Author Event! Anderson M. Bean's Venezuela in Crisis

Join us on July 13th at we host Anderson Bean, Simón Rodríguez, and Roberto López Sánchez in conversation to discuss Venezuela in Crisis: A Socialist Perspective. Signed copies of the book are available for purchase.

About the book:

In this essential intervention, Venezuelan socialists provide an invaluable analysis of the origins and causes of their country’s crisis, and offer a critique of the Maduro regime.

Venezuela in Crisis brings together a diverse array of Venezuelan thinkers and activists to grapple with the question of how and why the aspirations for what Hugo Chavez deemed “socialism in the twenty-first century” gave way to the deepest economic collapse in all of South America. While recognizing the devastating impact of sanctions, this collection’s authors reject the simplistic view that all would be well if not for US meddling. Rather, they argue that from governmental mismanagement to rising repression, the regime of Nicolás Maduro deserves a significant share of the blame for Venezuela’s ongoing crisis.

With chapters focused on the Maduro government’s economic policies, its continuities and breaks from the Chávez era, its erosion of democratic processes in the country, and its doubling down on extractivism, Venezuela in Crisis is an indispensable guide for international solidarity activists and for anyone looking for a nuanced understanding of Venezuela’s crisis.
Writing from an anticapitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-authoritarian perspective, this volume never loses sight of the need to stand with the Venezuelan people rather than their government―even when it claims to be struggling to build socialism.

About the authors:

Anderson Bean is a professor of sociology at North Carolina A&T State University, a North Carolina–based activist, and a member of the Tempest Collective. He is a contributor and editor of Venezuela in Crisis: Socialist Perspectives as well as the author of the book Communes and the Venezuelan State: The Struggle for Participatory Democracy in a Time of Crisis.

Simón Rodríguez is a Venezuelan socialist writer and journalist, a founder of the Partido Socialismo y Libertad (PSL), and a former professor at the Universidad de los Andes. He is a founding member of Laclase.info and Venezuelanvoices.org and has published in NACLA, The New Arab, Rebelión, and numerous other outlets. His work has been translated into six languages, and he is coauthor, with Miguel Sorans, of Why Did Chavismo Fail? A Left-Opposition Balance Sheet.

Roberto López Sánchez is a historian, labor organizer, and revolutionary activist. He earned a PhD in political science and was a professor at the University of Zulia from 1994 to 2014. Active in labor, peasant, Indigenous, environmental, and cultural movements since the 1970s, he participated in Venezuela’s revolutionary armed struggle and later helped found the National Union of Workers–Zulia. He has published extensively on Venezuelan history, labor, and social movements and currently serves on the Consultative Council of the Bolivarian Socialist Federation of Zulia Workers.