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In
swearing in his new cabinet on Jan. 8, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez
proclaimed the goal of carrying through a socialist revolution. A Jan. 9
AP dispatch quoted him as saying: "We're heading toward socialism,
and nothing and no one can prevent it.”
In his
inauguration address Jan. 10, he took an even stronger line. The Jan. 11
British Guardian reported: “The past eight years of his rule, which
started with Blairite rhetoric about a third way, laid the groundwork for
what will henceforth be accelerating radicalisation on the principles of
Trotsky's permanent revolution, said Mr Chavez. ‘We have hardly begun. It
will be permanent.’”
The Venezuelan
president followed up his proclamation of the goal of socialism by
announcing that he would nationalize the energy and telecommunications
trusts, as well as four oil projects on the Orinoco River owned by big
imperialist companies.
Chavez
certainly issued a ringing challenge. “Socialism or death,” he declared.
Those, in fact, might now be the alternatives. The theory of “permanent
revolution” indicates that in a country dominated by imperialism any
reform measures that stop short of a complete socialist revolution are
likely to be abortive and eventually suicidal; without fundamental
economic change, the working people will eventually sink into passivity,
and then the imperialists and local capitalists will strike back.
Chavez’s
statements did rattle the local stock market and Wall Street. But in
general, it seems that the capitalists are waiting to see how far economic
changes will actually go.
The Washington
Post reported Jan. 11: “Investors are still unclear about what his
nationalization plan entails. But Ricardo Sanguino, head of the finance
commission in the National Assembly, told reporters Wednesday that the
government would negotiate settlements with companies it plans to
nationalize. ‘We're not going to do anything illegal,’ he said. ‘There
will always be compensation.’”
The article
continued: “Shares of the CANTV telephone company, which is expected to
be nationalized, rebounded after Sanguino's assurances to investors.”
Meanwhile, the
oil markets and energy companies took a wait-and-see attitude, noted
David Mares, a political science professor at the University of
California at San Diego, who has studied the Venezuelan oil industry.
“He's
announcing that he's going to do what the markets already expected him to
do—take more control of the profits of the Venezuelan production,"
Mares told the Washington Post. "He has not said that
nationalization in the Orinoco means 100 percent Venezuelan ownership.”
So far, Chavez’s nationalizations have involved the state taking a 51
percent of the stock and leaving the actual management in the hands of
the capitalists.
Decisive for
actually carrying out a socialist revolution in Venezuela will be the
creation of a leadership that can effectively mobilize the masses. Even
the Cuban socialist revolution, which was carried through from the top,
was based on the holding of power by the Rebel Army.
Chavez is talking about a
process of expanding community councils. But organs of direct democracy
without a revolutionary leadership have been a recipe for still-born
reformism, as in Germany and Austria after 1918.
Chavez’s party,
the Movement for the Fifth Republic is a multi-class populist
organization that is notoriously distrusted by the masses. He has now
followed up his proclamation of revolutionary goals by proclaiming the
formation of a revolutionary party, a united socialist party. The process
of the formation of the new party is likely to prove decisive for the
process of radicalization in Venezuela. But many questions remain about
this project.
About two weeks
after his election victory, in a Dec. 15 speech, Chavez announced the
formation of the Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV). He said it
would include all of the parties that support him and be the government
party.
Parties were
free either to join the PSUV or to continue their independent existence,
but in the latter case they would not be included in the government.
The function of
the party, Chavez said, would be to provide a means to overcome
bureaucratic obstacles to the representation of the masses and to the
transformation of the country.
The
announcement of this project has been followed by a long series of
statements and discussion articles posted on Aporrea (www.aporrea.org), a
website dedicated to the defense of the Chavez regime and sponsored by
groups with Trotskyist origins, the Venezuelan Partido de la Revolución
Socialista (PRS) and the Argentine Movimiento Socialista de Los
Trabajadores.
The Fifth
Republic Movement immediately announced that it was dissolving into the
new party, transferring all its assets to it, and that “everyone” was
welcome to join it. That statement alone raises the question of what the
class character of the new party will be.
A Dec. 25
article by Humberto Marquez on the Aporrea site noted: “During the
election campaign … Chavez had warned that after his victory he would
give impetus to a ‘single party of the revolution,’ as he calls the
process that he is leading and which is now ‘entering a new phase of
building Twenty-First Century Socialism,’ the vague concept that he
evokes in his speeches.
“Besides, he
[Chavez] will promote a reform of the Constitution, which he himself
pushed in 1999 to adjust it to the concepts that he is using—for example,
to define the Venezuelan economy as a mixed system of private, state, and
social property and permit his reelection for an indefinite number of
terms.
“The Fifth
Republic Movement (MVR), created by Chavez in 1997 to run into the 1998
election, which he won, has ‘disappeared and gone into history, and will
give way for the United Socialist Party,’ a statement of his followers
declared last weekend. On Dec. 18, the leaders of the MVR began the
process for its legal dissolution, in order to transfer its moveable and
immoveable assets to the new PSUV, when it is formed.”
Another
article, by Sergio Sanchez and Carlos Mogollon, pointed out: “The
[right-wing] opposition has understood that it needs to win over popular
sectors that are now supporting President Chavez but are discontented
because of the quantity of defects in a lot of the functionaries and
parties of the Bolivarian government.
“The
bureaucracy present in all the institutions of the state, corruption on
the part of many of those who call themselves comrades, despotism of some
who talk about socialism that at the same time mistreat, humiliate, and
forget the people, and opportunism have been features of the good part of
the Chavista ruling class, which has undermined the confidence of the
people and even its hope.
“A section of
the opposition has understood that if it builds up its forces … it could
in a short time win certain territorial bases, such as governorships and
mayoralties, since a recent poll shows that only 35 percent of the
population supports the mayors and governors that support the revolution.”
The discredit
of the Fifth Republic Movement in the eyes of the masses has been
notorious. But the question is if the entire old party joins the new
party, how is the latter going to be different?
Of course,
Chavez may think that he can control the new party more directly if the
ranks elect leaders in accordance with his indications. He has said that
he expects that they will follow his suggestions. Moreover, the new party
is not being formed on the basis of a program but rather a directive from
Chavez. The basic common thread of all the statements of groups joining
the new party is their acceptance of Chavez’s leadership.
The historic
model for a revolutionary socialist party, the Russian Bolshevik Party,
was a party seeking to organize and lead social struggles, including a
mass struggle for working-class power.
The Bolsheviks
were a vanguard formation of disciplined cadre organized on the basis of
a revolutionary or anti-capitalist program. The Bolsheviks never viewed
their party as becoming a "state party" or the future apparatus
of the new government they sought to bring into being.
Instead, they
viewed the socialist government of the workers' state they envisioned as
consisting of the direct rule of the working class and their allies among
the revolutionary peasantry through the form of soviets (“soviets” being
the Russian word for "councils") representing the vast majority
of the entire oppressed classes.
In short, the
Bolsheviks set out to establish soviet rule, as opposed to the rule of a
vanguard party. The socialism they fought for was to be a new society
where, for the first time in human history, the vast majority ruled in
their own name, through their own institutions (soviets), and in the
context of the abolition of private property for profit—that is, a
collectively owned and managed society.
So far, this is
by no means the conception of socialism or of the revolutionary socialist
party projected by Chavez. The latter institution appears to be a party
based on governmental power; such a party tends strongly to become a
magnet for opportunists of all sorts. Neither its socialist program nor
its class character have been defined.
Chavez’s
decision to call the new party socialist and to devote it in principle to
socialist revolution is certainly a step forward. But it is still quite
uncertain what this will lead to. Even his definitions of socialism and
socialist revolution remain vague.
In the Aporrea
discussion articles, both the terms “único” and “unitario” are used for
the new party, with some contributors objecting to the first. “Unico” or
“single” does suggest a state party. There is a long history of state
parties that call themselves socialist in Third World countries that have
been anything but democratic and still less revolutionary.
Chavez’s
project has launched considerable political discussion that can advance
the mass radicalization in Venezuela. But it needs to begin to be focused
more on program than it has been so far. Arguing about organizational
questions is pointless until the question of the program and class
character of the new party is settled.
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