Life on the Left

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Can People’s Power Save the Bolivarian Revolution?

Rightists’ election victory poses major threat to Venezuela’s advances

President Nicolás Maduro addresses Chavista supporters on December 7, following election defeat the previous day.

By Richard Fidler

Seventeen years after Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s President for the first time, the supporters of his Bolivarian Revolution, now led by President Nicolás Maduro, suffered their first major defeat in a national election in the December 6 elections to the country’s parliament, the National Assembly.

Coming only two weeks after the victory of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina’s presidential election, it was a stunning setback to the “process of change” in Latin America that Chávez had spearheaded until his premature death from cancer in 2013. The opposition majority in the new parliament threatens to undo some of the country’s major social and economic advances of recent years as well as Venezuela’s vital support to revolutionary Cuba and other neighboring countries through innovative solidarity programs like PetroCaribe and the ALBA fair-trade alliance.

The election result is an important gain for Washington as it mounts renewed efforts to restore neoliberal hegemony in Latin America and fracture the new continental alliances (UNASUR, CELAC) that Chávez was instrumental in initiating as alternatives to the US-dominated OAS.

A decisive majority for the opposition Rightists

Under Venezuela’s mixed electoral system, which combines direct election of deputies with proportional representation of parties, the right-wing opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD, by its Spanish acronym), with 56.2% of the popular vote, won 109 seats. With the support of three indigenous deputies, elected separately, the MUD could have a two-thirds majority in the 167-seat unicameral Assembly.

The vote for President Maduro’s United Socialist Party (PSUV), which campaigned in alliance with smaller parties in the Gran Polo Patriótico Simón Bolívar (GPP), was 5,622,844, just under 41% of the total. The GPP won a total of 55 seats: 52 for the PSUV plus 3 for its allies, including 2 for the Communist party.[1] (After the election, Venezuela’s Supreme Court (TSJ) suspended the swearing in of four incoming legislators — three opposition, one PSUV — pending investigations of voting irregularities in Amazonas state. More on this below.)

With a “super majority” of two-thirds of the seats, the opposition MUD has the constitutional and legislative power to, among other things:

Block government spending and ministerial appointments;
Unseat Supreme Court justices;
Remove the Vice-President;
Convene a National Constituent Assembly, and initiate a recall referendum for President Maduro (although under article 72 of the Constitution, a call for a referendum to remove a public official from office requires the signatures of 20% of the electorate);
Submit international treaties, conventions or agreements to referendums; and
Pass or modify any draft organic law (laws enacted to develop constitutional rights, which serve as a normative framework for other laws, or which are identified as such by the Constitution).

In short, writes Lucas Koerner in Venezuelanalysis.com,

a two-thirds majority gives the opposition all of the institutional weapons necessary to reverse many of the key transformations of the Venezuelan state achieved by the Bolivarian Revolution over the last seventeen years.
They will now be empowered to revoke critical revolutionary legislation such as the Organic Law of Communes, the Organic Work and Workers’ Law (LOTTT), among numerous others, repeal international treaties such as the ALBA-TP and PetroCaribe, as well as pack the Supreme Court with an eye towards impeaching President Nicolás Maduro.

Why the opposition victory?

Whether the MUD will do all or any of these things, of course, depends on a number of factors that are not necessarily within its control — above all, how the social and class forces in Venezuela react in the changed political landscape. The MUD itself is not a cohesive political party, and has many divisions among its components. It is composed of 18 parties, 13 of which are now represented in the National Assembly! They are united primarily by their opposition to Chavismo, the spirit and program of the Bolivarian Revolution championed by Hugo Chávez and his successors. But can the election result be interpreted as a vote against Chavismo as such?

With a voter turnout of 74.5% (up from 66.4% registered in the previous legislative election, in 2010), the PSUV gained more than 350,000 votes over its result in 2010. However, it lost almost 2 million votes from the more than 7.5 million for Nicolás Maduro, the PSUV candidate in the 2013 presidential election. Where were those losses registered? Gabriel Hetland, a US professor specializing in Venezuelan politics and a first-hand observer of the election, notes that the opposition vote in affluent districts “was nearly identical to what it was in the 2010 National Assembly election.” It is clear, he writes in The Nation,

“that the MUD’s overwhelming victory was due to widespread support among popular sectors that have traditionally favored Chavismo. The MUD won 18 of 24 states, including Hugo Chávez’s home state of Barinas and erstwhile Chavista strongholds in Caracas such as 23 de Enero, Catia, and Caucaguita, a very poor district that abuts Petare, one of the largest barrios in Latin America.”[2]

Hetland reports on his conversations with voters on election day:

“In the popular-sector voting centers I visited I encountered numerous people planning to vote for the opposition. In one barrio in the city of Porlamar... only two of the 18 people I spoke with planned to vote for the PSUV. None of the voters supporting the opposition mentioned liberty or democracy as a reason for doing so. All of them said they were supporting the opposition because of the material difficulties they faced. “I want change,” a woman told me. Pointing to the baby she was holding she said, “I can’t buy formula, and my father, who is 60 years old, had to go to another country for medical treatment” because the medicine he needed was unavailable in Venezuela. Over and over I was told of people’s frustrations with long lines and shortages of food and basic goods. Another young woman holding a baby said, “I get up at 4 am to stand in line and I can’t even buy food. I want change.” As she said this, the women standing next to her nodded their heads vigorously.”

Hetland concludes:

“The sentiments expressed by these voters suggest that it’s more accurate to think of the election result less as a victory for the opposition and more as a rejection of the government.”

As Hetland indicates, voter disaffection with the PSUV reflected the harsh effects of the country’s current economic crisis on the conditions of ordinary Venezuelans, including many who in the past have voted by large majorities in support of the Chavista government. It was a “voto castigo,” a punishment vote.

Economic crisis

The shortages of basic goods, the high inflation, and the currency devaluation now afflicting millions of Venezuelans are directly linked in one way or another to the country’s dependency on hydrocarbons production. Oil accounts for more than 95% of Venezuelan exports, and almost half of its fiscal income. High oil prices made it possible for the government to invest heavily in social programs, education and efforts to diversify the economy.

However, the international price of oil has dropped precipitously in recent years with the outbreak of the global capitalist crisis in 2008 and the recent exponential increase in North American production as a result of new, environmentally disastrous techniques like fracking and tar sands production. The increase in US production alone has drastically cut the demand for foreign oil by the world’s biggest consumer — and now biggest producer — of petroleum. The dependent oil-producing countries have failed to develop a common strategy in response — Saudi Arabia, fearful of losing market share, has rejected pressure from Venezuela and others to raise prices — and OPEC, revived in 1999 by Hugo Chávez, has ceased to be a serious player in international markets.

The drop in the international price — from US$100 or more per barrel to less than $30 today — has cut deeply into Venezuelan state revenues. Although the government has maintained spending on social programs and continued to provide inexpensive oil to its Caribbean neighbors, it has had to borrow to cover budget deficits; its total foreign debt increased from 10% of GDP in 2006 to 25% of GDP in 2014 (although this is still a relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the rest of Latin America).

When the government curtailed access to dollars at the official exchange rate,[3] the black market exchange rate shot up, increasing exponentially in 2014-15. While the official rate has been fixed at 6.3 bolivars to the dollar since 2013, by the end of 2015 the black market was offering 800 bolivars to the dollar. This in turn played havoc with the price controls the government had imposed for most essential goods in order to counter retailers’ tendency to sell at the black market rate instead of the official rate. This meant that over time more and more products were priced far below the price they could obtain in neighboring countries.

More and more Venezuelans will acquire dollars at the official rate, purchase goods at the subsidized prices for many necessary products, then export them across the border for an enormous profit. Some major companies, writes Telesur correspondent Gregory Wilpert,[4] are involved in this process too, “claiming that they need to import essential goods, and then either not importing these or re-exporting them to acquire dollars. In mid-2014 Maduro estimated that up to 40 per cent of all goods imported into Venezuela (at the official exchange rate) were smuggled right back out again.”

The state has found itself forced to use its dollar currency reserves to import massive amounts of basic products, which it then sells at subsidized prices through state-owned distribution channels. This allows Venezuelans access to a limited amount of basic foodstuffs at low prices. But since these products are scarce, the black market increases exponentially and prices reach many times the regulated price.

“The situation has now become truly untenable,” writes Jorge Martin. “Ordinary working people are forced to queue for hours on end to be able to access small amounts of products at regulated prices in the state-owned supermarkets and distribution chains, and then pay extortionate prices to cover the rest of their basic needs.”

Martin notes that Venezuela’s GDP contracted 4% in 2014, and is forecast to fall by a further 7% to 10% in 2015. “President Maduro has said that inflation this year will be 85%, but many basic products have already risen by an annual inflation rate of over 100%. The IMF forecasts an inflation rate of 159% for the whole year in 2015.”

Corruption and inaction

While oil income from royalties and taxes has until recently brought extraordinary state revenues, also extraordinary are the amounts that are effectively embezzled through the joint collaboration of corrupt Venezuelan capitalists and a section of the state bureaucracy, often linked together through interlocking directorships in banks, insurance companies, firms that contract with the state, and even family members located abroad, using a variety of techniques: import fraud, speculative maneuvers with sovereign debt certificates, negotiation in marginal markets of currencies and debt certificates of the state oil corporation PDVSA, etc.

In one of a series of in-depth exposés of this process, which it describes as a “mafia-like accumulation of capital,” the left pro-Chavista tendency Marea Socialista has documented net capital flight by the “Boliburgesía” (the new “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie) of almost $260 billion (US) between 1998 and 2013 alone. This, it notes, is equivalent to 25 times the cost of Brazil’s World Cup expenditures, 10 times the fall in state income caused by the anti-Chávez oil industry shutdown in 2002-03, the construction of 6 million new homes under the government’s current housing mission, or 37 times the difference between subsidized gasoline sales prices and the cost of production.[5]

There were of course other reasons for the government defeat, as TeleSUR correspondent Tamara Pearson explains: among them, disinformation by the opposition media (still predominant in Venezuela); recent setbacks for the left elsewhere in Latin America themselves linked to the global capitalist crisis; and the alienation of many younger voters who “don’t remember what it was like in Venezuela before Chávez was elected in 1998.” But she notes as well that

“while the opposition has attracted some of the less politically aware social sectors to its anti-Chavismo discourse, the government has also lost some ground from conscientious and solid revolutionaries, partly due to its lack of a solid response to the opposition's ‘economic war.’ Although it's easier said than done to combat a rentier state, capitalist system, historical corruption, and big business's campaign of economic sabotage, Maduro has only announced things like national commissions to deal with the situation.
“While people spend up to seven hours a week lining up for food, and while many of them understand that the government isn't directly responsible for the situation, the lack of a serious response and significant measures hasn't helped support for the government.”

Further, says Pearson,

“while the government clearly sides with the poor, for multiple reasons including more right-wing attacks, it has becoming increasingly distanced from the organized grassroots.... [W]ith the way the government communicates with the people, the way it gets information out and involves people in serious decision making — there has been a step back in recent times. This aspect of the Bolivarian revolution is perhaps the most important, so the significance of it and its impact on people shouldn't be underestimated.”

Some immediate responses to election verdict

President Maduro promptly accepted the official election results but pledged to continue defending the progressive laws and social programs adopted and implemented during the last decade and a half. A new stage is opening in the Bolivarian Revolution, he said in his election night address, a stage in which the central task is to deepen the revolution by building the country’s productive capacity at all levels — “communal, communitarian, industrial and regional.” Venezuelans, he added, should see the current difficulties in the oil industry as “warnings... and as opportunities to replace the rentist petroleum system with a self-sustaining, self-sustainable productive economic system.”

(This would require some major changes in the present program of the PSUV, the Plan de la Patria or Plan for the Fatherland. Although it lists as one of its five major historical objectives “going beyond the capitalist petroleum rentist model,” it also calls for doubling Venezuelan oil production from 3.3 million barrels per day in 2014 to 6 million in 2019.)

Following Maduro’s election night speech, hundreds of Chavista activists from various popular movements marched in solidarity the next morning through the streets of Caracas to the presidential palace (Miraflores). Maduro invited the crowd to send in representatives to meet with him to discuss the next steps. In this and two subsequent meetings, 185 voceros or spokespersons of communes, commandos, brigades, etc. hammered out some lengthy documents outlining what they considered key objectives to be pursued in the coming months.[6] In addition to proposals for greater government control over foreign trade, banking and finance, more effective tax collection and a sustained fight against bureaucracy and corruption, a central theme was the need to strengthen the role and productive capacities of the communal councils and communes, the territorially based grassroots organizations that the Chavistas see as the foundational units for the eventual creation of a “communal state” of direct democracy “from below” to replace the top-down bureaucratic administration of the capitalist state.[7]

A theme heard more and more in the extensive public debate now underway in radio and TV, on web sites and in the social media is the need to move toward nationalization of the major banks and financial institutions, and possibly to establish a state monopoly over foreign trade — essential measures, in my view, if Venezuela is to establish public control over the speculators and protect itself from the worst vagaries of uncontrollable world prices.

Maduro has established work teams to systematize these and other such grassroots proposals in a “central document of the Bolivarian Revolution” as a guide to action in its new stage. And he has convened an organizing committee to meet January 23 to prepare a “Congress of the Fatherland,” although providing few details on what he has in mind.

Communal Parliament

On December 15 Diosdado Cabello, PSUV deputy leader and president of the outgoing National Assembly, presided over the first gathering of the National Communal Parliament. This legislative body was provided for in the Organic Law of Communes, adopted in 2012, but it was only recently that there was a sufficient critical mass of municipal and regional communes to convene it. The communes had begun electing delegates (voceros) to this body in August 2015. It was originally intended that it would function as an adjunct to the National Assembly. “Now it's up to you in the National Communal Parliament, to discuss and present proposals that you consider necessary to help President Nicolas Maduro,” Cabello told the delegates. He said this grassroots parliament would help to shield the country’s laws of Popular Power from right-wing attempts to rescind them in the new National Assembly.

The Communal Parliament has met several times since, and in early January announced that its voceros from Venezuela’s 24 states would meet February 4 to adopt their internal rules of functioning, which will then be published in a new monthly publication, the Gacetas Comunales.

In a parallel development, the outgoing National Assembly hastily adopted in late December a spate of pending legislation that was promptly ratified by Maduro in accordance with the Constitution. A major one, the Law of Presidential Councils of the People’s Power, will provide a means for direct citizen input in decision-making by the government (in this case, the President). The purpose, as the introduction to the law proclaims, is “to strengthen the System of Popular Government” by establishing a basic network that “addresses in a profound way the concrete problems of the population through policies, plans, programs and projects for sectoral development... based on the principles and values enshrined in the Constitution....”

Also adopted was a ground-breaking Anti-GMO and Anti-Patenting Seed Law, the result of an ongoing grassroots campaign by environmental and campesino social movements over the past two years. “The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty,” write the authors of the linked article, “because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization.

“The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy — the people as legislator — in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions.”

The new opposition-dominated National Assembly may very well attempt to reverse some or all of these legislative gains, of course. However, PSUV deputy Diosdado Cabello, the former Assembly president, notes that the Constitutional Division of the Supreme Court may disallow national laws “which are in conflict with this Constitution, including omissions... in failing to promulgate rules or measures essential to guaranteeing compliance with the Constitution.”[8]

On January 6 President Maduro reshuffled his cabinet and created several new ministerial departments as part of an “economic counter-offensive.” He said the new leadership team would prioritize agricultural production as part of a plan for economic recovery.

MUD aims for destabilization – and overthrow of Maduro

Maduro was scheduled to present a detailed report on his plans to the new National Assembly on January 12, although he acknowledged that there was no assurance it would accept them.

However, on January 12 the Assembly session was adjourned in confusion, followed soon after by a humiliating backdown by the MUD majority. As mentioned earlier, three of the MUD deputies had been suspended by the Supreme Court for alleged irregularities in their election. However, when the new Assembly first met, the MUD swore in the three, in defiance of the Court. The Court responded by declaring that the Assembly proceedings would then be of no force or effect. Now, with the PSUV absent and only a handful of MUD deputies present, the Assembly president Henry Ramos Allup (himself an old-line politician[9] elected president in a private session of the MUD, contrary to Assembly rules) then found there was no quorum and adjourned the proceedings.

However, amidst the ensuing public outcry at these shenanigans, the three suspended deputies wrote to the leadership of the Assembly asking that their swearing-in be reversed. The next day, Ramos Allup called the Assembly to order, had the Supreme Court ruling read aloud, then stated that the Assembly leaders would “abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court.” But Maduro has yet to give his promised report.

The opposition’s climbdown probably reflects strategic divisions within their ranks between a relatively moderate faction led by Henrique Capriles, which is said to favour posing as a credible alternative to the government with proposals to solve the economic crisis, and a more confrontationist faction, apparently dominant, which is led by virulent opponents of the government. Its main leader is Leopoldo López, currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for his involvement in the guarimba street protests in 2014 that resulted in 43 deaths, as well as other violent actions. Both Capriles and López have links to the coup plotters of 2002.

The opposition’s initial defiance of the Supreme Court underscored its determination to steer toward an outright confrontation with President Maduro, with the goal of destabilizing his government as much as possible. Ramos Allup says he hopes to prepare Maduro’s ouster within the next six months. Another primary goal is passage of an amnesty law to free what the opposition terms “political prisoners,” that is, all those who have been involved in violent protests (including Leopoldo López).

Among other promised or rumoured measures favoured by the anti-government majority in the Assembly, writes Greg Wilpert, are a law

“to give ownership titles to the beneficiaries of the housing mission. Over the past five years the government has constructed one million public homes, which it has essentially leased to families in perpetuity, but without giving them a title that can be bought and sold. The reasoning behind this is to avoid the development of a speculative housing market of homes built with public funds. The opposition is betting that most public housing beneficiaries would prefer a saleable ownership title, so that they can sell the home and thereby possibly make a profit from it.
“... a rumored project to dollarize the economy. It is obvious to everyone in Venezuela that the current economic situation of high inflation, frequent shortages of basic goods, long lines at supermarkets, and a massive black market for price-controlled products, is not sustainable. One ‘solution’ to these problems that some opposition leaders have favored it to simply get rid of the local currency, the bolivar, and base the entire economy on dollars, just as Ecuador did in 2001. Aside from undermining the country’s economic sovereignty, such a move would also almost definitely mean major painful displacements for economy, leading to increased inequality and unemployment. ...
“Other major projects on the opposition docket,” reports Wilpert, “include the repeal of a wide variety of progressive laws that were passed during the Chavez and Maduro presidencies, beginning with the land reform, [and including] re-privatization of key industries and the dismantling of price controls, among other things.”

Capriles has also proposed a “padlock law” to “put an end to oil diplomacy” and “stop the government from giving away and wasting the country’s resources” — a threat clearly aimed at the PetroCaribe initiative that has provided Caribbean countries including Cuba with much-needed oil at preferential repayment rates.

Needless to say, little of this was mentioned in the MUD election platform.

Basically, the virulence of the opposition majority in the legislature — they have even removed portraits of Hugo Chávez (and Simón Bolívar!) from the Assembly precincts — reflects the visceral determination of the class they represent to avenge and reverse not only the laws but the very foundations of the Bolivarian regime initiated by Chávez and his original Movement for the Fifth Republic. No wonder this opposition holds the 1999 Constitution and its institutions in such contempt. That Constitution effectively terminated the institutional setup underlying the rule of the bourgeois elites who had monopolized political power for generations, characterized by the sham alternance of two similar capitalist parties cemented in the infamous “Punto Fijo” accord. In its place the new Constitution outlined the creation of a real sovereign democracy in which the great mass of the population were to be the “protagonists,” the living actors, of their destiny as implemented through a variety of grassroots-operated institutional forms that are only now beginning to become reality.

A new stage — and a challenge

Apart from the role of the Supreme Court (itself threatened by the opposition-dominated National Assembly) in trying to restrain the Assembly within constitutional limits, there are now three powers contending in this conflictual context: the President, head of state and supported by the military, who have confirmed their loyalty to the Constitution and the Bolivarian Revolution; the National Assembly, at loggerheads with the President and determined to replace him and all he stands for as soon as possible; and what is commonly referred to as the People’s Power, the grassroots mobilizations of ordinary citizens organized territorially in communal councils and communes or politically in support of the “process of change” — a force that is diffuse and still lacking a coherent structured national leadership. It is unclear at this point what role this relatively new force can play in helping to overcome the current economic and political crisis. The governing party, the PSUV, is largely an electoral machine and somewhat discredited by the implication of some leaders in corruption and bureaucratic maneuvers. It needs a fundamental overhaul.

There is much talk among Chavistas of answering the crisis by “deepening the revolution,” taking a “qualitative leap” as Chávez himself advocated in his Golpe de Timón speech.

In a remarkable essay, Venezuelan militant José Roberto Duque of Misión Verdad issues a challenge. If, he says, the Presidency and the Assembly are determined to prevent each other from fulfilling its role, “then it will be technically and procedurally impossible to to legislate (the Assembly’s mission) or to govern (the executive’s mission) in Venezuela.

“As such, we will be on the threshold of a situation in which a third actor, the most important and decisive amongst state subjects (popular power, citizens, you and I) must take a position with respect to the legitimacy of the actions of our representatives....
“Today we Chavistas unanimously support the ‘Communal State’ project proposed by Chávez. How many of us are prepared to keep building that Communal State even when the National Assembly eliminates the Law of Communal Councils and the Law of the Communes in one foul stroke? Will we have the stamina to keep building the other society clandestinely and illegally? Or will we submit to bourgeois laws that order us to give the entire productive apparatus up to private business?”

Duque explores these and related questions and concludes:

“The communes should be structures that are capable of surviving at the margins of the state and government, even functioning as areas of rearguard and resistance at the moment of an institutional collapse — when the Bolivarian government ceases its functions because of either legal or illegal means.
“We must be capable then of creating and consolidating self-sustainable and self-sufficient structures. We are in a very early stage of our communard history, and that is the reason why a ministry still exists that is in charge of financing the launch of productive projects in the communes. But in the future it would be an aberration for the communes and other organisations and means of production to continue to be dependent on state financing and other entities.”

I think this is the fundamental challenge facing the Bolivarian Revolution in the coming period. But it must be accompanied by measures at the level of the existing state to overcome the economic crisis — through implementation of an emergency program that can provide immediate relief to the masses of Venezuelan workers and campesinos.

[1] Elecciones parlamentarias de Venezuela de 2015, Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.

[2] The End of Chavismo? Why Venezuela’s Ruling Party Lost Big, and What Comes Next, The Nation, December 10, 2015.

[3] Capital controls were first imposed in 2002-03 in order to stabilize the currency and stop a flight of capital resulting from a bosses’ shutdown of the oil industry in the wake of their failed attempt to oust Chávez in a coup.

[4] Wilpert is the author of an excellent book on the Chávez years: Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2007).

[5] See, for example, Sinfonía de un Desfalco a la Nación: Tocata y fuga... de Capitales.

[6] See El sacudón electoral del 6D como crisis revolucionaria y motor de saltos cualitativos hacia el Socialismo Bolivariano, http://www.aporrea.org/poderpopular/n283366.html and http://www.aporrea.org/poderpopular/n283410.html.

[7] There are now more than 45,000 communal councils and 1,430 communes established throughout Venezuela. Most of the communes have been established since Hugo Chávez’s famous speech to his cabinet El Golpe de Timón just after his election in 2012 and shortly before his death in March 2013, in which he urged his ministers to prioritize the construction of communal democracy.

[8] Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, art. 336. Here is an English translation.

[9] A leader of Acción Democrática, he is also vice president of the Socialist International!

Can People’s Power Save the Bolivarian Revolution?

Rightists’ election victory poses major threat to Venezuela’s advances

President Nicolás Maduro addresses Chavista supporters on December 7, following election defeat the previous day.

By Richard Fidler

A decisive majority for the opposition Rightists

With a “super majority” of two-thirds of the seats, the opposition MUD has the constitutional and legislative power to, among other things:

Block government spending and ministerial appointments;
Unseat Supreme Court justices;
Remove the Vice-President;
Convene a National Constituent Assembly, and initiate a recall referendum for President Maduro (although under article 72 of the Constitution, a call for a referendum to remove a public official from office requires the signatures of 20% of the electorate);
Submit international treaties, conventions or agreements to referendums; and
Pass or modify any draft organic law (laws enacted to develop constitutional rights, which serve as a normative framework for other laws, or which are identified as such by the Constitution).

In short, writes Lucas Koerner in Venezuelanalysis.com,

a two-thirds majority gives the opposition all of the institutional weapons necessary to reverse many of the key transformations of the Venezuelan state achieved by the Bolivarian Revolution over the last seventeen years.
They will now be empowered to revoke critical revolutionary legislation such as the Organic Law of Communes, the Organic Work and Workers’ Law (LOTTT), among numerous others, repeal international treaties such as the ALBA-TP and PetroCaribe, as well as pack the Supreme Court with an eye towards impeaching President Nicolás Maduro.

Why the opposition victory?

“that the MUD’s overwhelming victory was due to widespread support among popular sectors that have traditionally favored Chavismo. The MUD won 18 of 24 states, including Hugo Chávez’s home state of Barinas and erstwhile Chavista strongholds in Caracas such as 23 de Enero, Catia, and Caucaguita, a very poor district that abuts Petare, one of the largest barrios in Latin America.”[2]

Hetland reports on his conversations with voters on election day:

“In the popular-sector voting centers I visited I encountered numerous people planning to vote for the opposition. In one barrio in the city of Porlamar... only two of the 18 people I spoke with planned to vote for the PSUV. None of the voters supporting the opposition mentioned liberty or democracy as a reason for doing so. All of them said they were supporting the opposition because of the material difficulties they faced. “I want change,” a woman told me. Pointing to the baby she was holding she said, “I can’t buy formula, and my father, who is 60 years old, had to go to another country for medical treatment” because the medicine he needed was unavailable in Venezuela. Over and over I was told of people’s frustrations with long lines and shortages of food and basic goods. Another young woman holding a baby said, “I get up at 4 am to stand in line and I can’t even buy food. I want change.” As she said this, the women standing next to her nodded their heads vigorously.”

Hetland concludes:

“The sentiments expressed by these voters suggest that it’s more accurate to think of the election result less as a victory for the opposition and more as a rejection of the government.”

Economic crisis

Corruption and inaction

“while the opposition has attracted some of the less politically aware social sectors to its anti-Chavismo discourse, the government has also lost some ground from conscientious and solid revolutionaries, partly due to its lack of a solid response to the opposition's ‘economic war.’ Although it's easier said than done to combat a rentier state, capitalist system, historical corruption, and big business's campaign of economic sabotage, Maduro has only announced things like national commissions to deal with the situation.
“While people spend up to seven hours a week lining up for food, and while many of them understand that the government isn't directly responsible for the situation, the lack of a serious response and significant measures hasn't helped support for the government.”

Further, says Pearson,

“while the government clearly sides with the poor, for multiple reasons including more right-wing attacks, it has becoming increasingly distanced from the organized grassroots.... [W]ith the way the government communicates with the people, the way it gets information out and involves people in serious decision making — there has been a step back in recent times. This aspect of the Bolivarian revolution is perhaps the most important, so the significance of it and its impact on people shouldn't be underestimated.”

Some immediate responses to election verdict

Communal Parliament

“The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy — the people as legislator — in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions.”

MUD aims for destabilization – and overthrow of Maduro

Maduro was scheduled to present a detailed report on his plans to the new National Assembly on January 12, although he acknowledged that there was no assurance it would accept them.

Among other promised or rumoured measures favoured by the anti-government majority in the Assembly, writes Greg Wilpert, are a law

“to give ownership titles to the beneficiaries of the housing mission. Over the past five years the government has constructed one million public homes, which it has essentially leased to families in perpetuity, but without giving them a title that can be bought and sold. The reasoning behind this is to avoid the development of a speculative housing market of homes built with public funds. The opposition is betting that most public housing beneficiaries would prefer a saleable ownership title, so that they can sell the home and thereby possibly make a profit from it.
“... a rumored project to dollarize the economy. It is obvious to everyone in Venezuela that the current economic situation of high inflation, frequent shortages of basic goods, long lines at supermarkets, and a massive black market for price-controlled products, is not sustainable. One ‘solution’ to these problems that some opposition leaders have favored it to simply get rid of the local currency, the bolivar, and base the entire economy on dollars, just as Ecuador did in 2001. Aside from undermining the country’s economic sovereignty, such a move would also almost definitely mean major painful displacements for economy, leading to increased inequality and unemployment. ...
“Other major projects on the opposition docket,” reports Wilpert, “include the repeal of a wide variety of progressive laws that were passed during the Chavez and Maduro presidencies, beginning with the land reform, [and including] re-privatization of key industries and the dismantling of price controls, among other things.”

Needless to say, little of this was mentioned in the MUD election platform.

A new stage — and a challenge

There is much talk among Chavistas of answering the crisis by “deepening the revolution,” taking a “qualitative leap” as Chávez himself advocated in his Golpe de Timón speech.

“As such, we will be on the threshold of a situation in which a third actor, the most important and decisive amongst state subjects (popular power, citizens, you and I) must take a position with respect to the legitimacy of the actions of our representatives....
“Today we Chavistas unanimously support the ‘Communal State’ project proposed by Chávez. How many of us are prepared to keep building that Communal State even when the National Assembly eliminates the Law of Communal Councils and the Law of the Communes in one foul stroke? Will we have the stamina to keep building the other society clandestinely and illegally? Or will we submit to bourgeois laws that order us to give the entire productive apparatus up to private business?”

Duque explores these and related questions and concludes:

“The communes should be structures that are capable of surviving at the margins of the state and government, even functioning as areas of rearguard and resistance at the moment of an institutional collapse — when the Bolivarian government ceases its functions because of either legal or illegal means.
“We must be capable then of creating and consolidating self-sustainable and self-sufficient structures. We are in a very early stage of our communard history, and that is the reason why a ministry still exists that is in charge of financing the launch of productive projects in the communes. But in the future it would be an aberration for the communes and other organisations and means of production to continue to be dependent on state financing and other entities.”

[1] Elecciones parlamentarias de Venezuela de 2015, Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre.

[2] The End of Chavismo? Why Venezuela’s Ruling Party Lost Big, and What Comes Next, The Nation, December 10, 2015.

[4] Wilpert is the author of an excellent book on the Chávez years: Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2007).

[5] See, for example, Sinfonía de un Desfalco a la Nación: Tocata y fuga... de Capitales.

[8] Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, art. 336. Here is an English translation.

[9] A leader of Acción Democrática, he is also vice president of the Socialist International!

Saturday, December 26, 2015

A new political situation in Latin America: What lies ahead?

‘Venezuela defines the future of the progressive cycle’ An interview with Claudio Katz

Introduction

Two recent events — the second-round victory on November 22 of right-wing candidate Mauricio Macri in Argentina’s presidential election, and the December 6 victory of the right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable,[1] winning two thirds of the seats in Venezuela’s National Assembly elections — have radically altered the political map in South America. In the following interview, Argentine Marxist Claudio Katz discusses what these setbacks for the left mean for the progressive “process of change” that has unfolded on the continent over the last 10-15 years. My translation from the Spanish.

Katz is a professor of economics at the University of Buenos Aires, a researcher with the National Council of Science and Technology, and a member of Economists of the Left.[2]

This interview with La Llamarada occurred just before the outgoing National Assembly in Venezuela called the first meeting of the “National Communal Parliament,” a new legislative structure of delegates from the country’s more than 1,400 communes, the grassroots bodies in rural and urban communities throughout Venezuela. President Maduro was quoted as saying “I'm going to give all the power to the communal parliament.... This parliament is going to be a legislative mechanism from the grassroots. All power to the Communal parliament.”

– Richard Fidler

Communal Parliament meets in Caracas December 23.

* * *

Q. In your work on South America, you speak of the duality that has characterized the last decade. What exactly is that duality?

Claudio Katz. In my opinion, the so-called progressive cycle of the last decade in South America has been a process resulting from partially successful popular rebellions (Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador) that altered the relationship of forces in the region. They allowed us to take advantage of higher prices for raw materials and dollar income in a way that differed considerably from what prevailed in other periods. During this interval, neo-developmental and distributionist economic policy schemes existed alongside the neoliberal model. Politically, right-wing governments were now joined by center-left and radical governments. It was a period in which imperialism’s capacity for action was seriously circumscribed, with a retreat from the OAS and recognition of Cuba. David had finally defeated Goliath and the United States had to accept that defeat.

It was also a decade in which there were no Greek-style adjustments in almost any Latin American countries. And there were important democratic victories. It is highly illustrative to compare South America with Central America. The level of aggression that is current in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala contrasts with the public freedoms conquered in Argentina, Bolivia or Brazil, a clear indication of the scope of this change. And Chavismo rescued the socialist project. For all these reasons South America became a point of reference for social movements throughout the world.

In a recent article I pointed to a “duality in Latin America” because this change in the political cycle and in the relationship of forces coexisted with a consolidation of the pattern of extractivist accumulation located in the export of basic raw materials and Latin America’s insertion in the international division of labour as a provider of basic products. That is a natural situation for a neoliberal government, it forms part of its strategy. But for progressive governments of the center-left, there is a tension with that structure; and for radical, distributionist governments, there is a conflict of huge proportions.

There were successful rebellions, therefore, that resulted in distinct governments, some anti-liberal, but also a situation that sooner or later had to disappear, since they could not coexist with the extractivist model and the strengthening of the traditional dependent economic configuration of Latin America. It is that contradiction that has prevented them from getting back on their feet in recent months. And that is why the conservative restoration began, and with it the debate around the end of the progressive cycle. At year-end we are confronted by two crucial events.

First, the triumph of Macri, which is important because it is the first instance of a rightist return to Argentina’s presidency. Beginning with the cacerolazos [the banging of pots and pans in street demonstrations] the Right built its political power, defeated Peronism and formed a cabinet of the “CEOcracy” for a country now governed by “its proper owners,” a cabinet directly from the capitalist class.

The second event is more partial but more significant. In Venezuela the Right has won not the government but the parliament, in conditions of a brutal economic war, media terrorism, economic chaos generated by reactionaries. And Venezuela is the most complete symbol of the radical processes within the progressive cycle.

Q. What is the situation, in this new continental scenario, of the countries that far from duality have maintained not only the economic pattern but also the neoliberal policies?

A. One of the major information gaps in this entire period has been the concealment of what is happening in the countries governed by neoliberalism. You might get the impression that everything is going marvellously there and that the only problems in Latin America are in the other countries. But in fact this is a monumental media distortion. It’s enough to look at the situation in Mexico, a country that has extremely high levels of crime, destruction of the social fabric and huge regions rife with drug trafficking. Or to see the situation of Central American countries decimated by emigration, by the predominance of crime and with presidents like the one in Guatemala, who have been removed from office over corruption scandals. Or take the Chilean economic model, which is in a quite critical situation with significantly reduced growth and now the appearance of corruption in a country that has made a show of transparency. Family indebtedness, labour precariousness, inequality, and the privatization of education have begun to surface. And Bachelet’s government is paralyzed. Those reforms in pensions and education, which it thought it would carry out, are now delayed.

Looking at the neoliberal universe we also see the sole case of debt default throughout this period, in Puerto Rico, a country that is in fact a North American colony that has endured decapitalization, the pillage of its resources, the disintegration of its social fabric. For a time it was compensated with public financing but now this prop is finished and it has defaulted.

So in the countries where the raw material rents of this super cycle were not redistributed, the social, political and economic situation is very serious. But no one talks about that.

Q. In this new scenario that has opened, what do you think will happen in the neo-developmentalist countries like Argentina and Brazil? Will the conservative restoration in those countries tend to reconfigure the “blocs,” integrating them with the openly neoliberal bloc?

A. There we can be very categorical in our balance sheet of what has happened, and very cautious about what is coming. I would separate things, to differentiate what we know from what we can imagine. Clearly, in Argentina and Brazil the change under way is the result of an exhaustion of the neo-developmentalist economic model. That is not the sole cause nor am I sure that a greater impact can be attributed to it than to other factors, but it is the background to the problem.

In both countries there was an attempt to use a portion of the rent generated by the increase in raw materials prices in order to revamp industry and attempt to build a model based on consumption. But since we are operating within the capitalist system this type of processes has very strict limits, because what functions at the outset is later exhausted insofar as capitalist profitability is affected. The theory of reverse feedback does not work. It is an illusion of Keynesian heterodoxy to suppose that with a mere increase in demand a virtuous circle begins. The contrary happens. At some point those governments encounter a limit, and the classic process begins, with capital flight and pressure on the exchange rate — which is what has happened in both cases.

I think there is an economic erosion but also there has been a major political deterioration both in Brazil and in Argentina. That erosion was determined in both cases by the appearance of social discontent that neither government was willing to harness by responding to the demands. That was the climate in which Macri’s ascent and the expansion of the social base of the Brazilian Right was situated.

That assessment is clear, but what is to come is not clear. The big test will be the Macri government. We still cannot assess that. It is a classic right-wing government with all the reactionary characteristics of a right-wing government. But it is operating in a context of great combativity. Thus there is a contradiction between what it wants to do and what it can do.

Q. Going back to Venezuela, in a talk you gave you raised an idea that we think is important, noting the futility of always and everywhere applying the cliché that “what does not advance, retreats,” “what does not radicalize, turns back.” But putting this in concrete terms, we recall Fidel’s recommendation to Allende after the Tancazo, “This is your Girón.”[3] What prospects — not abstract but concrete, in terms of the political and social forces — do you see for a radicalization in Venezuela? What would be the measures to be taken in that direction?

A. Those phrases are heard repeatedly, but many of those who use them forget to apply them when it is necessary to do so, especially today in Venezuela. In Venezuela the progressive cycle and the future are being defined. It has been the principal process and its outcome will determine the context throughout the region.

It is obvious that imperialism has set its sights on Venezuela. The United States recognizes Cuba, has friendly relations with many governments, but not with Venezuela. There it imposes the decline in the price of oil, supplies the paramilitary organizations, finances conspiratorial NGOs, operates militarily. It has set in motion strategies for overthrow prepared for some time now. The elections unfolded in this context of economic war and in the end the Right achieved its victory. For the first time it won a majority in the parliament and is now aiming to call a referendum to revoke President Maduro’s mandate.

The Right will try to straddle two paths, that of Capriles and that of López.[4] The latter promotes a return to the guarimbas while Capriles favours a war of attrition against Maduro. And it is highly illustrative that in Argentina Macri first proposed an assault behind the screen of the “democratic clause”[5] although he later opted to postpone it. Macri is balancing between the two strategies (but note that Corina López, the wife of Leopoldo, was present at his electoral victory). He will follow the dominant tone. On the one side López and on the other Capriles, since the two complement each other. They are two lines of the same thing. And Macri is one of those orchestrating that conspiracy internationally.

Now there is strong pressure on Maduro to agree to negotiation, which would leave him overwhelmed without the ability to do anything. But he can also react and apply the famous phrase: a process that does not radicalize will regress. He can land a counterblow. A big conflict is approaching, because the parliament under right-wing leadership will demand powers that the President is not prepared to give it. The parliament will vote amnesty for López and the executive will veto it. The executive will bring out a law against hoarding and the parliament is not going to accept it. Either the executive governs or the parliament governs, a clash of powers that is very typical.

In that sense, since it takes a year to prepare a revocation referendum — they have to collect the signatures, they have to have them officially recognized,[6] they have to call the referendum and win it — that is going to generate a major conflict. And therein lies the dilemma. There is a conservative sector, social democratic or mixed up in corruption, within Chavismo that has no desire to do anything in response to that dilemma through a radicalization of the process.

That sector stands in the way of reacting against the Empire’s aggression. It is obvious that imperialism is waging an economic war on Venezuela, but the problem is that Maduro has not managed to defeat those attacks. The problem is that Venezuela is a country that continues to receive dollars, through PDVSA,[7] and those dollars are handed over to sectors of the corrupt civil service, and the capitalists, who recycle them and ruin the Venezuelan economy. Those dollars find their way into smuggling to Colombia, into creating shortages, into exchange rate speculation, and the country lives with queues and general irritation. Furthermore, Venezuela is now burdened with a sizeable public debt. It does not have enough dollars to pay for all the imports and at the same time pay down the debt.

In these conditions the social-democratic and conservative sectors of the government limit themselves to complaining about “the terrible situation imposed by imperialism” but without taking effective action to thwart that aggression.

And this conduct has consequences, because it increases demoralization. The Right was victorious not so much because it stole votes from Chavismo but because people did not go out to vote. That has happened before. It is a form of protest that some Venezuelans engage in. And much more problematic, more serious, is the attitude of leaders who say goodbye to Chavismo or return to private life. They express no opinion or criticize the government instead of proposing radical measures against the Right. That in turn is accentuated by the government’s conduct in preventing left currents from developing. Instead of encouraging them, instead of facilitating their action, it limits their possibilities. And it maintains the verticalist structure of the PSUV.[8]

So that’s the situation. And as many people say, this time it is the last opportunity. Now or never. And this last opportunity means making decisions in two very clear-cut areas. Economically: to nationalize the banks and foreign trade, and to use those two tools to define another way of using the dollars. There are many good economists who have been saying this for ten years now. They have devised programs that explain in detail how this is done. So these are not unknown measures. And the other pillar is political. To sustain the radicalization, communal power is needed. Venezuela now has legislation, a structure, adopted laws, that provide for administering the country with a new form of communal organization; from below and from above, with distinct authorities, in which democracy is a reality and popular power is not confined to being a set of defensive institutions. It is a decisive architecture for contending with the parliament of the Right. If Maduro and the Venezuelan leadership want to rescue the Bolivarian process, this is the time for communal power. We shall see. What I think is that the cards are on the table and decisions must be made.[9]

Q. It has become common for intellectuals, including activists, to place their expectations more in the protagonism of governments than in the protagonism of the mass organizations. What is the prospect that lies ahead for social struggles? What role should anti-imperialism and anticapitalism have in them?

A. It is very important, I think, in any discussion about whether or not the progressive cycle has ended to look not only at the governments but also at what is going on below. Many writers tend to assess a cycle in terms of who is exercising the executive power. But that is only one element. The cycle originated with popular rebellion and it is these rebellions that define the relationship of forces. The process over the last decade was novel because, through a partial redistribution of resource rents, many governments developed social security networks and consumption patterns that moderated social struggles. That is one of the explanations for why we have not had rebellions since 2004.

There is a change in the economic cycle that is going to put the social struggle back on the agenda, and in this process discussion of the left project will resume. Much depends on what develops in Venezuela, which has been the political reference in the recent period for the significant left, in the same way that the Cuban revolution or Sandinismo were at other times. The emancipatory references are continental. They occur in one country and become the focus of all the others.

But the big strategic problem lies in the fact that many thinkers are of the view that the left should focus on building a model of post-liberal capitalism. This idea blocks the radicalization processes. It assumes that being on the left is to be post-liberal, that to be on the left is to slog away for an organized, human, productive capitalism. This idea has undermined the left for several years now because being left means fighting capitalism. To me, this is ABC. To be socialist is to fight for a communist world. At each stage that horizon changes and the strategic parameters are renewed. But if the identity of the left is altered, the result is frustration.

Building the left means taking up again the idea of the later Chávez. A strong commitment to a socialist project that is linked with the traditions of Latin American Marxism and the Cuban Revolution. It seems to me that this strategic line of march has been distorted by strong illusions in the convenience of replacing this horizon through convergence, for example, with Pope Francis. The assumption is that with Chávez’s death we need another reference and it is thought that the substitute can be Pope Francis. I think this is a strategic error. I don’t think the Social Doctrine of the Church is the guide that we should adopt in our battle against capitalism. Pope Francis is being recycled with the intention now of reconstructing the popular influence of a much weakened Latin American church. And in my opinion it takes great naiveté to suppose that this reconstruction is going to favour a left that is situated at the polar opposite of the Vatican’s project. I think we ought to shore up our own ideals at this key moment in Latin American history.

[1] Mesa de la Unidad Democratica (MUD). Argentina’s Macri was the candidate of a coalition, Cambiemos (Let’s change), formed to end an era in which various wings of the Peronist movement have governed for decades.

[2] For more in English by Claudio Katz, see http://isreview.org/person/claudio-katz. Also, The Cuban Epic.

[3] A CIA-sponsored counter-revolutionary military force invaded Cuba on April 16, 1961at Playa Girón, known in English as the Bay of Pigs. It was soon defeated, the invaders surrendered and their leaders were tried and executed or jailed. The remainder were later returned by Cuba to the United States in exchange for needed medicine and food. Just prior to the invasion, on April 15, after Cuban air fields had been bombed by eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers that then returned to the United States, Fidel Castro declared the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution, which he was confident would motivate the Cuban masses to fight in defense of their country. For more, see Bay of Pigs Invasion.

[4] Henrique Capriles Radonski was the Right’s candidate for President in 2012 and 2013, when he was defeated first by Hugo Chávez, then by Nicolás Maduro. Leopoldo López is a right-wing politician who was sentenced in September to a jail term of 13 years 9 months for public incitement to violence in the guarimbas, the antigovernment street riots starting in 2013 in various parts of Venezuela.

[5] Argentina’s newly-elected President Mauricio Macri has threatened to invoke Mercosur’s “democratic clause” in order to get the trade alliance to expel Venezuela on the absurd allegation that Venezuela is not democratic and is therefore ineligible for membership.

[6] Katz is referring to Art. 72 of the Venezuelan Constitution, under which a demand for a referendum to remove a public official from office requires the signatures of 20 percent of the electorate. Here is an English translation of the Constitution.

[7] PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.) is the country’s state-owned hydrocarbons company.

[8] PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) is the “united socialist party” founded by Hugo Chávez and headed by President Maduro.

[9] La Llamarada Editor’s note: The interview occurred before the convening of the Communal Parliament was announced.