What an exciting event! Wish I could be there...alas...alas!

I'd like to focus on a matter you've brought up, Tom. "If we are to promote labour capital funds that will eventually buy out and socialize firms, then workers in those firms need to be ready to run them."

Absodamnlutely! It isn't enough to simply have tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars of pension funds and LSIFs committed to forming some vague platform for worker control.

At the same time, how should the hundreds of billions of dollars already committed, at least theoretically, be deployed in advance of the full development of such a platform?

Part of the answer might be to have workers form fund management companies to manage private equity funds. This would allow workers to form general partnerships that will often be able to control companies, regardless of whether the workers' themselves have put up a majority stake. In addition, it is not unusual for a fund management firm to earn up to 20 percent of a fund's earnings in addition to the annual management fees the firm earns. These earnings can be applied to investment involving much more direct worker control of enterprises.

Between worker control of fund managers and direct investments arising passed on from the worker-owned private equity fund manager, workers' should quickly acquire the means to directly control companies, with the added advantage of having had a number of years to ramp up systems of worker control in the portfolio companies.

Here's an update on the Caracas meeting:http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1801

Here's an excerpt of that article:

Chavez told hundreds of activists that Latin America is freeing itself from US dominance and that, "we are not just recovering these factories, we are recovering our true sovereignty."

Chavez made these comments while giving the opening speech of the conference in the Teresa Carreño Theatre in Caracas. Representatives from 21 trade unions and 235 worker-occupied factories from 13 Latin American countries are participating. Ministers, parliamentarians, and senior government functionaries from Venezuela and other Latin American countries also attended.

Chavez praised those taking part in the workers' struggles across the continent, comparing them to those who fought for independence from Spain in the 19th century. Chavez said that the new struggle for independence was from the US and that, "We are in the presence of a new opportunity… to really set people free in these lands." Chavez suggested that there should be an international organization for worker occupied factories to help activists from across Latin America share and compare, "concrete strategies and tactics".

Here's another article by ZNet's Michael Albert on the self-management experience in Argentina:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9042

In this article, again by Albert he exposes many of the fascinating things going on in Venezuela with regards to Participatory Democracyvia municipal self-management (by the way Venezuela has a Minister of Popular Participation) and worker self-management. I think it is important for Economic Democrats to also look at Polity issues as well and look at re-inventing Democratic institutions that go along with the economy we want.

Here's the article:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=9067

Here's another article by Jorge Martin on the Caracas Meeting that was held last month:

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46679

Here's a few quotes from the meeting's Statement called “The commitment of Caracas” (quite radical indeed):

"In Venezuela, which is living through a revolution, the workers have put on the agenda expropriation with workers’ control of these companies in different ways. We greet the announcement of comrade president Chavez during the opening of this Encuentro, of two new expropriations of companies and that they should be under workers’ control. This is what we all need in our countries.”

“We wish to advance to an economy under the total control of the workers so that it can be planned in the interests of the people as a whole. Our movement is anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. It is a clarion call and an organized movement of the working class against the regime of private property of the large-scale means of production that is only capable of surviving through war and the exploitation and oppression of the peoples."

“Our resistance has not gone unnoticed by the bosses, by Capital and their international institutions, which attempt to prosecute and crush us. But they are also seeking ways of destroying our resistance by enmeshing the workers in different forms of class collaboration, tempting them with possibilities of individual integration within the capitalist system."

“From now on, we will rise as one if in any country the governments attack us or threaten to close down the companies we control."

“They steal the land, we occupy it. They make war and destroy nations; we defend peace and the integration of the peoples’ with respect for their sovereignty. They divide; we unite. Because we are the working class. Because we are the present and the future of humankind. We call upon all to continue this struggle, to broaden it and to meet again next year to strengthen the unity and the struggle we are carrying out together with the working class as a whole and the peoples against the common enemy of humanity. Venceremos!”

235 WORKER-RECOVERED FACTORIES/21 TRADE UNIONS REPRESENTING 10,000 WORKERS
see link:

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46758

"Parliamentarians from 13 countries also attended. Banners, flags, chants and thunderous applause welcomed Chavez and his offer of a US$5 million fundfor a cross-continental network to facilitate the collaboration and integration of worker-controlled enterprises"