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Since the failure of the U.S. backed coup
of April 2002 to remove the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela, that
country’s radical leader has posed the major political challenge to
imperialism. His support for to Cuba has also been an important
encouragement and material aid for the world’s only revolutionary
regime.
Up until now, however, the
radicalism of the Chavez regime has consisted essentially of a
redistribution of the country’s substantial oil income for social and
progressive projects and general denunciations of imperialism and
capitalism, as well as invoking the promise of a socialist future.
The process in Venezuela now seems to have reached the stage where
complications are becoming evident and the need for definitions and
concrete plans more acute.
Thus, on July 29 on his
program "Aló Presidente," Chavez projected the idea of a
specific "petrosocialism." A Venezuelan government press
release said: "The president of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela made remarks about building a socialist model that is based
on the potential of oil resources,during his regularly broadcast
program "Aló Presidente."
"‘We are committed to
constructing a socialist model that is very different from what Karl
Marx imagined in the 18th century. Our model is to count on petroleum
wealth,’ Chavez said."
The rise in the oil price
since Chavez took office in 1998 from $9 a barrel to the current
all-time high of $78 a barrel has been a bonanza for the radical
regime. Chavez has said that he expects the price to rise to $100.
The vast increase in the country’s oil income has made it possible
for Chavez to finance many social projects without coming to sword’s
point with the local capitalists.
However, it is risky to base
any long-term scheme for social development on confidence in the
world capitalist market for oil. The very high price of oil is an
incentive to develop new sources and methods of reducing oil use and
developing substitutes that could eventually lead to lower oil
prices. Moreover, the Venezuelan oil industry is largely dependent on
equipment from the imperialist countries.
Thus, The New York Times
reported July 27: "In comments that jolted global energy markets
last week, Mr. Ramírez, the energy minister, acknowledged that
Petróleos de Venezuela had hired 40 percent fewer drilling rigs than
its target for this year, in part because of new rules requiring
contractors to donate 10 percent of the value of their contracts to
social welfare projects."
The British Economist, one of
the most astute capitalist observers, has been speculating that the
Chavez regime will eventually run out of steam because the decline in
investment in the Venezuelan oil industry by imperialist corporations
will lead to a disastrous drop in production.
The report by Ramirez
indicates that this is in fact a danger. The New York Times article
continued: "The country’s oil exports fell 15 percent while
overall production dropped 7 percent in the first quarter of this
year," said Ramón Espinasa, a chief economist at Petróleos de
Venezuela in the pre-Chávez era and now a respected consultant,
citing both the difficulties with hiring rigs and a surge in domestic
fuel consumption driven by subsidized prices.
"Combined with lower
global oil prices during part of this year, Venezuela’s income from
oil exports may decline by about 24 percent in 2007, to $45.6 billion
compared with $60.4 billion last year, by Mr. Espinasa’s estimate."
Moreover, although Petroleos
de Venezuela is the central pillar of what is supposed to become a socialist
economy, it is not subject to workers control or indeed any
democratic control and, according to The New York Times article, it
is facing charges of corruption and mismanagement:
"‘Our sovereignty is at
risk if we allow Petróleos de Venezuela to remain in this
situation," Luís Tascón, a pro-Chávez lawmaker, said in a
telephone interview. … We cannot allow this company to remain an
indecipherable black box.’ Mr. Tascón has summoned Mr. Ramírez to the
National Assembly to respond to accusations of corruption against
senior executives."
The New York Times also
reported that in addressing the National Assembly in the third week
in July, Luis Vierma, vice president of exploration and production at
Petroleos de Venezuela, said that the national oil company was in
"an operational emergency."
Chavez himself has chosen this moment to
declare that the "Twenty-First Century Socialism" he offers
has nothing to do with Marxism.
This statement was commented
on July 27 by the Aporrea website, an independent left website that
supports the Chavez government in an interview with Stalin Perez
Borges, a leader of the radical trade-union federation, the CUT, who
has joined Chavez’s new party, the United Venezuelan Socialist Party
(PSUV) : "Well, the president said in the last "Aló
Presidente," the Venezuelan Socialist Party will not take up the
banners of Marxism-Leninism, because this is a dogmatic thesis whose
time is past and it does not suit today’s reality. . . .
“Moreover, in relation to the
role of the working class, he said: ‘The theses that the working
class is the motor force of socialism and revolution are obsolete. …
Work today is different, it is the information and telecommunications
industry. Karl Marx could not even dream of these things.’"
It is certain that the PSUV,
which Chavez has said is an essential instrument for transforming the
country, is not a Leninist Party. In a few months, it has signed more
than 5 million new members, a major section of the country’s adult
population. Such a party cannot be even a social democratic Party. It
can only be a state party, a populist party.
The union leader responded to
Chavez’s dismissal of the working class by noting that it was the
workers who saved the radical president when the local capitalists
and imperialists tried to overthrow him.
As for Chavez’s denial of
Marxism, labels of course are not decisive. But his taking the
trouble to declare that the socialism that he advocates cannot be
Marxist amounts essentially to a guarantee to the capitalists and
their imperialist big brothers that Chavez does not really intend to
dismantle capitalism, and that invocations of socialism are and will
remain vague.
In fact, Chavez’s obituary of
Marxism came at the same time as the retiring minister of defense,
Raúl Isías Baduel, declared in a speech that Chavez’s socialism must
not be contaminated with Marxism. The New York Times article referred
to above said that this statement aroused an uproar in the military.
It seems, in fact, to have
indicated that the base of reaction in the armed forces has not been
eliminated, nor therefore the danger of a future coup, or at least
right-wing threats to keep Chavez from beyond the framework of what
is tolerable to the local capitalists and their foreign backers.
Thus, at this point it seems
doubtful if Chavez’s reforms will go further unless he changes his
strategy and his definitions, or unless a new leadership arises in
the country.
The leaders of the radical
wing of the union movement—Perez Borges, who joined the
PSUV, and Orlando Chirinos, who did
not—have been increasingly critical of Chavez. They are obviously
facing a more and more difficult task of addressing the political and
organizational weaknesses of the radicalization that has been
developing since the Chavez regime came into office.
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