For sure , and I just see some options forming (not yet concrete, also I’ll not be the one to figure it out from the other side of the world lol). I think south America could do some radical move to actually separate more from China in exports (keep importing Chinese non-strategic stuff) and convince the USA to invest in them heavily, but doing this while maintaining some sovereignty. Deng was able to do this by using the USSR as the counter weight. I think China will survive such a thing easily (unlike the USSR which was materially weak relatively), and then Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico will be able to build up some needed production means without the US bombing them. Right now, I think we are underestimating how major the lacking production means is playing a role in subservience to the US.

There are tons of problems with this Idea, but I would like to work through more of the contradictions and see what’s possible.

Was trying to have this convo in the news mega. Seems most here are taking the defeatist position on what South America countries can do

Yeah honestly it has changed my analysis to some extent. I think I overestimated the influence of these relationships between wealthy and diplomats/politicians. Turns out, the material force behind both was the strongest once again lol

Tbh I can’t. I have trouble estimating anything above like 10 lol.

‘How many people are in the room with you?’. If it’s above 10, I’m gonna say like ‘uhhhh between 5 and 30’

Yeah this is the sort of comment I was hoping to get, thanks. I don’t have time at the moment but will reply soon. But a teaser: I think you’re limiting the possibilities by keeping as static the imperialized relationship between the US and Venezuela without accounting for ways that other geopolitical movements can be used to shift that. I only have vague notions still, but it seems those possibilities aren’t being very widely discussed and I want to know how they could be leveraged.

Yes, but again, not about Dengism as a set of specific actions. And also I never said Dengism is the only option. I just think that the person who replies to “what can Venezuela do to make this strategy work?” with “can’t work, America too bad” is being defeatist and useless.

You are not understanding me at all, or are not very imaginative. You are stuck on the specific operations and correctly (re)explaining why Venezuela can’t do the exact thing China did. I also did that in the original comment (though shortly, because it seems obvious). I am asking what Venezuela could do to make the US “sell them rope.” At a strategic level, that’s what Deng sought and found. If Delcy is Pulling a ‘Deng’, can she find a way to do that?

Might be easier if you just ignore all operational decisions of Deng and understand the question as such: how can Delcy make Venezuela safe and bait the US into assisting its development utilizing their current material conditions?

I didn’t say Dengism was the only option. An article claimed that Delcy was trying to and I wanted to explore that option.

Well I at least recognize the phrasing from that discussion. Could be wrong, though.

Vague-posting lol. I am one of the people who said you were irresponsible, but that was you using 2 data points of likes (or maybe it was views? I can’t remember) on Pahlavi propaganda on social media from somewhere before and after the blackout to argue that he was popular with an huge amount of Iran. It was shit methodology. You post very good stuff often, but you’re not immune to mistakes and that was one. Calling it irresponsible was an adult way to engage with it, and it was not a way to call you inherently evil or unintelligent or something. Just something that you posted without the care and knowledge that you often have.

I am not sticking my head into the sand but asking for sober analyses that assumes the USA is as bad and dangerous as we say but still works around or through that. You stop analyzing at the moment of correct analysis of enemy strengths. I want to discuss how we can turn those strengths into downfalls.

How can Venezuela get the gun off their head? Or do you think they should just accept the situation until Americans suddenly do their revolution? Sounds very similar to Trotsky’s argument for world revolution.

No, Venezuela and the rest of the world can take active roles in forming these forces. Deng was able to build off of a movement before his leadership, but that building started somewhere. We can do this, regardless of how hard, because the US position is as malleable as all things in a dialectical world

And how? Should Venezuela sit and wait for their primary contradiction (imperialism) to be ended?

I’m sorry but I don’t take this sort of defeatism seriously. You leave the options immensely limited. There’s a huge set of external contexts that can be used in resolving that contradiction. Not easily, but just acting like the US doing this ends all possibilities isn’t useful in any way.

The magic of strategy is that it is all encompassing! If it’s unable to counteract the counterinsurgency, then the strategy must be changed ;)

But I agree in principal on all of this. I just always think that we should take responsibility for our failures no matte how abstract. We aren’t losing because the US is too good, we need to get better to win and haven’t managed it. Taking that responsibility forces us to think differently. Though I agree with your despair here

I think we do something, as communists (mostly) not in the periphery, by discussing this sort of problem with the caveat ‘Whether the US will militarily try to prevent this’ instead of making that a starting point of the discussion. That is an assumption we must make, which is the US will intervene the moment it can safely do so (politically, not about safety of lives) whenever it deems the shifts to be against its interests. Deng started here also and found a way to become beloved by the US while accomplishing China’s goals.

A state can make this assumption and takes the stance of increasing the difficulty of US invasion (get the nuke, make it so damaging that it’s not worth it, partner up to increase the investment needed to win for the US). This is what the AES seems to be doing, and is what the USSR managed after WW2 (and Stalin tried hard beforehand). It’s, in my opinion, a short-sighted position unless the rest of the world does the same. It relies on too many factors to be stable. It’s noble, and I love them for trying. I want to make it work by keeping the west from invading, too. But it’s an inherently unstable place to be, and I wouldn’t recommend it except for the absolute most strong movements in the world. The bolivarian one isn’t strong enough, I think, for this road. (not Latin American, but basing this off of how precarious it seems the past 20 years from outside)

The other lever to pull is the attractiveness of the invasion. Don’t make it difficult, make it senseless for the US to want to invade. This is what China did. How can Venezuela theoretically do that now? Playing China and the US off each other is one way, though its a huge sacrifice and will likely damage the neighbors too. Then Venezuela can say ‘look US, I’m helping you by trading with you and not China, with the only requirement being that you invest more capital into us from which you benefit’. I think this might work. Is that good for global communism? I’m genuinely not sure, but over a 75 year period, I think it might be because the US would’ve deindustrialized again and built up a new powerful enemy.

agreed, but that’s why I wanted to talk about how to do Deng’s strategy by changing some of the tactics according to material conditions. Now, with the current global political dynamics, how can a country get the capitalists to help them develop in a way that ultimately goes against the capitalists’/imperailists’ interests? What needs to shift in the tactics or world situation to make it possible?

I think that China, for example, can be used as leverage. The US states its desire to decouple from China (probably gonna fail) and Venezuela could use that as leverage to pull a similar strategy. China won’t be hurt by that in the long run, I think, because their independent development is so accelerated at the moment that I have little worry they would come through (inb4 Xiaohongshu comes in with the monetary failures and lack of internal demand lol).

Well my point is to explore how a country can do Deng’s strategy of ‘use the needs of the capitalist nations to China’s own benefit’ in a new way. Deng’s tactical position ‘invite capital to exploit labor but benefit from the construction’ is probably untenable for the reasons you state. But how much does it need to change to make it tenable? That’s what I want to discuss.

This was my reading too. All just a lot of bullshit contextualization for a way too dynamic topic.

Holy shit, huge if true

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/28/can-venezuelas-delcy-rodriguez-become-a-latin-american-deng-xiaoping

Article filled with brainworms, but I am wondering what Hexbears think about this concept in general. Delcy trying to follow the model of Deng (hallowed be his name ) seems like a very difficult path without major change to the method. Deng was able to leverage Chinese huge proletarian labor capacity, many ports, and sovereignty to invite capital, make that capital reproduction valuable for the capitalists, and benefit from the effect of built infrastructure and knowledge. Venezuela would need to make some huge changes to their infrastructure very quickly to be able to do this (could be posisble if enough outside investment comes) and would be taking a bigger risk seeing as the bolviarian revolution less defensible is than the CCP was. That, or Venezuela tries to do a Opening Up but limiting it to the oil industry… which I think is a bad strategic path and will result in failure (with Oil being phased out for cheaper renewables). And it will only result in useless built up knowledge and infrastructure.

What am I missing here? Are there other strategic options that I’m ignoring or don’t know about?

Or is this bullshit that is being assumed about Venezuela but not actually how anything on the ground is working?