Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Chavez succumbs to his cancer

Venezuela's president Chavez lost his battle with cancer. Sadly, SOYMB can only conclude that he also lost his battle to create a "socialist" revolution.

Contrary to some claims made by Leftists, from the very outset of his populist rule Chavez has pursued a mostly heterodox political "revolution". While at times the government has allowed for so-called "participatory democracy", such measures have more often than not been cancelled out by centralising tendencies at the top and the perils of charismatic leadership. Chavez has only gone so far with his "Bolivarian Revolution".

What used to be the regime’s greatest strength has  turned into its weakness: it was all Chávez, and, without him, can his policies continue? His latest 2013-2019 Plan is designed to "make the revolution irreversible" but with his passing away it is now by no means certain that the more participatory tendencies within the Chavez movement will prevail against other more centralising forces. We may see increasing political fissures within the Bolivarian Revolution as rival wings vie for control. Will Chavez's successors vindicate the Eugene Debs saying that if a Moses can lead you to the Promised Land, another can just as easily lead you out again.

 Roberto Lopez, a member of the leftist Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide) current of Venezuela’s ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela writes :
"The means of avoiding this will always be through the strength of the popular movement led by a truly revolutionary program. This cannot rely on small and tiny groups or tendencies that exist within or outside the PSUV...we must try out all means for exercising democracy and achieving the broadest possible consensus for allowing unity of action throughout the country."
What is interesting is that he confirms the Socialist Party case that one of the things needed for a successful transformation of society is the necessity for  majority support.

Under the programme, Venezuela will ostensibly undertake profound and systemic change intended to replace the trappings of bourgeois democracy with the communal state. On the surface at least, the plan sounds progressive as it will transfer a great degree of power and resources from state governors and mayors to so-called communes or communal councils. Chavez authorities' experimentation with the communal councils dates back to 2006, when the government empowered communities to oversee their own local neighbourhood affairs and economic development. Councils handle everything from gas and water distribution to road paving projects to the construction of local drainage systems and sports fields. Over the years, communal councils have steadily grown in number and today there are more than 40,000 stretching all across Venezuela. Moreover, in the next four years, Chavez authorities plan to organise an additional 8 million people within some 20,000 new communes. It has to be admitted that communal councils have empowered the marginalised and women and allowed people to circumvent oftentimes corrupt municipal governments. On the other hand, one must consider that communes are in turn directed and funded by the Chavez authorities so the new system could easily wind up replicating age old clientelistic networks and cronyism, only this time without the usual middlemen. Moreover, it's by no means clear that the councils will be less corrupt over the long-term than other forms of local government, and indeed some communes have been plagued by mismanagement. Communal councils could radically alter the fabric of Venezuelan political life. Officially, the communes are to be granted the prerogatives of budgeting, state planning and even taxation. The question, however, is whether the Chavez regime is truly committed to radical change but recently, the President back-tracked with the statement that councils will not cancel out or weaken the power of local and municipal governments which casts doubt on Chavez's pledge to establish true "participatory democracy".

The normally supportive Z Magazine charged that the "government is exploiting volunteer labour, ignoring political disagreements, promoting local democracy at the expense of broader interests and consolidating central control". Speaking to Z Magazine, one anti-Chavez bureaucrat mocked the authorities, noting that the government conducted so-called "pinata parties" or "spectacular public events" in which officials doled out money. "These high profile events attract media attention and generate public interest," notes Z Magazne, but "also fuel some disillusionment, since skeptics associate them with clientelism and narrow self-interest."

 Since Chavez originally came to power, the number of co-operatives in Venezuela has skyrocketed. In 1998, only about 20,000 workers laboured in the co-operative sector yet several years later that number had increased to a whopping 1.5 million. Spurred on by free business and self-management training provided by the government, co-operatives have continued to flourish and today the authorities plan to establish tens of thousands of new communal enterprises. In some cases, officials have even laboured to secure worker ownership of closed-down factories.  the government has also exempted co-operative businesses from taxes while subsidising the purchase of equipment and physical installations with low interest loans. Chavez authorities have transferred much needed credit to banks which are owned by the aforementioned communal councils. Thousands of community banks will in turn direct resources toward new communal enterprises as the councils move to create social enterprises like neighbourhood markets, bakeries, pharmacies and even radio stations.

Despite these advances, there's been a certain amount of fraud and corruption within the co-op movement. Indeed, some groups have registered as "phantom" co-ops and later walk off with desperately needed money. Some members of Venezuela's traditional co-operative movement, which predates Chavez's initial assumption of power, argue that new co-ops may be doomed to failure as they lack key management and administrative skills.

On the one hand, there are democratic socialist or even anarchist tendencies within the Chavez movement, but on the other, a kind of anachronistic "top-down, state directed and authoritarian" political wing which could centralise and jeopardise the future of independent co-ops.

Right now, co-ops exhibit many of the same vices as capitalist firms. For example, co-ops react to supply and demand in order to maximise profit and, over time, some firms might become richer than others. If that is the case, then larger co-operatives might feel an incentive to lie and exploit the community, just like capitalist companies.  The key challenges facing co-ops is the resistance of the capitalist sector in Venezuela which still controls much of the state and local government apparatus. In spite of the legal support for co-operatives at the national level, bureaucratic state and local authorities can hold up various licences that co-operatives need to survive and grow, sometimes due to political differences with the Bolivarian government, sometimes as part of a residual culture which will not provide the required licence unless a bribe (unaffordable to the poorest co-ops) is offered.

In 2009, Chavez launched the so-called Sucre, a common currency amongst left-leaning ALBA nations of Latin America. It too seems to be doomed asa legacy of Chavez Since its inception, the idea of the Sucre has confronted many structural challenges at the political and economic level. In theory, however, the notion of launching a common currency designed to counteract the "dictatorship" of the US dollar is a good idea. Unfortunately, however, the Sucre is just an electronic currency used by ALBA nations to carry out commercial exchanges in local currency.  More recently, Chavez has urged ALBA to transform the Sucre into a real currency, though such calls have failed to gain much traction within the bloc, let alone amongst more economically powerful countries such as Brazil. In the event that right-wing governments take over in ALBA nations, the Sucre could be placed in jeopardy or the Chavez bloc itself might even dissolve it.

SOYMB neither mourns nor celebrates Chavez's passing.

4 comments:

Purple library guy said...

Some of these criticisms have weight. Others seem a bit like sour grapes. But in either case, it seems a rather petty way to handle the passing of the man who did more for socialism than any other this century.

The muted praise here seems extremely grudging--"It has to be admitted"; yes, and if it didn't absolutely have to be you would really have preferred not to, apparently. How small-minded. Chavez was a man with big dreams, big ambitions, and above all big love, and now he's dead. Can you not do better for a comrade at his death than this cold-blooded nitpicking?

ajohnstone said...

Many thinkers in various fields have added their quota to social progress. All of them, however, could only work within the conditions and the limits of their particular time. We are no worshippers of leaders or "great men" yet we recognise their achievements when it is merited. We ourselves stand on the shoulders of those past workers who have helped to make our social vision clearer. Chavez simply is not included in these ranks. Our task is to battle our political enemies. Chavez was no friend of socialists in the sense that he contributed to an understanding of socialism. His programme of radical reforms and moving from private capitalism towards state capitalism threatened the vested interests of powerful private capitalist groups but our enemy's enemy is not necessarily our friend.

It is understandable why the Left loved him when he was regularly heard espousing their slogans, making their kind of demands, using their language. Chavez offers numerous contradictions between his rhetoric and his action, between his words and its results, between his ideas and their realisation. Socialism is the ongoing task of the majority; it cannot work top down; it cannot be imposed and cannot be legislated for by leaders or a vanguard movement, no matter how well-intentioned. Too many were willing to take Chavez and his PR at face value without checking the base of the supposed revolution as Rafael Izcategui, editor of El Libertario, Venezuela’s longest-running anarchist, points out in his book "Venezuela. Revolution as Spectacle."

Chavez’s heart may have been in the right place, even if he is somewhat muddled as to the meaning of the word “socialism,” and he may well have decent intentions. But his “socialist” agenda amounts to little more than one vast reformist programme that is largely being financed by the country’s oil (btw, its petroleum industry was nationalised in 1976, long before Chavez came to power.)

Chavez referring to the state sectors in oil, steel, aluminium, iron ore, etc. said, “what we have now is state capitalism. Without workers' control, you cannot have socialism.” An article by Michael A. Lebowitz, professor emeritus of economics and adviser in the Venezuelan Ministry for the Social Economy, confirms this definition of socialism "...cooperatives have been schools of socialism – that is, they have given people experience in the process of making decisions themselves. I think the real alternative to the capitalist corporation will be workers' management of state enterprises." http://www.countercurrents.org/lebowitz111112.htm If you can't build socialism in a single country then you certainly can't build it in a single factory.

Many on the Left will accept this statement because of its failure to define what capitalism really is, a world market economy based upon buying and selling where the worker is robbed at the point of production. His “socialist” agenda amounts to little more than one vast reformist programme, largely being financed by the country’s oil revenues. We don't want to belittle this but it's not socialism. Venezuela is no nearer socialism than Russia was when it claimed to have established it.

Chavez was compelled by circumstances to govern within the confines of capitalism. Lebowitz in his book "Build it Now" writes “...there is nothing inevitable about whether the Bolivarian Revolution will succeed in building that new society or whether it will lapse into a new variety of capitalism with populist characteristics. Only struggle will determine this.” The SOYMB can only conclude that “a new variety of capitalism with populist characteristics” would be the apt description of Venezuela under Chavez. Anti-imperialist and anti-American Chavez may have been but anti-capitalist, he was not. In Venezuela, as elsewhere, capitalism staggers on.





ajohnstone said...

In retrospect, i think the blog post and my accompanying comment does not emphasise that Chávez submitted himself and his agenda to fourteen national votes, winning thirteen of them. Chavez was committed to the democratic process and the ballot. And there is no doubt that all the voting was fair. He should indeed be praise in no short measure for that.

Anonymous said...

Chavez did not make any contributions to what is known as socialism. He did great contributions to what is known as state capitalism.

With the Bolsheviks and with the Bolivarian socialism did not advance one day.

The left has not learned from the past and they still continue thinking that socialism can be established by a leader, and if that leader disappears socialism will never be established, that contradict on their own faces the main principle of Marx, that the liberation of the working class is going to be effected by the working class itself.

We do not need leaders in order to liberate ourselves