Venezuela’s revolution – giving power to the poor

2007-02-22

Richard Moore

         The revolution is also thoroughly democratic. Pro-Chavez
         forces have won 11 straight national elections and
         introduced a new constitution guaranteeing popular
         participation in government, including the right to overturn
         any legislation via a national referendum. The government
         has announced an extension of direct democracy, via the
         promotion of grassroots communal councils, and is also
         discussing workers' councils in workplaces across the
         country to enable working people to exercise control over
         production.

         One of the most crucial lessons of the Bolivarian
         revolution, learned from the experience of the class
         struggle, is that you cannot build a society based
         on social justice within capitalism. The capitalist
         system - whereby the ownership of the means of
         producing wealth are owned by a small minority who
         run the economy for profit - has to be replaced with
         socialism, where industry is collectively owned and
         democratically run by the workers.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/699/36312

Current GLW:
21 February 2007
Issue #699

VENEZUELA
Venezuela's revolution - giving power to the poor

Stuart Munckton
16 February 2007


"We, and millions of people around the world Š 
believe another world is possible, a world free 
from war, poverty and hunger. Here in Venezuela 
the [government of socialist President Hugo 
Chavez] along with the majority of the people in 
our country are fighting hard to build this new 
world, despite the attempts of the old elite and 
the US government to prevent us from succeeding." 
This is what 25-year-old university student 
Germania Fernandez told Pablo Navarrete, 
according to a December 1 article on 
Venezuelanalysis.com.

Fernandez was participating in a November 26 
demonstration in Caracas of 2.5 million people, 
in a city of only 5 million, in support of 
Chavez's re-election on December 3 and his call 
to deepen the pro-poor revolutionary process his 
government is leading. Repeatedly slamming the 
"perverse" system of capitalism, Chavez insisted 
that December 3 would be a referendum on the 
construction of a "new socialism of the 21st 
century" - a "democratic" and "humanist" 
socialism that did not repeat the errors of the 
Soviet Union.

The results were spectacular. Chavez scored 7.3 
million votes (63% of the total), the highest 
number for a presidential candidate in Venezuelan 
history and more than double his votes in the 
2000 elections. Chavez has since declared: "All 
that was privatised, let it be nationalised." The 
nationalisation of the telecommunications firm 
CANTV and Electricity of Caracas, both owned by 
US interests and amounting to 50% of daily 
trading on the Caracas stock exchange, has 
already been carried out. Chavez has given five 
oil multinationals in the Orinoco Belt until May 
1 to give the state-run oil company PDVSA at 
least 60% controlling interests in their 
ventures, and has promised to nationalise gas.

These radical moves build on the gains already 
made by the Bolivarian revolution, as the process 
led by Chavez, who was first elected in 1998, is 
known. Named after Simon Bolivar, who liberated 
much of South America from Spanish colonialism, 
the revolution has sought to challenge corporate 
interests and redistribute the nation's oil 
wealth to the poor majority. A November 17 
Venezuelanlaysis.com article by Calvin Tucker 
points out that according to opposition-aligned 
polling company Datanalysis, the income of the 
poorest 60% has risen by 45%. Navarrette reports 
that a recent census reveals the number of 
households living in poverty has dropped from 49% 
in 1998 to 33.9% in early 2006.

The revolution is also thoroughly democratic. 
Pro-Chavez forces have won 11 straight national 
elections and introduced a new constitution 
guaranteeing popular participation in government, 
including the right to overturn any legislation 
via a national referendum. The government has 
announced an extension of direct democracy, via 
the promotion of grassroots communal councils, 
and is also discussing workers' councils in 
workplaces across the country to enable working 
people to exercise control over production.

'Death of history'?

"This is not supposed to be happening", you can 
almost hear them cry out in the corporate 
boardrooms. There is an air of disbelief in much 
of the corporate-owned media's coverage of 
Venezuela. After the collapse of the Soviet Union 
and the Eastern bloc, socialism was supposed to 
be dead and buried. History was supposed to have 
ended, with capitalism triumphant. What kind of 
weird, throwback retro act is playing in Caracas?

Yet no-one should be surprised. The "new world 
order" has brought the world fresh wars for 
corporate profit, worsening poverty and 
environmental destruction. In the 1990s, poverty 
greatly increased across Latin America at the 
same time as some 4000 publicly owned companies 
shifted into the hands of multinational 
corporations. Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin's 
comment that the world was living in an "epoch of 
war and revolution" rings true today.

Venezuela stands at the head of a turbulent mass 
revolt across Latin America. In recent times, 
mass uprisings have deposed pro-US neoliberal 
governments, and a number of new governments have 
been elected pledging to take a new path.

However it is in Venezuela that this new wave of 
mass struggle has gone the furthest. As the first 
revolution of the 21st century, which is 
struggling to construct socialism, it provides 
many lessons about how to change the world.

Corporate interests can be challenged

Neoliberal economic policies were accompanied in 
the 1990s by the mantra that "there is no 
alternative". Corporations are too powerful to 
challenge, we were told. The argument goes that 
if you don't accept the demands of the 
corporations, and if you place too many 
restrictions on their right to make a profit, 
then they will simply move to another country 
with less restrictions, and this will cause an 
economic crisis.

The most important lesson from Venezuela is that 
another way is possible. The Chavez government 
has torn up the neoliberal rule book. Halting 
privatisations that were planned before Chavez 
was elected, government social spending has 
increased by nearly ten times since 1998. A 
series of pro-worker laws have been passed. The 
government has cracked down heavily on tax 
evasion, closing down a number of multinational 
corporations for up to 48 hours for tax 
violations, including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, IBM, 
Shell, Microsoft and Bechtel. As a result, in 
2005 the government increased its tax revenue by 
50%, and this directly funded an increase in the 
minimum wage.

The neoliberal argument insists that you should 
not increase the minimum wage, because this will 
increase unemployment. In Venezuela, the minimum 
wage has been repeatedly increased, and 
unemployment is now at the lowest level since 
Chavez was elected.

In an article entitled "Chavez Drives a Hard 
Bargain, But Big Oil's Options are Limited", the 
October 19 San Francisco Chronicle reported that 
Venezuela was forcing oil multinationals to 
"swallow some bitter pills". As well as a number 
of tax and royalty increases, last year 26 
foreign oil companies were forced to shift their 
investments into joint ventures with PDVSA that 
gave the latter the majority share, altogether 
decreasing the holdings of the corporations by 
around two thirds. Two companies refused and were 
expelled.

The result is that far from being in crisis, 
Venezuela's economy has grown by an average of 
12% in the last three years and poverty is 
decreasing. Critics of Chavez have claimed that 
this is simply because oil prices are high, but 
economic growth is significantly higher in 
Venezuela than in other oil producing countries, 
and it is only in Venezuela that there is a 
serious attempt to both redistribute the oil 
wealth to the poor and use it develop other areas 
of the economy in order to overcome dependency on 
oil revenue.

Neither are corporations fleeing the country. 
Venezuela has called their bluff. The concept of 
corporations as footloose and capable of going 
wherever they please to get a better profit is a 
myth used by pro-corporate politicians to justify 
giving the ultra-rich what they want. There is 
only a limited amount of resources and markets in 
the world, and there is already heavy competition 
among corporations for control over this finite 
space. Venezuela shows that for all their huff 
and puff, much of the time corporations will 
accept the conditions a government imposes on 
them because they would prefer to make some 
profit than none at all.

Popular power can win

The US government - representing the interests of 
US corporations - and the Venezuelan capitalist 
class have not taken this lying down. They 
launched a campaign to overthrow the government 
and reverse the gains of the revolution. In April 
2002, the pro-capitalist Venezuelan opposition 
launched a military coup that overthrew Chavez 
and installed one of Venezuela's richest men, the 
head of the chamber of commerce, as president. 
Chavez was kidnapped and his murder planned. The 
US government, which knew of the coup plans in 
advance, openly welcomed Chavez's overthrow. 
However a popular uprising of the poor and loyal 
soldiers overthrew the coup junta in two days and 
restored Chavez's presidency.

The opposition tried again in December 2002, when 
big business organised a bosses' lockout that 
closed companies across Venezuela to sabotage the 
economy and force Chavez to resign. The 
pro-capitalist management of the nominally 
state-run PDVSA shut the company gates and 
sabotaged production. However, the poor mobilised 
again, and blue-collar oil workers in alliance 
with the armed forces (purged of the coup 
plotters) restarted PDVSA and broke the lockout.

The opposition has continued trying to overthrow 
Chavez and stop the revolution by any means 
possible. However despite all its wealth and the 
support and millions of dollars in funding it 
receives from the US government, its attempts 
have been defeated by the people. The 
presidential election was the latest crushing 
defeat suffered by the Venezuelan elite.

Socialism, not capitalism

One of the most crucial lessons of the Bolivarian 
revolution, learned from the experience of the 
class struggle, is that you cannot build a 
society based on social justice within 
capitalism. The capitalist system - whereby the 
ownership of the means of producing wealth are 
owned by a small minority who run the economy for 
profit - has to be replaced with socialism, where 
industry is collectively owned and democratically 
run by the workers.

The revolutionary movement did not start out with 
socialism as its goal, and many believed this was 
not viable in the wake of the collapse of the 
Stalinist system in the Soviet Union that claimed 
to be "socialist". Chavez initially called for a 
"third way" between socialism and capitalism. The 
aim of the revolution was to transform Venezuela, 
an underdeveloped nation, along pro-people lines. 
The original economic plans to carry this out 
involved a combination of the privately owned 
capitalist sector, the state sector and a sector 
known as the "social economy" - based on 
cooperatives and small business.

It was the actions of the capitalist class that 
convinced both Chavez and the majority of 
Venezuelans that achieving this project required 
breaking with capitalism. In the face of moderate 
pro-poor reforms that affected its interests, the 
capitalist class attempted to overthrow the 
government. It used its position to sabotage the 
economy to protect its privileges. The workers 
have responded by taking over companies left idle 
by their bosses and running them for the benefit 
of society, while it is the cooperatives 
established by the poor that have proven willing 
to develop much-needed sectors of the economy 
like agriculture.

The gains of the revolution have been made where 
the government has been able to use industries 
under its control, especially the oil industry, 
in an increasingly planned way in conjunction 
with the cooperatives to solve people's needs and 
develop the economy.

This led Chavez in 2005 to come out in favour of 
socialism. He argued that the struggle for a 
"capitalism with a human face", was just trying 
to "put a mask on the monster". Chavez called for 
a debate across Venezuelan society on the goal of 
socialism. On December 3, the Venezuelan people 
gave their answer, opening the way for further 
moves towards a democratically planned economy.

Power to the poor

Another key aspect of changing the world is the 
need to struggle for power. Neither spontaneous 
revolts, nor movements that purely pressure those 
already in power for concessions, are enough to 
bring about significant change.

In Venezuela, the movement Chavez led was able to 
win government through elections, and then begin 
to pass reforms that benefited the poor. However, 
it quickly became clear that simply winning an 
election is not the same thing as winning power. 
Power is exercised under capitalism both through 
the economic power in the hands of the 
corporations, but also through the structures of 
the state, including the unelected bureaucracy 
that controls state administration, and 
instruments of repression - such as the armed 
forces, the police and the courts. It is not 
enough to be able to pass laws, you need to have 
the power to implement the changes, and the 
institutions the Chavez government inherited have 
been dominated by forces hostile to the 
revolution that have sabotaged it at every turn.

In response, Chavez has turned to the people, 
insisting that "to eradicate poverty, you must 
give power to the poor". While the media is 
obsessed with the individual personality of 
Chavez, it is ordinary people across Venezuela, 
led by Chavez, who are making the revolution. The 
attempts of the capitalist class to overthrow the 
government have not been defeated through 
parliament, but through mass action on the 
streets.

The defeat of the coup and bosses' lockout 
through "people's power" changed the relationship 
of forces in Venezuela to enable more radical 
measures. After the failed coup, the government 
was able to purge the military of hundreds of 
right-wing officers, and increasingly use the 
armed forces as a weapon to defend, rather than 
repress, the people. After oil workers took over 
the oil industry during the bosses' lockout, the 
government was able to take full control of the 
industry and use the oil income to begin 
seriously redistributing wealth.

Just as important is that the institutions the 
Chavez government has inherited are dominated by 
a counter-revolutionary corrupt bureaucracy. To 
overcome this, the government has sought to 
encourage the organisation of working people into 
grassroots institutions of direct democracy. The 
social missions have been organised outside of 
the control of the existing institutions, and 
have run parallel to them under community control.

A number of experiments in creating popular power 
have led to the promotion of the communal 
councils as the building blocks of a "new 
revolutionary state", in Chavez's words. These 
are not like the sort of local councils that 
exist in Australia. Based on no more than 400 
families, the communal councils operate according 
to direct democracy. A general assembly of the 
community is the highest decision-making body and 
it directly controls the funds and planning for 
the social missions in that area. In this way, 
the corrupt bureaucracy is bypassed. The 
government is pushing for a significant expansion 
in the number and the power of these councils.

This struggle is still playing out, and there is 
a strong bureaucracy not just within much of the 
state, but that has also infiltrated the 
pro-Chavez political camp. There are many cases 
where the hold of the bureaucracy means that 
revolutionary measures exist only on paper, and 
the degree by which changes have occurred is 
often tied to the degree by which power is able 
to be exercised directly by working people 
themselves. Chavez has called for moves to 
further strengthen the institutions of popular 
power, such as the communal councils, in order to 
"dismantle the bourgeois state".

For re-raising the banner of revolution in the 
21st century, by showing it is possible to 
struggle and to win, and by providing invaluable 
lessons on how such a struggle can advance, all 
those who believe in a better world owe the 
Bolivarian revolution an enormous debt.

From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #699 21 February 2007.

rticles posted are as they were before 
proofreading, and prior to any final changes in 
the printed version.
Authorised by K. Miller, 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale, NSW.

-- 

--------------------------------------------------------
Escaping the Matrix website        http://escapingthematrix.org/
cyberjournal website               http://cyberjournal.org
Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html
subscribe cyberjournal list        mailto:•••@••.•••
Posting archives                   http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/