Click here to access article by Bruce Lerro from Planning Beyond Capitalism.
Because he asks a very significant question--"is this the real thing?", I am posting this brief article on the above website which is based on a longer report posted on Venezuelanalysis.
I was dismayed following my two week visit to Venezuela in 2005 by what I saw there which has been confirmed by subsequent events. It seems that leaders, how ever radical they are to begin with, cannot get over the allure of power that all leaders since recorded history (the last roughly 2% of the 200,000 years of human existence) are drawn to. Hugo Chavez talked a lot about the community councils as a revolutionary core of the Bolivarian Revolution but he went on to simply use them as his political power base. Having said that, I admit that it's not for me to judge any revolutionary struggle because I don't know all of the powerful forces they confront which are usually backed by the all-powerful US Empire.