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At
the special congress of the Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in
mid-November, accompanied by an international conclave of supposedly
left parties, the president of Venezuela and the top leader of the
party, Hugo Chavez, called for the formation of a Fifth International
to unite left parties worldwide to fight international capitalism and
struggle to replace it with socialism.
Chavez’s
declaration aroused interest among parties of Trotskyist
origin and identification in particular because it recognized a
historic place for the Fourth International. His argument that the only
solution to the crisis of capitalism is its replacement by socialism,
and that that required international unity of parties fighting for
socialism, coincided with the historic positions of the Trotskyist movement.
Chavez
called for a meeting of left parties in April to form the international
socialist organization he proposed. An article on the Aporrea web page, a service initiated by forces of Trotskyist origin that supports the Chavez regime,
declared that the Venezuelan president was now the recognized leader of
the world left.
FranÁois Sabado, a member of the
Executive Bureau of the Fourth International and an activist in the New
Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France, wrote an article in the
November edition of International Viewpoint magazine that
welcomes Chavez’s Fifth International call. Sabado
states that the Fourth International has already formulated, on many
occasions, its programmatic proposals around which revolutionary forces
could unite. These include “an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist
program of emergency demands, which starts from the demands and the
social needs of the popular classes, proposes a new distribution of
wealth, public and social appropriation of the key sectors of the
economy, and leads on to the revolutionary transformation of society.”
Sabado said that Chavez’s call “creates the conditions for
a new international discussion, indissociable
from solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution.”
However,
if Chavez meant what he said or understood what he was calling for, he
chose an odd venue for his call. The Caracas gathering of alleged left
parties included the Partido Revolucionario Institucional
(PRI, the main party in the lower house of the Mexican Congress), which
has never been a socialist party and is no longer even a populist one.
It also included the ruling Workers Party of Brazil, which has cast
aside whatever socialist program it ever had and administers a neoliberal regime hardly different from its
right-wing predecessor in government. In fact, according to the
Argentine Trotskyist journal Alternativa Socialista
(Dec.17), a representative of the PRI at the gathering interrupted
Chavez and called on him to join the association of Christian
Democratic parties to which the PRI is allied.
Alternativa Socialista wrote: “The context was not
favorable. Most of the guests were more interested in making deals with
the local ‘boliburguesia’ [businessmen who
have profited from their relations with the Chavez government] or the
very ‘red’ state bureaucracy than talking about internationals, much
less hearing the names of Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Marx or Engels. ... The representatives of the PT [Workers
Party] of Brazil declared that they
preferred to stay in the framework of the Sao Paulo forum, a sort of regroupment of neoliberal
Social Democrats. And the Latin American Communist Parties, with the
exception of the Cuban one, which has not yet taken a position,
defended their position of anti-imperialist united fronts, which have
failed for decades. The CPs could not
tolerate the recognition of the Fourth International….”
In
the Dec. 4 issue of Socialismo o Barbarie, the magazine of the Nuevo MAS (New
Movement Toward Socialism), another Argentine Trotskyist
group, Claudio Tesla wrote: “You have to recognize that Chavez is a
specialist in taking the content out of words, or directly turning
fundamental concepts upside down. Thus, when he proclaimed the building
of ‘Twenty-first Century Socialism,’ he immediately followed that by
establishing that this peculiar ‘socialism’ was going to be built in
collaboration with businessmen—that is, without expropriating the
capitalists.
“Then
when the working class began to raise demands and fight through trade
unions independent of the government, he talked about forming ‘workers
councils.’ Of course, these peculiar ‘soviets’ were not going to be
democratic organs of the masses (like those in the Russian Revolution)
but organizations of Chavistas to put an end
to the problems caused by trade unions, especially, in the public or
nationalized sector. After that the announcement that ‘popular
militias’ were going to be formed had nothing to do with organizing a
Red Guard, as in 1917, or the militias of other revolutions, as in
Spain in 1936. They would be part of the armed forces for maintaining
order.”
Chavez’s
recognition of the Fourth International was not so surprising or
reassuring to Trotskyists who remember that a
former minister of labor in his government was of Trotskyist
origin, and claimed to be a Trotskyist, but
had to be dumped from the government in response to protests from
workers who were infuriated by his support of a company against them
(an Argentine-owned company backed by the Peronist
government Chavez regarded as an ally).
However
contradictory, nonetheless, Chavez’s leftism
has not been limited to words. There has been a slow process of
radicalization of the regime and a series of nationalizations, which
have grown over the past year. The most recent is the nationalization
of some banks. But it was a symptomatic move in more ways than one. In
the first place, it was long overdue. The Venezuelan banking sector is
dominated by international trusts, although most of the deposits are
government money deriving from the income of the nationalized oil
industry.
The Economist, the
leading magazine of the British capitalist class, reported in its Dec.
10 issue: “‘Being rich is bad,’ Hugo Ch·vez
is wont to remark. But in the decade in which he has been Venezuela’s
president, some people with close ties to his regime have made
fortunes. Now he seems to have lost patience with them. Over the past
fortnight the government has shut down seven small banks and an
insurance company and arrested several of their owners, accusing them
of fraud and mismanagement. The president says this is part of a drive
to root out corruption. Yet the scandal would seem to lead to the upper
echelons of his government.”
Chavez’s
move against some bankers (10 percent of the banking industry) touched
off a panic in the sector, with bank shares falling precipitously. The
rate of the national currency, the Bolivar, suffered a corresponding
drop on the exchange market. Chavez moved quickly to reassure the
bankers.
The
Bloomberg press service reported Dec. 4: “Chavez said yesterday his
government’s investigation of banks is confined to a small group, not
the entire sector, a day after threatening to seize financial
institutions for failing to comply with regulations. The government
took over four banks on Nov. 20. … ‘Chavez is saying I’m not going to
nationalize the entire financial system, just the small fries,’ said
Kathryn Rooney, an emerging-markets analyst at Bulltick
Securities Corp. in Miami.”
The
Economist
commented cynically that whatever the reason for Chavez’s move against
some relatively small banks, Chavez “has seized on the issue to assume
one of his favourite roles, as scourge of the
rich. He may yet turn this scandal to his political advantage.”
After
his threats to bankers, Chavez threatened the transnational car
manufacturers that unless they produced “rustic” cars—that is, vehicles
able to negotiate the country’s largely rough roads, and shared their
technology with local companies, that he would nationalize them.
In
its Dec. 25 issue, Truth About Cars, a magazine of the U.S. automotive industry,
commented: “Their options are either to ‘share their technology with
local businesses’ (a half-expropriation) or get out (a full
expropriation.) Chavez usually doesn’t do nationalizations in piecemeal
fashion. He tends to nationalize whole industry sectors. The metals,
cement, oil, coffee and electricity sectors are all being owned by the
people of Venezuela, or Hugo Chavez, depending
how one looks at it.”
However,
the magazine speculated that Chavez’s objective was to replace Japanese
and American carmakers with Chinese capitalist companies, in line with
his project of making China the major consumer of
Venezuelan oil, replacing the United States. Truth About Cars
noted that Chavez has declared that China is his main strategic ally
in the world, but thought that his perspective was illusory, given China’s dependence on the
American and Japanese market:
“The
matters are being complicated by the US and Japan being major
trading partners of China, and by GM and Toyota having major joint ventures
in China and buying lots of parts
from Chinese manufacturers. China will gladly buy Venezuela’s oil and
build them some ports to go with it. But they won’t put their booming
auto business at risk for some 100,000 ‘rustic’ cars built in Venezuela.”
Truth
About Cars
pointed out that in any case, the Venezuelan car workers were not
likely to gain by having U.S. and Japanese bosses
replaced by Chinese ones: “Should it really come to the Chinese taking
over Venezuela’s auto plants, then the
workers may be in for a rude surprise. Chinese factory managers are not
necessarily known for their subtle style when it comes to labor
relations.”
However,
Chavez has not demonstrated an interest in defending workers’ rights.
He has also made a special alliance with Lukashenko,
the dictator of Byelorus, who crushed the
Minsk subway workers strike and has fostered legislation that would
abolish collective bargaining in principle. According to Lukashenko’s law, the only contacts would be
between individual workers and the boss.
It
is also a contradiction for Chavez to say that he is for an
international movement for socialism, when he makes special alliances
with governments like Lukashenko’s or Amadinejad’s in Iran, which are violently
reactionary, just because they are in conflict on one level or another
with the United States.
Of
course, Chavez has justification for seeking tactical alliances with
third-world capitalist governments that are trying to win some
maneuvering room from U.S. imperialism. The support of
Lula’s government was important to Chavez’s survival when the
Venezuelan capitalists tried to oust him with a lockout of the oil
industry, which they then controlled. Likewise, the very limited
defense of Cuba’s right to self-determination by the PRI government in
Mexico helped to stave off a massive U.S. assault on the Cuban
revolution.
But
there has to be a clear separation between such tactical and diplomatic
alliances and political alliances. Chavez can win no points with the
Mexican rulers by appealing to them to join a world socialist movement.
And he makes his appeal for a revolutionary socialist international
appear ridiculous by appealing to parties like the Mexican PRI.
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