Scientists and Revolution Bolivarian
By: Saul Flores and Juan Vargas
"All these institutions have to be oriented ... It's not science to please, that we urge and institutions that are financed with the people, Hagan science useful for Venezuela, these institutions must be transformed according to the needs of the country, leaving their encapsulation, make useful science, social research, science and technology to raise the standard of living of the people, out of these laboratories and the laboratory will have to be social ... the social laboratory .... to go with his other hand escualidismo for socialism or death ... science and technology to serve the people not the elite or personal whims, caprices of complacency "
On March 9, at No. 329 Alo Presidente, President Hugo Chávez made this statement referring to the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas - IVIC. After these statements was no response from some scientists who felt alluded to this claim. They claimed persecution, lack of financial support, establishing a dictatorship in the scientific, arguments that disagree and dispute the claim. Far from wanting to give personal responses to these assertions of those "offended" by President Chávez prefer attempt to analyze these elements together within the Venezuelan social context and respond as "scientists" who we are.
The first thing to say is that science and knowledge are forms of domination, ie science is power. If any doubt, just look at that vast country have pre-economic and political dominance worldwide, the answer is pretty clear: those who have developed the necessary technology and knowledge to subordinate those who have been prevented. So we have to distinguish that in science -Like in politics or the economy-there own terms of what should occur and how they will spread the benefits of that production. Remember how, until recently, only the privileged Venezuelans came to the university and the richest country out of the centers of research. Once trained these people in the scientific field and after the assimilation of foreign culture where they had formed, returning to Venezuela to play the production model learned and implemented the domain structure from the North or Europe. Over time, conditions and research domain or country lines ended promoter imposed. Very few have taken the step of reinterpreting the knowledge gained in the "developed" for the benefit of that knowledge are in their own society. On the contrary, as stated by Ludovico Silva, the dependence of underdevelopment, which also involves the dissemination of our science and its own development is subjected to the will of developed countries like the United States, leaving them with the benefits and Worse, with the secret of these technologies, which makes us users and consumers of science and technology whose inner workings are unknown to us. It is these conditions that we have to reveal and understand our scientific alienation, which manifests itself in the inability of scientists to integrate their knowledge to the realities and needs of their society.
The problem under discussion is not to decrease the budget, he who denies the fact that the Bolivarian government has allocated the largest budget the last decades (about 2.5% of gross domestic product devoted to development of science and technology, the highest in Latin America, surpassed only by the Nordic countries, Japan and Korea investing something like 3.5%), or be a blind or a liar. The problem as we understand it is that has changed the North-South relationship, which means that it now accepts more than the North scientific imperialism is not the dream to solve problems, rather it is the nightmare that still dream. The fact is that knowledge has diversified and has attempted to broaden its distribution, through agreements with other countries, with the opening of new universities, which for lack of participation of scientists and the inability red tape does not have been able to develop new lines of strategic research for Venezuela. We do not understand how a scientist can say that Venezuela does not need as many universities, because many professionals are not required. This statement only reveals their level of alienation or complicity, since it is clear that scientific and technological backwardness generates economic and political dependence. To open a flower and let it rain a thousand schools, said Mao Tse Tung, a thousand schools, a thousand universities, but with heart humanist, socialist, Latin American and emancipator, not heart corrupt, capitalist alienation.
we say that President Chavez, like any human being is wrong. Such is the case when he says that our scientists do science indulgent, capricious, if that were the case there would be no problem, because that science would be directed only to the aggrandizement of a few egos. The real problem is that our scientists do science capitalist and many ignore it, but many others do not want to admit it, so they hide behind their habit of objectivity, wisdom and incorruptibility. It alienated the scientist, who does not realize that outside of the laboratory, test tubes, computers and test tubes, as Chavez said, there is a social laboratory that is much more important because it is in that place where lies the object Science: human beings. These academics are clearly opposed to the government led by President Chavez, closely resemble those groups of intellectuals who criticized Marx and Engels in almost all his works, and intellectuals Gramsci described as "traditional , which are regarded as independent social life and consequently put their ideas serving class interests, becoming a "nuisance marginal" because they belong to a time before and is in danger of being overtaken. Such intellectuals have no problem endorsing the outrageous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Communion Israeli fascist with annihilation against the Lebanese or the Palestinians, to support the embargo against Cuba, or to say that they are persecuted or not they are supported, in short, to lie to the people selectively to protect and legitimize their own interests and of those they serve or with whom they identify. These groups of scientists are frequently appearing in the programs of the private media, at conferences, supporting and participating in campaigns to discredit the revolutionary process. His action has a moral and ethical background, although it will convince many people based on deception, we can not do the same with his conscience. It is this class of intellectuals who protect a number of privileges in its narrow understanding of objective reality, perceived rights. It is they who defend hierarchies, ranks, vying among themselves to highlight and outshine their opponents, they who seek to shine like stars in the intellectual firmament, trivializing and commercializing its own practice, their profession, their work. It is they who alienated not understand the relationship between science and human being, science and society, science and nature. They are the ones who do not understand that their knowledge should not be employed by their own egos, but the needs of society. Complacency arises after realizing that they can never come to occupy the pedestal reserved for those scientists from the centers of power, so must play their little pyramid of prestige, which occupy the privileged position and to defend at all costs, so the behavior that is self-indulgent is part of the capitalist system of scientific production. But for its imitation of servers required structure to work, slaves, data producers, no questions , followers and supporters. The latter will be selected from universities few other characters as they control, it plays the circle of complacency and complicity. These "chosen" can only have red blood, because in his mind must be absent this color, must be willing to climb the pyramid and compete with each other, because as good scientists think, it is only possible survival of the fittest, the strongest, the more flattering. Ideologizing ideological and scientific. Reproduces the ideological system that alienates, ideologizing because they are the new generation of scientists in the same vices, in the same mental entelechies. It is evident a contradiction: the science is the paradigm of change and transformation, is to embody the paradigm of backwardness and the static, tradition. Thing to say, it is paradoxical to note, as in a socialist state in scientific research institutions, as IVIC maintain structures that play a caste system and gods, a feudal, colonial.
The other class of intellectuals, identified by Gramsci, intellectuals are "organic ." They are the product of an emerging social class and are called to become a true self homogeneous political, economic and cultural. In this category are contained scientists, philosophers, ideologues, activists, politicians, industrial technicians, lawyers, economists, etc. They more than being "contemplative and legitimizing intellectual " become agents of change through its participatory action in social life and in those areas where the theoretical articulation of various political currents is necessary. Gramsci states that the activity of the organic intellectuals must be understood as a cultural battle to transform the popular mind and disseminate scientific innovations, philosophical (thinking) that prove to be historically true as long as specifically become universal in a particular social context and historical (for our If the context is Venezuelan and Latin American). Consequently, the organic intellectual does not accept the current consciousness of the masses, nor is it intended to convey any kind of higher truth. Simply acts as a bridge between "scientific knowledge " and "common sense " self in people, to enable a better understanding of social reality that are part and thus to different collective social practices that generate the transform. In short the work of these scientists is designed to help socially excluded sectors understand the reasons for its holding, their misery, so that, are able to generate practical change that reality. In this group are a large number of intellectuals and scientists Venezuelans who work among indigenous communities, black peasants, workers, marginal and that through hard work trying to transform and provide options (even limited ) to these people among whom they work and which are not only under investigation, but partners and active subjects capable of generating change. It is they who have understood something that the people had understood long ago: the need to integrate the ancient knowledge, popular, scientific practice, because only the "dialogue of knowledge" and "knowledge transfer" with and for communities that will replace the old capitalist paradigm and indeed the emergence of a scientific revolution, moral and cultural development of human and social order. Building a social science is possible as long as scientists and intellectuals to understand and identify, as does President Chavez, I l excluded social sectors that they recognize the wisdom of the most humble of the land, of which only read, for those who have never set foot in a college, but have filled his life with love for their land, this country why we work every day. Also when the work of all scientists, without exception, regardless of rank or hierarchy, is dignified moral and material, when it recognizes the personal and creative researcher.
The "organic intellectuals and scientists " require special attention by the Bolivarian Revolutionary process and that the changes should not only be economic level but also at the level of culture, ideology, the latter being perhaps the most critical, since any model that offers an alternative to capitalism is a "different world " a much different way of relating between people and nature. It is true that many of these scientists are not interested in positions of prestige or power, for a long time know that his lab is in the communities and their efforts are aimed at finding solutions and alternatives to the problems and needs that these have. Others, while certainly could play good administrative and managerial functions, are not and most likely has not given the opportunity and confidence to do so, because this would subvert the natural order of the gods, so they are doomed to excluded from the decision and execution levels of government, because they have never been to Europe or the United States to certify their knowledge of the colonizer [1] . It is a sad but harsh reality that arises as a result of the contradiction between rhetoric and practice of those who have been charged in the institutions to carry out processes of transformation, as these people tend to protect what they should change, simply because they belong to the old structure that is wounded but not killed. For science becomes necessary to change the relationships and system scientific production, while prevailing capitalist and colonial structure, it is not possible the birth of new human and social sciences.
transformations we have spoken must be deep and should be directed to expose a reality that has been built according to the interests of a few, whether they be imperialist elites, local elites or simply operators. What is at stake is our future as a species, the possibility of a world in which the differences are not used to justify exclusion, death, but rather are interpreted as the possibility of coexistence future multi-worthy. The "scientific organic" have this great responsibility and must be champions of this cause. We support President Chavez because we recognize their effort to transform and revolutionize our society, to build a more dignified and inclusive reality for those who have only been pieces on the chess capitalists. We also recognize that the flaws and criticize. We assume our political stance, we do not hide behind the impartiality or scientific nature as do those that oppose the revolutionary process, we customize our discussion not because we believe it is in the process and not the people we should focus our discussion. The debate is raised hope to hear many more voices.
[1] [1] currently evaluating whether a researcher produces quality work, they have to be measured by publication rates of the first world (Science Citation Index). Otherwise the work done by an investigator has no value for institutional advancement. It is well known that our problems can differ and do differ from first-world problems, so those who make a science of interest to the first world, certainly not produce something for our immediate national interest and that they will become branches of science colonial colonialism, if you want be accepted in its institutional environment and national levels. He reveals a new contradiction.
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