[The following
interview was conducted with Orlando Chirino, national organiser of
Venezuela’s National Workers’ Union (UNT) federation and leader of
C-CURA (the United Autonomous Revolutionary Class Current) within the
UNT. --Ed]
Interview
Trade Unions and Socialism in Venezuela
By Orlando Chirino and Aporrea.org
Wednesday, Jul 18, 2007
The following interview was conducted with ORLANDO CHIRINO, national organizer of Venezuela’s National Workers’ Union (UNT) federation and leader of C-CURA (the United Autonomous Revolutionary Class Current) within the UNT. The interview was conducted after President Hugo Chávez proposed the formation of a new unified Venezuelan Socialist Party (PSUV). Originally posted on the left-wing Venezuelan Web site Aporrea.org in late April, it was translated and posted in English on the British International Socialism journal Web site in early May 2007.
WHAT IS your assessment of the issues posed by President Chávez when he launched the proposal for forming the PSUV on March 24?
THE GREAT virtue of the discussion that President Chávez has set in motion is that it gives us an opportunity to discuss the nature of the Venezuelan revolution, the project for creating the PSUV, the role played in the revolution by different social sectors, and in particular the working class. It’s a debate about how you build an organization and it raises a whole series of questions that we should discuss openly, publicly, and with complete honesty.
What is most worrying is that the president ended up by doing exactly what he criticized. He criticized the political cannibalism that characterizes the organizations of the Left, but then he went on to say that anyone who does not share his views is a counterrevolutionary. I think this is a serious mistake, because far from encouraging debate it closes it down and encourages the sectarianism that the president has said he is anxious to fight.
WHAT DO you think are the most important issues?
THERE
ARE lots of issues to discuss, but let me address two in particular.
The president says, for example, that the reformists are a danger—and I
agree. And yet it is my view that the program the president is putting
forward rests on a reformist conception, and that there is no
perspective for a break with the logic of capital. Let me explain.
After the great neoliberal offensive of the 1990s, we are seeing again multimillion-dollar investments by international capital in strategic sectors of the economy such as oil, mining, coal, construction, and infrastructural projects. International consortia from China, Russia, and Iran are exploiting our workers more than ever. I don’t believe that some multinationals are better than others. They are all essentially concerned with monopolizing production and trade, exploiting workers, pillaging the natural resources of nations and intervening politically in the economic decision-making processes of those countries. This strikes at the heart of the kind of economic model we are building.
The president represents investment by the multinationals as a step
forward. I see it as mortgaging the revolution. For me, the first step
toward socialism is to break with multinational companies and
corporations. What this government is doing, on the contrary, is
promoting concentration into larger and larger economic groups; the
purchase of CANTV and the Electricity Company of Caracas are examples.
There’s no question that the recuperation of these enterprises by the
state is a step forward, but the business sector was so pleased with
these developments that they made a public announcement of their
support for the move.
Equally worrying is the president’s
announcement that Sidor [a major steel company] will not be
nationalized because it is being run by “good capitalists.” In fact,
this company was privatized under the Fourth Republic and is owned by a
multinational consortium headed by Techint of Argentina.
Our understanding is that the president took this view because the company is based in a country governed by a “friendly” president, namely [Néstor] Kirchner. But we wonder when we began to speak of “good” and “bad” capitalists?’
The president is currently making a lot of public references to China. We would ask him not to do that, because capitalism was restored in China a number of years ago, and today it is the country where the working class is most exploited. They are modern-day slaves, led by a rotten party that calls itself communist, but is in fact completely subject to the multinationals. To cap it all, the Chinese have just introduced into the constitution the right to private property. China is hardly a good example.
Another important issue is the role of social classes in this revolution. You don’t have to refer to Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky to know that the only way to overturn capitalism, a system in which a minority imposes its will on the majority, is that the working class and the people—we who are the majority and the producers—take the lead in expropriating the enterprises and place them under our control. In that sense, what we mean by socialism is very simply stated.
Yet that is becoming more and more difficult in Venezuela. We workers are not in that position, even in the key sectors of the economy, to contemplate even joint management, let alone workers control. The government will not consider the possibility of co-management in strategic sectors.
Our comrades at the Constructora Nacional de Válvulas (today called Inveval) had to undergo real physical hardships and hunger, and fight like hell before the government finally listened to them and agreed to expropriate the company. The workers of Venepal (now Invepal) had to fight for ten months before they beat the capitalists—while the government looked the other way. And now we have the case of Sanitarios Maracay where the workers are in the fourth month of an occupation for nationalization—but the government still seems less than interested in nationalizations like this.
This suggests that the government’s program does not include expropriation, and nor will the PSUV’s. But if this doesn’t happen, we will not be moving toward socialism, but only toward some kind of state capitalism with a developmentalist perspective. This leaves private property untouched, and means that capitalist exploitation and the accumulation of profit by a very few will continue.
WHAT ABOUT Chávez’s view on the independence of the trade unions?
THIS
IS a really important issue. The president can’t change history and
argue that those of us who are fighting for the independence of the
trade-union movement have somehow been “poisoned” by the experience of
the Fourth Republic. On the contrary, trade union autonomy is the key
antidote to bureaucratization; that’s why the revolution was saved in
2002 and 2003, and as long as it continues it will be the key safeguard
of the revolution.
The CTV (the old national trade union, the Venezuelan Confederation of Labor) sold its soul to the old two-party system and the governments it produced. For forty years the Venezuelan trade-union movement lived through its worst period, because workers were puppets in the games played by the old parties (Copei and AD) and the bosses’ organizations. Venezuelans still remember how AD (Democratic Action) decided the fate of workers, bought and sold contracts, and worked with the government to control the unions and the CTV. We should remember that the bosses’ strike of 2002–03 was led by CTV and Fedecámaras (the bosses’ organization) working hand in hand. The raison d’être of the new UNT union is exactly the opposite: to fight for trade union autonomy, and organize the workers to fight against any attempt to submit them to political control or give in to compromises.
(click here to view entire interview)
Comments