Impressions from a month in the Venezuelan class struggle - PR9

Every five years or so young leftists from the west, bored by the slow pace of the class struggle in the imperialist heartlands, pack their bags and head off to some distant corner of the globe. In this particular corner, Venezuela, social revolution is rumoured to hang in the air like pollen. The struggle for fundamental change in the midst of capitalist decadence can seem daunting, depressing, senseless; the endless fight to reach a working class dominated by social democracy and passivity, the dry ideological struggles at the university amongst students worried about their careers. It’s just too tempting to take a break from all this and go somewhere where the revolution is, y’know, in full gear.

In the 1980s the Mecca of the young leftists was Nicaragua, in the 1990s it became Chiapas in Mexico and after 2000 it was Argentina. Now, the left wing Hajj can’t lead anywhere but Venezuela. The key words change with the geography – “Sandinista”, “Zapatista”, “Piquetero”, “Bolivariano” – but the idea is basically the same everywhere; the mass anti-imperialist struggles create opportunities for political organisation, alternative education and creative projects that are hard to find elsewhere. In the case of Venezuela, most activists head out to the slums above Caracas and get involved in the activities of the urban poor. They offer English courses, paint murals, work at community radio stations and do similar projects. They are generally infatuated with the “Bolivarian Revolution”.

As a Berlin-based leftist, it wasn’t unusual to be sitting in a café and run into some well known activist’s face: “Oh, you’re here too?”

The contradictions

But a number of activists learn that the “Bolivarian revolution” does not live up to the hype. Some even notice that there’s not much of a revolution at all. What shocks a left wing visitor to Venezuela most is the wealth – the almost unimaginable wealth of an oil state, proudly on display in Caracas in the form of gargantuan shopping malls and polished SUVs as far as the eye can see. Of course, this wealth is in the middle of equally unimaginable poverty – the slums on the hills around Carcas are juxtaposed with the steel-and-glass high rises.

Chávez won the presidential elections in 1998 with 56% of the votes. Since then he has won at least eight more national elections by ample majorities, and maintains the support of Venezuela’s poor masses. But, after nearly ten years in power, discontent is growing within Chávez’s social base – despite the record-breaking oil price (which has actually quintupled in the last decade!) and all the talk of “21st century socialism”, terrible poverty continues to exist alongside tremendous wealth. The inflation rate of almost 30% means that workers’ wages must be stretched just to buy basic foodstuffs, which are in any case in short supply. It’s not that the pro-Chavista masses are angry at Chávez, but there is growing anger directed at Chavista mayors, governors, ministers etc, who are accused of bureaucratism and corruption. (One thinks involuntarily of the peasants in the Soviet Union enraged by some local bureaucrat: “If only Stalin new about this!”)

In short, the social base of the Chávez government is becoming wobbly. In the elections at the end of the year, the, opposition has a realistic chance of taking over a number of city and state governments. The opposition politicians have turned up their social demagogy a notch, feigning concern about the lack of rice and beans on the shelves in the slums. In this situation, El Presidente has again needed to radicalise the content of his speeches in order to keep his supporters on his side. (The half-Chavista, half-Trotskyist International Marxist Tendency recently certified that Chávez speech on 1 May 2008 was his “most radical speech ever”!)

Proletarian awakening

The working class has so far only played a marginal role in the “Bolivarian process”. Only in times of crisis, such as the bosses’ “strike” in late 2002 and early 2003, when the workers’ of the oil industry organised themselves and managed to keep the oil production running despite a lock-out by management, has the power of the working class been easily visible. But even in this case, as soon as the workers had shown that they were capable of running industry themselves – and that workers’ control was central to the struggle against the counter-revolution – the government moved in and ended all workers’ control “experiments” in the oil industry, putting all of its faith in a new class of loyal Chavista bureaucrats.

A common misconception about the process in Venezuela is that the working class makes up an insignificant minority of society. Venezuela solidarity activists tend to claim that either the poor masses in the slums or the peasants in the countryside are the majority of the population, and therefore the true revolutionary subject. But, as Chávez himself admits, Venezuela has very low agricultural production and peasants make up a small part of the population.1 The slum dwellers, far from being some kind of new social class who are outside the production process, work to a large extent below the slums, down in the cities. A worker at the Ministry of Labour claimed that of Venezuela’s 24-27 million inhabitants, around 12 million sell their labour in order to survive (the most classical definition of proletarians), and of these, seven million have a regular, salaried job (but not necessarily a contract).

The working class will be decisive for the further development in Venezuela. When the alliance between the “patriotic” sectors of the bourgeoisie and the masses grouped around the left-bonapartist government of Chávez begins to splinter in the coming months or years, the working class can intervene and resolve the crisis by imposing their own rule in the form of a workers’ government. But for this to happen all efforts need to be directed towards building up an independent political force of the working class, a point which I have made in an earlier article in Permanent Revolution.2

A lunch with Venezuela’s “socialist businessmen”

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez, who refers to himself a “Bolivarian socialist”, has called for alliances with the national bourgeoisie. He has even called on nationalist businessmen to participate in the “Venezuelan revolution”. But have these businessmen answered the call?

The majority of Venezuela’s capitalists are fiercely opposed to the Chávez government, as they’ve shown in two attempted coups. But there is also an important sector of the bourgeoisie that supports the government, expecting high profits from its policies of reducing dependence on imperialism by developing national industries. Who are these capitalists? What do they think about the situation in Venezuela?

To answer these questions, I visited a “technical round table” hosted by the “Association of Businessmen for Venezuela”, better known by the informal name “Association of Socialist Businessmen”. At the meeting, which took place in a chic bar in Caracas’s most expensive shopping mall, businessmen and the press could exchange their experiences doing business under the “socialist government”. No expense had been spared to woo visitors: there was fresh-pressed melon juice, filet mignon on toothpicks, little cakes brought around by waiters – and at night, as one of the young assistants told me, this bar was the best disco in the city.

This businessmen’s association was founded during the bosses’ lock-out (sometimes referred to as a “strike”) in December 2002. This adventurist attempt to topple the Chávez government failed, but not without doing great damage to the national economy. A group of middle-sized businessmen, including a few directors of large corporations, made the call – “No to the strike! Yes to work!” – and the association was born. At the beginning it had 3,000 members; today more than 300,000 mostly small and middle-sized businesses have signed up.

I spoke for a while with Dr Uzcátegui, president of the association, and my first question was of course: “Socialist businessmen? Isn’t that a bit contradictory?” but he was used to the question: “We need to be more precise. The government is talking about socialism of the 21st century, which is neither dogmatic nor reformist. It’s a nationalist socialism, a Venezuelan socialism, which is being built with all social sectors, including businessmen.”

I mentioned that Chávez is often attacked in the international press for restricting the free market, and Uzcátegui replied: “The state needs to regulate, to control the economy. The traditional businessmen have a mentality which is neoliberal and speculative, not productive. This mentality can’t run free, it needs to be controlled. We support the economic model of the government, which has been successful. Traditional businessmen are losing influence, which is why they want to destabilise the government. But we aim for an integration of the private sector with the Bolivarian government.”

Our talk was interrupted by a round of presentations. A representative of a chemical manufacturer explained how he was going to a business conference in Shanghai with the help of the Venezuelan labour ministry. Then I had to present myself from the stage as well: “We have a friend, a journalist from Germany, here.” I’m not much of a public speaker: “Yes, uh, thanks, uh, for the food . . .”

When we continued, I asked about the strategic vision of the “patriotic capitalists”, and Uzcátegui presented a vision very similar to that of Chávez himself: transforming the economic model of the country, towards more distribution of wealth, less exploitation, more production and less monopolies. He referred to this goal repeatedly as “socialist production”. “Economic power is still very important in Venezuela, and it’s the old oligarchy that has this power and is running a media campaign to mis-interpret the policies of the government.” Breaking the oligarchy’s economic power was his goal, even if it was “the most difficult sector of the revolution”.

About the government’s policies of nationalisations, Uzcátegui said they were supported by the businessmen’s association, for example the recent announcement of the nationalisation of the steel works SIDOR. “These businesses have all been strategic, and the nationalisations have benefited thousands of other businesses.” At the same time, he said the word “nationalisation” wasn’t quite right, since the businesses have been bought at a market price by the government. “The government and the multinational corporation sit down at a table and work out a deal that’s acceptable to both sides. In the case of [the Caracas phone company] CANTV, for example, there wasn’t one complaint by the shareholders. The government was excessively fair, paying 480 million for the company.”

Finally, I asked if the “socialist businessmen” were concerned about a radicalisation of the Chavista movement – after all, there are some sectors behind the president who call for the complete nationalisation of the economy. But Uzcátegui isn’t worried at all: the country has a “common leader who’s strong” in the person of Chávez (who meets with the “socialist businessmen” at least once a month) who will ensure that the government’s policies don’t hurt business interests. Chávez’ main accomplishment was, in the words of the business leader, “reforming nationalism”, with policies which have strengthened the “productive business sector” (i.e. the small and middle-sized bourgeoisie).

The “Association of Businessmen for Venezuela” (in Spanish, EMPREVEN) is growing rapidly, at the expense of the traditional and virulently anti-Chávez association, FEDECAMERAS. The name means simply the “Federation of Local Chambers of Commerce”, and more and more of these chambers which make up FEDECAMERAS are switching over to EMPREVEN.

The Chávez government’s policies of national development, reversing earlier privatisations with profits from the oil industry and giving credits to small and not-so-small businesses, are creating a new bourgeoisie which is loyal to the regime. The Chávez project – and here I, as a Marxist, agree with a representative of the capitalists – is a project of developing a strong, independent economy in Venezuela which is based on private property.

Dr. Uzcátegui summarised our talk: “It’s a great time to do business in Venezuela. Fantastic, even.” The motto on the fliers of the association says it all: “To transform Venezuela into a world power.”

SIDOR’s steel workers fight owners and Chavez police 31 March 2008

On 14 March Venezuelan police brutally attacked a demonstration by thousands of striking steel workers from the SIDOR factory. The “Bolivarian National Guard” arrested 53 workers, injured more than a dozen with rubber bullets and even smashed up 51 cars with batons. This repression was directed against a three day strike by the SIDOR workers, part of an ongoing struggle over the last 15 months.

SIDOR, Latin America’s biggest steel works, is located in the city Ciudad Guyana in the state of Bolívar. More than 13,000 workers are demanding a new collective contract with wage increases and improvements in working conditions.

SIDOR was privatised in 1998 by the government of Rafael Caldera. Currently it is controlled by the Argentinean multinational Ternium-Sidor, which is part of the consortium Techint. Ternium owns 60% of the factory, 20% belongs to the state of Bolívar and 20% belongs to the 15,000 workers who were employed at the factory at the time of privatisation.

In the nine years since privatisation working conditions have become worse and worse – 19 workers have died on the job! On 25 March, a 52 year old worker died of a heart attack. His station, which used to be run by three workers, is now maintained by a single worker thanks to “rationalisation”. This death provoked a further 72-hour strike by the SIDOR workers.

The strike was decided at an emergency workers’ assembly on the evening of the death, without any leaders of the trade union present; they had also missed the spontaneous assemblies before the three day strike on 13 March and the one day strike on 24 March. The latest strike included a 5,000 strong demonstration through Ciudad Guyana.

The workers and their trade union SUTISS (United Trade Union of Steel Workers and Similar Industries) are demanding not only a collective contract but also the re-nationalisation of the steel works, since in the last few years the Venezuelan government has talked a lot about reversing privatisations.

Less than one-third of the workers at SIDOR have a secure job. The other two-thirds are employed on temporary contracts and have significantly fewer rights (vacation, housing benefits, job security etc). A further demand of the current struggle is to win permanent contracts for all workers.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has been largely silent about the SIDOR conflict: even now, two weeks after the brutal repression, he has not distanced himself from the actions of the National Guard or responded to the demands for nationalisation. The Chávez government doesn’t want to jeopardise its good relations with Argentinean government of Cristina Kirchner, which stands behind the Techint corporation.

“If this were a Yankee company, the government would have re-nationalised it long ago,” the workers’ representatives complain. José Melendez, from the executive committee of SUTISS, argued that “what’s good for the rooster is good for the hen”, referring to the need to nationalise all multinational corporations. “In Venezuela we talk about socialism, but our leaders should tell us what socialism they mean, since the capitalists continue to do as they wish at the expense of the workers.”

The strikers’ most well known banner made the same point: “Chávez, rampant capitalism is present in SIDOR”. The “Trade Union Alliance”, a left wing list within SUTISS (of which Melendez is a representative), pointed out in a flyer that a presidential decree gave the temporary workers at the state-owned oil company PDVSA permanent contracts. Their flyer continued: “We demand the President treats us the same as the workers of PDVSA.”

But the government has so far been largely on the side of the bosses. Labor Minister José Ramón Rivero first tried to install an “arbitration council”, a body hand-picked by himself which would decide on a solution to the conflict that the workers would have to accept. The workers rejected this proposal entirely.

Then the minister tried to impose a “referendum”, a vote of all the SIDOR workers about the owners’ latest offer, organised by the National Electoral Council. Again, this proposal was rejected as state interference in the sovereign decision-making processes of the trade unions.

Labor Minister Rivero has earned the hatred of the SIDORistas. Melendez commented: “They shouldn’t call him the Minister of Labor but rather the Minister of the Owners!” But President Chávez, who is very popular amongst Venezuelan workers, is also subject to mounting criticism.

At a national meeting to build a solidarity campaign for SIDOR, in Ciudad Guyana on 29 March, the mood amongst the 200 or so trade union leaders and workers from all over Venezuela was quite hostile to the “socialist government”.

“I’ve been at SIDOR for 30 years and I’ve never seen this kind of repression, not even in the Fourth Republic [the Venezuelan Republic until 1998]” said José Rodriguez from the SUTISS executive committee. Cruz Bello, also from the executive committee, talked about the need for a political party of the working class to fight for workers’ interests in conflicts like the current one. Many SIDORistas felt that the government’s backing for the owners in this conflict will significantly reduce its support in the industrial region around Ciudad Guyana, which up till now has been a bastion of “Chavismo”.

The lawyer representing SUTISS took this thought even further: “On 14 March – precisely on the anniversary of the death of Karl Marx – when President Chávez was talking about Marx and the proletarians, the National Guard, which is under the command of the president, was attacking protests by the proletariat. Even in the strike of 1971, which I supported back then as a law student, I haven’t seen such repression . . . Even if it does write ‘socialist’ on its forehead, the bourgeoisie still needs to repress the working class.”

At the solidarity meeting the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) sought to reconcile support for the SIDOR workers with sympathy for the government. The PCV’s first representative who spoke declared that the struggle at SIDOR should be “the spark that sets Venezuela ablaze” and explained that the repression by the police was because the “state in Venezuela is essentially a state at the service of the bourgeoisie. We must destroy it and construct popular power!”

But at the same time, he said the fight for the victory of the SIDORistas and the destruction of the state would be “side by side with the Bolivarian government”, i.e. with the leadership of the state that’s repressing the workers!

The PCV’s Secretary General Oscar Figuera arrived at the very end of the assembly and spoke for 45 minutes in an attempt to cool the discontent with Chávez. He explained that “the main enemy isn’t the national government, it’s the multinational corporation” and “we need to define the main enemy so we can win allies, we can’t drive the government away with too much criticism”. But as this point he was interrupted by angry workers who interjected, “But they’re defending capitalism!”

The assembly in support of the SIDOR struggle was just one expression of the growing alienation between the Chávez government and the Venezuelan workers. After nine years in power, Chávez’ “Bolivarian revolution” hasn’t brought about fundamental changes to the economy, and the daily life of Venezuela’s workers still consists of “rampant capitalism”. Many activists see the struggle at SIDOR as a possible turning point, when the working class will take up an independent role in Venezuelan politics.

Orlando Chirino, a national co-ordinator of the National Workers’ Union (UNT), expressed this clearly at the assembly: “If the SIDOR workers win, this anti-worker Labor Minister will fall in a few minutes. If the SIDOR workers win, the workers in the public sector will win their struggle. If the SIDOR workers win, the fight for trade union autonomy will win.”

In this spirit, the assembly passed a resolution agreeing to form a solidarity committee for SIDOR and demanding the president speak up about the repression of 14 March.

The night before the national meeting, there had been a big solidarity festival in a park on the Orinoco river. Up to 1,000 workers and their families came to listen to music and speeches to draw strength for the struggle ahead. Messages of solidarity arrived from all over Venezuela and Latin America, including a declaration by Argentinian train workers describing their struggles against Techint and the need for a united struggle of the workers against multinational corporations. 

April statement Solidarity with the workers of SIDOR!

For the last 15 months the workers of the Venezuelan steel works SIDOR have been fighting for a new collective contract and the re-nationalisation of the factory. There have been at least eight strikes, multiple demonstrations and a national assembly of solidarity. On 14 March a demonstration by SIDOR workers was brutally attacked by the national police, leaving more than 50 workers under arrest and more than a dozen injured.

We denounce this repression, an act by Venezuela’s capitalist state (even though the government calls itself “socialist”) to silence the legitimate demands of the workers. The solution to the workers’ problems lies in the expropriation of the multinational corporation Ternium-Sidor, not under the control of the state bureauucracy but under the control of the workers themselves. A victory of the SIDOR workers will inspire workers across Venezuela and Latin America to fight for their interests. Therefore, we say:

*              Solidarity with the workers of the SIDOR steel works!

*              For the nationalisation of SIDOR under workers’ control!

*              For socialist revolution in Venezuela and across the world!

The nationalisation of the Venezuelan SIDOR steelworks is a victory for the workers

In the early hours of Wednesday 9 April, Venezuela’s Vice-President Ramon Carrizalez announced that the SIDOR steelworks in the city, Ciudad Guyana, would be nationalised by the government. At this moment, negotiations are going on between the Venezuelan government and Techint about the sale price of the shares, and Techint is expected to keep a 20% share of the company.

This announcement is in the first place a victory for the 15,000 SIDORistas, who for the last fifteen months have been fighting for higher wages, better working conditions and permanent contracts for the 9,000 temporary workers in the plant. They have also been demanding the re-nationalisation of SIDOR, which was privatised in 1998.

The conflict escalated this year, with nine strikes in the first four months of 2008, as well as national solidarity meetings and demonstrations in Ciudad Guyana. More than once the workers’ suffered brutal repression at the hands of the Bolivarian National Guard.

The SIDOR workers greeted the government’s announcement last Wednesday with a massive celebration that very morning, and the local trade union leaders outdid each other in praising Chávez and his government. They conveniently forgot their own harsh criticism of just a few weeks earlier and, more importantly, they ignored the fact that the surprising decision in favour of nationalisation was not some gift from the Commandante en Jefe, but rather a reaction to a particularly determined struggle by the workers.

At the same time, the announcement was a blow for Venezuela’s Labour Minister José Ramón Rivero (who was a Trotskyist militant until the late 1990s and still sometimes refers to himself with that term) who, from the beginning of the conflict, had intervened on the side of the bosses. On April 15, a week after the nationalisation was announced, Chávez removed him from his post. This was a genuine “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”, since even in the final negotiations between the government, the SIDOR management and the workers, the government was no longer represented by the Labour Minister but rather by the Vice-President Rivero.

Rivero is hated by more or less the entire workers’ movement in Venezuela, including the members of his own trade union tendency, the Bolivarian Socialist Workers’ Force (FSBT). His pro-business position was most clear during the conflict at the ceramics factory Sanitarios de Maracay, where he steadfastly refused the workers’ demands for the nationalisation of their plant.

The conflict at SIDOR and the pro-business attitude of government was leading to fissures in the social base of Chavismo. A national meeting of trade union leaders in Ciudad Guyana on March 25 was filled with criticism of the government, sharper than any time in the last nine years. Many working class activists felt that the struggle at SIDOR could lead to a break between the Chávez government and the working class vanguard. It’s clear that the government saw things exactly the same way, and made a surprising 180-degree turn in its policies towards SIDOR. At the same time, this decision can also be seen as part of a long term shift towards a stronger focus on developing national industry in Venezuela, which requires a reliable supply of raw materials like steel.

Several things are clear from the SIDOR struggle: the Chávez government still has plenty of room to manoeuvre – with oil at over $100 a barrel, it still has plenty of money to finance its development projects and buy the support of the workers’ movement.

A break between Chávez and a significant sector of the workers has been averted – for now. But the fundamental problems of the SIDOR workers have not been solved: the 9,000 temporary workers still need permanent jobs and the 4,000 permanent workers still need a large raise just to match an inflation of almost 30% per year.

The government isn’t questioning the “right” of a multinational corporation to own at least 20% of the steel plant, and in no nationalised factory in Venezuela has the “socialist” government allowed full-scale workers’ control, as demanded by the SIDOR workers.

So the struggle at SIDOR is not over. The course of the struggle up till now shows that the workers cannot rely on Chávez government to defend their interests. They must force its hand by organising, demonstrating and striking – and defending themselves against the “Bolivarian” police and the “socialist” state bureaucracy. The government’s policies of developing a national industry in Venezuela (a task which big bourgeoisie has ignored for the last century) are a long way from “socialism” and are not in the long term interest of the workers.

The workers in Venezuela need to build up their own revolutionary party, independent of capitalists and state bureaucrats, in order to consistently defend both their immediate class interests and also the strategic goal of abolishing capitalism.

The struggle at Sanitarios Maracay continues

Sanitarios Maracay is a factory that produces ceramic bathroom products, located in the Venezuelan state of Aragua. The factory’s name has become synonymous with a heroic workers’ struggle and the massive contradictions that exist between the workers’ movement and the “socialist” government in Venezuela.

Sanitarios Maracay is a huge factory, which employed as many as 1,000 workers and controlled around 70% of the Venezuelan market for bathroom fixtures, producing up to 2,500 complete bathrooms per week. But the business went into a downward spiral in 2003 and eventually the owner filed for bankruptcy.

When he announced that all workers were to be fired and re-hired under significantly worse conditions in November 2006, they occupied the factory and began producing under workers’ control.

From the outset the position of the Venezuelan government towards the occupation was hostile. The government had previously nationalised a number of businesses which had been abandoned by their owners, for example the factories Inveval and Invepal. But the Labor Minister José Ramón Rivero consistently rejected demands for nationalisation of Sanitarios Maracay, arguing that the business simply wasn’t “strategic” for Venezuelan industry. The workers point out that the government runs a huge housing project, Petrocasa, which needs 18,000 bathrooms this year alone. But the government gave the contract to the other big ceramics factory in Maracay, which is a normal capitalist business.

Over nine months the struggle at Sanitarios Maracay slowly ran out of steam and money. The hard line of the Bolivarian government demoralised a large number of workers who had counted on support from their government.

“We’ve had visitors from the US, Germany, France, Korea and all over the world. The only person who hasn’t visited is Chávez, even though he lived only 90 kilometers away” comments José Villegas, one of the strike leaders.

By 10 August 2007 it was possible for a co-ordinated action of the Labour Ministry, the trade union bureaucracy and the administrative personnel of the factory to depose the strike committee and convince a majority of the workers to accept a settlement. They got at least 3,000 Strong Bolivars each (about US$1,400) and ended the occupation.

Only a small minority of workers decided to continue the struggle – about 60 in total (down from the 600 who began the occupation nine months earlier).

In December, they occupied a small production installation just across the street from the main complex, where plastic parts for the bathroom products were produced. In the last six months they have been producing toilet seats, plungers and similar products and selling them on the street.

In the last year there has been little information about Sanitarios Maracay in the English-speaking left. This is principally because most reports had been published by the “International Marxist Tendency” of Alan Woods, whose strategic goal was a negotiated settlement between the workers and the government.

As the government refused to negotiate and the confrontations intensified – the state forces brutally attacked workers going to Caracas for a demonstration in April 2007, and the workers of Maracay responded with a regional general strike – the IMT group decided to withdraw. “The people from FRETECO [the IMT’s trade union front] don’t come around anymore” said Marco Pacheco, one of the leaders of the occupiers. “They’ve got a very friendly position with the government.” The IMT’s Chavismo goes so far that they blame the workers for the fact that the government didn’t nationalise the plant – they argue that the regional general strike scared off the well-meaning “revolutionary” government!

The workers of Sanitarios Maracay desperately need solidarity in order to maintain production. Spread information and collect funds in support of the occupation!

Impressions of a socialist battalion meeting of the PSUV

On Sunday 5 April the members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) voted for the 24 regional co-ordinations of their party. The “Socialist Battalions”, the base units of the PSUV, met up all over the country. I attended the assembly of the “Socialist Battalion Number 13” near the Plaza La Concordia in Caracas. The meeting took place in a long, narrow loft where the fans swinging back and forth on the walls couldn’t do much against the exhausting heat. “The temperature in this hall helps to keep meetings short” was the comment of one PSUV member.

I had been expecting a large, city-wide assembly of delegates to elect the local leadership, but instead there were only meetings of the neighbourhood groups. The members in attendance were instructed to each write three names on a slip of paper. The lack of an assembly meant it was impossible for candidates to present themselves, so most of the time was spent discussing questions of eligibility: “Is he a member of the PSUV in Caracas? Does he already have a party function somewhere else?”

The election process was just as ridiculously undemocratic as the election of the PSUV’s national leadership at the founding congress one month ago. The 60 members who received the most votes would form a list of possible candidates. Then the national leadership would select from these 60 the 15 members and 15 alternates of the regional co-ordination. “I don’t like it either, but that’s the way it is” was all the battalion’s spokesman could say about the process.

This electoral farce shows the truth behind the repeated claims by the Chavez government that the PSUV is being built “from the bottom up”. It also shows how little power the members of the PSUV have to oppose these bureaucratic structures; at the PSUV founding congress, hundreds of delegates signed a letter of protest against the process of selection (not election) of the national leadership. But this protest has obviously had no effect, as a similar process was used at the regional level.

The most notable thing about the battalion’s meeting was its composition. Chavez announced the formation of the “Socialist Battalions” as bodies of roughly 200 PSUV members each. The election meeting of Battalion No 13 was attended by just 23 – and this is no exception.

The only people under 30 were two young children of PSUV members and one “Chavotrotskyist” from the tendency “El Militante” (linked to the IMT). The only worker who was active in a trade union explained that he had been attending these meetings “since way back when this used to be called the MVR.” Many analysts from the international left want to see a qualitative shift between Chavez’ old, bourgeois nationalist party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR), and his new party, the PSUV, but many members of these parties recognise the continuity.

To put this in numbers – when the PSUV was formed, it claimed six million members. Only about 15% of these six million, or 900,000 people, ever attended a PSUV meeting. And six months later, only about 10-15% of these 900,000 – 100,000 or so – are still active.

The PSUV, with 100,000 active members, is of course a mass party. But it’s not the totally-super-gigantic-mass party that many expected the PSUV to be – in fact it’s not larger, relative to the size of the population, than most social democratic parties in Europe. This might explain the lack of success of the left wing groups that dissolved in order to enter the PSUV and work inside it. Of the more than 1,600 delegates at the founding congress, the tendency “El Militante” had just seven; the group “Marea Socialista”, which includes a number of well known trade union leaders, had one single delegate.

In a conversation after the meeting, the member of the tendency “El Militante” who was present explained: “I think the PSUV is a bureaucratic instrument for the government to control the masses. I can say that to you, but I can’t say that to the masses in the PSUV, because they wouldn’t understand it. They see the PSUV as a democratic instrument to transform the country.”

Well, I agree with the first part of what this “El Militante” activist said, but in contrast to him I think the masses can and must understand that the PSUV is not an instrument to fight for socialism. But for them to understand it, Marxists inside and outside the PSUV will need to present their views openly. If the PSUV members want socialism they’ll need to create their own revolutionary, socialist party, independent of “socialist” businessmen and the “Bolivarian” state bureaucracy. 

Socialist Unity of the Left

In late April, the National Electoral Council (CEN) legalised a regional party in the state of Aragua. As Richard Gallardo, a national co-ordinator of the trade union federation UNT, explained, this new party, the Socialist Unity of the Left (USI), aims to construct “an authentic party of the Venezuelan workers who are committed to the revolutionary process, in struggle against imperialism, multinational corporations, businessmen and big landowners, in defence of national sovereignty and for the construction of a revolutionary socialist society free of exploiters and oppressors.”

The initiative for the new party is supported by well-known activists like Orlando Chirino, national coordinator of the UNT, José Bodas, general secretary of the oil workers’ union in Anzoátegui, Miguel Angel Hernández, professor at the Central University of Venezuela, Richard Gallardo, president of the UNT in Aragua, José Villegas, the principal leader of the strike at Sanitarios de Maracay and many other workers’ leaders.1 Last year, these activists created the “Movement for the Construction of a Workers’ Party” and began developing common political work – among other things, they called for a blank vote in the referendum for the government’s constitutional reform, which got a lot of attention on the international left.2

Now they are taking steps to build up the USI as a political party and participate in the state elections at the end of the year. These elections could be decisive for the whole Chavista project. Chávez remains very popular throughout Venezuela, but there is a growing discontent with the day-to-day realities of “21st century socialism”, which is expressed as increasing frustration with local functionaries.

Concretely this means the government camp could lose the governorships in up to a third of Venezuela’s 24 states to the opposition. In this situation the leaders of the USI want to present a political alternative to the left of Chávez so that disillusioned workers don’t abstain – as happened in the referendum on the constitutional reform – or support the opposition. This is why they are working to have the party legalised in a number of states as a step towards becoming a national party. The founding congress of the USI is scheduled for this summer.

The name of the new party is “certainly not ideal”, as Miguel Angel Hernández admits. However, Venezuela’s electoral laws prohibit parties from mentioning “social sectors” in their names, so for instance the word “workers” cannot be used in its title. The original name proposed for the new party was the “Party of the Socialist Left” but the Electoral Council instead gave them the name Socialist Unity of the Left.

There has been some preparatory work for the formation of a workers’ party – for example, the regional congress of the UNT in Aragua last year voted for the creation of a political instrument of the working class. But there has so far been no big campaign of workers’ assemblies to discuss the new party. Indeed the activists initiating the USI don’t believe it’s the moment for a mass workers’ party in Venezuela. Only a tiny vanguard has broken from Chavismo, and while larger breaks are inevitable, this will not necessarily happen in the coming weeks and months. The USI is conceived as an instrument to intervene when significant sectors of the working class move to the left of the Chávez government.

The discussions about the formation of a new party have gone on around the Venezuelan supporters of the “International Workers’ Unity” (UIT), an international Trotskyist current centred in Latin America. The USI is conceived as the Venezuelan section of the UIT, as a Trotskyist cadre party with no more than 100-200 active militants at the beginning. “It will be a small party but it will include important workers’ leaders, and via them it will have a mass influence” explains Miguel Sorans, an Argentinean who is one of the principal leaders of the UIT. At the moment in Venezuela he believes it isn’t possible to create a mass party based on the trade unions containing many political tendencies, similar to the “Workers’ Party” in Brazil in the 1980s. “The difference is that the PT was centred around Lula, a Christian trade union bureaucrat, whereas a workers’ party in Venezuela would be centered around Chirino, a revolutionary and a Trotskyist”.

It has been almost ten years since the last significant Trotskyist organization in Venezuela, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PST) dissolved. Many local Trotskyist groups continued to exist – each one grouped around a trade union leader who came from the PST – and produce small publications. The first attempt to bring these groups together was in 2005 with the foundation of the Party of Revolution and Socialism (PRS), which fell apart in 2007 over the question of how to relate to the PSUV.

The formation of the USI now represents the next serious attempt to form a revolutionary socialist organisation at a national level, based on the principle of independence from the government. The UIT activists have a problematic tradition in relation to Chavismo – for example in the PRS they were against a workers’ candidacy in the presidential elections. The Morenoite tradition of Trotskyism includes countless adaptions to bourgeois nationalism and populism, and includes many stitch-ups with reformist bureaucrats carried on alongside revolutionary phraseology.3

But it is clear that the UIT in Venezuela is playing a central role in the struggle for workers’ political independence from Chavismo, and deserves the support of revolutionaries internationally (without abandoning criticism of their inconsistencies). The formation of the USI could be a step towards the creation of an independent, revolutionary workers’ party with a mass base in Venezuela. But in order to win the masses for this project, it will be necessary to not only rely on the prestige of different C-CURA leaders, but to involve the broadest sectors of the working class in a campaign to discuss the programme and perspectives of the new party. Only by counter-posing radical workers’ democracy to the bureaucratic control in the PSUV will it be possible to win an important number of activists for the USI and an independent, revolutionary socialist party.

The workers who have struggled most under Chavismo are the most conscious of the necessity for a workers’ party. As José Villegas, one of the principal leaders of the struggle at Sanitarios Maracay and also a supporter of the USI project, explained: “Just as we workers demonstrated that we can control and direct the production in businesses during the bosses’ strike-sabotage of 2002, or in the experience of workers’ control in Sanitarios de Maracay, we also want to propose that we can direct the country via a workers’ government, and for this we need our own political party without bourgeois, without big landowners, without bureaucrats and corrupt people.”

1. a longer list: http://www.uit-ci.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=112

2. English translation of this call: http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1811

3. A number of articles on Morenoism and its history can be found on the Permanent Revolution website – just use the search tool for “Morenoism”

Sat 04, October 2008 @ 13:08