Venezuela: Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution
By Virginia de la Siega
It may be easier to understand the Venezuelan process if we place it in the context of Latin America in particular and the world in general.
At present, there is a world neoliberal offensive of the imperialist financial bourgeoisie to snatch away from the workers the political and economic rights they conquered during the post-Second World War “Golden Years” of capitalism. The application of neoliberal policies has different effects whether it is carried out in Europe and the USA, or in Latin America. In the former two, it has meant, among other things, the loss of workers’ rights and the growth of unemployment. In Latin America, it has meant the pauperization and near starvation of large sectors of the population. To give but one example, in Argentina, a working class child of five is only as tall as a middle class child of three – and the statistics say nothing about the effects of malnutrition on mental development.
But this globalized offensive has had to face the resistance of the world masses. That is why imperialism has developed methods to impose the application of neoliberal measures: the exertion of political and economic pressure on governments, militarism and the mechanisms of formal democracy. The first is most evident in the policies of international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The last two are more subtle.
When one thinks about imperialist militarism, Iraq comes immediately to mind. However, the US has for some time been taking steps in the process of re-colonization of Latin America via the militarization of the region. “Plan Colombia” and the continued attempts to force the parliaments of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina to allow American troops in their territories, who will not be subject to the laws of the country, are but a few examples.
However, imperialism’s preferred way to save capitalist regimes throughout the world is the use of the mechanisms of formal democracy. In Latin America, formal democracy has come to replace the savage dictatorships which different American administrations held in power up to the 1980s. Latin American workers, just as the workers of the First World, now have the “right” to periodically vote for governments that will act against their interests, regardless of their needs or demands. However, the function of formal democracy in Latin America is different.
The brutal application of neoliberal policies has repeatedly triggered uprisings – in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Peru – which have ended in the overthrow of hated governments. However, these masses who have managed to organize themselves into committees and battalions to fight against the police and the army, have not yet been able to create an independent political force. Consequently, the potentially revolutionary processes of the last five years have all been channeled into the trap of formal democracy, and power has been given to “new” bourgeois governments, which have betrayed the hopes of the people. Until a new political alternative is built, the Latin American masses will continue to vote for governments that will betray their hopes. Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia are good examples of this.
Venezuela, under its President Hugo Chávez, stands out as an exception to the rule.
The history of the process
The revolutionary process in Venezuela began in 1989, when President Carlos Andrés Pérez took the decision to apply the neoliberal measures demanded by the IMF. The consequence was the social uprising known as the “Caracazo”: the masses took to the streets; Pérez gave the army the order to shoot; 3000 people were killed.
The cycle of resistance to neoliberalism opened by the “Caracazo” continues not only in Venezuela but – in different degrees – on a continental scale in the whole of Latin America.
In 1992, Chávez led a coup d’état against the rampant corruption of the government. He failed, but the masses began to look at him as an alternative to the general atmosphere of dishonesty, bribery and general corruption of the Venezuelan ruling class, which had absolutely sold out to American imperialism. Six years later, in 1998, with an electoral campaign centered on the denunciation of the corruption of the regime, Chávez became president with almost 60 per cent of the vote.
The economic situation of the country during Chávez’s first years in government was catastrophic. A central problem was the low price of oil on the world market. He was not in a position to carry out reforms that implied a direct attack against the interests of the national and the international bourgeoisies.
Instead, he very quickly put into practice a program for the democratization of state institutions. Two months after taking power he called for a constituent assembly. The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, passed in 1999, transformed the Venezuelan state into the most democratic bourgeois state in the region. In November 2001, the process continued with the adoption of 49 decrees establishing that the oil, land, fish and other sectors of the economy are part of the wealth of the Venezuelan nation, rather than areas for the private accumulation of wealth.
Neither the Venezuelan bourgeoisie nor American imperialism was going to allow this. The US was not going to consent to any assertion of national independence at a time when they were interested in submitting the whole of Latin America to the conditions set by the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), another attempt of the US state to reinforce its domination over the whole of Latin America. The Venezuelan bourgeoisie has historically been unwilling to grant even a minimum of social rights, such as access to education to the poor.
Bourgeois hatred in Venezuela is rooted in race as well as class. Class division, in many countries in Latin America, follows racial lines, with a “white” bourgeoisie descendant of the old colonial elites and European immigration, and the masses of Indigenous, Blacks and mixed-race people who fill the camp of the workers and the poor. This class-cum-race division is clearly seen in the demonstrations for and against Chávez. In the former are the Blacks, the mixed-race people of colour and the Indigenous who see Chávez as one of their own. In the latter are the well-dressed, white middle and upper classes of Venezuela.
In April 2002, with the help of American imperialism, the Venezuelan bourgeoisie launched a military coup which overthrew Chávez and sent him to prison. The American and the Spanish governments were the first to positively greet this breach of the constitutional order. Forty-seven hours later, the time they needed to get organized, the Venezuelan masses took to the streets in defence of Chávez. On seeing this, the army – which in Venezuela is seen by many of the poor as a means to social progress – abandoned the coup plotters. The coup was defeated, and Chávez found himself once again in power.
Masses to the rescue
Between December 2002 and the beginning of February 2003, the bourgeoisie and the corrupt, pro-imperialist trade union bureaucracy of the oil workers, tried to prevent the production of oil to bring the government down to its knees. Once again, the mobilized masses and the rank-and-file oil workers – breaking away from their union – came to the defense of their government and the lock-out was defeated.
The only weapon left to the American government and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie was formal democracy. In 2004, they demanded a plebiscite. Chávez accepted the challenge and promised to resign if he lost it.
Once more, the Venezuelan masses came to the rescue. Under the slogan “They will not come back!”, the campaign committees organized electoral battalions subdivided into cells of ten people called electoral patrols. This form of organization replaced the traditional Bolivarian circles and allowed millions of sympathizers to take part in political discussion. It was the patrols that finally guaranteed the presence of thousands of voters in a country where abstentionism was the rule.
The political axis of the campaign launched by the patrols and the battalions was fundamentally anti-imperialist: Down with Bush and his government! Down with neoliberalism! Down with the political and economic caste that had ruled Venezuela until then! For Latin American integration!
Their victory was not only the victory of the people of Venezuela. The mobilized masses of Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina considered it their own victory.
The Venezuelan experience has another element which should be underlined: the self-organization of the masses and the workers. While it would be an exaggeration to talk about dual power in Venezuela, it is true that the confrontations against the bourgeoisie and imperialism have raised the consciousness and the level of organization of the Venezuelan masses.
In this sense, the success of the government “missions” that operate in the fields of education, health, housing, etc., would not have been possible without the existence of neighborhood committees, which group together local militants by the hundreds. These committees, which are not centralized, played a very important role in the mobilizations that put Chávez back in power, and then in the electoral “commandos” that were the key to the victory of the NO in the referendum.
Workers’ self-organization
However, it is the creation of the UNT (National Union of Workers) that can be considered one of the most important attempts at workers’ self-organization of this period. After decades of being ruled by the corrupt, pro-bourgeois bureaucracy of the CTV (Confederation of Workers of Venezuela), the Venezuelan workers now have an independent workers’ organization, within which revolutionary Marxists play a key role. The UNT continues to grow among the new and most combative sectors of workers, but the counter-offensive against the CTV has started. The bureaucrats have now made an attempt to impose a new “official” trade union central with obligatory membership and dues collected directly from the workers’ salaries, transforming the workers’ organization into one more government body.
The UNT has lead important workers’ struggles. Some of them have followed the traditional pattern (better working conditions, salary increase) but others, much more radicalized, pose the question of who should manage the work place. An example of this is Venepal, the main paper mill in the country, whose owners had declared bankruptcy. After a three-month strike, the mill was nationalized under workers’ control. This victory led to new struggles in which the defense of jobs is combined with attacks against the owners, who supported the coup and then sabotaged the country’s economy. A number of closed factories have been taken over and put to work by the workers in the form of co-operatives, while, in the public sector, the demand of “co-management” – in fact of some sort of control – has also been raised.
On July 9, left wing groups and parties of Venezuela (OIR, OCT, Trabajadores al Poder, “Activate” [a university youth movement], the journal Verdad Obrera Sindical) and independent activists got together to create the National Committee for the Building of a Workers’ Party for the Socialist Revolution. This committee will have as its task the discussion of the manifesto and program of the party, with the purpose of holding the founding congress of a new party in January 2006 during the World Social Forum in Caracas. Up to then, they will adopt the name UNIR (Union of the Revolutionary Left).
So, what about the Bolivarian Revolution?
What about Chávez’s contradictions?
Chávez is a consistently bourgeois nationalist president of a semi-colony, who has managed to stop the privatization of Venezuelan oil – the main objective of American imperialism and of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie – who has come to the aid of Cuba, and who is also trying to build a network with various Latin American governments of the continent so as to negotiate better conditions within an imperialist order. It is not to diminish what he has done to say that he is not for a socialist revolution. When Chávez called a constituent assembly and institutionalized the right of the Venezuelan people to profit from the exploitation of their country’s wealth through social benefits and education, he started a colossal democratic revolution in Venezuela. This is why the centres of world power consider “chavismo” a bad example for the region and want it to be eliminated.
Chávez faces a historic alternative. He can base himself on the strength of the Venezuelan masses and go down the road of reforms that open the way to a real revolution. Or, he can follow the example of others like Peron in Argentina, Goulart in Brazil or Allende in Chile, and, by negotiating with imperialism for the sake of “not shedding the blood of brothers,” make the process that opened the Bolivarian Revolution end in a new disappointment for the Latin American masses.
External danger
There is also an external danger. After the experience of the referendum, it is clear to both the American government and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, that they cannot get rid of Chávez by means of a coup or through the democratic process. That is why the possibility of an attempt at assassination or even military intervention justified as “pre-emptive” action cannot be ruled out. In this sense, talk of Chávez’s support of Colombian guerrillas represents ideal pretext. The kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Venezuelan territory can be considered a sample of what is to come.
This puts to the fore the need of an international solidarity campaign with the people of Venezuela to prevent any imperialist aggression.
