This article is focusing on theory. But I think two things are omitted. In
fact, Venezuela could proceed with Chavez's plan because it is an oil rich
country. But now, the price of oil has dropped. That fact is causing problems
for countries and for fossil fuel companies. The other issue is that the US has
been attempting to undermine the socialist experiment in Venezuela, and it
actively supports rebellion there. So to discuss the form of socialism that
Venezuela is attempting to implement as if these two additional factors were
unimportant, seems pointless to me.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey ;
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2017 10:12 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Did socialism fail in Venezuela?
https://socialistworker.org/2017/06/07/did-socialism-fail-in-venezuela
Did socialism fail in Venezuela?
Eva María explains why the answer depends on our understanding of socialism.
June 7, 2017
AS A Spanish teacher at a university in Portland, Oregon, I've had three
students who randomly comment on the tragedy of socialism in Venezuela in the
course of the last month:
"Aren't you from Venezuela?" one asked me.
"Yes, I am."
"Is your family okay? I've been hearing a lot about people being killed by
the socialist dictator."
Similarly, at a public meeting of the ISO titled "The Case for Socialism," a
member of the audience commented: "I really want to agree with all of this. But
how can we have socialism and avoid what is happening in Venezuela?"
This uptick in interest and concern about Venezuela should come as no surprise
since the ever-deepening crisis and the latest wave of anti-government protests
have featured prominently in the mainstream media.
Since the election of the late President Hugo Chávez in 1998, it seemed like
the Western media focused every few months on scenes of protest and chaos,
involving crowds of young, college-educated Venezuelans who saw middle-class
living standards threatened by Chávez's left-wing political and economic agenda.
Hugo Chávez (in blue and white) joins in a mass rally in Caracas Hugo Chávez
(in blue and white) joins in a mass rally in Caracas
The mainstream media almost never represented the poor majority of Venezuelans
and the struggles they faced--either during Chávez's reign when their
conditions improved and they took action in support of the government, or now
when they bear the brunt of the economic and social crisis.
Now, that crisis has been reaching new heights as rising inflation makes
minimal wage increases irrelevant, food and medicine shortages threaten
people's survival and well-being, and intensifying street violence and clashes
between police and armed opposition groups contribute to a mood of fear and
confusion.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ALL THIS is being associated in people's minds with socialism since Chavez and
Venezuela's current President Nicolás Maduro both embraced the project of
building "socialism of the 21st century" in Venezuela, with the hopes of
extending it regionally.
In theory, this new version of socialism wouldn't follow the Russian or Cuban
models from the 20th century, but would constitute a new project, based on the
cooperation of the state, led by Chávez, and the people to build a mass
democratic and egalitarian system.
Eventually, an expansive network of local communes would gain representation in
the state until the state itself became "a confederation of communal councils,"
as Chávez described it in the 2005 World Social Forum speech where he
introduced his vision of "socialism of the 21st century."
This implementation of popular democracy was to be the essence of the
Bolivarian revolution, or at least one of its most important aspects.
Many socialists in Venezuela and across the world went along with this new
vision of socialism and theorized what it could mean for the future of
socialism as a worldwide goal.
But looking back more than a decade later, it's obvious that the spread and
empowerment of communal councils fell far short of a national
confederation--while the other "motors" of "socialism" that Chávez described,
including laws enabling him to govern by decree in order to establish the
conditions of popular participation, have become all the more dominant in the
Maduro era.
The U.S. media portray Venezuela as an oil-rich country that fell into the
hands of a communist-style dictatorship allied with the Castro regime in Cuba.
They link the horrible and indefensible conditions that Venezuelans are
enduring today with the imposition of a socialist system by a dictatorship.
By contrast, revolutionary socialists view what's happening in Venezuela not as
a result of socialism failing, but as a consequence of the fact that it was
never implemented. What we see in Venezuela is not the crisis of a socialist
society, but rather an acute crisis of capitalism that is crystallizing across
the region, whether in countries with a more free market-oriented system, or
those like Venezuela with a more state-directed economy.
Thus, the answer to the question "Did socialism fail in Venezuela?"
depends on what we mean by socialism and how we see it being achieved.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN THE 1960s, the American socialist Hal Draper summarized the differences in
how socialism is defined by contrasting two traditions:
"socialism from below" versus "socialism from above."
For Draper, "socialism from below" is the socialism of Karl Marx. Marx and
Frederick Engels believed that the rise of capitalism made it possible for the
first time in history to achieve a world free from scarcity and inequality, but
only if the capitalist system--which puts profits ahead of people's needs,
producing poverty, hunger and environmental catastrophe--is swept away and a
new society, based on the collective power of workers, is built.
Marx and Engels summed up this idea with the famous phrase: "[T]he emancipation
of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves."
The vision of socialism from below draws on the experiences of mass workers'
struggles and revolutions, like the Russian Revolution of 1917, where a system
of genuinely mass democracy was established through the system of workers'
councils, representing working people at the grassroots of society.
In his book Ten Days that Shook the World, John Reed the spirit of the workers
councils, or "soviets":
As all real socialists know, and as we who have seen the Russian
Revolution can testify, there is today in Moscow and throughout all the
cities and towns of the Russian land a highly complex political
structure, which is upheld by the vast majority of the people and which
is functioning as well as any newborn popular government ever
functioned...No political body more sensitive and responsive to the
popular will was ever invented. And this was necessary, for in time of
revolution, the popular will changes with great rapidity."
The contrast of this system with what Draper called "socialism from
above" couldn't be clearer. At the time he was writing, his main
argument was directed at the two most prominent forms of "socialism from
above": social democracy, mostly dominant in Western Europe, and the
so-called communist states of Russia, China and the Eastern bloc. As
Draper wrote:
These two self-styled socialisms are very different, but they have more
in common than they think. The social democracy has typically dreamed of
"socializing" capitalism from above. Its principle has always been that
increased state intervention in society and economy is per se
socialistic. It bears a fatal family resemblance to the Stalinist
conception of imposing something called socialism from the top down, and
of equating statification with socialism.
Draper illustrated the difference between these different "souls" of
socialism based on the question of who acts--a small minority or the
vast majority in society:
What unites the many different forms of Socialism-from-Above is the
conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be
handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling
elite which is not subject to their control in fact. The heart of
Socialism-from-Below is its view that socialism can be realized only
through the self-emancipation of activized masses in motion, reaching
out for freedom with their own hands, mobilized "from below" in a
struggle to take charge of their own destiny, as actors (not merely
subjects) on the stage of history.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BASED ON this understanding of socialism, it is impossible to identify
Venezuela under Chávez as anything but a version of socialism from
above. The origin of "socialism of the 21st century" in a speech by the
president, with its first concrete steps handing more power to that
president, is the very definition of "from above."
Defenders of the Bolivarian revolution acknowledge, of course, the
reality that the first steps have been taken by friendly managers of the
state--but they go on to insist that these steps have been crucial to
the development of grassroots projects from below advancing the level of
democratic engagement. In a recent interview for the print edition of
Jacobin magazine, Gregory Wilpert states:
The fact is, historically, the government is oftentimes the main
obstacle to revolution, right? But in Venezuela, suddenly you had a
different kind of government, one that said: "Hey, you can create these
communes, you can organize yourselves, and so on." Isn't that the
government giving the tools to the people to participate in that
revolution? To make their own revolution, in fact?
Under this conception, Venezuela's network of communal councils should
develop under the sponsorship of the state, but also in opposition to
it, as a revolutionary movement from below--one that would need to
challenge the state at any point that it becomes an obstacle to the
development of communal power.
This is a contradiction, to say the least, which can be seen in the very
clear limitations on popular power in Venezula--especially when it comes
to workers' power over their workplaces.
The actual experience of the relationship between the government and
working-class organization has been mixed, with the state picking and
choosing which initiatives for workers' control it supported and which
it didn't.
For example, even at the high point of Chavismo a decade ago, the
government rejected nationalization as an option for Sanitarios Maracay,
a bathroom fixture manufacturer run under workers' control after the
employer abandoned negotiations. When the employer succeeded in ousting
the workers' occupation, the government refused to intervene--because
the factory wasn't "strategic."
And it must be remembered that even state-run enterprises, much less
those under some real form of workers' control, have always been a
minority in the Venezuelan economy. As Anderson Bean wrote in a recent
SocialistWorker.org article:
Despite its progressive language on participatory democracy and human
rights, the 1999 Chavista constitution gives significant protection to
private property in Article 15.
In fact, between 1999 and 2011, the private sector's share of economic
activity actually increased from 65 to 71 percent. The critical oil
sector is dominated by a state-owned company, but other important
industries, like food imports and processing operations, pharmaceuticals
and auto parts, are still controlled by the private sector.
The limitations on anything that could be called "popular power" are
even more obvious today with the increasing authoritarianism of the
Maduro government.
But even under Chávez, economic and political power in Venezuela
remained overwhelmingly in the hands of a corrupt capitalist elite and
an increasingly bureaucratized state that was in a position to control
the amount of popular power it was supposedly encouraging.
Attempts at grassroots organizing through the communal network, though
often very inspiring, remained subordinated to the bureaucracy. And
meanwhile, the government, by simultaneously upholding and protecting
privately owned industry, weakened its own position in conflicts with
Venezuela's capitalists, particularly as the drop in oil prices hit
Venezuela's oil export-based economy.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE CHÁVEZ government managed to do what no other leader of Venezuela
has done. Using the oil revenues that swelled during the early years of
the 2000s, it expanded social programs to provide health care for
millions of poor Venezuelans, dramatically increased access to education
and attempted to include historically marginalized sectors into the
national political process.
Additionally, Chávez's opposition to the U.S. and its neoliberal
economic doctrines--openly expressed as opposition to
capitalism--rightfully inspired millions of people around the world to
reconsider socialism as a worthwhile project.
These are achievements worth celebrating. But they don't add up to
socialism because Chávez never let real power spread to the grassroots
of society. Indeed, any initiatives for popular power depended, to
receive any funding or support, on loyalty to the government. This kind
of clientelist relationship with grassroots campaigns has nothing to do
with genuine socialism.
Once the boom in basic commodities ended, world oil prices plummeted,
and the revenues used to expand social programs dried up, along with any
leverage that the state had to hold Venezuela's private capitalists in
check.
The response of the Maduro administration has been to crack down on
opposition, both from the right wing that has always opposed the
government, but also supporters of Chavismo that dissent from Maduro's
direction for society.
This, too, must be completely rejected by revolutionaries. The fight for
socialism should always stand for the expansion of democracy, not
restrictions on it.
With Maduro, the bureaucratic layer that had already emerged under
Chávez seems to have consolidated and strengthened its hold over state
resources. Not only is it clear that there is massive corruption among
"Bolivarian bureaucrats," but this layer has failed to challenge the
Venezuelan capitalist class--something that Maduro has shown with his
continual overtures and concessions to private capitalists, even as he
cracks down on democracy.
Venezuela has remained a capitalist country, through and through,
despite the social achievements of the last 18 years. What has failed is
not socialism, but a system that has been capitalist in its economic and
political domination by a minority over the majority.
To the extent that Chávez proposed a strategy for achieving socialism in
the future by accepting compromises with private capitalist control and
the political rule of a minority acting on behalf of the masses of
people, that, too, has been proven lacking.
Relying on a minority, however well intentioned, to take over a
capitalist state and reform the system into socialism has failed before.
Socialism from above, in whatever form it takes, is not the successful
shortcut we should keep trying.
To inspire a new generation of socialists, we need to be able to explain
what happened in Venezuela--and to re-raise the banner of socialism from
below. As Draper writes at the close of his The Two Souls of Socialism:
Since the beginning of society, there has been no end of theories
"proving" that tyranny is inevitable and that freedom-in-democracy is
impossible; there is no more convenient ideology for a ruling class and
its intellectual flunkies. These are self-fulfilling predictions, since
they remain true only as long as they are taken to be true. In the last
analysis, the only way of proving them false is in the struggle itself.
That struggle from below has never been stopped by the theories from
above, and it has changed the world time and again. To choose any of the
forms of Socialism-from-Above is to look back to the old world, to the
"old crap." To choose the road of Socialism-from-Below is to affirm the
beginning of a new world.
Print
E-mail
Share
close
Facebook logo
Twitter logo
StumbleUpon logo
Digg logo
del.icio.us logo
Diigo logo
Furl logo
Google logo
identi.ca logo
LinkedIn logo
MySpace logo
Newskicks logo
Newsvine logo
Ping This! logo
Reddit logo
Technorati logo
Tumblr logo
Yahoo logo
Respond
.
Main menu
Home
Recent
E-mail alerts
RSS
Donate
International Socialist Org.
About Us
Contact us
..
Join us at Socialism 2017!
Socialism 2017 | Chicago | July 6-9
View at full size
Related articles
◾Venezuela at an impasse
◾Giro autoritario en Venezuela
◾Against Venezuela's authoritarian turn
◾Solidarity with Aporrea.org
◾Maduro is trying to subvert popular democracy
Recent articles
6/9
6/8
6/7
6/6
6/5
6/2
Friday, June 9th
◾Does Trump's Paris pullout mean game over?
◾Our message of solidarity against the alt-right
Blogs
Critical reading
◾Corbyn closing the gap in the UK election
◾Trump, Comey, & the crisis in the US ruling class
◾How capitalism undermines social justice
◾iPhones aren't why we can't afford healthcare
◾Women workers began the Russian Revolution
E-mail alerts
Get e-mail alerts from SocialistWorker.org
Subscribe
Socialism 2017 | Chicago | July 6-9
.
International Socialist Review | ISReview.org
.
WeAreMany.org
.
Blank-ad-space.gif
.
.
SocialistWorker.org
Recent
E-mail Alerts
RSS
Donate
International Socialist Org.
Who We Are
Where We Stand
Contact Us
War/Antiwar
Economy
National
International
Opinion
History/Traditions
Labor
Activist News
Readers' Views
Books/Entertainment
Published by the International Socialist Organization
