workers’ state in the immediate postrevolutionary period." " Dictatorship? That means rule. Yes, we want the rule of the proletariat; but that does not mean the rule of a man or a clique or a band or a party; it means the rule of a class. Class rule means class dictatorship." My comment: Communist party rule does not mean dictatorship of proletariat. Workers , proletariat has to be directly involved , not only through its party ( could be many such party, why only one is right one) , which can claim to represent them or their interest , but mostly represent only itself ( that was from previous experiences of parties run by democratic- centralism principle). https://www.ppesydney.net/karl-marx-and-the-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat/ https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/hal-draper/article2.htm or simple on " “revolutionary democracy,” in which workers and the poor exercise direct control over economic, social, and political decisions affecting their lives." this is extract from one article about the situation in Venezuela https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/venezuela-noninterventionism-self-determination-solidarity For me , the good source about analyzes what is happening in Venezuela from left perspective you can find at https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis here are some. There are plenty of good and informative ones https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15065
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