by George Saunders
As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez swore in a new cabinet on Jan. 8 and was himself inaugurated in his new term on Jan. 10, his words and actions caught the attention of both working class activists and capitalist decision-makers, and the scribblers who serve them, all over the world.
Here is a roundup of some responses to the Chávez initiatives of Jan. 8 and 10.
First a look at some contributions to the Marxmail discussion group hosted by Louis Proyect (www.marxmail.org ).
Many of the contributors to Marxmail have a background in or around the Trotskyist movement. Here is a hasty note Michael Lebowitz posted to Marxmail from
Lebowitz, a frequent contributor to Marxmail, is a Marxist economist, professor emeritus of a
university in
Lebowitz wrote:
“From Chávez’s ongoing speech upon the inauguration of new ministers:
“[Chávez related that] when he called José Ramón Rivero to ask him to become the new minister of labor, Rivero said, “You know, president, I am a Trotskyist.” Chávez said that his response was: “What does it matter? I am a Trotskyist—I believe in permanent revolution!”
In the
“By the way, mark this day—I think
we may well look back on it years from now as the day Chávez
began pulling the plug on capitalism in
“Chávez said when he proposed to the comrade that he take the post, the comrade replied, ‘Look, I want you to hear this from me, not to have it reach you via someone else. I’m a Trotskyist.’ And Chávez said he replied, ‘How could that be a problem?’ He [Chávez] was a Trotskyist, too, a follower of the line of permanent revolution.
“Moreover, it was ultra-conscious. Moments before, he had highlighted a member of the Venezuelan Communist Party, saying he was proud that his cabinet was the first one in Venezuelan history to have a member from that party.
“Obviously, Chávez intends that the new party be inclusive of all revolutionary-socialist-minded trends, highlighting the inclusion of both the traditional pro-Moscow forces and their nemesis.
“And then…he explained that it was necessary to destroy the old Venezuelan state and build a new communal, revolutionary Bolivarian state. He said you could not build socialism with the old bureaucracy. He projected this as a step-by-step process. But for the explicit purpose of deepening the revolutionary process, he’s asked the legislature for a one-year grant of extraordinary legislative powers for the council of ministers.”
The following is part of a summary
of the second speech Chávez gave, two days later, at
his inauguration on Jan. 10, sent to Marxmail by a
Spanish-speaking contributor from
“Most importantly Chávez emphasized…the need to make the communal councils the fundamental and most important political decision-making bodies in the country. Chávez said, ‘We need this so that the revolution never finishes.’
“Chávez continued that the communal councils need to be able to make diagnostic assessment of their local areas…We need a confederation of communal councils on a national level. We need to transform power into a communal power. Economic and political power needs to be transferred to these local bodies, so that we can work toward a communal and social state and move away from capitalism. We need to continue to bury capitalism.’
“During his speech Chávez stressed…that the revolution was still in its beginning stages…He once again used Trotsky to explain his position [as he had on Jan. 8], stating, ‘Trotsky said that the revolution is permanent; it never finishes. Let’s go with Trotsky. It is Trotsky who is correct that the revolution does not finish.’”
A report about Chávez’s Jan. 8 speech appeared the next day on the web site of the International Marxist Tendency (the IMT, headed by Alan Woods). The author, Fred Weston, stressed the preliminary nature of his comments and said a fuller evaluation would appear later. Interestingly, his report said nothing about the self-designated Trotskyist who is the new minister of labor, nor did it mention Chávez’s describing himself as a Trotskyist and follower of the line of permanent revolution.
This omission was made up for by a
Jan. 12 article on the IMT web site (www.marxist.com)
by the generally well-informed Jorge Martin, who also heads up the
international Hands Off Venezuela campaign. Jorge
Martin’s article bore the headline, “‘What is the
problem? I am also a Trotskyist!’ — Chávez is sworn in as president of
For the information of our readers, we here reproduce Weston’s article in full, from the IMT web site. The article has been modified only slightly for consistency with Labor Standard editorial style. Jorge Martin’s Jan. 12 article is likewise reproduced below, after two capitalist press reports on Chávez’s initiatives of Jan. 8 and 10.
Chávez announces radical measures against capitalism in Venezuela
by Fred Weston
President Hugo Chávez
of
In December he won a massive victory, the biggest ever since the Bolivarian Revolution began. The balance of forces is now weighted very heavily in favor of the Venezuelan masses. Chávez has absolute control of parliament and massive support among the population. The conditions exist for snuffing out capitalism once and for all.
The list of measures announced by Chávez would mean striking at the very heart of Venezuelan
capitalism. It is not by chance that an article that appeared in the Washington
Post yesterday, commenting on his speech, appears under the title “Chávez accelerates
In his speech Chávez
emphasized that
The enabling law is the main plank of his proposals. It would allow Chávez, over the coming year, to push through a series of decrees. He specifically pointed out that a central part of the law would include the nationalization of key industries that had been privatized by past governments, such as the Venezuelan telecommunications company CANTV (privatized in 1991) and the electricity industry. Earlier this year he had already threatened to nationalize CANTV if it did not adjust its pension payments to come in line with the minimum wage.
He was very clear about what needs to be done. He said, “All of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized,” which received big applause. He added that the aim was to establish “social ownership over the strategic sectors of the means of production.”
He also plans to increase state
control over the oil industry. At present there are four Orinoco Oil Belt
projects that the state runs as joint ventures with the
He announced that the text of the law is ready and would soon go to the National Assembly.
He also proposed new constitutional reforms. He did not specify what kind of reforms he is proposing, but in his speech he said he would base himself on the “popular power, the true combustible,” referring to the need to base the revolution on the grassroots, the people that have consistently supported the revolution. He added that, “We’re moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution…We’re heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it.”
One specific reform he did mention was that of establishing greater control over the Central Bank. The bank is presently independent. Chávez wants to remove this. As he pointed out, this independence makes it an instrument of “neo-liberalism.” This is a correct decision. The Central Bank directors have systematically put up opposition to Chávez’s policy of using state funds to alleviate poverty and carry out genuine reforms. They have used the independence of the bank to defend the interests of the unelected oligarchy that wishes to maintain its control over the fundamental levers of the economy.
Other measures he outlined included that of setting up a “Bolivarian popular education” system. He explained that this would “deepen the new values and demolish the old values of individualism, capitalism, egotism.”
He stressed the need to give a greater say in running things to the poorer areas of the country, clearly indicating the need to shift power to the masses that support the revolution. He said that what needed to be done is to “dismantle the bourgeois state” because all states “were born to prevent revolutions.” This is to be done by giving more power to the newly set-up Communal Councils and by developing them from the bottom up with the aim of creating a new state based on these Communal Councils.
Before his speech he had already
taken a firm decision not to renew the broadcast concession to the RCTV, a
television company that has consistently supported all the undemocratic
maneuvers to remove Chávez. It supported the [April]
2002 coup and the sabotage of the oil industry [December 2002 through February
2003]. Chávez has been attacked for this by the
[Venezuelan] opposition and imperialism. They want the freedom to maneuver and
plot against the democratically elected government of
Another measure that had already been announced, and that can be seen in the same light as the ones announced yesterday, is the removal of Vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel and his replacement by Jorge Rodriguez. Rangel had come to be seen as a representative of the most moderate elements within the Bolivarian leadership, and he specifically had opposed the expropriation of the Caracas golf courses announced by the mayor, Barreto, at the end of August last year. At that time Rangel said the government was fully for the respect of private property.
Marxists cannot but give wholehearted support to the measures announced by Chávez. We have consistently argued that the Venezuelan revolution cannot stop halfway. Either it moves forward to the expropriation of the commanding heights of the economy, thus breaking the power of the oligarchy and imperialism, or the process could unravel, with the oligarchy using its control of the economy to carry out acts of sabotage and wear down the revolution.
The massive victory in the December elections was a clear signal that the masses want to move on and take on the oligarchy. Chávez’s speech reflects this situation. It explains why he stated that, “Nothing or no one will be able to push us off course in our pursuit of…Venezuelan socialism, our socialism.” During his speech he specifically referred to the ideals of Marx and Lenin.
The reaction of the bourgeoisie
internationally has been as could be expected. Alberto Ramos, writing for Goldman
Sachs, commented: “These disconcerting policy announcements represent a clear
turn into deeper nationalist and interventionist policies, which can lead to
further erosion of business confidence and the country’s macro and
institutional fundamentals.” Richard La Rosa, an equities trader at Activalores Sociedad de Corretaje CA, said: “We all expected some radical
announcements after his swearing-in, but this took markets completely by
surprise. We never imagined that he would name a company specifically. It left
all of us in shock.” He added: “The big question in the marketplace is how are we going to be compensated? No one doubts Chávez’s intentions at this point.” Many are making the
comment that Chávez could go down the road that
Chávez is
to be sworn in tomorrow as president. This will be his third term in office and
would take him up to 2013. The bourgeoisie in Venezuela and internationally is
mounting a rabid hate campaign against Chávez as he
moves further and further to the left. This is not by accident. Their real
material interests are at stake here. If Chávez goes
all the way, he will receive the enthusiastic support of the Venezuelan masses.
In the recent period Chávez had spoken about making
the revolutionary process in
When he says that it is necessary to “dismantle the bourgeois state” he is absolutely right. The present state is riddled with agents of the old regime. The big majority of civil servants and top state officials is still made up of people appointed in the past to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. They cannot be trusted. Every day, every minute they are maneuvering to block any progressive reform. They are trying to slow down the revolution, hoping to wear it down and prepare the ground for a return of the old regime. Chávez has often referred to the bureaucratism and corruption at all levels that are blocking the revolutionary process.
What is needed is to shift the center of action to the masses themselves? The only force that Chávez can really trust is that of the Venezuelan working class, the peasants, and the poor. Now is the time for committees to be elected in all the factories and other workplaces, and in the working class neighborhoods. These should elect delegates to higher bodies, eventually leading to a national body. This would be the instrument that could “dismantle the bourgeois state” and build a “revolutionary state.”
It is to be noted that one of the few companies specifically mentioned as being up for nationalization is CANTV, where workers and former workers have been fighting for their rights and demanding nationalization for the last few months. This will surely provide a new impetus to the struggle of workers at Sanitarios Maracay for nationalization under workers’ control.
The UNT [the million-strong pro-Chávez union federation] should take the initiative of calling immediately a National Workers’ Conference to discuss these measures and take concrete steps of the workers in key sectors of the economy to organize themselves to struggle for nationalization under workers’ control and preempt any attempt of the bosses to sabotage them or strip them of assets or valuable information. Such a conference should also call for a national day of action of factory occupations in which the 800 companies already mentioned by Chávez a year and a half ago should be taken over, and with them all strategic sectors of the economy should also be occupied by the workers.
Chávez sees the need to “deepen” the revolution. He understands that the revolution cannot stand still. It must move on. He can see that every time he tries to push the process further, the bureaucracy comes up with a thousand and one obstacles. He feels that he cannot make this state machine do what he wants. The only road is therefore to break this machine and build a new one based on the workers.
In the next few days we will
provide a more in-depth analysis of what is happening in
[Here, for the information of our readers, is another
sampling in our roundup of responses to Chávez’s
initiatives of Jan. 8 and 10. The following article, by Associated Press writer
Ian James, appeared in The Guardian (
Chávez: Will Nationalize Telecoms, Power
by Ian James
President Hugo Chávez
announced plans Monday to nationalize
Chávez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs until 2013, also said wanted a constitutional amendment to eliminate the autonomy of the Central Bank and would soon ask the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to give him greater powers to legislate by presidential decree.
“We’re moving toward a socialist
Before Chávez was reelected by a wide margin last month, he promised to take a more radical turn toward socialism. His critics have voiced concern that he would use his sweeping victory to consolidate more power in his own hands.
“The nation should recover its ownership of strategic sectors,” Chávez said. “All of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized,” he added, referring to “all of those sectors in an area so important and strategic for all of us as is electricity.”
The nationalization appeared likely to affect Electricidad de Caracas, owned by Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corp., and C.A. Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela, known as CANTV, the country’s largest publicly traded company.
Chávez
said lucrative oil projects in the
“I’m referring to how international companies have control and power over all those processes of improving the heavy crudes of the Orinoco belt—no—that hould become the property of the nation,” Chávez said.
Chávez did not appear to rule out all private investment in the oil sector. Since last year, his government has sought to form state-controlled “mixed companies” with British Petroleum PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Total SA, and
Statoil ASA to
upgrade heavy crude in the
The United States remains the top buyer of Venezuelan oil, [the sale of] which provides Chávez with billions of dollars for social programs aimed at helping Venezuela’s poor as well as aid for countries around the region.
Chávez threatened last August to nationalize CANTV, a Caracas-based former state firm that was privatized in 1991, unless it fully complied with a court ruling and adjusted its pension payments to current minimum-wage levels, which have been repeatedly increased by his government.
CANTV is the dominant provider of
fixed-line telephone service in
Electricidad
de Caracas is the largest private electricity firm in
After Chávez’s announcement, American Depositary Receipts of CANTV—the only Venezuelan company traded on the New York Stock Exchange—immediately plunged 14.2 percent to $16.84 before the NYSE halted trading. An NYSE spokesman said it was not known when trading might resume.
Investors with sizable holdings in CANTV’s ADRs include some
well-known names on Wall Street, including Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., UBS
Securities LLC, and Morgan Stanley & Co. But the biggest shareholder,
according to Thomson Financial, appears to be Brandes
Investment Partners LP, an investment advisory company in
CANTV said it was aware of Chávez’s remarks but added in a statement: “No government representatives have communicated with the company, and the company has no other information.”
Chávez cited the communist ideals of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin at other points in his speech.
“I’m very much of [
In the fiery address, the president also used a vulgar word [pendejo], roughly meaning “idiot,” to refer to Organization of American States Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza. He lashed out at Insulza for questioning his government’s decision not to renew the license of an opposition-aligned TV station.
[The following article,
reproduced here for the information of our readers, is from the Jan. 11, 2007,
issue of the New York Times. In the print edition an “outtake” in the middle of
the article in large bold text read: “
Chávez Begins New Term Vowing Socialism
by Simón Romero
“Fatherland! Socialism or death, I swear
it!” Mr. Chávez yelled as he was sworn in and given
the presidential sash and a golden key to the tomb where the remains of Simón Bolívar, the South American liberator, are interred.
In
his speech, the president defended his decision this week to nationalize
companies in the telecommunications and electricity industries and promised to
seek greater control over natural gas projects. He also renewed his request to
Congress for decree powers, saying a “revolutionary law of laws” would allow
him to hasten the construction of socialism.
Since
his re-election last month, Mr. Chávez has moved
swiftly to group his varied supporters into a single Socialist party. In
addition to his nationalization campaign, he has called for the end of the
central bank’s independence from politics and the rewriting of the commercial
code.
Headlines
in the afternoon newspapers here reflected continuing polarization over his ideas.”Socialism Has Arrived,” proclaimed El Mundo, which, like most Venezuelan newspapers is
friendly to Mr.Chávez’s government. Tal Cual, a small opposition paper, titled its main
editorial “The Monarch.”
Teodoro Petkoff,
editor of Tal Cual, said Mr. Chávez’s “21st-century Socialism” had exhibited the same
autocratic characteristics of Socialist movements of the 20th century.
Others
pointed to the president’s political instincts as an explanation for his sharp ideological
turn.
Fernando
Coronil, an authority on Venezuelan history at the
“People
voted for Chávez but didn’t give him a blank check,”
he said. “Now he has to pay back.”
In
his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Chávez, who hinted at
the possibility of seeking another term once this one ends in 2012, seemed to
evoke Fidel Castro’s
leftward ideological evolution in the years after taking power in
He
weaved in quotations from Napoleon and Trotsky, saying Trotsky had the right
idea when he said, “The revolution never ends.” He also quoted liberally from
the writings of Bolívar and the Bible.
He
railed against his domestic political opponents and dissidents in the Roman
Catholic Church, singling out Archbishop Roberto Luckert
of
“Monsignor
Luckert is going to wait for me in hell,” he said.
After
his speech, Mr. Chávez traveled to
[Now
the Jan. 12 Jorge Martin article mentioned above—also slightly modified in
keeping with Labor Standard editorial style.]
“What is the problem? I am also a Trotskyist!”
— Chávez is sworn in as president of
by Jorge Martin
On
Wednesday, Jan. 10, Chávez was sworn in as president
of
After
the massive victory in the presidential elections in December (in which Chávez received 7.3 million votes, 63%), Chávez had insisted that this was not a vote for himself,
but rather a vote for the socialist project that he had been defending. The
announcements made in the last few days in
The
composition of the new government can be considered a shift to the left. First
of all vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel, who had publicly opposed the expropriation
of the Caracas golf courses by Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto
and explicitly said that the government respected private property, has been
removed. He has been replaced by Jorge Rodriguez, who is generally seen as
being on the left of the Bolivarian movement. His father, of the same name, was
historically a leader of the Socialist League in the 1970s, and died as a
result of torture while he was in the custody of the secret police.
Chávez also put emphasis on the fact
that “for the first time in history, we have a minister of the Communist Party
in
Among
the new ministers to be incorporated into the government Chávez
also pointed to the new Minister of Labor, José Ramón Rivero,
whom he described as “young, and a workers’ leader.” “When I called him,” Chávez explained [in his Jan. 8 speech], “he said to me: ‘President,
I want to tell you something before someone else tells you…I am a Trotskyist.’ And I said, ‘Well, what is the problem? I am
also a Trotskyist! I follow Trotsky’s line, that of
permanent revolution.’”
José
Ramón Rivero was a trade union leader in the
state-owned aluminum smelter Venalum, in the
industrial state of Bolivar, and had become one of the members of parliament
for the Bolivarian Workers’ Front (Spanish initials, FBT). In the recent period
the FBT has been dominated by its most moderate elements, who
launched a campaign against the left wing in the UNT. It remains to be seen
what the attitude of Rivero as minister of labor will
be. He will be judged for his position in relation to workers’ management,
factory occupations, nationalizations, and the defense of workers’ rights.
But
the statement of Chávez that he himself is a Trotskyist reflects the leftward evolution of his political
thinking and his growing personal radicalization. At the beginning of the
Venezuelan revolution in 1998 Chávez quite openly
admitted that he was in favor of “third way” [between capitalism and socialism]
and did not in any way challenge capitalism as such. It was only in January 2005,
at the time of the expropriation of Venepal [a paper
mill], that he first said that “within the limits of capitalism there is no
solution to the problems facing the Venezuelan masses” and that the revolution
must go toward “socialism of the 21st century.” This change in his political
thinking came about as a result of several things, he said: the experience of
the Bolivarian Revolution (trying to apply basic reforms such as free
healthcare and education for all and being confronted by an armed uprising on
the part of the capitalist class), reading, and discussing.
Shortly
before he declared himself to be a socialist, he had bought a copy of Trotsky’s
book Permanent Revolution, at a meeting in
At
that time this was a major turning point in the Bolivarian Revolution and
opened up the debate about socialism and what it meant throughout Venezuelan
society in an unprecedented way. The recent announcements by Chávez can be seen in the same way as yet another major
turning point in the revolution.
Chávez also stressed that the new
ministers were “ministers of people’s power” and that they should spend Monday
to Wednesday in their offices carrying out their duties, but then from Thursday
to Sunday they should be “out in the streets implementing a plan of work.”
“Nothing,
nobody will be able to divert us from the road toward Bolivarian socialism,
Venezuelan socialism, our socialism,” he stressed. In the swearing-in ceremony
as president he declared that the aim was to establish the Bolivarian Socialist
Republic of Venezuela, and even the formula he used for taking the presidential
oath was overtly socialist. “I swear for the people and for the fatherland that
I will not give rest to my arm nor respite to my soul;
that I will give my days and my nights and my whole life to the building of
Venezuelan socialism, a new political system, a new social system, a new
economic system.” And he finished his speech with the new battle cry
“Fatherland, Socialism or Death!”
As
in any of the other major steps forward in the Bolivarian revolution, Chávez is both interpreting and responding to the pressure
of the revolutionary masses from below, but at the same time taking the
initiative, launching bold ideas and proposals and consciously pushing the
whole process forward. The response of the revolutionary rank and file to the
announcements made on Monday, Jan. 8, and particularly the nationalization of
the telecom company CANTV and the electricity company EDC, has been
enthusiastic.
Trade
union activists have been contacting the UNT leaders, expressing their support
for these measures. The “Trade Union Alliance” at SIDOR, the steel works in
Bolivar, which was privatized in the 1990s, has already issued a statement
asking the president to renationalize the company. They added that renationalization should not be just a return to the
previous situation when the SIDOR was state-owned, but rather that this should
be accompanied by the introduction of workers’ management like the one that is
already being experienced at the nearby aluminum smelter ALCASA.
Rivero, the new minister of labor,
has already organized meetings with the trade unions representing workers in
the companies that are to be nationalized, to discuss their future, and has
added that a discussion has taken place in the new council of ministers about
the “setting up of workers’ councils” in the companies, starting in the
Ministry of Labor itself.
But
also, as in previous turning points, the bureaucracy and the reformist elements
within the Bolivarian movement (and particularly within its leadership) are
already conspiring to water down the content of Chávez’s
announcements and proposals and to block the revolutionary initiative of the
masses. The announcement of the nationalization of CANTV and EDC immediately
sent their shares into a downward spiral on the
The
struggle is therefore far from over, and it is necessary for the revolutionary
rank and file, and particularly the revolutionary trade unionists, to take the
initiative on all fronts and to give content to all these announcements: the
need to nationalize the key sectors of the economy, the need to dismantle the
bourgeois state and replace it with a revolutionary state based on workers’ and
people’s councils, and the building of a united party of socialist revolution.
The Revolutionary Marxist Current (CMR) in
The
next few months will be crucial for the future of the Bolivarian revolution,
and the working class must play a key role.
[Lastly, we reproduce an article
from the Canadian online publication Socialist Voice, by its co-editor
John Riddell—a very valuable discussion of the mass socialist party that Chávez has called for.
[Curiously enough, Riddell also omits mention of Chávez’s references to Trotsky and permanent revolution. Perhaps that omission will also be made up for soon. Riddell does quote what Chávez had to say about Jesus as a socialist, along with a rich discussion of the indigenous and other roots of socialism. The article is mainly written a report on the Dec. 15 speech by Chávez on the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and Riddell includes some extensive quotes from Chávez expressing the latter’s views on the degeneration of the Russian revolution. These are fully consistent with the analysis made historically by the Trotskyist movement. But why omit mention of Chávez’s blunt statement that he too is a Trotskyist, a follower of the line of permanent revolution? Why not acknowledge that on Jan. 10 Chávez said: ‘Trotsky said that the revolution is permanent; it never finishes. Let’s go with Trotsky. It is Trotsky who is correct that the revolution does not finish.”
[Incidentally, publication in
English of the full texts of Chávez’s Jan. 8 and 10
speeches, in addition to his Dec. 15 speech, would be a major contribution to
the world’s labor and socialist movements.
[In reproducing Riddell’s article here, we have edited it slightly for
style purposes. The original may be found at www.socialistvoice.com.
The article has also been posted on the Monthly Review web site (www.mrzine.org). Readers may go to those web sites
to follow the References links not shown here.]
Chávez Calls for United Socialist Party of
by John
Riddell
When supporters of Venezuelan
president Hugo Chávez rallied on Dec. 15, 2006, in
the Teresa Carrena theatre in Caracas to celebrate
their presidential election victory [of Dec. 3] “there were cheers in the back
half of the theatre,” writes Michael Lebowitz, “but
few in the high-priced seats.”
This was not because Chávez spoke of going forward to socialism and combating
corruption—that wasn’t new—but because “it was all about the new party,” which Chávez insisted must be built “from the base” by the
popular committees that fought and won the election.
The prospect of a united,
fighting party of the Venezuelan masses is indeed unsettling to the
conservative careerists who occupy many high posts in the pro-Chávez political parties. But, for working people, it could
be the instrument they need to break the present deadlock in
Victory
without Precedent
The victory of the Bolivarian
movement in the Dec. 3 presidential elections has created the most favorable
conditions yet for such an advance. The Venezuelan people made the elections
the occasion for their largest mobilization ever in support of the Bolivarian
movement and President Hugo Chávez. The pro-Chávez vote of 7.3 million (63% of votes cast) was almost
double his total in the last presidential elections, and 25% more than in the
recall referendum of 2004. Moreover, Chávez
supporters on election day massively occupied the
streets, forestalling any opposition effort to challenge the vote.
So massive was the victory that
the right-wing opposition, for the first time since the Bolivarians
took office in 1998, conceded that they had indeed lost the election and that Chávez was
Program
for Change
When his new cabinet was sworn
in on Jan.8, 2008, Chávez pledged to set a fast pace
in carrying out the mandate of Venezuelan voters.
Among his proposed measures:
nationalization of key industries privatized under previous governments,
including the giant telecommunications and electricity companies, and expansion
of government ownership of oil projects. The national bank’s independence will
be curbed. More power will be transferred to the recently created communal
councils (see below). What is needed, Chávez said, is
to “dismantle the bourgeois state” and create a “communal state.”
Progress toward a new socialist
party will be crucial in enabling these and other programs to advance.
Danger
from Within
According to Lebowitz, a Caracas-based Marxist writer, the main danger
to the Venezuelan revolution comes not from the opposition, its backers in
Many officials in the
Bolivarian political parties “want Chávez without
socialism,” Lebowitz says, and “want to retain the
power to make decisions from above.”
Following the elections,
officials of many of the two dozen parties of the Bolivarian movement made
boastful statements regarding how many of the Chávez
votes had been on their ticket. (Under Venezuelan electoral law, Chávez’s vote is the sum total of votes for all the parties
who named him as their candidate. The Movement for the
“Let’s not fall into lies,”
said Chávez on December 15. “Those votes were not for
any party…they were votes for Chávez, for the
people.” The audience then responded with an ovation to his call, “Don’t divide
the people!”
A
New Party
“The revolution requires a
united party, not an alphabet soup,” Chávez said. “I,
Hugo Chávez Frias…declare
today that I am going to create a new party.” It will be “a political
instrument at the service not of blocs or groupings but of the people and the
revolution, at the service of socialism.” To great applause, he proposed the
name United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Spanish initials, PSUV).
As for those who doubt the
wisdom of this proposal, Chávez continued, “I don’t
have time to bury myself in a debate…they are entirely free to pursue their
course.” But “obviously, they will leave the government.”
The new party will not be a
copy of any existing organization. As for the dominant Bolivarian party, the
MVR, which Chávez himself founded, “its work is
completed; it must pass into history.” Nor would party officials be
automatically carried over to the new formation: “You will not see me with the
same old faces, the same party leaderships—no, that would be a deception.”
How then will the party be
formed? Chávez recalled the battle of the recall
referendum in 2004, which was won by thousands of Units for the Electoral
Battle (UBEs), made up of working people across the
country. “Afterwards, I asked everyone to maintain the UBEs…but
almost everywhere they were lost…Let us be sure this does not happen after our
great victory of December 3.”
Built
by the Ranks
Hailing the great work of
11,000 Bolivarian battalions, 32,800 platoons, and innumerable squads in
rallying the people for this victory, Chávez said,
“Let not a single squad dissolve. Starting tomorrow, the leaders of the squads,
platoons, and battalions must bring together their troops, their worthy troops,
who are the people.”
Get hold of a computer,
typewriter, whatever, Chávez said, and draw up a
list—a “census of the activists, sympathizers, and friends—for “the battalions,
platoons, and squads will be the basic national structure” of the new party, a
party built “from below.”
Chávez
blasted the prevailing custom of hand-picking candidates and leaders from
above—in the Venezuelan idiom, singling them out “with the finger.” “Enough of
the little finger,” he said, “and generally it’s often my finger,” when he is
“asked to take decisions on candidates…This should all be done from below, from
the base. The people should take these decisions, as has been written in our
Constitution for seven years, except we haven’t done it. Now is the time to start.”
Elitist
Models
Most Latin American left
parties of the 20th century, Chávez noted, had
“copied the Bolshevik model of the party,” which under Lenin’s leadership
brought victory in the Russian revolution of 1917. Later, this party “went off course, which
Lenin could not prevent, because he was ill and died very young.” The
Bolsheviks “ended up as an anti-democratic party, and the wonderful slogan, ‘All
power to the soviets,’ ended up as ‘All power for the party.’
“In my humble opinion, this
deformation took place close to the outset of the socialist revolution that
gave birth to the Soviet Union, and we saw the results 70 years later” in the
USSR’s collapse. Workers did not come
out to defend the Soviet system “because it had become converted into an
elitist structure that could not build socialism.
“We here will build Venezuelan
socialism—an original Venezuelan model.”
The new party “must be created
not for electoral purposes—even though it will carry out electoral battles as
we have done,” Chávez said. “The task is to carry out
the battle of ideas for the socialist project.” For this purpose, everyone must
“study, read, discuss” and “distribute information, printed material.”
Roots
of Socialism in Religion
Chávez took
care to present socialism not as something new, invented, or imported, but as
growing organically out of the traditions and beliefs of the Venezuelan people.
The socialist project, he said on Dec. 3, is “Indo-Venezuelan, homegrown,
Christian, and Bolivarian.”
In his Dec. 15 address, he
employed relevant passages in the Christian Bible to good effect. The prophet
Isaiah condemned those who accumulate wealth, “Woe to those who add house to
house [and] join field to field, until there is no more room” (Isaiah
5:8).
Jesus’s Sermon
on the Mount blessed the poor and denounced the rich: “Woe to you that are well
fed, for you shall hunger” (Luke 6:20–25).
“We are much more moderate than
Christ,” Chávez said. “We don’t want anyone to go
hungry” and [we want] the rich to “share with us the happiness of being
free…everyone free and equal.” But Jesus “was a radical, a revolutionary, an
avenger [?], and that’s why he was crucified by the capitalists and
imperialists of that time.”
Chávez pointed
to the example of the early Christian church, quoting the Biblical account that
believers who owned land and other property donated them to the community, “and
distribution was made to each as any had need.” For the company of believers
“were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he
possessed was his own, but they had everything in common” (Acts 4:32–35).
Roots
of Socialism in
“Once Fidel [Castro] told me,
speaking of Christ, ‘I’m a Christian on social questions.’” Chávez
added, “Well, the atheists are welcome. This is not a religious movement…I’m
just searching for its roots.”
Then he pointed to the example
of Simón Bolívar, “a pre-socialist thinker,” who
believed that society must be based on equality. Among Bolívar’s
companions, Simón Rodríguez
was a “socialist thinker,” and the Brazilian revolutionary José Ignacio Abreu de Lima was the author of “the first book on
socialism written in the
Chávez also
recalled how the pioneer Peruvian socialist, José Carlos Mariátegui,
had pointed to the socialist project’s roots in the indigenous societies of
Referring to all these experiences,
Chávez said, “We’re going to take these models to the
neighborhoods, to the housing developments; we’re going to create spaces for
socialism.”
Scientific
Socialism
They began to propose solutions
based on “the transformation of the economic model,” which is “fundamental if
we wish to build a true socialism. Therefore we must socialize the economy,”
including the land, and create a “new productive model,” he said. All the “new
spaces that we are creating or regaining” will be “nuclei of socialist
construction.”
On Jan. 8, Chávez
was more explicit: the aim is “social ownership over the strategic sectors of
the means of production.”
Barriers
to Progress
It is not hard to enumerate the
massive obstacles facing Venezuelan workers and farmers along this road. The capitalist profit-making system remains
intact—in fact, it has had a banner year. The capitalist right wing controls
almost all the media and benefits from the sympathy or lethargy of many in the
governmental apparatus.
The enemies of the revolution
stand ready to use violence and dictatorship to impose their will—backed to the
hilt by
Although the Bolivarian
government’s measures have brought tangible benefits to the poor, poverty
remains widespread and profound. Land reform has progressed slowly. Only a
minority of workers have stable employment in the legal economy.
And the Bolivarian trade union
movement that represents this minority is in disarray, wracked by factional
divisions, and has done little to implement the government’s program to expand
workers’ control.
But the most immediate barriers
impeding further advances toward overturning capitalism in
Most political parties in
Strategy
for Socialism
The Bolivarian movement has not
developed any blueprint for the transformation of this economy. Chávez’s speech on
the new party, however, gives evidence of a strategy for the struggle for
socialism based on placing power in the hands of the working people who have
beaten back capitalist assaults in each successive confrontation.
“We will build it from below,
an endogenous socialism,” Chávez said.
If built as Chávez
advocates, the new party could solve the central challenge facing the
Bolivarian movement: that of linking the worker and farmer base together with
their chosen leadership in a cohesive, democratic political movement.
As for the government
apparatus, the Bolivarians continue to focus on
creating parallel institutions controlled by the worker-farmer ranks. On Dec.
15, Chávez focused on the Communal Councils (Consejos Comunales), of which
16,000 have been organized to coordinate action around the concerns of
residents. “They are the key to people’s power” he said, appealing for their
extension to every part of the country.
These councils, he said, must
“transcend the local framework” and achieve “a sort of regional federation of
Communal Councils” that could elect coordinating bodies. On Jan. 8, he went
further, projecting the councils as the embryo of a new state.
A united socialist party will
be key weapon in the fight to achieve such goals.
Challenge
to Socialist Movement
On Dec. 3, Chávez
dedicated his election victory “to the Cuban people and to president
Fidel Castro, brother, comrade, companion.”
The inspiration, guidance, and
practical help of the Cuban revolutionaries has been
crucial in winning Venezuelan working people to support socialism. Today
The outstanding significance of
Chávez’s new-party initiative, as of all the Bolivarians’ major struggles of the last couple of years,
is that a vision of authentic socialism is taking root. Socialists around the
world must ensure that the voice of the Bolivarians
is heard and understood by rebels and activists everywhere.
References
Hugo Chávez
on the new party, 15 December 2006 (in Spanish, text plus video)
Hugo Chávez
on his reelection, 3 December 2006 (in English)
Michael Lebowitz,
“‘It’s My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want to’: Chávez
Moves Forward,” MRZine 17 December 2006.
Coral Wynter and Jim McIlroy,
“Challenges for
C. Wynter
and Jim McIlroy, “Marta Harnecker:
Venezuela’s Experiment in Popular Power,” Green Left Weekly 693, 30 November
2006.