Pablo Navarrete, Caracas: Below is an article I wrote entitled '21 Century Socialism' which appeared in the November issue of Red Pepper.
21st Century Socialism
The outcome of the political struggle in Venezuela is likely to determine the future direction of Latin America as a whole. Pablo Navarrete reports on the battle between the socialism of Hugo Chávez and the neoliberalism of George Bush
‘We will fight for Venezuela, for Latin American integration and the world,’ proclaimed Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez at the United Nations World Summit, held at its New York headquarters in mid-September. In a brazen 22-minute speech Chávez denounced the US government’s hypocrisy on terrorism and lambasted the UN’s lack of democracy. The organisation has ‘exhausted its model’, he said, as he proposed the abolition of the veto powers held by permanent members of the Security Council. ‘That elitist trace is incompatible with democracy, incompatible with the principles of equality and democracy.’
The boldness of Chávez’s speech reflects the strength of his government at home and his increasing popularity abroad. Since the referendum on his presidency in August 2004, when he won nearly 60 per cent of the vote, his government has increased its popularity. An independent poll held in July showed over 70 per cent support for the Venezuelan president; and in local elections in August, Chávez’s party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), along with other allied parties of the pro-Chávez coalition, won 80 per cent of the city and district council seats. This increased support is in no small part due to the behaviour of the domestic opposition, whose lack of leaders or of a coherent vision for the country threaten to make the Chávez movement the only credible party in town.
Things have not always been this rosy. From the moment Chávez stormed to the presidency in the 1998 election with promises to bury the ancién regime and bring an end to ‘savage neoliberalism’, his government has endured unending hostility from both domestic and international opponents.
Chávez´s first year in office saw the introduction of a new constitution, which sought to change the terms of the relationship between the Venezuelan state and its people. It promised a wide array of progressive social provisions to Venezuelans, 80 per cent of whom were classified as poor when Chávez came to power, and contained new obligations to pay taxes, which the rich had long avoided.
But it was only in November 2001 that the government’s opponents finally realised that Chávez had plans for the country that went beyond mere reform. His government passed a controversial set of 49 laws ‘designed to revolutionise the country’s economic infrastructure and to build on the changes already outlined in the new constitution’, as Richard Gott, author of the recently published Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, puts it.
The opposition also changed gear. Composed largely of members of Venezuela’s traditional, mainly white elite, the opposition included the overwhelming majority of media owners (both TV and print), the Catholic church hierarchy, the business community, and a section of the military high command. Driven by an increasingly fanatical hatred of Chávez, his opponents engaged in three major attempts to remove him from power: a military coup that lasted for 48 hours in April 2002; a strike (better described as an employer lockout) in December 2002; and the August 2004 recall referendum.
Chávez’s capacity for survival has been impressive, in large part due to his charisma and capacity to mobilise support in defence of his government. The referendum victory also paved the way for a further leftward shift; earlier this year Chávez publicly rejected capitalism as a model of development, arguing instead for the need to ‘invent the new socialism for the 21st century’.
This rhetorical radicalism has gone hand in hand with the deepening of what the government calls the ‘economic revolution’, which has included an increasing emphasis on cooperative based production. According to Sunacoop, the government body overseeing the cooperative sector, by October this year there were 86,500 registered cooperatives in Venezuela (compared with 800 in 1998).
Cooperatives have in turn fed into another radical initiative that has been gaining momentum: co-management. While presently confined to a few, mainly state-owned enterprises, such as aluminium company Alcasa, the expectation is that the practice will grow significantly. In the case of Venepal and Valvulas, two small private companies declared bankrupt, the government took them over and re-launched them under co-management, with 51 per cent of the shares owned by the state and the remaining 49 per cent held by a workers’ cooperative. And in this year’s Mayday speech Chávez announced that more companies might qualify for government assistance if they involved their workers in the management, adding that a draft bill was being presented to Congress for discussion.
According to Alcasa´s president, Carlos Lanz, in the case of Alcasa ‘democratic planning’ had lead to an 11 per cent increase in production. Lanz added that unlike the co-management of European social democracy that limited itself to giving workers shares and a seat on the board, ‘This is about workers controlling the factory, and that is why it is a step towards socialism of the 21st century.’
‘Endogenous development’ is the term used by the government to describe the process of change that it is seeking. This process of ‘developing from within’ places priority on production for national rather than international needs.
Yet even before this explicit reaffirmation of the government’s commitment to locally-based, national development, Chávez’s Venezuela had already gone too far for some. His most implacable opponent, as has so often been the case for progressive governments in Latin America, has been the US government. After providing support to groups involved in the April 2002 coup and engaging in various other measures to bring about ‘regime change’, the US has increasingly attempted to isolate the Chávez government from its Latin American neighbours.
In August this year relations deteriorated still further following calls by US Christian fundamentalist leader and friend of the White House, Pat Robertson, to assassinate the Venezuelan president. A State Department spokesperson merely referred to Robertson’s statement as ‘inappropriate’, but in Venezuela this call to commit an act of terrorism was taken very seriously indeed. Carlos Chirinos, a leader in the new Venezuelan trade union confederation, the UNT, commented: ‘The danger now is that they will try to assassinate Chávez. What Pat Robertson said recently on TV is what the US administration really thinks. The US, with the support of President Uribe and his Plan Colombia/Plan Patriota, could well utilise Colombian territory to invade Venezuela.’
Despite the continuing danger of US intervention of various sorts, Chávez and his foreign policy team have pursued bold and assertive diplomacy – the UN speech marking the culmination of such a strategy. Venezuela enjoys increasing respectability abroad, and has managed to reach out to neighbouring governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. Indeed, the Chávez government has become both the initiator and chief spokesman for many of the continent’s most recent initiatives, such as Petrosur and Petrocaribe, an energy-based alliance in which Venezuela guarantees the export of cheap oil to its neighbours.
While still being chastised in most of the western foreign media, with the Economist waging a particularly biased campaign, Chávez has managed to counter-attack with a new mass media initiative. This is Telesur, the new continent-wide television channel launched in Venezuela in July. It is co-sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay with the stated aim of showing Latin America ‘through Latin American eyes’. Tariq Ali, a member of Telesur’s advisory board, stressed at its launch that it was important that the channel challenged ‘the dictatorship of corporate capital with the democracy of truth’.
Finding ways to communicate its ideas, at home and abroad, has certainly proved a challenge for the Chávez government. At the UN, Chávez took advantage of his platform to announce that, ‘In just seven years of Bolivarian Revolution, the people of Venezuela can claim important social and economic advances.’ He pointed out that 1.4 million Venezuelans (out of a population of 25 million) had learnt to read and write; three million people, previously too poor to do so, had entered into primary, secondary and higher education; almost 70 per cent of the population now enjoyed access to free health care; and 700,000 new jobs had been created.
The list is impressive. And these gains show that in an age of neoliberal globalisation, even in poor countries the power of the state can still be harnessed for the benefit of its masses, instead of for war and destruction. The ability of the Chávez government to build on these achievements may be compromised, however, by a number of threats, both external and internal.
Apart from facing up to the threat of externally-led destabilisation by the US government, internally the Bolivarian revolution needs to ensure that mass participation and democratic practices are built into all areas of the economic, political and social transformations currently underway. It is important, too, that it develops the capacity to see a future beyond Chávez. Corruption is another huge problem, which the government has not yet adequately tackled and whose corrosive effects cannot be underestimated if the revolution is to succeed.
Keeping a critical distance when exploring and learning from the Venezuelan process is vital. But in a continent whose choice of possible futures will increasingly be determined by the contest between Bush’s neo-conservatism and Chávez’s experiment in radical democracy, it is important that progressives around the world are clear on what is at stake. Chávez and the Venezuelan revolution have reclaimed the state and used its power, alongside ordinary Venezuelans, to build a practical example of what an alternative world may look like.
Pablo Navarrete is a UK-born writer living and working in Caracas, Venezuela. He is the editor of Red Pepper’s new blog on Venezuela, available at www.redpepper.org.uk
I always find it interesting to read articles by foreigners on the Venezuelan "revolution". It teaches me a lot about my own country. For example, I did not know that the 1999 constitution "contained new obligations to pay taxes". Wait. It doesn't.
Or that the opposition is composed of the "mainly white elite". I guess that the people who marched against Chávez on April 11th, 2002, were "mainly white elite". It certainly didn't look that way at the time.
Or that the coup, the strike-lockout, and the referendum were all carried out by the same people: a faceless, sinister "opposition".
Or that the US is even contemplating an attack on Venezuela from Colombia.
Or that a "revolution" can be carried out without overthrowing the ruling class.
Live and learn.
Posted by: Henry Georget | December 07, 2005 at 05:09 PM