Whats
Next In Venezuela?
By Lee Sustar
22 May, 2005
The
Socialist Worker
The
nationalisation of a bankrupt and closed-down paper company, Venepal,
under workers self-management late last year signaled a new turn
in Venezuelan politics. Soon afterward, Chávez used the World
Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil to talk about socialism of
the 21st century, and has continued speaking on that theme ever
since. It is impossible that we will achieve our goals with capitalism,
nor is it possible to find an intermediate path, Chávez
said in a May Day speech in the capital city of Caracas. I invite
all of Venezuela to march on the path of socialism of the new century.
This shift to the
left coincides with a new surge of activism in the social movements
and National Union of Workers (UNT, by its initials in Spanish), a new
labor federation that is fast displacing the conservative Venezuelan
Confederation of Labor (CTV), which aligned itself with employers during
the failed U.S.-backed coup of 2002.
Moving beyond his
regular denunciations of U.S. imperialism, Chávez is advocating
a new economic and political direction for Latin America and the developing
world. And by injecting socialism back into the international debate,
Venezuela is challenging the free-market mantra coined by former British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: TINA--There Is No Alternative.
The leverage to
chart a new economic course is the surge in oil prices, which, according
to the International Monetary Fund, fueled a 17.3 percent growth rate
in 2004, the third-fastest in the world.
Now the question
of socialism has sharpened the debate in Venezuela over the nature of
the revolutionary process itself. The emerging struggle
in Venezuela over the meaning of socialism for the 21st century
will have a major impact on the left internationally.
For the U.S. government and Venezuelan big business, the discussion
of socialism has vindicated their claims that Chávez is a would-be
Fidel Castro with oil, driving toward a one-party dictatorship fueled
by petrodollars. Venezuela has strengthened economic ties with Cuba.
But the two countrys political systems are vastly different.
Chávez has
won a series of elections since 1998 by big majorities because the Venezuelan
ruling establishment had been thoroughly discredited through decades
of corruption and, finally, economic collapse.
Chávezs
movement arose following the collapse of the two-party power-sharing
scheme between the nominally left-of-center Democratic Action (AD) and
social Christian COPEI, established in 1958. The governments embrace
of International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures in 1989 provoked
a spontaneous insurrection in which the armed forces killed scores of
people. Thus, when Chávez mounted a failed coup in 1992, even
mainstream politicians had to admit that he was widely seen as a heroic
populist.
The 1990s saw further
economic unraveling, with real wages plummeting 23 percent, and some
60 percent of the population forced to rely on the informal sector of
the economy to make a living. Out of a population of some 25 million,
about 80 percent lived in poverty.
Even the conservative
North-South Institute at the University of Miami published a collection
of articles in 1995 that showed how Venezuelas state and party
institutions had lost all legitimacy. The parties and their tactics
are blamed for most of the perceived principal problems in their country:
corruption, the high cost of living, the inefficiency of public services
and personal insecurity, went a typical contribution.
Meanwhile, the wealthiest
Venezuelans--known as the oligarchy--and the upper middle class maintained
living standards comparable to their U.S. counterparts. Mountaintop
villas, gated suburban communities, luxury SUVs and private schools
seal off moneyed Venezuelans from the crowded Caracas barrios and hillside
slums that are vulnerable to rainy-season mudslides (an estimated 10,000
poor people on the outskirts of Caracas died as torrential rains washed
away their homes away in 1999).
This inequality
is what won Chávez the support of the poor for his Bolivarian
revolution--named for Simón Bolívar, the 19th century
leader of the independence movement against the Spanish colonists--and
set the stage for Chávezs first electoral victory.
During his first
three years in office, low oil prices and a severe recession pre-empted
Chávezs planned economic programs. Instead, his focus was
on changes to political structures through a constituent assembly that
wrote a new constitution. A new presidential election followed.
This, however, was threatening enough to the oligarchy, which used its
control of the private media to relentlessly criticize the government
and incite the middle class and military. A mass march of the middle
class and a strike called by the CTV union federation on April 11, 2002,
served as a springboard for the short-lived military coup that abolished
the national legislature and conferred dictatorial powers on the head
of the chamber of commerce. A popular mobilization defeated the coup
makers, and Chávez returned to Venezuela in triumph.
The oppositions
next move was a strike in the state-owned oil company, PDVSA--in
reality, a lockout by top management and technical personnel. Backed
by the CTV, the lockout-strike was aimed at crippling the economy and
driving Chávez from power. Instead, rank-and-file oil workers,
along with soldiers from the armed forces, kept production and transportation
of oil going through two difficult months.
These two months
of effective workers control in the oil industry--and in other
companies that closed during the strike--became a touchstone for a split
within the CTV. The new UNT broke from the CTVs decades of labor
cronyism and corruption to revive class-struggle unionism in Venezuela.
At the same time,
the worldwide surge in oil prices enabled the Chávez government
to fund a series of missions--social programs that bypassed
the dysfunctional state bureaucracy in which the old parties remained
entrenched. The new NGO-style programs included funds for Cuban doctors
to bring medical care to the slums; literacy and high-school equivalency
courses to help workers and the poor gain access to higher education;
subsidized grocery stores in the barrios; land reform for poor farmers
and the landless; support for indigenous peoples; the creation of new
universities and more.
The government missions,
supported by the booming oil economy, gave Chávez the momentum
to win 59 percent of the vote in the August 2004 recall referendum organized
by the opposition.
Despite funding
by the U.S. government-backed National Endowment for Democracy, opposition
groups lack a credible leader. Divided among right-wing authoritarians,
business executives and parties that were formerly part of the socialist
left, the opposition had greater room to criticize Chávez when
the economy was in crisis, but has offered no alternative other than
the discredited old order.
Meanwhile, Chávez
has responded to U.S. government threats by purchasing military gear
from Spain and 100,000 AK-47 rifles from Russia--which will be used
by a popular reserve militia directly under the control of the presidency.
Yet continued social
and political polarization has also pressured the Chavista movement
itself to put forward a more coherent political alternative--an explicit
goal for the revolutionary process beyond the vague nationalist
aims of the early years.
Chávez's discussion of socialism is about filling this gap and
providing a new orientation for the Bolivarian revolution.
Government economists increasingly call for endogenous economic
development--an effort to divert the countrys oil wealth
to spur economic development, create jobs and raise the standard of
living for workers and the poor. Within the state bureaucracy, the debate
on socialism is being used to separate supporters of the revolutionary
process from those who oppose or sabotage it.
At the same time,
new laws call for co-management in state-owned enterprises--most importantly,
the big oil, metals and power-generation companies. Enterprises are
to be placed under control of elected delegates from technical personnel
and the workers, alongside government appointees.
The government has
even raised the possibility of making this a law for all Venezuelan
businesses--which would force companies like General Motors, Chrysler
and Ford to install worker delegates in their auto plants. Chávez
has also spoken of a system of employee ownership in which capitalists
would control a maximum of 30 percent of company stocks.
Yet although Chávez
speaks of taking a different path to socialism, distinct from Stalinism
or European social democracy, previous efforts to introduce socialism
by means of government laws, co-management or state ownership have failed.
For example, in less developed countries, the ouster of colonial governments
or puppet states in the 1950s and 1960s saw various attempts at African
socialism or Arab socialism--which turned out to be
a variant of capitalism, with the state running things. Venezuela itself
nationalized the oil and metal industries in the 1970s, which didnt
challenge capital or democratize the economy.
It is this history
that has spurred discussion in the popular movements over how to achieve
socialism--and Chávez, for his part, continues to call for such
a debate.
For example, the
Venezuelan left is critical of the fact that some 21 percent of the
government budget for 2005 is being used to repay foreign debt racked
up by the corrupt governments of the past, rather than social programs.
Meanwhile, the classista,
or class-struggle current of the UNT--led by former textile union leader
Orlando Chirino and Marcela Máspero of the pharmaceutical workers
union--has put forward its own vision of socialism: nationalization
and workers control. For example, a meeting of regional UNT leaders
in the state of Carabobo in March issued a final declaration that condemned
efforts by management of the state electrical power company, CADAFE,
to denounce UNT union leaders as counterrevolutionaries
for demanding greater workers input in the co-management scheme.
The UNT--which has
been denounced by the AFL-CIO as an arm of the state--isnt
shy about criticizing government policies, in particular, a currency
devaluation that has cut purchasing power for workers and the poor.
There are no reasons that justify this measure, which only favors
big business and the bankers; the workers and the poor see that it has
produced a wave of price increases in basic products, said the
declaration of a UNT meeting.
UNT leaders also
called for the independence of the unions from the employers, the government
and political parties. Militants in the UNT have mounted a challenge
to more moderate elements led by steelworkers union leader Ramón
Machuca, whose union remains independent, but who wields influence in
the new federation.
In the all-important
oil industry, leading union members recently launched the Workers
Class-Struggle Option (OCT) to challenge what they called the new
technocratic bureaucracy in PDVSA and to build on the legacy of
workers control during the oil strike. Aiming to unite workers
in different unions, the OCT is trying to lead new fights--for example,
to restore contract workers to the status of full-time employees with
benefits. In its founding statement May 14, the group criticized union
leaders for the most deficient contract negotiations in our history
and failing to attain major gains for the workers in view of the record
oil industry gains.
More generally,
the socialist left is taking the opportunity to spell out its own vision
of Venezuelas revolutionary transformation. One cannot speak
of socialism without proposing to break with the perverse logic of capitalism,
without attacking individual property by radical means, without speaking
of democracy--more precisely, the workers and the people deciding in
their majority what is to be done, a member of the group Revolutionary
Left Option (OIR) wrote in a recent pamphlet on workers control
and co-management.
Certainly the expectations
of workers in the big state industries--who havent seen real wage
increases since the 1980s--are rising. And with high oil prices, exceptional
natural resources and a developed manufacturing base and sizeable population,
Venezuela has far greater scope for economic and social change than,
for example, the Nicaraguan revolution, in which a small and shattered
economy was battered by U.S. sanctions and a Washington-funded civil
war.
Nevertheless, Venezuelan
capital and U.S. imperialism are digging in against further change--which
points to an even greater level of class confrontation in the future.
Venezuela's turn to the left coincides with a new wave of mobilizations
in Latin America, this time directed mainly at the new populist and
center-left governments--new mass protests in Bolivia over proposed
privatization of gas, a strike wave in Argentina and renewed marches
by the landless workers movement in Brazil.
The biggest revolt
so far has been in Ecuador, where President Lucio Gutiérrez,
was forced from office in April by a popular rebellion.
Gutiérrez
himself had led an uprising that ousted a president in 2000, and then
campaigned as a Chávez-type populist to win the presidential
elections of 2002. In office, however, Gutiérrez implemented
the International Monetary Funds economic policy and embraced
Plan Colombia, Washingtons program to militarize the Andes. Gutiérrez
was even praised by Bush as the United States best ally
in the fight against drugs and terrorism.
His fall is a major
blow to Washington, which counted on Ecuador to revive the stalled Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and give momentum in Congress to the
proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA, an extension
of NAFTA).
Another linchpin
of U.S. policy in South America, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe,
has failed to consolidate power and is in danger of losing upcoming
presidential elections. Meanwhile, in Mexico, the recent mass protest
in defense of the populist mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel
López Obrador, forced President Vicente Fox to drop attempts
to prosecute him.
Even Brazilian President
Luis Inácio Lula da Silva--a former union leader
and head of the Workers Party, whose conservative policies have
disappointed supporters, but pleased the White House and Wall Street--has
raised Washingtons ire by hosting a recent Latin American-Arab
summit and challenging the U.S. trade agenda.
In this context,
Chávez is projecting Venezuela as leader of an alternative to
the FTAA--and using oil to advance regional economic and political ties.
One such effort is Petrosur, an association of Latin American oil companies.
These setbacks for
U.S. imperialism in Latin America have only put more pressure on Washington
to turn the heat up on Venezuela. The upcoming Summit of the Americas,
set for Buenos Aires in November, has effectively given Washington a
deadline to try to recapture momentum in its own backyard.
But the dynamics
of Venezuelan politics and the debate on socialism highlight the fact
that the opposition to Washington and neoliberal free-market economics
goes far beyond the policies that have so far been pursued by the center-left
governments.
The debate in the
Latin American left is moving from what the labor and social movements
are against--free trade deals, privatization and flexible
labor policies--to what it is for: an economic and political system
based on genuine democratic control by workers and the poor.