Venezuela's Revolution: Giving Power to the Poor

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Venezuela's Revolution: Giving Power to the Poor

Via NY Transfer News Collective All the News that Doesn't Fit

Green Left Weekly via Venezuelanalysis - Feb 21, 2007

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1963

Venezuela's Revolution: Giving Power to the Poor

By Stuart Munckton

We, and millions of people around the world 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 Chavezs

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 nations 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 medias 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. Lenins

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 dont 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 McDonalds, 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 Oils 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, Venezuelas 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

Venezuelas 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 Chavezs overthrow. However a

popular uprising of the poor and loyal soldiers overthrew the coup junta in

two days and restored Chavezs 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

peoples 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 peoples 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 Chavezs 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.

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