Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution - What type of socialism in the 21st century? (PR3)

Venezuela
Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution
What type of socialism in the 21st century?


In the early 1960s the young leaders of the Cuban revolution were fêted by the new left and by progressives around the world. Hugo Chavez, elected president of Venezuela for the first time in 1998 and re-elected in 2006, is becoming the Fidel Castro of the early 21st Century. The former army colonel and charismatic leader of a popular movement, Chavez denounces the occupation of Iraq, stands up for the poor, ridicules George Bush and excoriates the neo-liberal policies pursued by Washington in Latin America and elsewhere.

Chavez has survived a military coup “made in the USA”, a general lockout/strike led by employers and unions, and a recall referendum to remove him as President. Through these he has become more radical as the masses of Venezuela have mobilised in his defence. In 2005 he announced that only “socialism” offered an alternative to neo-liberalism and imperialism. He received a thumping endorsement in his recent re-election with 62% of the vote; and he has promised to “deepen the revolution”.

Little wonder then that he has become the poster boy of the international left.

The extent of social change But what sort of socialism does Hugo Chavez offer? It might seem churlish to ask such a question when, in much of the third world, neo-liberalism, reaction, religious fundamentalism and war dominate the agenda. Yet precisely because Chavez and his movement is being held up as a model for others to follow it is necessary to examine the reality of the change in Venezuela. It is necessary to look beyond the rhetoric and wishful thinking that surrounds the “Bolivarian Revolution” and examine the extent of real change and the programme that lies behind it.

Many on the left prefer not to delve too closely but would rather bask in (and exaggerate) the successes of the government of Venezuela. Leaders in this field are those who refer to themselves as Trotskyists, but who since the 1950s have tailed every radical movement from Tito to Peron, from Castro to Ortega. They believe that the “blunt instrument” of Stalinism or left nationalism is a substitute for the building of a revolutionary Bolshevik- type party, that the “revolutionary process” can drive such movements on to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ state, despite their inadequate and reformist programme. For these groups the task of revolutionaries is to integrate themselves into such movements, cheering them on while offering an occasional piece of left wing advice.1

A revolutionary process?

Is there a revolution taking place in Venezuela? Chavez certainly calls himself a revolutionary and he talks about the Bolivarian Revolution. But this refers back to the national revolution, the struggle for independence from Spain that the impeccably bourgeois Simon Bolivar led. The term is used by many parties in Latin America to signal that they stand for “radical change” and this is certainly how Chavez has used it. In the Marxist sense there has been no revolution in Venezuela. Nor is there a “revolutionary process”, in terms of an ever-upward curve of struggle where the masses drive forward to socialism and revolution. Rather, there has been a period of major political struggles involving large-scale, but episodic, mobilisations of the masses. Chavez was elected president in 1998 on a programme of radical democratic change and an economic programme which posited an alternative to neo-liberalism and US domination of the South American continent. This programme threatened the power of the old oligarchy, represented by the two traditional parties – Accion Democratica and Copei – who took it in turn to rule (and loot) the state. It also threatened the interests of US imperialism. This led to a series of anti-democratic attempts to oust Chavez from power, and episodes of profound and radical class struggle. There was a short lived pre-revolutionary situation during the coup of April 2002 where the masses took to the streets and the army was split, and a two month long mobilisation of the working class, including some factory occupations, around the employers lockout between December 2002 and February 2003 [see Timeline panel].

But because of the weakness of the working class – its small size, the large informal sector, high unemployment/ underemployment, and corrupt trade union leadership (Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela – CTV) – these struggles never developed into revolutionary situations or periods of dual power where workers’ councils challenged for control of society.

Cuba in 1959 and Nicaragua in 1979, in contrast, had revolutions where the army was defeated and broken, where the government and state apparatus was overthrown, and general strikes and armed insurrections led to periods of dual power led by armed popular organisations. The state apparatus in Venezuela has never seriously been threatened (outside of the 48 hour April coup crisis). This has not stopped Venezuela’s supporters in the west peddling the idea that Chavez is indeed leading “a revolution” nor declaring the latest presidential election victory “a new stage in the revolution”.2 A radical, reforming government There is no doubting that the Chavez presidency has been a radical reforming government since it came to power in 1998. The programme of his Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) has focussed on a number of key tasks, the first of which was to summon a constituent assembly and introduce a new constitution. This was vital to break the power of the old corrupt parties, not only over the parliament, but in the Supreme Court and amongst state governments and municipalities. It has been combined with active voter and citizenship drives that have dramatically increased the participation of the workers and poor (the electorate has increased from 11 million to 16 million since 1998) – social forces which the old system sought to keep out of the political process.

But this was no revolutionary constituent assembly, convened to solve the poverty of the peasantry by expropriating the large latifundia or one that placed economic power into the hands of the workers by expropriating the banks and large industrial enterprises and media monopolies. Nor was it a body that started the struggle against imperialism by repudiating the massive foreign debt. It stayed scrupulously within the bounds of bourgeois legality and enshrined in its provisions respect for private property, emphasised the role of the state in encouraging private enterprise, and for good measure gave autonomy to the Venezuelan National Bank. Proposals to enshrine a woman’s right to choose in relation to abortion were quickly quashed, apparently at Chavez’s insistence.

Although the constitution is full of fine phrases about building “a democratic, participatory and proactive society” and allows for some initiative, referenda and recall by the electorate, it is a classically centralised and “Bonapartist” constitution, concentrating powers in the hand of the President and his selected ministers. Indeed Chavez has used his two-thirds majority control of the National Assembly to pass enabling laws which reduce Assembly members to virtual onlookers for initiatives carried forward by the Executive.

Spreading the oil benefits It is the Chavez government’s initiatives to help the urban and rural poor that have bolstered his popular support at home and abroad. Having won the battle to control the surpluses from the state oil company (PDVSA) Chavez proceeded to fulfil his electoral promises to the masses. A series of social missions were launched in 2003, the most important of which were in health and education. Barrio Adentro used thousands of Cuban doctors to set up medical clinics for the workers and poor in areas which had never had access to free health before. A large scale literacy programme, Mission Robinson, was launched, again using the model of the literacy campaigns in Cuba from the early 1960s, aimed at getting one million people to read, write and learn basic arithmetic. Another mission aimed to re-engage adults in education classes; 600,000 were engaged in the programme. The education budget was raised considerably and now stands at 4% of GDP, while social spending generally has gone up from 8.2% of GDP in 1998 to 11.2% in 2005. A Women’s Development Bank was launched to offer training and provide micro-credit for women involved in the informal sector. Small incomes were allocated for women looking after children and the minimum wage was raised. In 2004 Mission Vuelvan Caras aimed to put a million people through training programmes, the majority in agricultural skills. This was linked to a programme to encourage migration from the cities to agricultural areas with subsidies and homes being offered to form new agricultural co-operatives.

The army played an important role in these missions as part of Chavez’s determination to integrate the army into the government programme and to commit it to the reform process. Given that the new government worked with the old state system and civil servants, renowned for their corruption and lethargy, it was essential to use the army and missions to get round the existing unreformed bureaucracy. Not only did the army play a major role in running PDVSA during and after the lockout, but they were also used to launch a subsidised food distribution mission called Mercal. Now in the poor areas of cities and in many rural and isolated areas Mercal food stores provide basic supplies at 25-40% less than market prices. These measures have had a considerable impact on alleviating poverty. In the 1990s under the impact of IMF structural adjustment plans and the slashing of social expenditure, an estimated 80% of the population existed on the minimum wage or less. The Venezuelan national statistical office reported that 50% of the population were below the poverty line in 1998 whereas by the second half of 2005 this figure had fallen to 43%. But this underestimates the reduction in poverty under Chavez because these statistics only measure cash incomes not standard of living. Over half (54%) of the population now receives free health care, while an estimated 40-47% of the population buy subsidised food through Mercal.3 While undoubtedly the workers and the poor have seen their living standards raised, life remains grindingly hard for the majority of Venezuelan people. This is not the case for the middle and employing classes. Chavez has done little to change the massive disparities in wealth between the rich and poor that scar Venezuela.

The country is in the middle of an economic boom, having turned in growth rates of 18%, 10.3% and 10.2%, in the last three years as a result of the continuing high price of oil. As always under capitalism it is the rich who benefit most. The Financial Times recently commented on the “ebullient consumerism” in the middle class areas before the recent elections and pointed out that car imports had tripled in a year with the “new vehicles on the streets of Caracas, including the latest models of Hummers, BMW and Audi, causing gridlock.”4 None of this should be surprising, Chavez is not a revolutionary socialist and he has never suggested that it is part of his programme to expropriate the capitalists and the super rich. He is in the fortunate position of being able pursue his reformist socialist agenda and his antipoverty programmes courtesy of the fact that oil, which accounts for 80% of the countries export earnings, has risen from less than $10 a barrel in 1998 to over $50 throughout this decade, so he can do it without having to tax the rich and redistribute their wealth. Indeed even the opposition has adapted to the changed economic and political situation, with Manuel Rosales, the opposition candidate in the December 2006 elections, promising to retain the social programmes and introduce a monthly stipend for the poor, the Mi Negra Card, that supposedly would have distributed 20% of the oil surpluses directly to the poor.5 While these promises did little to dent Chavez’s support they undoubtedly helped to shore up the opposition support and contributed to its 4.2 million votes.

Transforming the economy?

The Chavez movement (MBR 200 and MVR) has always had a transformative economic programme running alongside its commitment to radical political and welfare reform. Since his army days Chavez has criticised the economy’s one-sided economic dependence on oil. For the old corrupt parties and ruling class, as long as the oil industry brought in billions of dollars, financed its ruling parties and bought off the middle class and labour aristocracy in the CTV, the rest of the economy – the poverty ridden countryside for example – was of little importance.

Agriculture stagnated and Venezuela was importing two-thirds of its food by the 1980s – 75% of the land was owned by the largest 5% of landowners and huge farms and latifundia went unused or under-utilised as the owners involved themselves in more lucrative commercial ventures linked to the cities and the oil boom. As elsewhere in Latin America, hundreds of thousands of rural workers migrated to the cities to eke out a living in the shanty towns and the informal sector which involves half the labour force. Ninety per cent of the population is now urban.

The collapse of oil prices in the early 1980s had brought to an end the grandiose state-directed projects to diversify the economy such as the steel and aluminium factories at Ciudad Guayana powered by massive hydro-electric dams. By the 1990s these under-invested and decrepit industries were either privatised (steel) or being prepared for selling off (aluminium and oil). Chavez and the MVR denounced these neo-liberal policies as selling out to imperialism and proposed an alternative economic plan based on “endogenous development”. The aim of the National Plan of Development 2001-2007 was to develop and diversify the economy away from oil to develop new industry and re-invigorate agriculture. It draws on the work of Osvaldo Sunkel, a Chilean economist, influential in Latin American development economics. He is a critic both of neo-liberalism and the 1960s development models of “import substitution”, where high tariff barriers were used to protect nascent industries in Latin America.6

The plan makes clear the commitment of the government to a mixed economy, encouraging both private and foreign capital. It uses the state, both to control strategic industries like oil, and to take initiatives to promote export oriented industries. The state had to create favourable conditions for investment, investing in infrastructure and above all training for the workforce. It is a model that draws on the Japanese and Asian economic development in the 1960s and 1970s where the state played an important role in encouraging the monopoly-led export economies. It is seen as an alternative to the deregulated neo-liberal model pushed by Washington.

This explains why, despite the hostility of Washington, Chavez has remained on good terms with foreign capital, particularly the multinational oil, gas and mining companies who have continued to invest heavily in Venezuela.7 A recent series of oil and gas “joint venture” agreements replaced the existing operating agreements and increased the PDVSA holdings to a 51% stake. These changes were agreed by companies like Shell, BP, Texaco- Mobil and Repsol. New proposals outlined in a speech by Chavez in January appear to want to extend these changes into the important Orinoco region, where companies like ConocoPhillips, Total, Chevron and Exxon Mobil have big investments in heavy oil projects. Currently the government has only a 40% stake in these fields which, if made economically viable, could give Venezuela the largest oil reserves in the world, ahead of even Saudi Arabia. Justifying the 51% deals struck towards the end of 2006 the Minister of Energy and Oil, Rafael Ramirez said, “We have done nothing more than reclaim the biggest oil reserves in the world from the jaws of imperialism”, an argument rightly described as “Orwellian” in its double- think by one commentator.8

The “social economy”

A relatively minor part of this plan, but one that has been seized upon by Chavez’s cheerleaders around the world to demonstrate the socialist nature of the government, is to encourage and develop the “social economy” – production based around co-operatives, family and self managed micro-enterprises. The aim in this sector was described in the plan, “to transform the informal workers into small managers” creating a newly trained “managerial class”.9 The Women’s Development Bank, some of the social missions, such as the agrarian oriented Vuelvan Caras, and generous state support for co-operatives that goes with them, were all aimed at achieving this. The Minister of Popular Economy, Elias Java, has said, “Our idea is to lay the foundations of a new socio-economic model which our president calls 21st century socialism”.
It is certainly true that Chavez sees the development of the co-operative model, of Social Production Enterprises (EPS) as they are being called, as central to his view of socialism. But this is not a “new socioeconomic model” – it is the return to the ideas of Proudhon, Saint Simon and Robert Owen, ideas that Marx and Engels characterized as utopian or “petit bourgeois socialism”. As a result the number of co-operatives has risen dramatically – from about 800 in 1998 to 100,000 in 2005, employing up to a million individuals. Many are tiny, as the Women’s Development Bank has granted more than 75,000 small credit loans for “micro businesses”. They often involve the poorest workers in the shanty towns and informal sector, providing work through state aid and subsidy but often at “wages” – that is, shared profits – at or below the minimum wage. Workers in the shanty towns are also being encouraged to become “homeowners”, to seek titles to their land and houses, through Urban Land Committees (CTUs).

In mining areas, co-operatives of 10-15 miners exist alongside, and trying to compete with, major multinationals like the largest gold producer in Venezuela the US-based Hecla, and the Canadian firm Crystallex.10 In rural areas the new state subsidised farming developments are organised as co-operatives and existing small producers are encouraged to form small co-operatives to receive state aid.

This is petit bourgeois because it develops a strategy of turning the masses into groups of small producers, working for themselves in collectively owned business. Instead of setting about drawing the workers from the informal sector into the proletariat proper, through mass programmes of public works, expanding and developing state owned industry and services etc, Chavez wants to encourage them to become small capitalists. Marx and Engels were scathing about such strategies. In his polemic with the German Proudhonists around the question of how to deal with housing shortages caused by mass migration to the cities, he said: “. . . it must be pointed out that the ‘actual seizure’ of all the instruments of Labour, the seizure of industry as a whole by the working people, is the exact opposite of the Proudhonist ‘redemption’. Under the latter the individual worker becomes the owner of the dwelling, the peasant farm, the instrument of labour: under the former the ‘working people’ remain the collective owners of the houses, factories and instruments of labour.11

The co-operative can be a useful tool in the transition to socialism, where the workers have already expropriated the capitalists and established their own state. They can be used to break down individualism and competition within the peasantry as part of the transition to collective state organised farming. As Trotsky and a section of the Bolsheviks recognised, they were a necessary compromise, a route to a socialist solution to the land question that avoided Stalin’s brutal policy of forced collectivisation. However, as a strategy to build socialism alongside capitalism it is both reformist and utopian. It develops a strategy of transforming the economy bit-by-bit, expanding ever further the co-operative sectors of the economy. It avoids the question of the capitalist state and the necessity of the proletariat to smash it to achieve socialism. Instead it advocates a gradual economic transformation, capitalism “growing over” into socialism – a reformist strategy. It is also utopian because it fails to recognise the advantages of monopoly capitalism (advanced machinery, access to capital, international division of labour, high levels of productivity and exploitation) over small co-operative enterprises. Co-operatives can only compete by driving down their “wages” to below those of workers in capitalist enterprises.

Agrarian reform not revolution

Venezuela has a massive land problem. A mere 1% of landowners own 60% of the land, much of it left unused or under utilised while Venezuela has to import the bulk of its food. Ownership of large estates often has dubious roots with much land transferred from the state through corrupt land deals. Meanwhile 75% of poor landholders try to scratch a living from 6% of the land. In early 2001 the Chavez government passed a very moderate land reform law which was aimed at redistributing under-used government lands and some unused big estates. A new law of January 2005 was aimed at privately owned big estates of more than 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) where it was determined that the land was underutilised.

The government and its bureaucracy has moved at a snail’s pace to implement these laws. It has been the poverty and land hunger of the rural workers and peasants and their militant response to these laws that has pushed them forward. Often the initiative has been taken out of the hands of the authorities through land seizures and occupations. One example was the case of the multinational Vestey, whose British owners are renowned for their tax dodging activities. It found its El Charcotte ranch occupied and was finally forced to hand over 20% of its idle lands. The landowners have often fought back, hiring thugs, often from Colombia, to intimidate the peasant squatters. Land activists have been killed and corrupt local police, and even the army, have colluded in attacks on squatters. A peasants’ conference in early 2005 criticised the slowness of the land reform and the collaboration of local judges and army commanders with attacks on peasants attempting to seize land. The activists called for self-defence units, the organisation of collective farms, and for “a revolution within the revolution” – a slogan raised as well in the workers’ movement to signal the need to clear out the obstructers and reformists.12 In July 2005, 6000 peasant and rural labourers protested outside the National Assembly against the impunity that the landowners apparently had in killing over 150 peasants during the previous few years.

These organisations undoubtedly represent the vanguard in the peasant movement. In contrast the Chavez government wants to establish co-operative farming peacefully, without alienating the large landowners and multinationals. It is part of the idea of establishing a small producers sector of the economy, a strategy that eschews nationalisation and expropriation of large agribusiness and handing it over to the control and management of the workers, the only strategy, that could really solve the land question in Venezuela.

Nationalisation, co-management and workers’ control In industry as well, the Venezuelan government has, until recently, little appetite for nationalising capitalist firms. For example the major steel plant SIDOR, in Ciudad Guayana, privatised shortly before Chavez was elected in 1998, remains in private hands. Only a handful of working factories have been taken over by the state, but Chavez has encouraged workers to take over and restart several hundred closed plants as co-operatives. The government is keen to encourage workers to set up their on businesses but unenthusiastic about taking over viable capitalist enterprises.
Invepal, a paper plant, was one of the first nationalizations which took place only after a long campaign. The company had closed down and been occupied by the workers. In 2005 it was finally nationalised and placed under co-management, with 49% of the company given to the workers, while 51% was owned by the state. The aluminium plant, Alcasa, was also put under co-management, this time on the initiative of the Labour Ministry as its state management had been deeply corrupt and incompetent.

These measures are still seen as “experiments” by the government, rather than the beginning of new nationwide policy. Indeed key strategic state industries, such as the PDVSA and gas, have been declared “off limits” for such experiments. For a while, in the struggle around the PDVSA lockout, the workers formed “guide committees” to exert some control and guard against sabotage, but once the state and the military were firmly back in control these committees were not encouraged and fell into disuse. Hugo Chavez has recently signalled a change in policy towards nationalisation. In January 2007 he promised to take over “strategic sectors” of the economy. What this will amount to has yet to be seen. He has said the broadcasting licence of the private Radio and Caracas Television (RCTV) will not be renewed, although it is not clear whether it will be given to a more sympathetic private operator – RCTV backed the coup in 2002. He has announced that the telecommunications company, Cantv, which the US company Verizon has being trying to sell its large stake in, will come under state control, and he has suggested the Caracas power company might be nationalised. If such a policy is left at the state capitalist nationalization of a few important companies, and increasing the government joint venture stakes with the oil companies, it will not signal a fundamental change in the nature of the Venezuelan mixed-economy – though no doubt it will be greeted as heralding a “new stage in the revolution” by Chavez cheerleaders in the west.

International dimension

Chavez was intelligent enough to realise that a programme for the national development of Venezuela, which went against the Washington consensus on privatisation, de-regulation and free trade, could not survive if kept within the bounds of the country. Here he drew on the history of Bolivar’s internationalism, his attempts to establish a unified federation of Latin American states. In an interview in 1995 he declared how Bolivar had a vision “of uniting all these Balkanised territories of Latin America in order to confront the imperial power of the north. Now everyone is struggling for this goal, not just Venezuela.”13

While Chavez has not been shy of floating grand schemes – a single Latin American currency, a Latin American NATO (without the USA of course!), a continental OPEC – his initiatives have been more limited and geared towards building allies against US intervention. He has also attempted to diversify foreign investment to reduce dependency on the USA and Europe. China’s emerging multinationals have taken on major projects, building a petroleum company, a large Orimulsion plant from which it is contracted to buy all the fuel. He has sought to bolster the discipline in OPEC to maintain the price of oil, supplied cheap oil to Cuba and at preferential prices to 11 Caribbean and Central American States. He has expended much energy to rally sympathetic Latin American states to torpedo the US drive to establish the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and presented an alternative in the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA).

ALBA is still an organisation in development but is meant to offer a non-market based approach to economic and political integration. So far only Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia have fully signed up. Telesur, a Latin American news channel, an alternative to CNN , is one recent initiative, a development bank and continental petrol company are planned. None of this however stopped Venezuela joining Mercosur in July 2006, the South American trading bloc based on impeccable neo-liberal principles.

Popular organisations and Bonapartism

Hugo Chavez is not unique in Latin America. He follows in a long tradition of progressive military leaders who have been repelled both by the poverty of their country and its prostration before the US colossus to the north. Some have tried to develop their economies and break free of imperialism using military regimes, others have taken the civilian road. Chavez’s initial heroes were all progressive military regimes – Torrijos in Panama, Velasco in Peru. His secret military organisation, MBR-200, was committed to overthrowing the elected government and establishing a military one, a strategy that ended in his failed coup attempt of 1992. In the late 1990s the economic crisis, and  discrediting of the old parties, was of such a scale that Chavez believed he had a chance of launching a civilian movement and being elected president.

But like all sudden populist movements, the electoral landslide in 1998 left Chavez with severe problems. He had no mass party with deep roots in all areas of society – workplaces, schools and universities, shanty towns and working class neighbourhoods, peasant and indigenous communities – a mass organisation to defend him against the anti-democratic manoeuvres of the opposition and imperialism. Neither did he have a mass organisation to use as a lever to carry his more radical policies into life.

This second aspect was particularly important because having come to power in elections, not as the result of a civil war or revolution as the FSLN did in Nicaragua, he was to a large extent the prisoner of an unreformed and hostile state bureaucracy. Even the new constitution failed to alter this awkward fact. Much of the constant change and experimentation with organisations of civil society – Bolivarian Circles, Patriotic Circles, Communal Councils Mark 1, Endogamous Battle Units and currently Communal Councils Mark 2 – is an attempt by Chavez to build such a base. Like all leftist “Bonapartes”, leaders who have to balance between the masses on one side and capitalism and imperialism on the other, Chavez needs, and has, a strong and direct relationship with the masses. His mass rallies, walkabouts and his popular Sunday radio and TV programme Alo Presidente, a cross between a party political broadcast and Jim’ll Fix It, where anyone with a problem will write in and the president will try to solve it, all reflect the reliance of the Bolivarian revolution on one person, its leader. But still he needs to build organisations that can mobilise millions when needed – to threaten the capitalists when necessary and deter imperialist intervention.

The parties that support Chavez, including the largest, the MVR, carry little real weight in Venezuelan society. They know they are creatures of the president, parties that would have no future without him. They are also highly undemocratic, based on top down appointments and patronage, and are often corrupt at a local and regional level. Thus the masses look to the president for change, not to these parties, which many hold in contempt. Chavez himself knows this. He regularly threatens and denounces his own party, complains of the inability to get things done. His constant attempts to build “popular organisations” outside of these parties and municipal structures has caused conflict and tension. There have been clashes between Communal Councils/UBE’s and locally elected officials, both claiming the democratic mandate. Recently Chavez called a meeting for party activists, shortly after the December elections, and announced to surprised supporters that a new party should be built, a “United Socialist Party of Venezuela” from the base up. Apparently while the crowds in the cheap seats cheered, the party bureaucrats in the stalls looked glum.14

Real power in fact lies with a small group of advisors and ministers, mayors and governors, and above all with Chavez’s support base amongst the officers of the army. Political arguments within this group or the MVR are carried on behind the backs of the masses and differences finally settled by Chavez himself. Far from being the marvellous “participatory democracy” that starry eyed supporters like Hilary Wainwright of Red Pepper claim, it is a classic top down Bonapartism where the initiatives are laid down from above while the masses encouraged to debate how to implement them.
This does not mean the masses are passive, only that they have no mass organisations through which they can exercise their power over the state. There are no workers’ and peasants’ councils, factory committees, a mass revolutionary party. Indeed the mobilisations against the right, and in defence of Chavez and his welfare programme, have brought hundreds of thousands into political life. They participate in elections, in social missions, in Bolivarian Houses and cultural clubs – but they have no power or control over the direction of state policy.

Whither 21st century socialism in Venezuela?

In a period where socialism has appeared to be on the retreat and neo-liberalism triumphant, it might appear like carping to criticise a leader and who openly attacks George Bush and his policies. Yet those who don’t explain to the workers the limitations of the Bolivarian revolution, its fundamentally bourgeois character (however radical it appears or says it is) do no service to the poor and downtrodden or the cause of international revolution. Every self-proclaimed “revolutionary” movement attracts its radical and uncritical supporters – Chavez more than most. But the lessons of history show that however radical a government, however many excellent reforms and benefits to the masses it introduces, unless it destroys capitalism itself, the root of exploitation and poverty, those gains will be rolled back. This was the lesson of the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979 where the gains of the 1980s were rapidly swept away by neoliberal governments of the 90s. 15

Of course, Venezuela has enormous advantages over a poor country like Nicaragua, it is oil rich. But the considerable reforms and welfare programmes being developed in Venezuela are absolutely dependent on the temporary high price of oil on the world market. A collapse as sudden as its rise, could sweep most of these reforms away and Chavez along with it. That is because the Bolivarian revolution has made no attempt to change the fundamentals of the country. The power of the multinationals, the capitalists and the media moguls have been left untouched, as has their wealth. They might be licking their wounds now, after several electoral defeats, but a downturn in the economy could bring them back to power as disillusion spreads and Chavez’s promises of a new dawn fails to materialise. Many on the left see it differently, they think the Bolivarian revolution offers a new model. Michael Lebowitz and his book Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century is typical. He believes Chavez has put “Marxism back on the agenda”, that the development of the “social economy”, state enterprises and co-operatives, is “evolving increasingly from a complement to an alternative to the logic of capital”. “By degrees these two ownership forms are expanding relative to private capital (which thus far retains its enclaves – especially in the media, banking, telecommunications and food processing).” 16

Lebowitz is in fact reworking the Stalinist stages theory of revolution for the 21st century. The social economy will gradually be expanded until the society is transformed, but for the moment it will co-exist alongside the capitalist “enclaves”. He clearly doesn’t recognise that the tail does not wag the dog and that in Venezuela capitalism is the driving force in the economy. But this is because like many others, the IMT for example, he thinks the state is already in our hands, or rather in the “unerring revolutionary” hands of Commandant Chavez.

In fact the state remains a capitalist one, defended by a police force and an army. The army is not, as Chavez would have it, a “civil-military union”, but a body of armed men standing above society and separated from it. It is organised under military discipline, led by officers who are in no sense revolutionary socialists, but who agree with Chavez that Venezuela must remain a mixed economy capitalism. Anyone who forgets the importance of the army forgets all the lessons of Chile in 1973. The developments in Venezuela offer enormous opportunities for a party of socialist revolution to organize within the masses – amongst the workers, the poor, the rural workers. But such a party would have to champion real workers’ democracy, organise real workers’ control, and fight for workers’ councils in the neighbourhoods. It would need to develop an intransigent critique of the failings of the Bolivarian programme as a whole, while supporting every measure taken that was in the interests of the workers and the poor. But it would put forward its own revolutionary action programme to tackle these burning issues – for example tackling the chronic housing problems, not by offering “titles” in the shanty towns, but by a mass programme of modern house building, expropriating the land needed (including the posh golf course in the heart of Caracas) and expropriating the under-used and second homes of the bourgeoisie.

Health has undoubtedly been improved by Cuban doctors but it could be made a lot better by expropriating the private hospitals, currently the preserve of the Venezuelan rich, and placing them at the disposal of the masses.
The massive disparities of wealth should be tackled by a steeply progressive wealth tax on the rich and the expropriation of dubiously obtained assets. What is needed in Venezuela is a revolutionary workers’ government, one that puts the factories, mines, banks and farms at the disposal of the masses. That develops a plan of production using, workers and peasants’ councils and workers’ management, democratically determining what needs to be produced. Any such government would need to take immediate steps to arm the workers and immediately encourage the formation of soldiers’ committees and unions, making officers responsible to the rank and file soldiers. These and other revolutionary measures could really mobilise the masses and start the construction of a real 21st century socialism. Only by organising a mass revolutionary socialist party to fight for them, one that is independent of the Chavez state, will give the Venezuelan masses a hope of achieving it.

Endnotes

1 Foremost among the cheerleaders are the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) and their Hands Off Venezuela Campaigns. See The Venezuelan Revolution; a Marxist Perspective by Alan Woods which expounds on Hugo Chavez’s “unerring revolutionary instinct”. Similarly uncritical cheerleading can be found in Green Left Weekly, paper of the DSP Australia and International Viewpoint, online magazine of the Fourth International. The infection has even spread to the British SWP, which used to have little time for the revolutionary credentials of the FSLN in Nicaragua or Castro. A recent Socialist Review (Dec 2006) declares “Hugo Chavez is the most prominent representative of a far reaching revolutionary process in Venezuela . . .”
2 See for example “After the election: Venezuela’s Road to Socialism”
on the IMT’s website, In Defence of Marxism, which in a report of the president post election speech says “President Chavez did not outline concrete plans to move the revolution forward . . . However, one of the most important points in his speech (and which can have a greater impact in the new period that opens up after this revolutionary victory) was the idea that the revolution not only continues but is also going to become more intense.”
3 See “Poverty Rates In Venezuela: Getting The Numbers Right” by Mark Weisbrot, Luis Sandoval, David Rosnick, Center for Economic and Policy Research, at: http://www.cepr.net/publications
4 “Petro-populism”, Financial Times, Friday 1 December: a third term beckons for Venezuela firebrand president.
5 See “Mi Negra Plan Manuel Rosales: Opposition Candidate for President of Venezuela”, by Sean Kriletich at: upsidedownworld.org
6 See for example: Development From Within: Toward a Neostructuralist Approach for Latin America, Osvaldo Sunkel. Also interview “Commanding Heights” available as html on Google.
7 Chavez is quite open about the importance of foreign investment. He makes clear in an interview with Marta Harnecker that if his government had taken a position of cancelling the foreign debt it would have cut them off from such investment. See Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution, Monthly Review Press 2005, p 110.
8 “Joint Ventures: Venezuela’s Faustian Pact with Foreign Capital” by Steve Mather, venezuelanalysis.com
9 See Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century, Michael Lebowitz, Monthly Review Press 2006 Chapter 7 for a summary of the 2001-07 plan.
10 A recent visitor to one such area reported on Crystallex, “It’s not difficult to notice their land: a high fence surrounds their huge swath of land, and at the main gate, guards with helmets and riot sticks are keeping away unwanted persons . . . It’s clear: these mining companies are here for the money and not for anything else.” “The Open Veins of Venezuela”, Jeroen Kuiper, venezuelanalysis.com
11 Engels, The Housing Question, Part 3. Neither was this petit bourgeois socialism limited to the Proudhonists. Engels makes the point in his 1887 introduction of saying it existed in the German Social Democratic Party itself and its parliamentary fraction. He linked it to the growing stage-ism in the party which put off the demand for “the transformation of all means of production into social property” to the distant future while supporting “social patchworks” for “uplifting the labouring class” in the present.
12 Report translated from El Nuevo Topo by Earl Gilman
13 Quoted in Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan Revolution, Richard Gott, p183
14 See “Its my party and I’ll cry if I want to” by Michael Lebowitz on Monthly Review website www.monthlyreview.org
15 See “Lessons of Nicaragua”, www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1061
16 Michael Lebowitz op cit


Trade unions
The UNT and workers’ control The most well-organised and independent of the mass organisations in Venezuela are the new unions organised in the UNT . These unions went through an explosive period of growth between 2003 and 2005. The UNT now has 600,000 affiliated members, with many new unions still not affiliated to either federation. May Day celebrations have seen hundreds of thousands of workers out on the streets marching with the UNT while the old corrupt and bureaucratic CTV now only mobilises hundreds. Nevertheless while the CTV cannot compete on the streets it still retains an important apparatus and base in the traditional organised workplaces. Unlike the CTV, the UNT organises on a democratic basis.
The majority current is the Class Unity Revolutionary and Autonomous Current (C-CURA) led by Orlando Chirino, also known as the classist current. There are four other significant currents linked to Chavist parties and the government. At the second congress there was a walkout by the four minority currents, ostensibly over differences about moving to national elections for the UNT . In fact political tensions had arisen over the the C-CURA current’s policy of seeking to maintain complete political independence from the government.1 C-CURA has taken a critical stance towards co-operatives where workers become owner-capitalists.
Whilst it supports co-management it sees this as a transitional and educational phase through which the workers can move to workers’ control. C-CURA’s arguments for it to be extended into PDVSA and other important state industries have been rebuffed by Chavez, who sees these industries as too important for experiments in workers’ participation.
The UNT has played an important role in campaigns to take over firms threatened with closure, and Chavez’s policies on co-operatives and co-management have sparked considerable debate in the unions. For example at one point the workers’ leaders at Invepal dissolved their union and pressed for a 100% co-operative ownership. The majority of the UNT argue for keeping the unions and for co-management. But there is much debate about the term as it is constantly confused with “workers’ control”.
It is not only the workers who are confused. Supporters and advocates of the Chavez brand of 21st Century Socialism regularly talk of co-management and workers’ control interchangeably.2
The fact is that the nationalized industries in Venezuela, as elsewhere, operate within a capitalist state i.e. they are state capitalist enterprises used to develop and subsidise private capital in the country. Comanagement aims to involve the workers in improving the efficiency of these state capitalist enterprises, to make them more productive, and more exploitative, by improving profitability. Workers’ control is the antithesis of this. It aims, through trade union struggle, to exert a workers’ veto over the managers’ right to manage, to hire and fire. Workers’ control of production can only become a reality in a growing revolutionary crisis, situations of dual power, where factory committees organise on the basis of an economic plan – controlling the factories, selling goods, supplying raw materials, arranging credit and so on. This must lead directly to confronting the capitalist state and establishing a workers’ government. As Trotsky pointed out, “workers’ control is not a prolonged ‘normal’ condition, like wage scale agreements or social insurance. The control is a transitional measure, under conditions of the highest tension of the class war, and conceivable only as a bridge to the revolutionary nationalisation of industry”.3
To advocate or endorse “comanagement” in state-capitalist enterprises and pretend it is “workers’ control” is to encourage the workers to use their creativity in the interests of the capitalists, to participate in their own exploitation. It takes a potentially transitional, revolutionary demand and converts it into a reformist one.
1 T he C-CURA leadership is linked to the Party of Revolutionary Socialism (PRS) which declares itself sympathetic to Trotskyism. The other four currents are all closely linked to the government, the Bolivarian Workers Force (FBT), led by Osvaldo Vera (also an Assembly deputy for the MVR), the Autonomous Union, linked to the PPT, and the collective led by Marcela Máspero which is close to the Ministry of Works. For a good political report of the second congress see “The Real Fracture in the Venezuelan Labor Movement”, Steve Mather, venezuelanalysis.com
2 Green Left Weekly, In Defense of Marxism etc are all guilty of this confusionism. A recent article by Gregory Wilpert, a leading figure in venezuelanalysis.com, declares, “Currently at least four production plants, which produce paper, valves, and agricultural products, have been expropriated and turned over to worker control.” “The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism for Venezuela”, venezuelanalysis.com.
3 See Leon Trotsky, What Next: Vital Questions for the German Proletariat, Jan 1932. Part 14, “Workers’ control and collaboration with the USSR”, contains an important discussion on the fight for workers’ control and workers’ management.

timeline
1954 Hugo Chavez Frias born.
1971 Joins army.
1980-85 Tutor in the military academy at Caracas.
1982 Forms Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200
(MBR-200) – a secret political circle amongst officers.
1992 Chavez, now a colonel in the parachute regiment, leads failed coup attempt.
1994 Released from prison and proceeds to build MBR-200.
1997 Chavez forms the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) to aid his presidential bid and draws smaller parties – Patria Para Todos (PPT).
December 1998 Wins Presidential elections with 54% of vote. Major traditional parties Accion Democratica and Copei suffer voting collapse. Oil price per barrel drops to $7.60 on world markets.
1999-2000 Constituent Assembly works out new constitution, which is adopted in national referendum.
2000
July Chavez wins six year term as President under new Fifth Republic with 59.7% of popular vote and clear majority in new National Assembly.
2001
January-June Growing opposition on streets led by the employers federation (Federcameras), private media and CTV trade unions linked to Accion Democratica. In reply Chavez calls for Bolivarian Circles to be formed in local communities.
November Enabling Law published – 49 laws enacted by the President including land reform, increased royalties on oil, and a joint venture law insisting on 51% state share with foreign companies.
December One day business lockout called by the opposition.
2002
January-April Large scale pro and anti-Chavez street demonstrations. General lockout and strike called by employers and CTV for April 10-11 as a cover for coup attempt. Chavez arrested by army high command and the media reports his resignation.
April 12-14 Pedro Carmona head of Federecamas is sworn in as transitional President. National Assembly is dissolved, the constitution annulled and all elected governors and mayors sacked.
April 14 Mass demonstrations organised by Bolivarian Circles at presidential palace demand the return of Chavez. Many military bases are surrounded by crowds and some army units declare loyalty to Chavez. The palace guard retakes Miraflores palace and Chavez restored to the Presidency.
May-November Chavez follows policy of conciliation. Radicals in economic team replaced with moderates, head of PDVSA replaced with a president acceptable to business. Opposition returns to the offensive. Chavez retires 60 admirals and generals and consolidates support in the army command. Early December Federecamas and CTV launch lockout/strike centred on PDVSA and oil sector.
2003
January As lockout continues the masses mobilize and Chavez sends in army to take control of oil installations. By the start of February, with help of oil workers and tanker crews, the lockout is broken.
(The oil strike and lockout has severely damaged the economy which contracts by 28% between the fourth quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2003.)
Spring sees launching of “social missions” in health, education and adult education, subsidised food distribution – Mercal, agricultural training etc. Oil prices have increased to $50, a barrel a fivefold increase in as many years.
August First Congress of UNT a movement of independent trade unions that have broken with the corrupt CTV.
2004
January Campaign by the opposition to oust Chavez, this time constitutionally through the recall mechanism, is in full swing. August In recall referendum led by opposition 59.25% vote for Chavez to remain President. Opposition achieves 40%. Chavez uses “Electoral Battle Units” (UBEs) at neighbourhood level formed into squads, platoons etc. October Mayoral and Governor elections in which Chavez supporters win vast majority of offices.
2005
January In closing speech to World Social Forum in Brazil Chavez declares “We have to re-invent socialism . . . It can’t be the kind that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems based on cooperation not competition.”
Jan-June First half of year sees Chavez attempting to re-organise base of his movement. The UBEs (renamed Endogenous Battle Units) and Bolivarian Houses/Cultural centres are to be centres for local organisation and “participatory democracy”.
December National Assembly elections. Opposition parties withdraw a week before elections. Result is that the Chavista parties win all 167 seats. Economy grows by 10% in 2005, having grown by 18% in 2004.
2006
December Chavez wins another presidential election with 62% of the popular vote and calls for a “United Socialist Party of Venezuela”.
January Chavez announces nationalisation of major telecoms company, Cantv and promises to recover Venezuelan state’s property in other “strategic sectors” like Orinoco oil fields. “We’re moving towards a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform in our national constitution” he declared in a speech on the eve of his inauguration.

Wed 18, July 2007 @ 12:49