Decision Time in Venezuela

29/11/08

éirígí’s Daithí Mac An Mhaistír analyses recent electoral shifts in Venezuela in the article below, extrapolating the gains and setbacks of the ongoing Venezuelan revolution.

On Sunday (November 23), the people of Venezuela went to the polls to cast their votes in mayoral and state governor elections.

These elections were widely seen as a crucial barometer of the current state of the Bolivarian revolution, taking place 10 years after the coming to power of the movement led by Hugo Chavez.

Throughout the last decade there have been many significant events in Venezuela, and elections of one type or another have been a common feature of the process in that country. The government of Hugo Chavez has consistently held the support of the population, the vast majority of whom live in a severe state of poverty.

The Bolivarian revolution has politically awakened and brought into closer contact with political power millions of Venezuelans who, prior to 1998, had been excluded from the political, social and economic life of the nation.

During the last 10 years there has been an explosion of popular power in the form of Bolivarian circles, community councils and occupied factories under workers’ control. This deepening political engagement by the masses is exemplified by the fact that the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has a membership in excess of 5 million.

All of this stands in total contrast to the situation that pertained in Venezuela until the ascent of Chavez to the office of president, this situation being one where the country’s huge wealth had been held exclusively in the hands of an oligarchy of capitalist industrialists, bankers and politicians.

That the poor & working people of Venezuela understand where their interests lie is attested to by the fact that they have returned Chavez and his movement to power in multiple electoral contests and, more significantly, came to his rescue within hours of the 2002 coup d’etat, launched by the Venezuelan capitalist class and its US allies in the Pentagon and the White House.

The first signs that all was not as secure in this respect as previously thought was the Constitutional referendum of December 2007. In this referendum, the proposals put forth by the Chavez administration were defeated. While there were no significant gains for the opposition, over 1 million voters who had previously voted for the Bolivarian movement abstained. This was very significant, indicating that Chavez could not take for granted those who had previously supported him.

While there have been many, many advances under Chavez, there remain manifold problems facing the Venezuelan population. The progress is visible in the form of the various social missions that range from illiteracy eradication and education access programmes, to inititaives to improve health outcomes for all, and improvments in infrastructure and some advances in addressing the terrible housing conditions in the slums of the cities and countryside. Notwithstanding all of this the country is still beset by all the evils that face the American continent.

Venezuela is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to live and the grinding poverty that afflicts that country is so horrific it is hard to express its sheer magnitude in words. Wages fail to keep up with prices and there are severe shortages of basic staples such as beans, rice and cooking oil.

How can this be the case in a country that contains within it such apparent wealth? The simple fact is that Venezuela remains a handcuffed to capitalism; that is, the major industries, banks and land, and consequently the wealth accruing from them, remain under the control of the, minority, capitalist class.

These wealthy and powerful people have used their control over production to carry out wholesale economic sabotage in the form of reducing production so as to increase the sense of desperation among the mass of the population. They then sit back and wait for the (they hope) inevitable reaction of the people against Chavez. This is one of the tactics of the opposition. The opposition will argue that Chavez, as president, is ultimately responsible for the state of the country after all is said and done. With worsening economic circumstances it is inevitable that questions will be raised about the direction of the revolution and the ability of ‘socialism’ to address the problems facing the country. Of course, the problem is not with socialism but with the absence of socialism.

While the PSUV retained huge support, (including that of attracting the renewed support of the approximately 1 millon ‘Chavista’ voters that had abstained from voting in the Constitutional referendum of December 2007), Sunday’s elections saw some significant reverses for the Bolivarian movement. 5.5 million people (58% of the electorate) voted for Chavez and the PSUV while opposition candidates received 4 million votes (41%). In an election that had a turnout of 65%, the opposition gained control of the governerships of a further 3 states (bringing its total to 5, against that of seventeen for pro-Chavez forces). Significantly, the opposition gained control of the three most populous states, including the critically important Greater Council of the capital, Caracas.

What does this signify? It is a fact that, in the long term, Venezuela cannot continue as it has. It is impossible to make the changes required in that country while it remains a ‘free market’ economy. To argue that these changes could be made in a country functioning upon the basis of such an economic system would be to argue, at best, for social democracy and not socialism. In Venezuela it is capitalism that is THE problem, and as long as Chavez and the PSUV do not advance to the next level, that of the socialist revolution, they will increasingly be held responsible by more and more people for the social evils that beset the country. It is a simple fact that the poor can neither eat nor survive on slogans alone.

Chavez himself has acknowledged this fact on many occasions and has spoken of the ideological battle that must be fought within the PSUV – that is, the battle between those who argue for reform in contradistinction to a revolutionary socialist transformation of Venezuelan society. Chavez himself has undergone a radical transformation in his own political outlook over the last ten years of struggle and confronting the nature of the forces operating on Venezuelan society. He is on the record as having stated how he once “naively took as a reference point Tony Blair’s proposal for a ‘third way’ between capitalism and socialism — capitalism with a human face” and that he is now “convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism ... the path is socialism”. To this he has further stated that it is his firm conviction that “capitalism leads us straight to hell”.

What is it that is required in Venezuela to give effect to the demand of the masses for socialism? The answer to that question can be summarised thus: the capitalist class must be expropriated and the wealth of the country placed under the democratic control of the workers. There is no other option. The longer this does not happen, the opposition will continue to chip away at the idelogical and social advances that have been made and, moreover, the possibility that exists for more change within the system as it is currently constituted will be evermore reduced. This is a very real possibility given falling oil revenue and the fact that this will have an increasingly negative effect on the standard of living of an already impoverished population. Again, the opposition will point towards the inability of ‘socialism’ to address the manifold problems facing the country. They will argue, as has always been the approach of reactionaries everywhere, that the very problems that they are responsible for creating and maintaining are in fact the ‘problems of socialism’. They will be emboldened by these election results and, doubtless, will feel better able to push ahead with their counter-revolutionary and anti-democratic plans.

In many respects, the future of not just the poor of Venezuela, but that of the whole of Latin America will depend upon the next steps taken by Hugo Chavez and the mass movement he heads. Ultimately they must decide between reform and revolution.

After the 2006 presidential election Chavez spoke in an electrifying and seminal victory speech of how the people had voted not for him but for socialism. Two years have passed and the vultures of capitalism are beginning to circle again over Venezuela. One cannot make half a revolution, and whether or not these vulture capitalists have the bodies of the poor of Venezuela to feast upon will, in the final analysis, be determined by whether or not Chavez and the PSUV finally make the break with capitalism. The historical choice is as stark as that.