Hugo's idea man (Updated with a new quote and improved sarcasm!)

I suppose you've heard that Hugo Chavez yesterday officially condemned the Venezuelan people to the prison of socialism. Here's the story:

Chavez Gets More Power by Nationalizing

CARACAS, Venezuela -- As Venezuela embarked on another six years under Hugo Chavez, the president announced plans to nationalize power and telecom companies and make other bold changes that will concentrate more power in his hands.

Chavez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs until 2013, also said he wanted a constitutional amendment to strip the Central Bank of its autonomy and would soon ask the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to give him greater powers to legislate by presidential decree.

"We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his new Cabinet. "We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it."

Legislating by decree. "nothing and no one can prevent it." All that's missing (for now) is a pledge to re-educate those who don't have their minds right.

And in case you think the alarms being sounded over Chavez's power grab are an over reaction, familiarize yourself with Heinz Dieterich. He's the thug whisperer who's training the new breed of Latin American socialists. The term Chavez adopted, "21st Century Socialism"? Dieterich wrote the book (literally). And I'm not talking about European socialism lite. No, Mr. Dieterich is an old-school Leninist. Here are some of his thoughts from an interview in Unsere Zeit, the German Communist Party newspaper. (I found it on a different web site so click the first link for the full version.)

On what it will take for Chavez to be successful...

In my view, one can only do today in Venezuela what Lenin did in the New Economic Policy. Every other attempt to make steps toward socialism under today's conditions would lead rapidly to the collapse of the system because there is no basis of power from which to execute it. The bourgeois state has not been destroyed, it has merely reorganized itself into a new way of governing. The church has not lost its influence. Eighty percent of the mass media are in the hands of large companies opposed to the government. Also, the kind of correlation of power that would allow for a repetition of what happened in Cuba or the Soviet Union is lacking.

[...]

Lenin defined different requirements for different times. First, there was electrification. That meant the insight that the objective conditions for socialism did not exist -- they could be only created. That allowed for the collectivization of agriculture. The whole movement of farm collectives was a result of the political necessity, for the future of the revolution, of bringing under party control the potential within the population of making a decision for it. That was the deciding factor. And Lenin realized, of course, that the Soviet Union would remain bourgeois in the medium term if the peasants were not brought under the ideological direction of the party and the workers.

Of course as every schoolboy/girl knows (har-har), Lenin's New Economic Policy and collectivization killed people in the tens of millions either by execution, disease, or forced starvation...and sometimes all three for good measure. So it appears Mr. Dieterich fails to grasp that the term Great Famine -- just one catastrophic result of the NEP -- is not meant as a compliment to Lenin's skills as an economist and social organizer. If Dieterich has a similar favorable impression of the Great Famine Redux under Stalin, the interview doesn't say. But he does give some praise to Mao, so undoubtedly he has a soft spot for Uncle Joe as well.The whole interview is just more and more of that kind of rubbish.

However, at the end Mr. Dieterich at least supplies some comic relief...

But in any case it [socialism] must all be done democratically. If at some point the people say, "We have reached the level of development of Costa Rica and that's good enough for us, we don't want any socialist experiments in Venezuela," then there is nothing to be done. Democracy means that the majority rules. If the majority is satisfied with quasi-first world social conditions and does not wish to go any farther, socialism cannot be imposed.

Goodness...Many a collectivized field could be fertilized with that dung heap of a quote. Has Hugo Chavez given any indication he'd go along with a vote to remove him from power? What about Castro (Fidel or Raul)? Or Kim? And let's revisit the beginning of this post: legislating by decree; "nothing and no one can prevent it." That sure sounds like imposing socialism, no?

UPDATE: So Chavez was sworn in as tyrant...er...president today. I wonder if he ran this line from his speech past Heinz Dieterich: "Fatherland. Socialism or death — I swear it." Wow. That kinda adds a few more tons to Dieterich's dung heap, doesn't it.