|
U.S.
Increases Pressure on Venezuela as Chavez Declares for Socialism
by Gerry Foley /
March 2005 issue of Socialist Action
"Mr Chavez's claims of an assassination plot
come as he is embarking on one of the most radical phases of his promised
revolution," The British Guardian reported Feb. 22.
The article continued: “The [Hugo Chavez] government has announced
it will take over the running of land and businesses that are not being
fully exploited by their owners. Explaining the move, Mr Chavez said: ‘There
is a wise old saying, the owner of the warehouse should use it or sell
it.’”
Chavez said that he had been warned that U.S.
covert forces were planning to assassinate him. In response to this threat,
he proclaimed that if he were killed Venezuelan oil exports to the United
States would be halted. At present Venezuela is the fourth largest supplier
of oil to the U.S. The populist leader said that he had no intention of
isolating himself from the population out of fear of a CIA hit.
Clearly, since Chavez’s defeat of the opposition
trying to remove him in the Aug. 15 referendum, Venezuela’s president has
escalated his confrontation with the U.S. imperialists and their local
allies. The British press has been most concerned with his support of a
takeover of lands of a large ranch belonging to a British company.
The British Independent, which has the reputation
of being a left-liberal paper, ran a major article on this affair in its
Feb. 23 issue, using heavy irony to try to denounce the move by the
Venezuelan peasants and government: “Amid slogans that hark back to 1960s
Cuba, President Chavez has ‘declared war’ on large, and allegedly
unproductive, farms. El Charcote, among 14 ranches in Venezuela owned by
Agropecuaria Flora, a Vestey subsidiary and the biggest meat producer in
the country, is one of the first targets.
“Known locally as ‘the English company’ Flora is
widely, if falsely, believed to be merely a front for the British crown.
Many locals are even convinced the Queen not only owns El Charcote but
consumes the beef it produces.”
At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre,
Brazil, at the end of January, Chavez adopted a very militant tone toward
U.S. imperialism: “The permanent aggression that we are suffering from the
United States comes from them alone—they attack, we defend ourselves. The
greatest negative force in the world is the United States government.
“Our economic relations have not been much
affected but they are precarious and will continue to be as long as the
imperialist aggression continues. The government of the United States is
becoming isolated on this continent.
“We are anti-imperialists. We are a government
that opens its arms to the world. May God deliver us from a unipolar world”
(from the Aporrea website in Venezuela).
On Feb. 25, Chavez took a step further in clarifying
his political perspectives. In an address to an international meeting in
Caracas on poverty, Chavez said that capitalism was incapable of solving
global economic and social problems. “So, if not capitalism, then what? I
have no doubt, it's socialism.”
Chavez stated that earlier experiences with
“socialism” in the world, an apparent reference to the Soviet Union, might
not be the example to follow: “We have to re-invent the socialism of the
21st century.” He has also spoken
in favor of taking a new look at Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent
revolution, the major proposition of which is that in today’s world
socialist revolution is the only solution to imperialist domination.
However, at the same time, Chavez has defended
the Brazilian ex-left president, Luis da Silva ("Lula"), against
the crowds who booed him because he has abandoned the historic program of
his Workers Party and continued to follow the same neoliberal policies as
his right-wing pro-imperialist predecessor.
Chavez has clearly reached the point of tiptoeing
up to the red line that separates populism from socialist revolution. He is
obstructing imperialism’s plans for
tightening its domination of Latin America. That
is reflected by a stepping up of denunciations of his government by the
U.S. rulers, who have even gone so
far as to claim that he is transforming Venezuela
into a totalitarian state.
However, there is still no sign that Chavez is
prepared to take the necessary steps to further the revolutionary mobilization
of Venezuela’s workers and poor peasants on a scale necessary to overturn
the capitalist economy and promote the spread of socialist revolution
throughout Latin America.
As long as he does not do that, he will not
really threaten the U.S. domination of the southern continent, but he may
expose himself to more and more brutal attacks from the imperialists that
he is defying verbally and annoying by partial actions against their
interests.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Click here for info on how to subscribe to
Socialist Action newspaper.
|
