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The dynamics of the Venezuelan revolution
by Stuart Munckton
The Venezuelan revolution has raised the banner of socialism again — a project declared dead and buried after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The calls from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to construct, internationally, a “new socialism of the 21st century” carry weight because behind Chavez stand Venezuela’s increasingly radicalised working people. The conclusion that socialism is the alternative to the crimes of imperialism has been drawn not from abstract theoretical discussions, but from the experience of the living class struggle.
The revolution is revisiting the classic questions thrown up by the struggle to create a better world. For instance: reform versus revolution? Can you simply take hold of the existing institutions, fashioned under capitalism to serve the status quo, in order to transform society, or do you need to build new ones, based not on a top down bureaucracy, but directly on popular power?
This question is being answered in both a positive and negative way. The old state structures — dominated by a corrupt bureaucracy, have not proven effective as a tool to achieve change. The degree by which the revolution has advanced in many cases is the degree by which these structures have been bypassed and new ones created based directly on the power of the working people.
The social missions were consciously established outside the old state structures. There is a struggle to create new popular-based structures to avoid sabotage and corruption. The current experiment with communal councils is one example; it is a way of distributing funds directly to institutions of the working people themselves, bypassing the old inherently corrupt state structures.
There is a struggle developing inside the revolution itself over these questions. One hand, Chavez and the grass roots pushing in the direction of more power to the working people. On the other, bureaucratic and often corrupt elements (referred to as “counter-revolutionaries in red berets” — red berets being a symbol of support for the revolution) that still dominate much of the state and political structures.
The police force have so far been unable to be reformed. Chavez has raised the prospect of dissolving the existing police forces and starting from scratch. In the militant January 23
barrio, the community mostly police themselves and keep out the cops. The armed forces, on the other hand, have operated in key ways as a tool of the revolution, siding with the working people over the pro-capitalist opposition at crucial times.
The role of the armed forces is due to a combination of historical factors and the conscious strategy of the Chavez government to draw the closest possible links between the military and the people. This is not a finished question. Crucial to consolidating the “armed power” of the revolution is the goal stated by Chavez of creating “the people in arms”, via expanding the army reserves to 1 million people.
The struggle for socialism has flowed out of the struggle against imperialism. The masses of the Venezuelan people have entered the struggle, as masses of people always do, not according to a well-developed program but according to a crisis that needs to be solved. In Venezuela’s case, it is the extreme poverty the masses have been condemned to, despite the extensive oil wealth.
The struggle has been against the abandonment of the majority. The economy has been twisted around oil, with other sectors left underdeveloped. The struggle has centred around getting hold of the oil wealth and using it to solve the major problems facing Venezuela as a result of their relegation to the role of a semi-colonial nation that provides a cheap, raw material to complement the developed first world economy. Attempting to do this has brought the process into a confrontation with the pro-imperialist elite, who are tied to imperialism and dependent on the distribution of oil revenue in a corrupt and clientalist way.
There is a tendency of some on the international left, looking in on Venezuela with a checklist of measures they consider “radical”, to downplay the significance of the missions. The missions do not amount to a social revolution, but neither can a social revolution occur without the gains associated with them. The majority of Venezuela’s working people are in the “informal” economy; unemployed, operating as street vendors, or in the black market. They have built houses with whatever they can find on whatever land is available to squat on. You can not build a socialist society with a population suffering from such degradation, and not even organised into social production. The revolution has proceeded along a course of resolving this, and in doing so, has laid the groundwork for more significant transformations of the economy.
Solving the problems of the poor has been tied with economic development, partly through the promotion of cooperatives. Under Chavez, the number of cooperatives has grown from 800 to over 100,000, involving as much as 10% of the adult population. In the countryside, agriculture is so underdeveloped that Venezuela has to import 70% of its food, Not even being able to feed its population puts Venezuela in a very vulnerable position. So the land reform, taking under-utilised land owned by large landowners or the state and redistributing it to cooperatives of previously landless peasants, both tackles underdevelopment and economically empowers the poor.
This push, and the gains of the missions, requires control of the oil industry. It also pushes in the direction of more measures at the expense of corporations on behalf of the poor majority. This is because the government needs to provide cheap credit, cheap transportation and distribution, and a guaranteed market to the cooperatives, which are themselves crucial to empowering important sections of the poor. The push to overcome the legacy of imperialism leads in the direction of a greater confrontation with capitalism.
Through this confrontation with the old ruling class, the working people have become increasingly radicalised and organised. Reality has revealed to both the leadership and the working people that it is not possible to overcome the problems caused by imperialism without confronting the capitalist class that controls the economy. The actions of Venezuela’s capitalist class to the smallest moves against the right of imperialism to plunder Venezuela have revealed this.
Chavez has been perfectly clear that when they began the struggle, the leadership of the Venezuelan revolution were not thinking of socialism — a socially owned and democratically planned economy — but a “third way” of reforming the worst aspects of capitalism. On his nationally televised weekly program in February 2005, Chavez explained he was originally trying to build “capitalism with a human face, trying to give the monster a mask”. But he concluded: “this mask has fallen to the floor shattered by reality”.
Capitalism, Chavez told his viewers, “leads us straight to hell”. “Within the framework of capitalism it is impossible to solve the challenges of fighting against poverty, misery, exploitation, inequality.”
There are some on the international left who have attempted to counter-pose the leadership provided by Chavez to the struggle of the working people “from below”. But this misses the key dynamic at work. There is a close interrelationship between Chavez and the masses, with each driving the other forward at different stages. There is a contradiction put forward by those who try and counter-pose the struggle “from below” to the leadership of Chavez. A socialist revolution, involving the fundamental transformation of social relations, cannot be carried out “from above”, but only by the working people themselves. It was the actions of Venezuela’s working people that enabled the government, in January 2003, to effectively expropriate the oil industry, which has laid the basis for the gains that have followed.
Often, critics of Chavez will hold against him things that he cannot resolve, but can only be resolved through the greater radicalisation and organisation of the working people themselves to carry them out. The real criteria to judge Chavez by is not an abstract analysis of how “radical” particular measures have been at any particular time, but whether Chavez is working to deepen the consciousness and organisation of working people, or whether he is holding it back. Chavez’s introduction and constant discuss of socialism, where there was no serious push “from below” to do so, is one example of Chavez leading the working people.
This does not do away with the ongoing struggle to create a mass revolutionary party that can broaden the leadership out, but such a party will not be constructed counter-posed to the course set but Chavez, but through it.
