BOLIVARIAN CAPITALISM… colonel hugo chavez’ pro corporate “venezuelan socialism”
The following article was first published in Proletarian Revolution No. 81 (Spring 2008).
Venezuelan Workers and the Referendum
No to Chávez, Yes to Socialism!
With this article we continue our discussion of the working class political scene in Venezuela. We invite comments from readers. References to all quoted citations are available upon request.
February 18, 2008
The class conflict at the heart of Venezuelan society is breaking through the Bolivarian façade. The working class has rejected the overtly pro-imperialist neoliberal program of the rightist opposition. But for good reason, working people and the poor are growing more dissatisfied with President Hugo Chávez and his policies.
This sentiment led to mass abstention on a referendum pushed by Chávez this past December. The number of votes that Chávez traditionally counted on dropped so much that the No vote ended up winning narrowly. The opposition claimed victory over Chávez, but in reality they can’t take credit since their campaign against the referendum resulted in no significant increase in No votes.
This significant shift in the voting pattern occurred just a year after Chávez had won re-election in a landslide victory in December 2006. Yet in December 2007, approximately 45 percent of his usual base abstained — in a referendum which he claimed was the way forward to socialism. The LRP favored a No vote, which we will explain in this article.
The referendum proposed a large number of amendments to the constitution, which had to be voted up or down in two different blocks. Block A consisted of 33 articles, mainly put together up by a commission appointed by Chávez which met in secret with no public debate during the process. Block B contained 36 additional articles approved by the National Assembly. Each block included amendments meant to appeal to the working class — like reduction of the work day and extension of social security benefits. However, Chávez already had plenty of time, power, and mass support to carry out such reforms without a special referendum. The proposed changes were in this referendum for a reason: they were the carrot that would lure the masses to vote for a very big stick.
Concentration of Presidential Power
Had the referendum passed, it would not just have increased Chávez’s ability to retain office longer (notably, only the president would have had the right to be reelected continually). The right to freedom of information would have been more easily eliminated by a declaration of emergency, and such declarations could be of unlimited duration. During a state of emergency citizens could be detained without charge. Also, the president would have been empowered to reorganize the boundaries of cities, provinces and regions. Another proposal gave the president new powers to declare special military zones and regions and name military authorities for the regions, as well as the power to promote officers. All this would have strengthened the weapons of the capitalist state for future use against the working class.
Along this line of anti-worker attacks, another clause would have changed the definition of public workers, raising concerns that this significant labor sector would lose legal protections. Other proposals would have increased the percentages of voters required to put a referendum on the ballot, whether for a recall, constitutional amendments or a constituent assembly.
There were also amendments that would have constitutionally bolstered the operation of communal councils, labor councils, and the like, all of which were to be funded and registered by the national government. The councils are intended to pre-empt mass struggle organs of workers, peasants and other sectors from arising, in addition to the already existing unions.
The “communal councils” already exist and are supposedly evidence of “people’s power.” The funds allotted to these councils come directly from the Presidential Commission for Communal Power. They amounted to about 1.6 billion dollars last year and about 3 billion dollars this year. These councils are mainly being used along the lines of participatory democracy schemes in Brazil, Bolivia and elsewhere: local residents are given pre-set budgets for limited local projects. At best they are a way to divert the masses from taking on real decision-making and power, but in reality they usually function as transmission belts for the politics of the ruling regime. It does not appear that Chávez has been very successful in getting the labor councils off the ground yet, because of fears that they would be used for anti-union purposes. Passage of the referendum could have aided that effort.
Roots of Bonapartism
Chávez argued that he is uniquely endowed with the ability to make decisions for the good of the masses. Much of the left that defended the referendum bought that line. It is a hallmark of Bonapartism, a regime characterized by strongman rule with power concentrated in an executive who appears to rule independently above the main contending classes of society. But in fact the Chávez regime, like all Bonapartists, represents capitalist interests and therefore its repression is aimed primarily at the working class, when push comes to shove. Ignoring this essential Marxist understanding, much of the left also swallowed Chávez’s argument that increased concentration of the armed power of the bourgeois state would be used only against the right-wing opposition.
Most post-mortems on December missed an essential point: the bold attempt to enhance Chávez’s power was a real necessity for this regime. Chávez is a populist: he promotes class collaboration by making big promises to the masses that he will represent their interests if they stick with him, and he seems to favor mass involvement in society. But populists like Chávez also argue for promoting good capitalists against bad ones, not for class struggle. Populist rulers inevitably become increasingly Bonapartist, since they cannot actually fulfill mass expectations. Eventually the mass mobilizations that they encouraged in order to gain power threaten to undermine their rule.
Chávez’s dilemma is this: the masses are dissatisfied, but he does not have much more to offer them besides token improvements plus “red” rhetoric — dangling huge promises (i.e. “socialism”) for the future. His bourgeois development scheme means cultivating a privileged wing of the weak domestic capitalist class. Building up Venezuelan capitalism also requires maneuvers with the majority of capitalists who are tied to the right-wing opposition and the imperialists. Chávez adheres to a policy of bourgeois nationalism and peaceful coexistence with Venezuela’s imperialist oppressors, all his socialist rhetoric to the contrary. But even making minor gains for a capitalist Venezuela in that context requires a complicated balancing act. It is now economically impossible to continue appeasing the masses as well as the domestic bourgeoisie and imperialism. The failure of this project is behind the glaring economic woes today.
Even under near-optimal circumstances with high oil profits, Chávez has been unable to dramatically change the quality of life for the masses. This is impossible for any capitalist state, and all oppressed capitalist nations, like Venezuela, are bound to be dominated by imperialism in this epoch.
A perfect example of his policy toward imperialism is the current struggle between Chávez and Exxon-Mobil over the terms of a proposed joint venture in the oil-rich Orinoco Belt region. It is a question of the degree of superexploitation. For all his rhetorical threats, Chávez has made it clear that he will break no other existing business deals with Exxon-Mobil and will only utilize legal, i.e. imperialist sanctioned, means to defend Venezuelan interests. The last thing that he wants is to mobilize the willing ranks of the working class into an actual fight against imperialist holdings in Venezuela.
It is the duty of revolutionary workers to defend all oppressed nations against imperialist attack. But no sector of the national bourgeoisie of oppressed nations is capable of defending the masses against imperialism, since they are themselves incapable of breaking with imperialist domination. Revolutionary workers must also tell our fellow workers the truth about this: the working class itself must unite with all the downtrodden for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. The basic need is to replace the capitalist state, the state of bourgeois rule, with a workers’ state, where the working class will rule. By building their international vanguard party, the most class-conscious workers will lead the fight for socialist revolution not only in one nation but internationally. The idea of building socialism in one country is a fraud. A federation of workers’ states is the necessary step for abolishing class society and scarcity. This is Trotsky’s strategy of permanent revolution, and it is the only way to end imperialism and really answer the hopes of humanity.
Chávez is clearly weaker after the referendum, but he still is tremendously popular — in contrast to any contending leader or party in Venezuela at this time. He has amassed tremendous power, including the power to rule by decree. Using this authority, he caused much grief among his mass base when he granted amnesty on January 3 to opposition leaders tied to the imperialist-backed military coup against his government in 2002. Another presidential decree on January 18 turned the operation of the Caracas police force over to the national government. This transfer is the opening stage of a proposed National Police Law, which will place all municipal and state police forces under the national government.
State Maneuvers Against Workers
In Chávez vs. Working Class (PR 80) we highlighted Chávez’s attacks on union autonomy in announcing the launch of the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). The PSUV welcomed “socialist” business and military leaders into its fold, but demanded that unions and left organizations give up their independence in order to join. Getting the referendum passed would have been a great asset for force-feeding a program and rules for the party, since Chávez could then have falsely claimed that he was carrying out a popular mandate. He wants to make the PSUV into a big authoritarian party that could operate as a disciplining agent, repressing dissension from workers and the left.
It is obvious that his model in large part is the Communist Party of Cuba. It is no accident that the PSUV project had a Disciplinary Committee from the start and has even started expelling members, even though it is still a party in formation without any official program or statutes! Contrast the scene that Chávez faces today with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Castro was able over time to fuse his July 26th Movement with the hardened cadre of the existing Stalinist party, which had had much experience in backing the Batista dictatorship, especially within the union movement. Castro organized a new Communist Party, which was tied to the then powerful and nominally socialist Soviet Union and was an effective tool against the working class. Only after employing CP cadres to stifle the workers could Castro then take bold anti-imperialist measures like nationalization of industry.
While Chávez still retains great authority, his prestige has obviously suffered, which makes it even more apparent that he can’t summarily create a “great leap forward,” a mass party strictly following his dictates based merely on proclamations from on high. The material circumstances in Venezuela are not the same as in Cuba forty-plus years ago. And he can’t turn the small and independent Venezuelan Communist Party (which refused to enter the PSUV) into an authoritative party with masses of disciplined cadre that can control the working class.
Many leftists falsely claim that nationalization of major industry in itself signifies the existence of a workers’ state or some form of “socialist” regime. In Venezuela, Chávez has preserved a capitalist mixed economy, an alliance between state and private enterprise even within the formally state-owned oil industry. And Chávez openly opposes workers’ control or management of the industry.
Repression of Workers Continues
Repression against protesting and striking workers, discussed in our previous issue, has continued. Chávez especially fears the potential role of oil workers in Venezuelan politics — there are thousands of core workers who at great sacrifice and courage fought off the bosses’ attempted lockout for 14 months from December 2002 to February 2004. Afraid of workers’ power, Labor Minister Ramón Rivero even actively opposes the oil workers’ right to elect their own union leaders. A government appointed phony negotiating team from a newly merged union organization, FUTPV (United Oil Workers Federation of Venezuela), pushed through a bad contract in November. Workers who had tried to protest this process in Anzoategui state in September were attacked by police, with many arrested and injured; this led to an immediate work stoppage by other oil workers in the area.
The significance of the FUTPV’s negotiation of this contract goes beyond the raw economic deal: over half of the 60,000 oil workers in Venezuela had already voted to be represented by C-CURA (the United Revolutionary and Autonomous Class-Struggle Current) in the Fedepetrol federation, but the government refused to recognize this or to hold new elections.
The UNT (National Workers’ Union) was set up to be an alternative to the CTV union federation that had backed the coup and carried out the shutdown of the oil industry in 2002-2003. But the UNT itself is now permanently split — with each of the leadership groupings that co-founded it all using the same name-tag. The FSBT-UNT (Bolivarian Socialist Workers’ Force) is made up of close associates of Chávez’s government who now act in absolute cahoots with the regime to sabotage and divide labor struggles on a regular basis. They do not have a mass following of workers like C-CURA, which goes into conflict with the bosses and is obviously far more popular among militant workers.
C-CURA itself has two wings. The minority led by Orlando Chirino opposed entry into the PSUV and the recent referendum. It includes José Bodas, an important oil union leader, and has called for a “new party of workers,” which it is already calling the PAIS (Left Socialist Party) with a paper Voz de los Trabajadores. (See www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar.) The majority led by Stalin Pérez Borges entered the PSUV and favored the referendum. It publishes Marea Clasista y Socialista and includes Ramón Arias, leader of Fentrasep, the public sector union that has some 1.5 million members. The Chirino and Pérez Borges wings used to jointly run the fledgling PRS (Revolutionary Socialist Party) formation. Both wings capitulated heavily to Chávez, enthusiastically campaigning for his re-election in 2006. But the PRS never had any real political life and disappeared after its majority went into the PSUV.
Having made no fundamental break with their past tradition, Chirino and his associates have been forced into a phase of opposition to Chávez. Despite its capitulations, C-CURA finds itself representing the left wing of the existing union currents. For now it seems to be maintaining some unity in action, in order to defend itself against anti-union attacks from the regime.
The government feels threatened by the militant oil workers who have tremendous objective power, despite the fact that they represent only about one percent of the workforce. They also reflect the general popularity of class-conscious demands like full nationalization of a range of industries without compensation, workers’ control and management, an end to second-class contract labor, and a sliding scale of wages and hours. A notable battle right now has been taken on by the steel workers against the Argentine-controlled Sidor Corporation. These workers have been demanding nationalization for years and are in embroiled in a contract struggle as we go to press.
Attacks on Government Workers
For further proof of the attitude of Chávez toward class struggle one needs to look no further than to the plight of his own employees, the government workers, who represent about 13 percent of the workforce. Many make no more than the minimum wage. Along with oil and steel workers, public workers have a strong tradition of unionization. The elected representatives of Fentrasep went to the Ministry of Labor last August to renegotiate the collective contract for their members, after the workers had been stalled for two and a half years without a contract. The minister refused to meet with the delegates and locked them inside a room with no food or drink for days. They were eventually attacked by a thug organization associated with the government and dislodged. The ministry to date has refused to negotiate a contract, challenging the legitimacy of the delegates by claiming there is a dispute over union election results between C-CURA and the FSBT. The latter favors a lower wage settlement.
These are two of many examples where the government uses its ministry and labor lackeys to subvert the initiative of the ranks and their right to put forward their own leadership. In a September 2007 interview, Chirino spoke about this trend not only among the oil and public workers;
In Firestone, the labor inspector ordered the company to discuss the collective agreement with a union that only represented 10%. In Mavesa Foods, they registered a union in record time, a union with 34 signatures in a body with 750 workers. In Coca-Cola, after signing a collective agreement, the labor inspector partially certified the contract, leaving 15 clauses pending. …We state that in all these cases the work inspector acted in a perverse manner in order to favor minority groups identified with the FSBT in order to mount parallel unions. And so as to leave no doubt, the inspector herself has told the class-struggle union leaders that she has the order to string along all the unions that identify with C-CURA.
The government has also directly attacked or indirectly sabotaged small struggles of militant workers in the same vein. For one striking example, the workers at the Sincreba solid waste management company in Mérida suffered a shutdown of their plant last September, carried out by the boss with the help of local thugs and the police. They then occupied the plant and established themselves as a cooperative, attempting to run the operation for two months, while campaigning for the support of various mayors in the area as well as the local Puente Viejo Communal Council. Their initial occupation was shut down after a number of violent attacks. But they continued struggling for the goal of a permanent reopening as a state enterprise under workers’ control.
However, the Council, which had been empowered by the area mayoralties to run the plant, not only turned a blind eye to the violent attacks against these workers but refused to meet with them and finally denounced them. This anti-worker situation is what the government-sponsored councils can foster. (For Spanish language readers we recommend checking out the website my.opera.com/CLAN/blog/, which has extensive coverage.) The heroic struggle of these workers continues, as do many similar small battles, notably that of the workers of the Sanitarios Maracay bathroom fixtures plant, who had their occupation shut down last September. They have recently managed to reopen a part of the plant.
The Mass Abstention
It is estimated that 200,000 workers actually voted against the referendum. There are many reasons why millions more who also didn’t want the referendum to pass chose abstention. No doubt worries about retaliation by the regime (loss of jobs, benefits, etc.) played a big role in making workers afraid to vote No. But the act of abstention represented not just fear. It also reflected mixed consciousness among workers about how far to go in expressing or organizing their opposition.
Over the years Chávez and his mouthpieces have effectively preached the idea that a vote for Chávez is always a vote against imperialism, and vice versa. This time as usual pro-imperialist forces dominated the opposition to Chávez. Workers not only feared that they would be punished or slandered as right-wingers; many had to wonder if a No vote really would strengthen the right opposition.
The fact that the regime even declared it illegal to campaign for abstention meant that abstention became an act of protest, but a limited and still passive and confused one. It reflected a significant shift in workers’ consciousness but not an active clear way forward.
To a large degree workers who opposed the referendum didn’t see a class alternative. Workers are tending to become bolder in their experiences of conflict with the regime and with private bosses on a local or industrial level. But most have still not drawn sharp conclusions about the basic capitalist nature of the state and Chávez himself. On one level this is because the struggles have still been kept isolated from each other; workers have not yet experienced their independent power as a class. Many still believe that Chávez and the so-called left wing of the regime can be fashioned into a tool for winning class victories and even socialism — if only the “bureaucrats,” “rightists” and “corrupt” within the government could be weeded out. Despite the remaining illusions, there is a mounting tendency for workers to want to assert themselves and generalize their struggles as a class.
The outbreak of greater class struggles is inevitable. The biggest problem in our view is that there is no vanguard party in Venezuela which can point the way forward. In December, a revolutionary vanguard would have advocated a No vote tied to an independent workers’ opposition to Chávez on an explicitly anti-imperialist basis. For one thing, it could have called for demonstrations in support of the immediate enactment of a shorter work day, expanded social security coverage, and other specific benefits promised in the referendum. For another, it could have rallied support for the contract struggles in oil, steel, the public sector, etc. It could have opposed all the repressive measures in the referendum and the politics of the reactionary opposition at the same time.
Trotsky made a key point about the need to oppose the strengthening of a bourgeois state even against the threat of fascism:
The struggle against fascism, the defense of the positions the working class has won within the framework of degenerating democracy, can become a powerful reality since it gives the working class the opportunity to prepare itself for the sharpest struggles and partially to arm itself … to mobilize the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie on the side of the revolution, to create a workers’ militia, etc. Anyone who does not take advantage of this situation, who calls on the “state,” i.e., the class enemy, to “act,” in effect sells the proletariat’s hide to the Bonapartist reaction.
Therefore, we must vote against all measures that strengthen the capitalist-Bonapartist state, even those measures which may for the moment cause temporary unpleasantness for the fascists. (“Bourgeois Democracy and the Fight Against Fascism,” Writings 1935-6.)
Trotsky’s insistence against supporting the military build-up of any capitalist state, even against an immediate fascist threat, has relevance to Venezuela today. It argues that revolutionaries should counterpose the need for independent workers’ militias as opposed to reliance on any capitalist regime, however progressive its claims to be. Chávez has never ceased to insist that his proposals must be unequivocally supported in order to stop an imperialist inspired overthrow. While we do not believe that such a threat is real at this point, it remains true that in order to fight the threats of an imperialist intervention or coup, now or in the future, the workers must rely on their own independent power, not on Chávez. To this point, in the case of an actual imperialist threat, even then we would not support the kind of emergency decree or other Bonapartist measures that Chávez was pushing in the December referendum. The working class must never give up its independence, because only the working class can defeat imperialism.
In the current situation, the threat of an imperialist coup or takeover by the domestic right opposition has obviously receded, and Chávez has been using the relative peace on that front as an opportunity to make more deals with the right and crack down on mass struggles and aspirations at the same time. In fact, the current scene dictates the need for workers’ defense guards against the National Guard, police and thug outfits who have been attacking workers’ occupations, strikes and protests — as well as against any threat of a pro-imperialist coup from the right opposition. Workers’ political opposition to Chávez, and to this referendum in particular, must always include a commitment to mass mobilization to defend the regime against any imperialist attack. This was part of the message of class opposition to the referendum that revolutionaries needed to share with their fellow workers.
Against the Stream When Necessary
The point is not whether a working-class No vote campaign would have immediately won wide adherence. Sometimes even a small propaganda group with a bold message can tap into what workers are feeling and have influence beyond their numbers. But it is necessary to provide political leadership for the most advanced, potentially vanguard, workers, and create a working class pole of attraction — even if workers’ opposition to the referendum remained a minority movement at this particular time.
Tactically we could have favored abstention or voiding the ballot for workers in dangerous situations who could not vote No, but that had to be a very secondary matter. The main political message had to be clear: it was in our class’s interests that this referendum fail, and abstention was not a means to ensure that outcome. We totally reject any idea that voting No on behalf of the working class was a vote for the right or for imperialism. That methodology of amalgamation is what Chávez counts on every time, and such arguments will always be used to allow more power to fall into his hands — unless the initial elements of an authentic revolutionary vanguard are willing to stop living in the fear of Chávez’s shadow. It is absolutely necessary to distinguish between those times when a bloc with the regime is necessary to defeat an immediate imperialist threat or attack, and the times when blocking with the Chávez regime abets his ability to attack the working class himself and sets up the masses for more attacks from the right. The latter was the case in December.
Calling for abstention was an opportunist and irresponsible position for those concerned with defending the working class and raising its consciousness about what needs to be done. The fact that abstention indirectly resulted in a narrow defeat for Chávez could not have been assumed. The strategy of abstaining while secretly hoping for a defeat was opportunist, reflecting a fear of being amalgamated with the right opposition rather than having the courage to advocate what was necessary and risking such slanders temporarily, if necessary.
Chirino’s Abstentionism
Chirino and his associates, both in the unions and in his political tendency internationally (the UIT-CI), opposed the referendum. But they held back from calling for a No vote. Instead, they came out for a form of abstention. Here is an excerpt of the statement “Void Your Ballot” by Chirino and associates on behalf of the “Organizing Committee of the Movement for the Construction of a Workers Party,” dated November 2, 2007.
We call upon the workers to VOID YOUR BALLOTS this coming December 2, don’t mark either of the two options (YES or NO), just hit the VOTE key. This is an approach that has been raised by many workers who are afraid to be identified as abstentionists — now that the CNE [the electoral authority] has anti-democratically forbidden citizens to campaign for abstention — or who fear being fired from their jobs in government enterprises or being counterrevolutionary or reactionary for voting NO.
For revolutionary socialists it is important to express that we do not support the reform proposal, and for that reason we solidarize ourselves and we support all of those compañeros who are thinking about abstaining in a conscious form so as not to give their support to a retrograde constitutional reform, and more so with those who are disposed to take the risk of voting NO, without worrying about the manipulation and the pressures of all type that have come down on them.
Thus Chirino & Co. in passing solidarize with those workers who were bold enough to vote No. But this did not lead them to boldly call for a No vote themselves as a class policy, and they are supposed to be the leaders.
The call to void your ballots is close to the position adopted by the Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria (JIR: Revolutionary Left Youth), a small section of the Fracción Trotskista Cuarta Internacional (FT-CI: Trotskyist Fraction–Fourth International). We focused on the work of this small far left group in Venezuela in our previous article because of their consistent opposition to political support for Chávez in past elections. As well, they have put out some honest propaganda directly exposing the nature of Venezuelan society as capitalist and denouncing the Chavista myth that there is a “revolutionary process” underway.
These positive qualities contrast with the record of left union leaders like Chirino. Chirino is in a very militant phase now. But he and the whole UIT-CI tendency have consistently told workers to vote for Chávez. There is no evidence that he has changed his tune on that. In fact, despite his current oppositional stance toward the regime, he still talks about “deepening the revolutionary process” in Venezuela. He still fails to explain definitively that Chávez heads a populist bourgeois regime which uses the pretense of a “revolutionary process” to fool workers into supporting a capitalist state. Chirino uses the same false rhetoric while demanding a big role for workers in the process.
The JIR’s Abstentionism
Our previous article, in which we criticized the JIR for tailing Chirino, should be read as background to understanding the current turn. Unfortunately the JIR has not yet chosen to respond to our correspondence to them or to our published criticism. Worse, they have followed Chirino in taking the position of abstention in the recent referendum.
Here is the gist of their argument:
We are facing a proposed Constitutional Reform that seeks to increase the range of government power, in order to regiment the class struggle and the movements of the different factions of the classes, on the road of its “socialism with businessmen.” This is supported by the bourgeois sector of owners that backs the government and receives a boost from government, while the majority sectors of the dominant class oppose the reform.
…In the present referendum, there are apparently only two choices, that of YES to the Reform that Chávez and the National Assembly are proposing, and that of NO, defended by the broad majority of the right-wing opposition sectors and minority sectors that have withdrawn from the chavista movement. … Neither of these variants is a choice for workers, since, reformed or not, the Constitution continues defending private ownership of the means of production, that is, the regime of capitalist exploitation. Therefore, we are calling for an invalid vote (“votar nulo”). (JIR statement, Dec. 1, 2007.)
Of course, neither the movement backing Chávez nor the movement backing the right-wing opposition represented a political choice for workers. But that was not the question posed by the referendum, unlike in a regular election where Chávez runs against an opposition bourgeois candidate, when abstention would be the only choice. Here, voting No would just result in maintaining the current constitution.
Here the JIR argues against participating in a specific referendum simply because both sides stand for bourgeois constitutions. The JIR recognizes the mounting threat of Bonapartism in words but then refuses to identify it as the essential question to act on when a vote is posed. Whereas Trotsky said “we must vote against all measures that strengthen the capitalist-Bonapartist state,” the JIR claims that workers must abstain on strengthening the Bonapartist state because the result will still be a bourgeois state. This formalist argument covers up an opportunist conclusion: don’t stand directly against Chávez, not even on this.
In fact, defeating the referendum weakened Chávez’s power and therefore potentially strengthened the workers’ movement to fight back. The vote did not automatically strengthen the threat of a rightist coup; it didn’t even add significant numbers of recruits to the traditional opposition. Had working-class fighters mounted their own opposition and organized their fellow workers to actively vote No, the danger of strengthening the right wing would have been even less.
Last Spring the Chávez regime revoked the license of the RCTV network, creating a groundswell of opposition by the traditional right as well as a new middle-class student movement. The bulk of the left, including Chirino and the whole C-CURA tendency, championed Chávez’s move and urged that he go further. On this matter, the JIR correctly went against the pseudo-left stream, stating their opposition to the censorship of a reactionary TV station, even though opposition to the shutdown was dominated by the right. Again they went to Trotsky, looking at the essence of the question from the point of the class struggle, not siding with the seeming “left wing” of the capitalist class against the “right.” They quoted in their press from his article “Freedom of the Press and the Working Class” in Writings (1937-38):
As Leon Trotsky states in his brilliant work, “Theory as well as historic experience, testify that any restriction to democracy in bourgeois society, is eventually directed against the proletariat, just as taxes eventually fall on the shoulders of the proletariat. Bourgeois democracy is usable by the proletariat only insofar as it opens the way for the development of the class struggle. Consequently, any workers’ ‘leader’ who arms the bourgeois state with special means to control public opinion in general, and the press in particular, is a traitor. In the last analysis, the accentuation of class struggle will force bourgeois of all shades to conclude a pact: to accept special legislation, and every kind of restrictive measures, and measures of ‘democratic’ censorship against the working class.”…
We encourage workers and honest militants, students, and intellectuals to read this important work of Trotsky’s.
Going back to 2004, before the JIR formally existed as a section of the FT-CI, its co-thinkers in the Trotskyist Fraction internationally took the correct position of voting No against the imperialist-backed recall referendum which threatened to remove Chávez from office. This proves to their credit that they are not for abstention in all bourgeois referendums as a matter of course and that they can distinguish between a referendum and a regular election. It was correct in that situation to bloc with pro-Chávez voters. Even though Chávez advocated it, the recall was an extraordinary and illegitimate exercise forced upon the Venezuelan people by U.S. imperialism. The result of a successful recall campaign would not have been a normal electoral change in bourgeois representation but rather the opening for some sort of coup under a “democratic” pretense, and with covert U.S. support.
As the Mexican section of the FT-CI, the LTS (Workers League for Socialism) pointed out at the time, a vote against the recall referendum was a vote against imperialism and not a political endorsement of Chávez. In their article of August 13, 2004, the LTS stated:
The Chávez leadership can only bring defeat and frustration to the Venezuelan masses. Unfortunately, most of the left capitulates to him, bestowing political support more or less shamefacedly, which only serves to impede the proletarian vanguard from regrouping around independent working-class politics. … Vote NO critically, a NO to the opposition and to imperialism, which in no way means a YES to Chávez.
It was equally correct to abstain in the December 2006 presidential election, as the JIR did, and give no political support to any bourgeois candidate.
If the FT-CI tendency in 2004 was able to recognize that a No on the recall referendum was not a Yes for Chávez, we raise the question of why they couldn’t recognize that a No on the December 2007 constitutional referendum was not a Yes for the current constitution. It does them great discredit that they came up with such a paper-thin argument for abstention this time.
Left Opportunism and the Student Opposition
The only far left tendency we know of in Venezuela to call for a No vote was the Morenoite Unidad Socialista de los Trabajadores (UST: Socialist Workers Unity), a small group affiliated to the Liga Internacional de los Trabajadores (LIT: International Workers League). They called for a No vote but under the horribly false justification that it was mainly necessary to intervene in the middle-class student movement that opposed the referendum! While it would be wrong to argue that the student opposition is thoroughly right-wing and bought and paid for by the CIA, it is definitely a movement which calls for democratic rights based on free enterprise and has nothing to do with the aims of the workers’ movement and the fight against imperialism.
The bulk of the left, whether it calls itself Marxist or Bolivarian or both, is still cheerleading Chávez — with whatever hand-wringing criticisms they made about how the referendum was carried out. Not only do most of these groups not consider the struggle of the working class to be central; they virtually ignore it. That is why the JIR, which does politically oppose Chávez in general and does address itself centrally to the working class, is worthy of far more attention.
The defeat of the referendum is undoubtedly creating openings and encouraging the working class to put forward its demands. It did not result in an immediate rise of the right, while it has shown workers that there are many who share their mounting questions about the regime. Chávez conveniently claimed that the vote against his referendum showed that the working class was not ready for socialism. The opposite is far closer to the truth.
No to Imperialist Intervention!
No to Capitalist Attacks on the Workers and the Poor!
No to State Intervention in the Unions!
Mass Workers’ Armed Self Defense!
Build the Revolutionary Party of the Working Class!
Re-create the Fourth International!
Socialist Revolution Is the Only Solution!
Marxism & the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’Venezuela & the LeftIn January 2007, shortly after winning re-election, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez declared: “We’re moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela” (Guardian [London], 10 January 2007). The National Assembly then passed an “enabling law” granting the president authority to issue decrees. In December 2007, Chávez suffered a major setback when his plan to amend the country’s constitution in a “socialist” direction was narrowly defeated in a national referendum. Chávez has since promised to slow the pace of change, yet the so-called “Bolivarian Revolution,” which has mobilized millions of workers and poor people and excited many of the world’s ostensibly “Marxist” organizations, has always stood for the preservation of capitalist property. Hugo Chávez, who was first elected president of Venezuela in December 1998, heads a state apparatus organically tied to defense of the capitalist social order. His advocacy of “socialism” reflects a distance from the ruling bourgeois oligarchy that allows him to contain the mass plebeian unrest that has periodically shaken Venezuelan society. Chávez is hardly the first left-wing “strongman” to come to power in a neo-colony. When he was assassinated in August 1940, Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary, had been working on an article that dealt with this phenomenon:
The recently defeated constitutional reform package was advertised by Chávez as setting a course “headed straight towards socialism” (Economist, 16 August 2007). The right-wing opposition and its imperialist mentors denounced “Cuban-style communism” and claimed that the proposal to remove presidential term limits proved that Chávez intended to be “president for life.” Some of the proposed constitutional amendments, like reducing the workweek, extending pension coverage and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of health status or sexual orientation, were supportable. It is significant that there was no proposal to decriminalize abortion, access to which remains severely restricted. Other “reforms” were anti-democratic—including the removal of a 180-day limit on presidential “state of emergency” declarations, and raising the number of signatures required for a recall referendum from 20 to 30 percent of the electorate. Another amendment guaranteed capitalist property. Taken as a whole, the constitutional reform package was unsupportable. A “yes” vote in the referendum was an endorsement of Chávez’s brand of bonapartist reformism. Yet the most deadly opponents of workers and the oppressed mobilized heavily for a “no” vote. In this situation, the appropriate tactic for revolutionaries was to advocate a spoiled ballot as an expression of hostility to the imperialist-backed opposition and no political support to the bourgeois Bolivarian regime. Millions of Venezuelans who had previously backed Chávez came to this conclusion and refused to vote. Some may have been discouraged by the high-profile defection of General Raúl Isaías Baduel, who had played a key role in restoring Chávez after the reactionary coup of April 2002. Others were undoubtedly affected by the low-intensity sabotage campaign by rightist elements. But it seems that most workers who stayed home did so because they were suspicious of the anti-democratic political “reforms” and Chávez’s commitment to defending the prerogatives of the big capitalists. Alan Woods, leader of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) whose Venezuelan affiliate is the Revolutionary Marxist Current (CMR), argued for “completing the Revolution” with “a massive ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum” (Marxist.com, 20 November 2007). Woods was upbeat about proposals that would have allowed the president to create new sub-national political jurisdictions to bypass state governments controlled by hostile forces. Chávez had also proposed various grassroots institutions with limited decision-making authority. The centerpiece was to be a massive expansion of the “communal councils” of between 200 and 400 families in urban areas. In January 2007, Chávez announced that the several thousand communal councils already in existence would receive $5 billion in government funding, up from $1.5 billion the year before. The councils, which tend to have a heavily plebeian character, incorporate a variety of pre-existing formations:
Chávez’s suggestion that the communal councils could form the core of a new state apparatus delighted many of his “Marxist” admirers, even though it is generally acknowledged that they are not genuine organs of proletarian power. The New Zealand section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), for instance, which claims that there is “a dual power scenario in Venezuela,” admits that “these councils are not the same as the workers’ soviets of 1917 Russia” (“Venezuela’s deepening revolution & international socialist coordination,” 1 May 2007). The British Workers Power group, which in the February 2007 issue of its paper had observed that the communal councils “lack the class independence of soviet-type bodies and they are not the source of the state power but a ‘participatory’ and subordinate creation of it,” subsequently flipped its position:
Workers Power’s initial assessment was closer to the mark. Far from creating a situation of “dual power” or prefiguring a socialist republic, the communal councils are multi-class formations whose chief function is to strengthen Bolivarian bonapartism by tying the popular masses to the capitalist state via the presidency. Bolivarian ‘Socialism’: Cooperatives & Co-ManagementChávez’s leftist supporters are inclined to interpret the expansion of cooperative micro-businesses and the state sector as evidence of the emergence of “socialist” property. When Chávez first took office there were fewer than one thousand co-ops; today there are tens of thousands, employing hundreds of thousands of people previously excluded from the formal sector of the economy. The government provides start-up capital in the form of loans and encourages “endogenous” networking with other cooperatives and the quasi-independent government-backed Bolivarian social “missions.” The results have been mixed:
Many cooperatives have failed, while those that have succeeded have done so as tiny capitalist enterprises which have figured out how to turn a profit. Cooperative workers, as “owners” of marginally-viable micro-businesses, often earn less than the minimum wage. Some big companies have opted to outsource work to cooperatives rather than expand their unionized workforce. In the countryside, the government has distributed almost two million hectares of state-owned land to over 150,000 poor peasants who in many cases belong to farming cooperatives. More than 300,000 hectares of privately-owned “under-utilized” land have also been taken over, while big landowners using their land “productively” have not been touched (Venezuelanalysis.com, 26 March 2007). Workers in some urban cooperatives are involved in “co-managing” their companies with the owners or government bureaucrats. Some leftists have interpreted this as a form of “workers’ control of industry,” which it is not. Genuine workers’ control is characterized by dual power in the workplace, not institutionalized class collaboration. It tends to develop in pre-revolutionary situations and constitutes what Trotsky called a “school for planned economy.” Two of Venezuela’s most celebrated examples of “nationalized” companies under co-management are Invepal and Inveval—private enterprises whose owners participated in the December 2002-January 2003 bosses’ lockout against Chávez. Hundreds of enterprises went out of business due to the lockout and hundreds of thousands of workers were thrown out on the street as a result, but very few companies have been taken over by the state. Invepal (then known as Venepal) owed its workers back wages, while Inveval (then known as Constructora Nacional de Válvulas) declared bankruptcy. In 2005, the government agreed to purchase the facilities after workers demanding nationalization occupied the premises. At Inveval, a valve factory dependent on contracts with the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anónima (PDVSA), the employees’ cooperative has a 49 percent stake, and a factory council elected by a workers’ assembly runs the operation. Yet the company, which operated at only 10 percent capacity in 2007, remains subject to market fluctuations. One factor in this was a decision by PDVSA officials to renege on signed deals (Venezuelanalysis.com, 27 July 2007). In February 2006, workers at Inveval launched the Revolutionary Workers Front of Co-managed and Occupied Factories (FRETECO), which includes representatives from a dozen or so other companies. The project has received little support from the leadership of the National Workers Union (UNT—the main union federation) and is further handicapped by its leaders’ political loyalty to the government. The IMT reported on a FRETECO meeting in October 2006 presided over by CMR supporter Jorge Paredes:
The meeting concluded “with all workers and invited guests singing the Venezuelan national anthem.” Invepal is a paper mill in Carabobo state where the government also handed a 49 percent ownership share to the employees’ cooperative. The experiment in co-management turned ugly when work was contracted out at the company’s Maracay operation:
In February 2005, workers’ assemblies were permitted to elect managers at the state-owned aluminum firm, Alcasa, although the president of the company was appointed by Chávez. The workers have apparently disappointed their Bolivarian benefactors. Alcasa’s “revolutionary” spokesperson, Alcides Rivero, recently complained of “a culture where workers only worked to get money” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 30 October 2007). The situation at the “co-managed” state electrical company Cadafe is even more tense. According to one observer, there are:
Yet even these limited experiments with co-management are exceptions to the rule. Chávez briefly threatened to take over Siderúrgica del Orinoco (Sidor), one of Latin America’s largest steel companies, which had laid off thousands of workers when it was privatized in 1998. In May 2007, when workers demanding re-nationalization blockaded the entrance, Sidor management responded by offering to increase production of metal piping for the domestic market. Chávez accepted the proposal and agreed to allow the Argentine Techint Group and its partners to retain their 60 percent share of the firm. Earlier this year, 14,000 permanent and contract Sidor workers went on strike for a wage hike and the payment of outstanding pension contributions. The Ministry of Labor, perhaps in recognition of the company’s previous cooperation, intervened with a request that the workers reduce their demands by half (Venezuelanalysis.com, 2 February). Chávez also refused to nationalize Sanitarios Maracay, a ceramics factory that workers occupied for six weeks in early 2006 and then again later that year when the owner decided to close the plant. The workers responded by electing a factory council to keep the operation running. In April 2007, Sanitarios workers on their way to a FRETECO rally in Caracas were assaulted by police and National Guard forces. Twenty-one people were arrested and 14 were injured by buckshot. A month later, 3,000 UNT workers in the state of Aragua staged a one-day strike to protest this outrage. In August 2007, Humberto Lopez, a former UNT leader at Sanitarios, led a group of white-collar employees and company supervisors who seized the plant and deposed the factory council. They made a deal with the owner, under the auspices of the Ministry of Labor, which returned the factory in exchange for an agreement to pay back wages to the workers. A system of co-management was introduced with a commission of 13: three from the Ministry of Labor and five each representing the workers and the owner (Venezuelanalysis.com, 18 August 2007). Significantly, the government did not introduce “co-management” in Compañia Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela (CANTV), one of its two major acquisitions in 2007. CANTV, Venezuela’s main telecommunications company and largest private enterprise, which had been privatized in 1991, was purchased back for $1.3 billion. The government also “nationalized” Caracas’ electrical utility, Electricidad de Caracas, by having PDVSA purchase the 82 percent share held by AES Inc. of Arlington, Virginia for $739 million. ‘Re-nationalizing’ Venezuela’s Oil AssetsVenezuela’s oil industry was nationalized in 1976, but in the 1990s lucrative exploration and production rights were handed out to the petroleum multinationals. Under “Operating Services Agreements” (OSAs) the foreign oil companies did not buy and sell crude, but merely acted as “contractors” rendering “services” to PDVSA (which retained nominal ownership of the oil). According to Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela’s energy minister, the “fees” paid to these “contractors” just happened to be linked to world oil prices, and the companies thereby avoided paying the 50 percent tax rate on oil profits. Chávez ended this arrangement by converting the OSAs into “mixed enterprises” in which PDVSA holds a majority share. The royalty rates were raised and many former “contractors” were charged back taxes. Despite some grumbling, most of the foreign multinationals ultimately agreed to the new terms. Turning the OSAs into “mixed enterprises” was merely the first step in what Chávez called the “re-nationalization” of Venezuela’s oil. On May Day 2007, the president announced the “re-nationalization” of what is thought to be hundreds of billions of barrels of extra-heavy crude oil in the Orinoco region. France’s Total, Norway’s Statoil, Chevron and British Petroleum agreed to sell part of their stake in the Orinoco Belt to PDVSA, while U.S. conglomerates ExxonMobil and ConocoPhilips, which resisted the takeover, had their investments (estimated at $750 million and $4.5 billion respectively) expropriated. They have appealed to the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an agency of the imperialist World Bank. In February, ExxonMobil obtained temporary court orders freezing $12 billion in PDVSA assets in Britain and the Netherlands pending the ICSID’s ruling (Venezuelanalysis.com, 8 February). Most multinationals decided to go along with the “re-nationalization” because they can reap enormous profits. To diversify foreign participation in developing the resources of the heavy crude of the Orinoco Belt, the government has secured investments from Brazil, China, Iran and Russia. The Chávez regime has made it clear that it favors foreign ownership of a significant portion of its oil industry, as long as PDVSA maintains majority control and applicable taxes and royalties are paid. While Marxists certainly defend the right of every neo-colony to control its natural resources, Chávez’s “re-nationalization,” which has amply compensated the oil majors, hardly constitutes a blow against international capitalism. There is nothing inherently “anti-imperialist” about nationalized oil companies, as the New York Times (10 April 2007) observed:
The “anti-imperialist” hue of Chávez’s oil policies derives largely from the attempt to reduce dependence on the U.S. market, which currently absorbs half of Venezuela’s petroleum exports. In an era of dwindling and uncertain oil supplies, Venezuela’s estimated 300 billion barrels of light and heavy crude is a significant prize. It is possible that current calculations may considerably understate the country’s reserves. Investigative journalist Greg Palast claims that an internal report of the U.S. Department of Energy suggests that Venezuela might actually possess 1.36 trillion barrels of oil (ZNet.com, 24 May 2006). If this is true, it would make Venezuela the single most important source of petroleum on the planet and vastly increase its strategic importance. Washington is concerned about Venezuela’s growing influence within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, like Chávez, is high on U.S. imperialism’s list of enemies, joined the Bolivarian leader in blaming rising oil prices on the weak U.S. dollar (New York Times, 19 November 2007). In September 2007, Chávez ordered PDVSA “to convert its investment accounts from dollars to euros and Asian currencies” (New York Times, 30 November 2007). Iran has long campaigned for OPEC to begin pricing oil in euros rather than dollars, a move that would considerably accelerate the deterioration of America’s international position. Wriggling Out of Uncle Sam’s GripChávez’s success in loosening Washington’s hold can be attributed to three factors: rising oil prices, which have both filled government coffers and enhanced Venezuela’s geo-strategic importance; the regime’s relative independence from the elements of the national bourgeoisie most closely aligned with Washington; and the American military’s diminished capacity for intervention in Latin America while it is bogged down in Iraq. In May 2007, Venezuela announced its intent to withdraw from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, two key mechanisms of U.S. imperial control in the hemisphere. The IMF’s influence in Latin America has recently declined dramatically:
In August 2007, Chávez announced that Venezuela would purchase $1 billion worth of Argentine bonds:
Chávez played a key role in launching the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South) to replace the IMF with a fund of $7 billion to promote regional infrastructure as well as research and development. The Banco del Sur was officially launched in December 2007 at a signing ceremony in Buenos Aires attended by representatives of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. The Associated Press (9 December 2007) reported that Augusto de la Torre, the World Bank’s chief economist for Latin America, claimed that “this new initiative is not perceived as a competitor,” but that is clearly what Chávez intends. The Banco del Sur and Venezuela’s Argentine bond purchases complement the “Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas” (ALBA), an initiative to promote Latin American cooperation launched in 2004 by Chávez and Fidel Castro to compete with the imperialist Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) project. Under ALBA, Cuba provides medical services to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in exchange for oil. In April 2006, Bolivia’s newly-elected president, Evo Morales, decided to join ALBA:
Shortly after being sworn in as Nicaraguan president in January 2007, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega announced that his country would also join ALBA. Within a few weeks Venezuela had:
At an April 2007 ALBA summit in Caracas, plans were developed to promote healthcare, education and economic development in the region:
Caracas and Buenos Aires have:
Venezuela is also seeking to strengthen economic ties with Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Larov indicated that state-owned Gazprom was studying the possibility of forming a joint company with PDVSA to undertake natural gas and oil projects, while Russia’s vice president, Alexander Zhukov, acknowledged interest in future South American pipeline projects:
In 2006, Venezuela, Syria and Iran signed an agreement “to build a $1.5 billion oil refinery in Syria” (New York Times, 2 November 2006). In July 2007, the Iranian and Venezuelan governments began construction of a $700 million petrochemical plant near Tehran, with plans for an identical facility in Venezuela. A joint automobile company, Venirauto, is already in business. The first 300 units rolled off the assembly line in Caracas in July 2007, though the plan is to produce 25,000 cars annually by 2010:
Venezuela and Iran have signed deals worth approximately $17 billion, a collaboration Chávez celebrated by grotesquely designating Iran’s Ahmadinejad “one of the greatest anti-imperialist fighters” (Associated Press, 28 September 2007). Venezuela has also strengthened ties with the bureaucratic leaders of the Chinese deformed workers’ state:
In August 2006, Beijing signed an agreement with Caracas that projected raising oil imports from Venezuela to a million barrels per day by 2012. (The U.S. currently imports over a million barrels per day from the Bolivarian republic.) China has also offered to provide tankers and help Venezuela construct new drilling platforms. In November 2007, the two countries agreed to endow a joint development fund with $6 billion, two-thirds provided by the Chinese Development Bank and one-third by Venezuela (Venezuelanalysis.com, 7 November 2007). Yankee Imperialism BristlesAll of this activity has further alarmed an American foreign policy establishment already concerned by the erosion of U.S. influence in Latin America:
Latin America remains a critically important market for the U.S., which exports more than $100 billion a year to Mexico and another $50 billion to the rest of the region. Chávez’s outspoken denunciations of U.S. imperialism and his regime’s pursuit of regional autonomy have not been well received in Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice characterized Chávez as “one of the most dangerous men in the world” (Independent [London], 16 May 2006). A March 2006 U.S. National Security Strategy document complained: “In Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money is undermining democracy and seeking to destabilize the region” (cited in The Progressive, 24 September 2006). Chávez has responded to these threats with a modest expansion of the Venezuelan military. In January 2007, the Pentagon estimated that Venezuela had spent more than $4 billion on arms in the previous two years (New York Times, 25 February 2007). In 2006, when the U.S. suspended arms sales to Venezuela and blocked the acquisition of military aircraft from Spain and Brazil by denying export licenses for the American-manufactured components in them, Chávez turned to Russia, purchasing five submarines in addition to “24 Russian Sukhoi-30 two-seater attack aircraft, 34 helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikovs” (Guardian, 15 June 2007). George W. Bush, under whose watch the U.S. government orchestrated the failed April 2002 coup against the democratically-elected Bolivarian leader, hypocritically expressed concern about “the undermining of democratic institutions” in Venezuela (New York Times, 1 February 2007). The various agencies of U.S. “democracy”—including the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute—have showered financial and technical support on Venezuela’s pro-imperialist opposition. In 2006, the Associated Press revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) alone had doled out more than $26 million in Venezuela since 2002 to “strengthen democracy.” Eva Golinger, author of Bush vs. Chavez: Washington’s War Against Venezuela, reported:
Bolivarian Bourgeoisie’s BonanzaWhile many of Venezuela’s big capitalists revile Chávez, others are more impressed by the fact that business is booming under the “socialist” president. The head of the Caracas Country Club, Fernando Zozaya, when asked about Chávez’s Bolivarian vision, replied: “Let’s say it’s a very special type of socialism” (Guardian, 13 November 2006). José Guerra, the former head researcher at Venezuela’s central bank, was less coy: “‘State-supported capitalism isn’t just surviving under Chavez,’ he said. ‘It is thriving’” (New York Times, 3 December 2006). A leading mouthpiece of American capitalism made a similar observation:
Venezuela’s GDP, which stood at US$117.1 billion in 2000, grew to $181.9 billion by 2006 (“World Development Indicators database,” World Bank, April 2007). Low interest rates and high inflation have led to massive borrowing and a financial boom:
Members of what is called the “bolibourgeoisie”—entrepreneurs with government connections and public contracts—are not alarmed by Chávez’s talk of “transcending capitalism.” Venezuelan Banking Association director Francisco Aristeguieta, who seems happy enough with the status quo, remarked: “President Chavez is saying it’s the job of all of us for Venezuela to press ahead” (New York Times, 7 May 2007). Chávez has periodically assured his bourgeois allies that: “[W]e have no plan to eliminate the oligarchy, Venezuela’s bourgeoisie. We have demonstrated this sufficiently in over eight years” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 4 June 2007). The main employers’ federation, Fedecámaras, lost its affiliate in the state of Bolívar because of its opposition to the regime’s proposed constitutional reforms (Venezuelanalysis.com, 27 November 2007). Alejandro Uzcátegui of Businessmen for Venezuela (Empreven), a pro-Chávez association, opined: “We think President Hugo Chávez has done a very good job” (WashingtonPost.com, 3 December 2006). Empreven is part of the Confederation of Socialist Businessmen of Venezuela (Conseven), a pro-government business federation established in May 2007. Its leader, José Agustín Campos (former leader of Acción Democrática, one of the two pro-imperialist parties that shared power before Chávez was elected), explained that Conseven “will live in harmony” with the co-managed enterprises and Bolivarian cooperatives (El Universal [Caracas], 6 May 2007). Gustavo Cisneros, the billionaire owner of the Venevision television network, who supported the April 2002 coup, changed his mind when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arranged for him to meet Chávez in the run-up to the 2004 presidential recall referendum:
British journalist John Pilger insightfully observed:
The redistributive policies of the Bolivarian government, and Venezuela’s booming economy, have meant rising living standards for most Venezuelans. Unemployment has been reduced by half since Chávez took office, and now officially stands at 7 percent, with a majority of the workforce presently employed in the “formal” (as opposed to underground) economy. Social programs have also expanded considerably:
According to government statistics, the rate of poverty among Venezuelan households has fallen from 42.8 percent in 1999 to 33.9 percent in 2006, while “extreme poverty” declined from 16.6 percent to 10.6 percent (Instituto Nacional de Estadística website, September 2006). Recently, however, wages have been falling behind inflation, which is currently running at 20 percent per annum, and some basic foods have been in short supply. The Bolivarians’ attempt to hold living costs down by appealing to the capitalists to be good citizens, while freezing prices on some essentials, has led to shortages, as merchants stockpile goods while waiting for prices (and profits) to rise. Many farmers have simply sold their products across the border in Colombia. As supplies dwindled, the Venezuelan government backed down and raised the price of milk 30 percent and coffee by 40 percent. In February, Chávez announced that the price of rice, a basic staple regulated since 2003, would be increased 44 percent “to give incentive to rice producers” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 11 February). This illustrates the impossibility of finding some “third way” between a collectivized economy, where the production and distribution of goods are consciously planned, and a capitalist one, where decisions are determined by the pursuit of maximum profit. Administrative Agents of the BourgeoisieWhile Chávez retains a substantial social base, the decision of some three million of his traditional supporters to sit out the constitutional referendum signifies that many are losing confidence in him. Of course, the Bolivarian leaders do not trust the masses, and do not want to see an authoritative alternative leadership develop within the organizations of the working class. Since it was founded in 2003 as a pro-Chávez breakaway from the Venezuelan Workers Confederation (CTV) which had supported the rightist coup in 2002, the UNT has been run by “national coordinators” appointed by its major components. In May 2006, at the union’s second congress, leaders of the Bolivarian Socialist Workers Force (FSBT—the hard-core Chávistas) blocked a proposal by the UNT’s largest faction, the Classist, Unitary, Revolutionary and Autonomous Current (C-CURA—led by two self-described Trotskyists, Orlando Chirino and Stalin Pérez Borges, who have recently had a falling out) that UNT members should elect their national leaders. While not opposing elections in principle, FSBT supporters argued to postpone them to allow union militants to concentrate on campaigning for Chávez in the December 2006 presidential election. Chirino subsequently complained:
It seems clear that the FSBT feared that it could not win a vote, and that a UNT leadership with a mandate from the base might turn into a potential rival to Chávez for the allegiance of the masses. On 28 December 2007, Chirino was notified that he had been fired from his job at PDVSA. This act of political persecution—stemming from Chirino’s advocacy of a spoiled ballot in the constitutional referendum and his refusal to join Chávez’s new political party—is an anti-democratic attack on the Venezuelan workers’ movement as a whole. When the four labor federations representing workers at PDVSA were amalgamated to form the United Oil Workers Federation of Venezuela (FUTPV), no elections were held to legitimize the leadership. C-CURA, which claims the support of a majority of Venezuela’s 60,000 oil workers and controls Fedepetrol, the largest component of the new federation, refused to endorse the FUTPV bargaining committee appointed to negotiate with PDVSA last year (Venezuelanalysis.com, 29 September 2007). Fedepetrol sought to put direct pressure on PDVSA management:
The leader of Fedepetrol Anzoátegui, José Bodas (a member of C-CURA), denounced the pro-management elements of the FUTPV bargaining committee for describing the workers who took action against PDVSA’s stalling as “counterrevolutionaries.” In September 2007, striking oil workers were attacked by the police:
While PDVSA and state officials sought to distance themselves from the gratuitous brutality of the police, the incident graphically illustrates how the “Bolivarian” state apparatus serves the bosses, as well as how the division between the interests of labor and capital is just as real in PDVSA as in the private sector. The British Socialist Workers Party recently reported another example involving the public-sector union Fentrasep:
Whatever label they affix to themselves, those who administer the capitalist state inevitably end up serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. Leon Trotsky made the following observation about the function of bureaucrats like the FSBT’s Rivero:
PSUV: Chávez’s Bourgeois Populist PartyFollowing his overwhelming victory in the December 2006 presidential election, Chávez announced plans to enroll his mass plebeian base and the various political organizations supporting the Bolivarian project into the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Chávez’s Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) immediately signed on along with a variety of other groups, but the three largest pro-Chávez parties outside the MVR—For Social Democracy (Podemos), Fatherland for All (PPT) and the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV)—all remained aloof. Podemos, the Venezuelan affiliate of the Socialist International, which originated as a pro-Chávez split from the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), voted “no” in the constitutional referendum. The PPT, a pro-Chávez split from La Causa Radical, voted “yes,” as did the PCV, from which the MAS and La Causa Radical originally split decades ago. The PCV leadership, which ostensibly refuses to join the PSUV because it is not “Marxist-Leninist,” is careful not to be too independent. Several members of its Central Committee have joined the PSUV, and the PCV pledges to work closely with the new party. PCV Secretary General Oscar Figuera declared: “You will never see the Communist Party in the opposition. You will always see them accompanying the leader of the process: President Hugo Chávez Frías” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 19 March 2007). Chávez was initially angered by the refusal of the PCV and PPT to join the PSUV, but subsequently proposed a “Patriotic Alliance” of the three for the November 2008 mayoral and gubernatorial elections. The PSUV is a mass party with a nominal membership of millions of poor and working people, as well as a majority of the legislators in the National Assembly, top state officials and pro-government capitalists. Chávez explicitly proposed it as a cross-class, populist formation open to:
Before the party had a chance to work out a formal program or a constitution, Chávez had already appointed Diosdado Cabello, the ultra-wealthy MVR governor of the state of Miranda, to head a “provisional discipline committee” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 1 December 2007). C-CURA decided to join the PSUV project in January 2007 supposedly to guarantee its working-class character. But Chávez’s opposition to the existence of political tendencies within the PSUV and his declaration that the “unions should not be autonomous, one must put an end to that” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 2 May 2007) was too much for some in C-CURA to swallow. Chirino, who is associated with the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (UIT-CI—an international tendency led by former supporters of the Argentine revisionist Nahuel Moreno) had staked his reputation on safeguarding the “independence” of the labor movement, and so not only refused to join the PSUV but also urged his followers to spoil their ballots in the December 2007 referendum. Stalin Pérez Borges and his supporters, who publish a journal entitled Marea Socialista y Clasista, joined the PSUV and voted “yes” in the referendum. According to Pérez Borges: “There is no contradiction between organising in the PSUV to support the revolution, and also having independent unions. Both are part of the same fight towards socialism in Venezuela” (Venezuelanalysis.com, 12 September 2007). Launching the Movement for the Construction of a Workers Party represented a left shift for Chirino, who claims to be strongly for working-class political independence but who voted for Chávez in 2006 and supported the creation of the FBT (Bolivarian Workers Front) within the CTV. Alan Woods, perhaps the world’s foremost “Trotskyist” Chávista, denounced Chirino as one of the “sectarian clowns and half-wits” who dare criticize the Bolivarian caudillo:
The IMT, which has some influence within the workers’ movement in Venezuela, eagerly enlisted as official “promoters” of the PSUV:
Many of the world’s ostensibly Marxist groups, impressed by Chávez’s popularity, have taken a similar view. For example, the British Workers Power group argues:
Workers Power seems particularly excited by the Bolivarian leader’s talk of going international: “Even more important, Chavez has called for the PSUV to be part of the founding of a new International.” These chronic opportunists are already pledging to join “any international initiative Chavez may promote in the months ahead” (Ibid.). Bolivarian Reformism: Everything Old Is New AgainSuch displays of opportunist appetite from supposed revolutionaries are hardly unprecedented. In the 1950s, Michel Pablo, the arch-revisionist who played a key role in the political destruction of Trotsky’s Fourth International, was similarly enthusiastic about a hypothetical “Arab Revolution.” Pablo argued that revolutionaries should join the petty-bourgeois Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) because it had a mass base: “[T]he revolutionary Marxist tendency and the essential forces of a mass Labor Party of tomorrow will emerge from the inevitable social and political differentiation within the present FLN” (“The Arab Revolution,” November 1958). Similar delusions about the revolutionary potential of mass petty-bourgeois nationalist movements are promoted by all of Chávez’s leftist admirers. Trotsky criticized this impulse in addressing the arguments put forward by Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin in the 1920s to defend the disastrous policy of liquidating the cadres of the Chinese Communist Party into the bourgeois Guomindang:
The job of revolutionaries is to tell the truth—not to recycle popular illusions. And the truth is that multi-class formations led by left-talking petty-bourgeois bonapartists, like China’s Guomindang in the 1920s or Venezuela’s PSUV today, are dead-ends for the working class. Young leftists may believe that the Bolivarian “revolution” is completely unprecedented. But Alan Woods is old enough to remember how, in 1956, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser electrified the neo-colonial world by nationalizing the Anglo-French Suez Canal Company; survived a coordinated military assault by British, French and Israeli forces and then took over hundreds of foreign businesses. Eventually, Nasser proclaimed that his government was taking a “socialist” path:
In Nasser’s vision of “the people” leading the construction of “Arab socialism,” workers and managers shared power on company boards of directors. His political party, the Arab Socialist Union, struck an “anti-imperialist” note with its advocacy of a “non-aligned” movement of neo-colonial states. It was all positively Bolivarian. An even closer precedent for events in Venezuela was the regime of Lázaro Cárdenas, who won Mexico’s 1934 presidential election. Cárdenas’ government, the only one on Earth prepared to offer refuge to Leon Trotsky, sponsored a national literacy program and sought to expand access to medical care for the impoverished masses. Under Cárdenas, workers were permitted to seize idle factories, and thousands of agricultural and industrial cooperatives were founded. In June 1937, the Cárdenas administration expropriated the accumulated bond debt of the National Railways of Mexico, effectively nationalizing the enterprise. A year later, on May Day, he turned over control of the whole operation to the railway workers’ union. On 18 March 1938, Cárdenas announced the nationalization of Mexico’s petroleum resources. Faced with furious resistance by British and American oil corporations, he turned to the petroleum workers:
Leon Trotsky, who greeted the nationalization as “a highly progressive measure of national self-defense” against imperialist domination, noted that the “expropriation of oil is neither socialism nor communism”:
Trotsky subsequently commented:
Today various self-proclaimed Trotskyists heap praise on Hugo Chávez as a “socialist” despite the fact that the measures undertaken by his government fall far short of those implemented by Cárdenas. Hugo Chávez, like Cárdenas and Nasser, is a left bourgeois populist. Yet many “revolutionary socialists” have been actively promoting the illusion that the measures introduced by Chávez are paving the way for overturning capitalism. A good example of this is an essay entitled, “Strategies of the Left in Latin America,” by Claudio Katz, an Argentine leftist, that appeared in the July-August 2007 issue of International Viewpoint, journal of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USec):
The “old counterposing” of the revolutionary and reformist roads, which distinguished Leninism from Kautskyism, hinged on the question of whether the capitalist state could serve as a vehicle for socialism. Alan Woods of the IMT, who shares the USec’s objectivist methodology, thinks that Venezuela’s bourgeois state has been undergoing an incremental transformation:
The IMT’s former co-thinkers in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) seem inclined to agree, with references to “the Venezuelan state which, at this stage, cannot be described as a workers’ state” (The Socialist, 19 April 2007). This clearly implies that the CWI thinks that at some future point Bolivarian alchemy may succeed in turning the Venezuelan bourgeoisie’s repressive machine into its opposite. While such a view contradicts the core of the Marxist position on the state—i.e., that states are inextricably welded to the rule of a particular social class—this revisionist notion is consistent with previous claims by the CWI that similar metamorphoses occurred in Ethiopia, Somalia and various other places (see our pamphlet Marxism vs. ‘Militant’ Reformism). The Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP), a former USec affiliate which no longer pretends to any sort of “Trotskyism,” claims that the “transformation” of Venezuela’s capitalist state into a “workers’ and farmers’ state” has already occurred:
Leon Trotsky’s Transitional Program became fashionable among Chávez’s legion of foreign admirers after the head Bolivarian urged Venezuelans to read it during the 22 April 2007 broadcast of Aló Presidente, his weekly television program. Suddenly the IMT, CWI, USec, DSP and others who had previously regarded the founding programmatic document of the Fourth International as obsolete and ultra-left began to praise Chávez for treating it as some sort of social-democratic blueprint for building socialism while holding hands with the bourgeoisie. According to the DSP:
Trotsky, who completely opposed such crude class collaborationism, could hardly have imagined that his Transitional Program would one day be used as left-cover by a bourgeois head of state. At bottom, the Bolivarian project is about modernizing and stabilizing Venezuelan capitalism. Trotsky’s program of “transitional” demands is a codification of the experience of the Bolsheviks in the period leading up to the October 1917 revolution, and that of the revolutionary Communist International under Lenin, in politically preparing the exploited and oppressed to struggle for state power. The Transitional Program is aimed at mobilizing capitalism’s victims to smash the bourgeois state and the social order it defends—not to “transform” it. In explaining the demand for a “sliding scale of wages and hours,” Trotsky observed:
Despite the claims of various “Marxists” and “Trotskyists” who have volunteered their services as publicists for the Bolivarian strongman, no “revolutionary process” is underway in Venezuela today. While there is a real danger of violent rightist reaction and the possibility of civil war, Venezuela is not currently in a pre-revolutionary situation, i.e., the normal mechanisms of bourgeois rule continue to operate. Nor is it in a revolutionary, or “dual power,” situation, which would be marked by the development of potential organs of proletarian rule and a general recognition by all strata of society that things simply cannot go on as before. The USec’s resolution endorsing Chávez for president in 2006 claimed that the election would:
The phrase “revolutionary process” is commonly employed by revisionists seeking to blur the distinction between reforming the capitalist state and working for its revolutionary overthrow. USec scribe Stuart Piper optimistically projects that the “process” underway in Venezuela is “a nationalist, anti-neoliberal, anti-imperialist revolution, within which there is a socialist revolution struggling to get out.” According to Piper, “paradoxically, both aspects are crystallised in the personality of Chavez himself” (International Viewpoint, May 2007). The CWI has taken a somewhat less upbeat view than the IMT or USec:
The CWI has even expressed doubts about Chávez’s ability to provide revolutionary leadership:
While posing “the key issue” as the likelihood of the Bolivarian leader going Trotskyist, the CWI also sees a role for the masses: “it will be the working class in Venezuela who will ultimately decide this [the issue of socialist revolution]—not just president Chávez” (The Socialist, 18 May 2006). The IMT has tended to paint Chávez as the embodiment of an objectively revolutionary dynamic who “understands” the inexorable necessity to initiate a struggle to smash the state machinery he has wielded for almost a decade:
In endorsing “comrade President Chavez” prior to the December 2006 presidential election, Alan Woods pompously lectured those who lacked faith in the Bolivarian Bonaparte:
There is no question that Chávez has inspired millions of Venezuelans with dreams of the golden socialist future he promises. The job of revolutionaries, however, is not to reinforce these illusions but rather to alert the masses to the fatal dangers of Bolivarian-style class collaboration. Trotsky made this point in criticizing the “tail-endist” policy pursued by Stalin and Bukharin toward the radical-nationalist Guomindang in China in the 1920s:
In Venezuela today, as in China in the 1920s, the fundamental task for revolutionaries is to struggle to establish the political independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie, i.e., to split the Bolivarian movement along class lines. The IMT, in rejecting such an approach, employs the same arguments that Stalin used to defend his liquidationist policy in China:
Like other leftist apologists for the Bolivarian project, the IMT has generally tended to blame “reactionaries in the state bureaucracy” for thwarting Chávez’s socialist intentions:
Recently, however, the IMT leadership has evidenced some impatience with the disparity between the leftist rhetoric of the “Bolivarian Revolution” and the pro-capitalist reality. Alan Woods, frustrated by Chávez’s attempt to placate his right-wing critics in the aftermath of the failed constitutional referendum, complained that he missed the chance to effect a peaceful transition to socialism after his electoral triumph in December 2006:
This confused tangle of wishful thinking and vintage Kautskyan reformism is premised on the notion that socialist revolution is a matter of correct parliamentary tactics and skillful maneuvers to gain positions of influence within the capitalists’ repressive apparatus. The IMT imagines that, if he wanted to, Chávez could use his presidential office to “legally” uproot capitalism while incrementally transforming the bourgeois state he presides over into a workers’ state. Woods blames the Bolivarian shift to the right on “reformists” who filled the head of the glorious leader with bad advice:
This should make it clear for those who can read that the “Bolivarian socialism” the IMT has been promoting for the past few years, like the “Arab socialism” and “African socialism” touted by the Militant tendency several decades earlier, does not involve the expropriation of the means of production—it is simply capitalism under a different name. Workers’ Revolution: The Only Road to SocialismOne of the fundamental axioms of Marxism is the proposition that every state exists to defend the rule of a particular social class. This is why the road to socialism can only be opened by smashing the repressive machinery of the bourgeoisie and replacing it with institutions committed to defending collectivized, i.e., proletarian, property forms. A bourgeois state cannot be gradually turned into its opposite by replacing “bureaucratic” functionaries with “revolutionary” ones. A revolutionary policy for Venezuela must begin from the Marxist understanding of the nature of state power and the necessity of irreconcilable opposition to all wings of the bourgeoisie. A Trotskyist organization would seek to build a base in workplaces from which to intervene in the unions and address members of the communal councils and other Chávista mass organizations. While taking an active role in combating the rightist opposition, it would advance the perspective of permanent revolution, which is based on the recognition that in semi-colonial countries like Venezuela the capitalists are too weak and dependent on foreign imperialism to be capable of fulfilling any of the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. Only through the creation of a Venezuelan workers’ state can the oppression of workers, landless peasants, slum dwellers, indigenous peoples and other victims of capitalism be ended. A victorious socialist revolution in Venezuela would quickly spread beyond its borders and make the creation of a Socialist Federation of Latin America and the Caribbean an immediate possibility. It would also find a powerful echo within the proletarian masses of the northern imperial colossus and awaken them to the necessity to struggle to uproot the global system of imperialist exploitation, and to utilize the powerful productive forces developed under capitalism for the construction of a rationally planned, egalitarian socialist world free from exploitation and poverty. |
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Published: 1917 No.30 (April 2008) |
El siguiente artículo fue publicado por primera vez en Proletarian Revolution núm. 81 (primavera de 2008).
Trabajadores venezolanos y el referéndum
¡No a Chávez, Si al socialismo!
Con este artículo continuamos nuestra discusión sobre el escenario político de la clase trabajadora en Venezuela. Invitamos a nuestros lectores a comentar sobre el mismo. Las referencias están disponibles si así lo desean.
18 febrero 2008
El conflicto de clases en el corazón de la sociedad venezolana rompe su engañosa cara bolivariana. La clase trabajadora ha rechazado el programa neoliberal abiertamente proimperialista de la oposición derechista. Pero debido a buenas razones, el pueblo trabajador y los pobres están crecientemente más disatisfechos con el Presidente Hugo Chávez y su política.
Este sentimiento condujo a la abstención masiva en el referéndum impulsado por Chávez el pasado diciembre, donde la oposición obtuvo una victoria por un escaso margen. La cantidad de votos que Chávez tradicionalmente obtiene decreció de tal modo que la oposición gano el escrutinio — sin sumarle muchos votos a lo que acostumbra a lograr.
Este cambio significativo en el patrón electoral ocurre justamente a un año de Chávez obtener una reelección con una victoria que fue un triunfo electoral aplastante en el mes de diciembre del 2006. Sin embargo, en el mes de diciembre del 2007, aproximadamente el 45% de su base electoral acostumbrada, se abstuvo — en un referéndum que Chávez reclamaba ser de avance hacia el socialismo. En el mismo la LRP favoreció el voto del NO, el cual explicaremos en este artículo.
El referéndum proponía una cantidad enorme de enmiendas a la constitución, que serian escrutinados en dos bloques diferentes. El bloque A consistía de 33 artículos, principalmente redactados por una comisión escogida por Chávez y que se reunió en secreto sin el beneficio del debate publico durante todo el proceso. El bloque B contenía 36 artículos adicionales aprobados por la Asamblea Nacional. Cada bloque contenía enmiendas cuyo propósito consistía en ser atractivas a la clase trabajadora — como la reducción a la jornada de trabajo, y la extensión de los beneficios del seguro social. Sin embargo, Chávez ya había tenido suficiente tiempo, poder, y apoyo de las masas para efectuar esas reformas sin la necesidad de recurrir a un referéndum especial. Los cambios propuestos se encontraban en el referéndum por una razón: eran la carnada para tentar a las masas a votar a favor de un premio mayor.
La concentración del poder presidencial
Si hubiese triunfado el referéndum, no hubiese únicamente puesto en manos de Chávez la habilidad de permanecer en el poder mas tiempo (es preciso notar que solamente el presidente hubiese tenido el derecho de ser reelecto continuamente). El derecho a la libertad sobre la información hubiese sido mas fácilmente eliminado mediante una declaración de emergencia, y tales declaraciones serian de una duración ilimitada. Durante un estado de emergencia se podía detener a los ciudadanos sin someterlos a cargos. También le permitía al presidente reorganizar las colindancias de las ciudades, provincias, y regiones. Otra propuesta de enmienda le otorgaba poderes especiales al presidente para declarar regiones y zonas militares especiales y nombrar autoridades militares para gobernarlas, y el poder para promover oficiales militares. Todas estas medidas hubiesen fortalecido al estado capitalista para su uso futuro contra la clase trabajadora.
De acuerdo a esta línea de ataques antiobreros, otra cláusula hubiese cambiado la definición de empleados públicos, levantando la preocupación general que este significativo sector laboral perdiese protección legal. Otras propuestas hubiesen aumentado el porciento de votantes requeridos para llevar los referéndums a la urna electoral, bien sea para una revocación, enmiendas constitucionales o una asamblea constituyente.
Hubo también enmiendas que hubiesen animado constitucionalmente la operación de los consejos comunales, consejos laborales, y las organizaciones similares que serian financiados y registrados por el gobierno nacional. La intención de los consejos es supeditar los órganos de lucha de masas de los trabajadores, campesinos y otros sectores de levantarse, adicionalmente a las ya existentes uniones.
Los “consejos comunales” ya existen y son supuestamente evidencia del “poder del pueblo”. Los fondos económicos asignados a estos consejos provienen directamente de la comisión presidencial del poder comunal. La cifra consistió de $1,600 millones el año pasado y cerca de $3,000 millones este año. Estos consejos se utilizan principalmente como los esquemas de democracia participativa en Brasil, Bolivia, y otros lugares: a los residentes locales se le otorgan unos presupuestos pre-establecidos para proyectos locales limitados. En su mejor propósito son una manera de distraer a las masas de tomar decisiones y asumir el poder, sino en la realidad funcionan como correas de transmisión para la política del régimen en el poder. Aparentemente Chávez no ha sido exitoso en hacer despegar los consejos laborales debido a temores de que estos se utilicen para propósitos antisindicales. La aprobación del referéndum hubiese facilitado ese esfuerzo.
Las raices del bonapartismo
Chávez argumentaba que solo él estaba dotado con la habilidad para tomar decisiones para el bien de las masas. La gran parte de la izquierda que defendió el referéndum aceptó esa premisa. Ese es el sello del bonapartismo, un régimen cuyo rasgo principal consiste en el dominio de un hombre fuerte con el poder concentrado en el ejecutivo que aparenta dominar independientemente sobre las principales clases de la sociedad en contienda. Pero de hecho, el régimen de Chávez, como los bonapartistas, representa los intereses capitalistas y, por lo tanto, su represión se encuentra dirigida primordialmente contra la clase trabajadora, cuando más agrias se pongan las cosas. Ignorando este entendimiento marxista esencial, gran parte de la izquierda también se tragó el argumento de Chávez donde mantiene que una mayor concentración del poder armado del estado burgués se utilizaría únicamente contra la oposición derechista.
La mayoría de los análisis sobre el referéndum de diciembre han fallado sobre un punto muy esencial: el esfuerzo pronunciado para aumentar el poder de Chávez fue una necesidad real del régimen. Chávez es un populista: el promueve la colaboración de clases al hacerle grandes promesas a las masas de que el va a representar sus intereses si estas se mantienen a su lado, y el parece favorecer la participación de las masas en la sociedad. Pero los populistas como Chávez también argumentan a favor de promover capitalistas buenos contra los malos, y no por la lucha de clases. Los gobernantes populistas inevitablemente se convierten crecientemente bonapartistas, ya que ellos no son capaces de cumplir con las expectativas de las masas. Eventualmente las movilizaciones de masas que estos promueven para alcanzar el poder amenazan con socavar su dominio.
Este es el dilema de Chávez: las masas se encuentran insatisfechas, pero el no tiene mucho mas para ofrecerle a no ser parcos adelantos como gestos simbólicos junto a retórica “roja” — grandes promesas colgantes para el futuro como el “socialismo.” Su esquema de desarrollo capitalista significa el cultivo de un ala privilegiada de la débil clase capitalista nacional. La construcción del capitalismo venezolano también requiere de maniobras con la mayoría de los capitalistas que están atados a la oposición derechista y a los imperialistas. Chávez se aferra a una política de nacionalismo burgués y coexistencia pacifica con los opresores imperialistas de Venezuela, contrario a toda su retórica socialista. Pero para alcanzar aun pequeños adelantos para una Venezuela capitalista en este contexto requiere de un complicado acto de malabares. Es en el presente imposible continuar apaciguando a las masas a la vez que se apacigua a la burguesía nacional y al imperialismo. El fracaso de este proyecto es lo que se encuentra detrás de la calamidad económica que se percibe en el presente.
Aun bajo circunstancias casi optimas con altas ganancias petroleras, Chávez ha sido incapaz de cambiar dramáticamente la calidad de vida de las masas. Esto es imposible para cualquier estado capitalista, y todas las naciones capitalistas oprimidas tienden a ser dominadas por el imperialismo durante esta época.
Un ejemplo perfecto de su política hacia el imperialismo es la lucha actual entre Chávez y la Exxon-Mobil sobre los términos de una propuesta empresa conjunta en la faja petrolera del Orinoco. Es una cuestión del grado de superexplotación. A pesar de todas sus amenazas retóricas, Chávez ha clarificado que no romperá mas ningún negocio con la Exxon-Mobil y únicamente utilizara medidas legales, i.e. sancionadas por los imperialistas, para defender los intereses venezolanos. Lo último que desea es movilizar las filas de la clase trabajadora a una lucha real contra las empresas imperialistas en Venezuela.
Es el deber de todos los trabajadores revolucionarios defender a todas las naciones oprimidas de los ataques imperialistas. Pero ningún sector de la burguesía nacional de las naciones oprimidas es capaz de defender a las masas contra el imperialismo, ya que son incapaces de romper con la dominación imperialista. Los trabajadores revolucionarios también deben decirle la verdad a los compañeros y trabajadores sobre esto: la clase trabajadora misma debe unirse con todos los oprimidos para lograr el derrocamiento del sistema capitalista. La necesidad básica consiste en reemplazar al estado capitalista, el estado de dominio burgués, con un estado obrero, donde dominará la clase obrera. Al construir su partido de vanguardia internacional, los trabajadores más conscientes de clase conducirán la lucha por la revolución socialista no solamente en una nación sino internacionalmente. La idea de construir el socialismo en un solo país es un fraude. La federación de estados obreros es el paso necesario para abolir la sociedad de clases y la escasez. Esta es la estrategia de revolución permanente de Trotsky y es la única vía para derrotar al imperialismo y darle realmente la unica respuesta a las esperanzas de la humanidad.
Chávez se encuentra claramente mas débil posterior al referéndum pero es todavía tremendamente popular — contrario a cualquier dirigente o partido contendiente en Venezuela en estos momentos. Ha amasado tremendo poder, incluyendo el poder a dominar por decreto. Utilizando esta autoridad, le causó gran trastorno a sus bases al otorgarles amnistía el 3 de enero a los dirigentes de la oposición vinculados al golpe militar apoyado por el imperialismo contra su gobierno en el año 2002. Otro decreto presidencial el 18 de enero pasó la operación de la fuerza policíaca de Caracas al gobierno nacional. Este cambio es la etapa de apertura de una propuesta ley de policía nacional que concentraría todas las fuerzas policíacas municipales y estatales bajo la autoridad del gobierno nacional.
El estado maniobra contra los trabajadores
En el articulo “Chávez vs. la clase obrera” (PR 80) destacamos los ataques de Chávez contra la autonomía sindical al anunciar la creación del Partido Socialista Unificado de Venezuela (PSUV). El PSUV les dio la bienvenida a dirigentes empresariales “socialistas” y militares a sus filas, pero exigió que las uniones y organizaciones izquierdistas rindieran su independencia para poder unirse al partido. Si el referéndum hubiese sido aprobado hubiese sido un gran activo para alimentar forzosamente un programa y unas reglas partidarias ya que Chávez hubiese reclamado falsamente poseer un mandato popular. Chávez quiere convertir al PSUV en un gran partido autoritario que funcione como agente disciplinario y que reprima la disensión de los trabajadores/as y la izquierda.
Es obvio que su modelo en gran parte es el Partido Comunista de Cuba (PC). No es una causalidad que el proyecto de partido del PSUV tenia un comité de disciplina desde sus comienzos y ha comenzado a expulsar miembros aunque todavía sea un partido en formación sin un programa o estatutos oficiales. Compare el escenario que Chávez encara en el presente con la Cuba de Fidel Castro. Castro fue capaz de fusionar a través del tiempo su Movimiento 26 de Julio con los cuadros endurecidos del existente partido estalinista que había tenido bastante experiencia apoyando la dictadura batistiana, especialmente dentro del movimiento sindical. Castro organizó un nuevo Partido Comunista que había estado vinculado a la nominalmente socialista Unión Soviética y era una herramienta efectiva contra la clase trabajadora. Únicamente después de emplear a los cuadros del PC para sofocar a los trabajadores pudo Castro tomar medidas antiimperialistas pronunciadas como la nacionalización de la industria.
Mientras que Chávez todavía retiene una gran autoridad, su prestigio obviamente ha sufrido, que hace mas claro su incapacidad para crear rápido y sin ceremonia un “gran salto hacia adelante”, un partido de masas que siga estrictamente sus dictados basándose meramente en sus proclamas desde arriba. Las circunstancias materiales en Venezuela no son las mismas que las de Cuba hace cuarenta o más años. Y no es capaz de convertir el pequeño e independiente Partido Comunista Venezolano en un partido autoritario con masas de cuadros disciplinados que sean capaces de controlar a la clase trabajadora.
Se ha reclamado a menudo que la nacionalización de la industria petrolera significa que Chávez se encuentra en la vía “socialista” en Venezuela. La verdad es que Chávez ha preservado una “economía mixta” capitalista, una alianza entre el estado y la empresa privada aun dentro de la industria petrolera de propiedad formalmente estatal. Y Chávez se opone abiertamente al control o gerencia obrera de la industria petrolera.
La represión de los trabajadores continúa
La represión contra los trabajadores en protesta y huelguistas, discutido en nuestra edición previa, ha continuado. Chávez le teme especialmente al posible rol de los trabajadores petroleros en la política venezolana — existen miles de trabajadores medulares que con gran sacrificio y coraje lucharon contra el intento de cierre patronal de catorce meses desde el diciembre 2002 a febrero 2004. Temeroso del poder obrero, el Ministro del Trabajo Ramón Rivero hasta se opone activamente al derecho de los petroleros a elegir a sus propios dirigentes sindicales. Un equipo negociador engañoso escogido por el gobierno de una organización sindical nueva, la Federación Unitaria de Trabajadores Petroleros de Venezuela (FUTPV), propulsó un contrato malísimo en noviembre. Los trabajadores que trataron de protestar en setiembre este proceso en el estado de Anzoátegui fueron atacados por la policía, donde muchos resultaron heridos y arrestados; esta acción condujo al paro laboral de otros petroleros en esa región.
El significado de la negociación por FUTPV de este convenio va mas allá de ser un injusto arreglo económico: sobre la mitad de los 60,000 petroleros en Venezuela ya habían votado para ser representados por la tendencia Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria y Autónoma (C-CURA) de la federación Fedepetrol, pero el gobierno rehusó reconocerla o llevar acabo nuevas elecciones.
La Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) fue fundada para ser una alternativa a la federación sindical CTV que apoyó al golpe y llevó acabo el cierre de la industria petrolera en el 2003-2004. Pero la misma UNT se encuentra ahora dividida permanentemente — con cada uno de los grupos de liderato que la fundaron utilizando el mismo nombre. La Fuerza Socialista Bolivariana de Trabajadores (FSBT-UNT) está compuesta de aliados cercanos del gobierno de Chávez que actúan sobre una base regular muy de cerca con el régimen para sabotear y dividir las luchas obreras. No mantienen una base masiva de trabajadores como C-CURA, que entra en conflicto con los patronos y es obviamente mucho mas popular entre los trabajadores/as militantes.
La C-CURA misma tiene dos alas. La minoría es dirigida por Orlando Chirino que se opuso a la entrada al PSUV y al reciente referéndum. Incluye a José Bodas, importante dirigente sindical de los petroleros, y ha hecho un llamado a favor de un”nuevo partido de trabajadores”, que ya se ha denominado Partido de la Izquierda Socialista (PAIS) con su periódico la Voz de los Trabajadores (ver www.aporrea.org/trabajadores/a52113.html.) La mayoría es dirigida por Stalin Pérez Borges que entró al PSUV y favoreció el referéndum. Publica la revista Marea Clasista y Socialista y incluye a Ramón Arias, dirigente de la Fentrasep, el sindicato del sector publico que agrupa a 1.5 millones miembros. Las alas de Chirino y Pérez Borges lideraron la recién creada formación — el Partido de la Revolución y el Socialismo (PRS).
Sin haber hecho una separación fundamental con su pasada tradición, Chirino y sus asociados se han visto obligados a entrar en una fase de oposición a Chávez. Desde sus capitulaciones, C-CURA representan el ala izquierda de las corrientes sindicales existentes. Por ahora parecen mantener alguna semblanza de unidad en la acción con el propósito de defenderse contra los ataques antisindicales del régimen.
El gobierno se siente amenazado por los petroleros militantes que poseen una fuerza objetiva, a pesar del hecho de que representan únicamente e escasamente el uno porciento de la fuerza trabajadora. También reflejan la popularidad general de las demandas de conciencia de clases como la total nacionalización de una gama de industrias sin compensación, el control y la gerencia obrera, el final de la contratación laboral de segunda clase, y una escala móvil de salarios y horas. Una batalla notable ha sido desencadenada por los metalúrgicos contra la Corporación Sidor controlada por burgueses argentinos. Estos trabajadores han estado exigiendo la nacionalización durante años y se encuentran en una lucha contractual al irnos a la prensa.
Ataques contra los empleados estatales
Para obtener mas pruebas aun de la actitud de Chávez hacia la lucha de clases no hay que buscar mas allá de la lucha de sus propios empleados, los empleados gubernamentales que representan el 13 porciento de la fuerza de trabajo. La gran parte escasamente reciben el salario mínimo. Igual a los petroleros y metalúrgicos, los empleados públicos tienen una fuerte tradición de sindicalización. Los representantes electos de la Fentrasep asistieron al Ministerio del Trabajo agosto pasado con el propósito de renegociar el convenio colectivo de sus miembros, luego de que estuvo la negociación paralizada durante dos años y medio sin convenio. El ministro se negó a reunirse con los delegados y los encerró bajo llave dentro de un cuarto durante varios días sin agua o alimentos. Fueron eventualmente atacados por una organización de golpeadores asociada al gobierno que los desahuciaron. Hasta la fecha el ministerio ha rehusado negociar un convenio, retando la legitimidad de los delegados reclamando que existe una controversia sobre los resultados de las elecciones sindicales entre C-CURA y el FSBT. Este último favorece un aumento salarial mas bajo.
Estos son dos de los muchos ejemplos donde el gobierno utiliza sus ministerios y lacayos laborales para subvertir la iniciativa de las matriculas y su derecho para elegir sus propios lideratos. En una entrevista de setiembre 2007, Chirino habló sobre esta tendencia que no se limita a los petroleros y empleados públicos:
En Firestone la inspectora del trabajo ordena a la empresa a discutir la convención colectiva con un sindicato que sólo representa el 10%. En Mavesa alimentos se matricula en tiempo record un sindicato con 34 firmas en un universo de 750 trabajadores. En Coca-cola, luego de firmarse una convención colectiva, la Inspectoría del Trabajo homologa parcialmente el contrato dejando pendiente 15 cláusulas. En la Ford, luego de que el sindicato elabora y presenta un proyecto de convención, la inspectoría dilata los procedimientos, con la intención de poner a los trabajadores en contra de su organización sindical. Al examinar con detenimiento lo que sucede, hemos constatado que en todos estos casos, la Inspectoría del Trabajo actúa de manera perversa para favorecer a grupos minoritarios identificados con la FSBT para que monten sindicatos paralelos. Y para que no haya ninguna duda, la propia Inspectora les dice a los dirigentes sindicales clasistas, que tiene la orden de trancar a todos los sindicatos que se identifiquen con C-CURA. (enlacesocialista.org.mx/articulo-venezuela-el-ministerio-de-trabajo-una-junta-liquidadora.html)
El gobierno también ha atacado directamente o indirectamente ha saboteado las pequeñas luchas de trabajadores militantes siguiendo la misma línea. Un ejemplo notable es el de los trabajadores/as de la compañía de desperdicios sólidos Sincreba en Mérida que sufrieron un cierre de su planta en setiembre pasado, acto llevado acabo por el patrón con la ayuda de golpeadores locales y la policía. Los trabajadores entonces ocuparon la planta y se establecieron así mismos como una cooperativa que operó la misma durante dos meses mientras hacían campaña para lograr el apoyo de varios alcaldes de la región y del Consejo Comunal de Puente Viejo. Su ocupación inicial fue terminada luego de una cantidad de ataques violentos. Pero continuaron luchando a favor de la meta de una apertura permanente como una empresa estatal bajo control obrero.
Sin embargo, el consejo, que había sido apoderado por la mancomunidad de los alcaldes para operar la planta, no solamente se hizo ciego ante los ataques violentos contra los trabajadores sino también rehusó reunirse con ellos y finalmente los censuró. Esta situación antiobrera es lo que promueven estos consejos auspiciados por el gobierno. (Le recomendamos a los lectores la dirección cibernética: my.opera.com/CLAN/blog/alcaldias-delegan-en-el-consejo-comunal-de-puente-viejo-el-manejo-de-la-planta-d para una cobertura extensa.) La lucha heroica de estos trabajadores continua, como lo hacen en una cantidad de pequeñas batallas, notablemente la de los trabajadores de la planta de implementos Sanitarios Maracay cuya ocupación fue terminada abruptamente en setiembre pasado. Recientemente lograron reabrir parte de la planta.
La abstención masiva
En realidad se estima que sobre 200,000 trabajadores votaron contra el referéndum. Existen muchas razones por las cuales millones mas que también se oponían al referéndum escogieron la abstención. Sin dudas, preocupaciones de represalias del régimen (perdidas de empleo, beneficios, etc.) han jugado un papel primordial en que los trabajadores hayan tenido temor a votar NO. Pero el acto de abstenerse representa más que temor de parte de las masas. También refleja una conciencia mixta entre los trabajadores en cuanto a como hacer avanzar la expresión e organización de su oposición.
A través de los años Chávez y sus altoparlantes han predicado efectivamente la idea de que un voto por Chávez es siempre un voto contra el imperialismo, y vice versa. Esta vez como siempre las fuerzas pro-imperialistas dominaron la oposición a Chávez. Los trabajadores temían no solamente de que fueran castigados o difamados como derechistas: muchos/as tienen que haber dudaban si un voto del NO verdaderamente fortalecería a la oposición derechista.
El hecho de que el régimen declarase ilegal hacer campaña a favor de la abstención significa que la abstención se convertía en un acto de protesta, uno limitado, y un tanto pasivo e confuso. Reflejaba un cambio significativo en la conciencia obrera pero aun no una vía activa e clara de avance.
En gran parte, los trabajadores que se opusieron al referéndum no veían una alternativa de clases. Los trabajadores tienden a ser más valientes en sus experiencias de conflicto con el régimen y con los patronos privados a nivel local e industrial. Pero la mayoría no han alcanzado una penetrante conclusión sobre la naturaleza capitalista básica del régimen y del mismo Chávez. A un nivel esto se debe a que las luchas se han mantenido aisladas unas de las otras; los trabajadores/as aun no han experimentado su poder independiente de clase. Muchos todavía creen que Chávez y la tal llamada ala izquierda del régimen se pueden moldear en una herramienta para lograr victorias para la clase y aun para lograr el socialismo — si por lo menos los “burócratas”, “derechistas” y los “corruptos” dentro del gobierno se sacan de carrera. A pesar de las ilusiones que aun quedan, existe una creciente tendencia entre los trabajadores para afirmar y generalizar sus luchas como clase.
El surgimiento de luchas de clases mayores es inevitable. El problema mayor en nuestra opinión es que no existe un partido de vanguardia en Venezuela que sea capaz de señalar el camino de avanzada a seguir. El pasado diciembre, una vanguardia hubiese abogado a favor de un voto de NO atado a una oposición obrera independiente a Chávez sobre unas bases anti imperialistas explicitas. Por un lado, hubiese hecho llamados a favor de demostraciones en apoyo a la promulgación inmediata de una jornada de trabajo más corta, una cobertura de seguridad social más amplia, y otros beneficios específicos prometidos en el referéndum. Por otro lado, hubiese sido capaz de aglomerar apoyo a favor de las luchas contractuales de los petroleros, metalúrgicos, empleados públicos, etc. Hubiese hecho a la misma vez oposición obrera contra todas las medidas represivas del referéndum y a la política reaccionaria de la oposición.
Trotsky hizo una aseveración clave sobre la necesidad de oponerse al fortalecimiento del estado burgués aun bajo la amenaza del fascismo:
La lucha contra el fascismo, la defensa de las posiciones que la clase trabajadora ha alcanzado dentro del contexto de la democracia en degeneración, se puede convertir en una poderosa realidad ya que le otorga a la clase trabajadora la oportunidad para prepararse para las luchas mas profundas y armarse así misma parcialmente…para movilizar al proletariado y a la pequeña burguesía al lado de la revolución, para crear una milicia obrera, etc. El que no aproveche esta situación, que haga llamados al “estado”, i.e., al enemigo de clases, a “actuar”, en efecto le vende el pellejo del proletariado a la reacción bonapartista.
Por lo tanto, debemos votar contra todas las medidas que fortalezcan al estado capitalista-bonapartista, aun esas medidas que por el momento le causen desagrado temporero a los fascistas.
La insistencia de Trotsky contra el apoyo del fortalecimiento militar a cualquier estado capitalista, aun contra la amenaza fascista inmediata, tiene relevancia para Venezuela en el presente. Mantiene que los revolucionarios deben contraponer la necesidad de milicias obreras independientes en vez de depender de cualquier régimen capitalista, sin importar cuan progresista este reclame ser. Chávez no ha dejado de insistir que sus propuestas sean apoyadas inequivocadamente con el propósito de ponerle un alto a un derrocamiento inspirado por el imperialismo. Mientras que no pensamos que esa amenaza sea real en estos momentos, es cierto que para ser capaz de luchar contra las amenazas de una intervención imperialista o golpe, ahora o en el futuro, los trabajadores deben depender únicamente en sus recursos independientes, y no en los de Chávez. A este punto, en el caso de una amenaza imperialista actual, aun en ese caso no le daríamos apoyo a los decretos de emergencia o cualquier otra medida bonapartista que Chávez propuso en el referéndum de diciembre. La clase trabajadora nunca rinde su independencia debido a que solo la clase trabajadora es capaz de vencer al imperialismo.
En la presente situación, la amenaza de un golpe imperialista o una toma de poder departe de la oposición derechista domestica obviamente ha retrocedido y Chávez ha estado utilizando la paz relativa en ese frente como una oportunidad para llegar a acuerdos con la derecha y someter por la fuerza las luchas de masas y las aspiraciones, al mismo tiempo. De hecho, el presente escenario dicta la necesidad de guardias de defensa obreras contra la Guardia Nacional, policía y grupos de golpeadores que han venido atacando las ocupaciones obreras, huelgas, y protestas — de igual manera contra cualquier amenaza de un golpe pro-imperialista a partir de la oposición derechista. La oposición política obrera a Chávez y a su referéndum en particular, siempre está obligada a incluir un compromiso de la movilización de las masas para defender al régimen contra cualquier ataque imperialista. Esto era parte del mensaje de oposición de clases al referéndum que los revolucionarios necesitaban compartir con sus compañeros trabajadores.
Contra la corriente cuando sea necesario
El punto no consiste en que si una campaña obrera de NO votación hubiese inmediatamente alcanzado una adhesión amplia. Algunas veces hasta un pequeño grupo de propaganda con un mensaje valiente es capaz de sintonizar con lo que los trabajadores sienten y logran alcanzar una influencia superior a su tamaño. Pero es necesario proveerle dirección política a trabajadores de avanzada, potencialmente de vanguardia, y crear un polo de atracción obrero — aun si la oposición obrera al referéndum se mantenía como un movimiento de minoría en ese momento particular.
Tácticamente hubiésemos preferido la abstención o la anulación de las papeletas para los trabajadores en posiciones peligrosas que no se le hacia posible votar NO, pero eso tenia que ser una cuestión secundaria. El mensaje político principal tenia que ser claro: era en el mejor interés de la clase de que el referéndum fracasara y la abstención no era una alternativa que aseguraría ese resultado. Rechazamos totalmente cualquier idea de que el voto del NO departe de la clase trabajadora consistía en un voto a favor de la derecha o del imperialismo. Esa metodología de amalgamación es con lo que Chávez cuenta cada vez y tales argumentos siempre se utilizaran para permitir que se deposite más poder en sus manos — a no ser que los elementos iniciales de una autentica vanguardia revolucionaria estén dispuestos a no vivir bajo el temor de la sombra de Chávez. Es absolutamente necesario distinguir entre los momentos cuando un bloque con el régimen es necesario para derrotar una amenaza o ataque imperialista inmediato y los momentos cuando entrar en bloques con el régimen de Chávez aumenta su capacidad para atacar a la misma clase trabajadora y posiciona a las masas en una situación que las torna mas vulnerables ante mas ataques de la derecha. Esta última situación fue la que se vivió el pasado diciembre.
Haber hecho un llamado a favor de la abstención ha sido una posición oportunista e irresponsable para los que defienden a la clase trabajadora y buscan elevar su conciencia de lo que es necesario. El hecho de que la abstención tuvo como resultado una estrecha derrota para Chávez no se podía haber asumido. La utilización de la estrategia de abstención mientras secretamente se desea una derrota es ser oportunista, reflejando un temor de ser amalgamado con la oposición de derecha en vez de tener el coraje para abogar por lo que es necesario y arriesgar tales calumnias, si fuese necesario.
La abstención de Chirino
Chirino y sus asociados, tanto en las uniones como al interior de su tendencia política internacionalmente (la UIT-CI), se opusieron al referéndum. Pero se contuvieron de hacer un llamado a favor del voto del NO. En vez, prefirieron una forma de abstención. Aquí una parte de su declaración, “Anulen parte de su papeleta electoral” por Chirino y sus asociados de parte del “Comité Organizador para la construcción del partido de los trabajadores”, fechado 2 noviembre 2007:
Hacemos un llamado a los trabajadores a anular sus papeletas electorales el próximo 2 de diciembre, no marque ninguna de las dos opciones (SI o NO) simplemente oprima la tecla de VOTAR. Esta es una forma que ha sido sugerida por muchos trabajadores que temen ser identificados como abstencionistas — ahora que la CNE (la autoridad electoral) le ha prohibido anti-democráticamente a la ciudadanía hacer campaña a favor de la abstención — o que teman ser despedidos de sus empleos en empresas estatales o que teman ser considerados contrarrevolucionarios o reaccionarios por votar NO”.
Para los socialistas revolucionarios es importante expresar que no apoyamos la propuesta de la reforma, y por esa razón nos solidarizamos y apoyamos a todos los compañeros que piensan abstenerse de forma consciente para no otorgarle su apoyo a la reforma constitucional retrograda, y aun mas, con los que están dispuestos a arriesgarse a votar NO, sin preocuparse por la manipulación y las presiones de todo tipo que ha descendido sobre todos ellos.(www.solidarity-us.org/international/venezuela/votanulo)
Por lo tanto, Chirino y compañía se solidarizan de pasada con los trabajadores que fueron lo suficientemente valientes para votar NO. Pero no los condujo a hacer un llamado valiente a ellos mismos a votar NO como política de clases y ellos son los dirigentes. El llamado a anular las papeletas electorales es cercano a la posición asumida por la Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria (JIR), una pequeña sección de la Fracción Trotskista – Cuarta Internacional (FT-CI). Focalizamos en la obra de este pequeño grupo ultraizquierdista en Venezuela en un artículo previo debido a su consistente oposición al apoyo político a Chávez durante las pasadas elecciones. De igual manera, han producido una propaganda de las mas honestas desenmascarando directamente la naturaleza de la sociedad venezolana como capitalista y han denunciado el mito chavista que reclama que un “proceso revolucionario” se este llevando acabo.
Estas cualidades positivas contrastan con el record de dirigentes sindicales de izquierda como Chirino. Chirino se encuentra en una fase muy militante en estos momentos. Pero él y la totalidad de la tendencia UIT-CI le han dicho consistentemente a los trabajadores/as a que voten a favor de Chávez. No existe evidencia que haya cambiado su posición con relación a este punto. De hecho, a pesar de su presente postura de oposición hacia el régimen, todavía habla de “profundizar el proceso revolucionario” en Venezuela. Todavía falla en no explicar definitivamente que Chávez dirige un régimen burgués populista que utiliza la pretensión de un “proceso revolucionario” para engañar a los trabajadores a apoyar a un estado capitalista. Chirino utiliza la misma retórica falsa mientras exige un rol mayor para los trabajadores en el proceso.
La abstención del JIR
En nuestro articulo previo, donde criticamos a la JIR por andar a la rabiza de Chirino, debería ser leído como para mejor entender el presente giro. Desafortunadamente, la JIR todavía no ha respondido a nuestra correspondencia o a nuestras criticas publicadas. Peor aun, han seguido a Chirino en adoptar la posición que favorece la abstención en el reciente referéndum.
Aquí está la medula de sus argumentos:
Estamos ante la presencia de una propuesta de Reforma Constitucional que busca ampliar los márgenes de poder del gobierno para regimentar la lucha de clases y los movimientos de las distintas fracciones de las clases, en el camino de su “socialismo con empresarios”. Este es apoyado por el sector burgués y propietario que apoya al gobierno y recibe de éste el impulso, mientras los sectores mayoritarios de la clase dominante se le oponen, defendiendo la Constitución de 1999.
…Frente al actual referéndum se presentan aparentemente solamente dos opciones, la del SI a la reforma que propone Chávez y la Asamblea Nacional, y la del NO que defienden la amplia mayoría de los sectores de la oposición de derecha y sectores minoritarios que se desprenden del chavismo llamando a defender la Constitución del ’99. Ninguna de estas variantes es opción para los trabajadores, ya que la Constitución reformada o no continúa defendiendo la propiedad privada de los medios de producción, es decir el régimen de explotación capitalista. Por eso, llamamos a votar nulo el próximo domingo 2 de diciembre. (www.jir.org.ve/article.php3?id_article=486)
Por supuesto, ni el movimiento que apoya a Chávez o el movimiento que apoya a la oposición derechista representan una alternativa política para los trabajadores. Pero esa no era la cuestión planteada por el referéndum, contrario a lo que se plantearía en unas elecciones regulares donde Chávez corre contra un candidato burgués de oposición, donde la abstención es la ultima alternativa. En ese tipo de referéndum, el voto del NO resultaría en mantener la constitución corriente.
Aquí la JIR argumenta contra la participación en un referéndum específico simplemente debido a que ambas partes están por constituciones burguesas. La JIR reconoce de palabra la creciente amenaza del bonapartismo pero rehúsa identificarlo como la cuestión esencial sobre la cual se tiene que tomar acción cuando el voto se plantea. Mientras que Trotsky mantenía que “debemos votar contra todas las medidas que fortalezcan al estado capitalista bonapartista,” la JIR reclama que debemos abstenernos de fortalecer al estado bonapartista debido a que el resultado todavía seria un estado burgués. Este argumento formalista encubre una conclusión oportunista: no enfrentarse directamente a Chávez, ni siquiera sobre este asunto.
De hecho, la derrota del referéndum debilito el poder de Chávez y, por lo tanto, fortaleció potencialmente la capacidad del movimiento obrero para luchar contra el mismo régimen de Chávez. El voto no fortaleció automáticamente la amenaza de un golpe derechista; ni siquiera le sumó cantidades significativas de nuevos reclutas a la oposición tradicional. Si los luchadores obreros hubiesen montado su propia oposición y organizado a sus compañeros trabajadores para que votasen activamente NO, el peligro del fortalecimiento del ala derechista hubiese sido aun menor.
La pasada primavera el régimen de Chávez revocó la licencia de la cadena televisiva RCTV, creando un aumento sustancial de oposición en la derecha tradicional junto al nuevo movimiento estudiantil clase- media. La mayoría de la izquierda, incluyendo a Chirino y la totalidad de la tendencia C-CURA, favoreció la movida de Chávez y le pidieron que avanzara aun más. Sobre este asunto, la JIR correctamente tomó posición contra las corrientes seudo-izquierdistas, declarando su oposición a la censura de un canal de televisión reaccionario, aunque la oposición al cierre era dominado por la derecha. Otra vez consultaron la obra literaria de Trotsky, buscando la esencia de la cuestión desde el punto de vista de la lucha de clases, sin alinearse con la alegada “ala izquierda” de la clase capitalista contra la “derecha”. Citaron en su prensa al artículo de Trotsky “Libertad de Prensa y la Clase Obrera” de sus Escritos (1937-38):
Como afirma León Trotsky en su brillante trabajo sobre La libertad de prensa y la clase obrera: ‘Tanto la experiencia histórica como teórica prueban que cualquier restricción de la democracia en la sociedad burguesa, es, en último análisis, invariablemente dirigida contra el proletariado, así como cualquier impuesto que se imponga recae sobre los hombros de la clase obrera. La democracia burguesa es útil para el proletariado sólo en cuanto le abre el camino al desarrollo de la lucha de clases. Consecuentemente, cualquier “dirigente” de la clase obrera que arma al gobierno burgués con medios especiales para controlar a la opinión pública en general y a la prensa en particular, es, precisamente, un traidor. En último análisis, la agudización de la lucha de clases obligará a las burguesías de cualquier tipo a llegar a un arreglo entre ellas mismas; aprobarán entonces leyes especiales, toda clase de medidas restrictivas, y toda clase de censuras “democráticas” contra la clase obrera. Quien todavía no haya comprendido esto, debe salirse de las filas de la clase obrera’.
Invitamos a los trabajadores y las trabajadoras y a los honestos militantes de la izquierda obrera, estudiantil, popular e intelectuales a leer este importante trabajo de Trotsky.
Regresando al 2004, antes que existiera formalmente la JIR como secciónal de la FT-CL, sus co-pensadores en la Fracción Trotskista internacionalmente tomaron la posición correcta de votar No contra el referéndum de revocación apoyado por el imperialismo que amenazaba con remover a Chávez de su puesto. Esto prueba para su crédito que no están a favor de la abstención en todos los referéndums burgueses como línea permanente y que son capaces de distinguir entre un referéndum y unas elecciones regulares. Era correcto en aquella situación formar bloque con los votantes a favor de Chávez. Aunque Chávez lo endosaba, la revocación era un ejercicio extraordinario e ilegitimo impuesto al pueblo venezolano por el imperialismo norteamericano. El resultado de una exitosa campaña de revocación no hubiese sido un cambio electoral normal en representación burguesa sino al contrario la apertura para cualquier tipo de golpe bajo pretensiones “democráticas”, y con apoyo norteamericano oculto”.
Como señalase en esos momentos la sección mexicana de la FT-CL, la Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (LTS), un voto contra el referéndum de revocación era un voto contra el imperialismo y no un endoso político a Chávez. En su artículo del 13 agosto 2004, la LTS declaró:
El liderato de Chávez solo es capaz de traerle la derrota y frustración a las masas venezolanas. Desafortunadamente, la mayoría de la izquierda capitula ante Chávez, otorgándole apoyo político mas o menos desvergonzadamente, que únicamente sirve para impedirle a la vanguardia proletaria reagruparse alrededor de una política obrera independiente,…Vote NO críticamente, un NO a la oposición y al imperialismo, que de ninguna manera significa un SI para Chávez.
Era igualmente correcto abstenerse durante las elecciones presidenciales de diciembre 2006, como hizo la JIR, y no otorgándole ningún apoyo político a ningún candidato burgués.
Si la tendencia FI-CL en el 2004 fue capaz de reconocer que un voto de NO en el referéndum de revocación no significaba un SI para Chávez, preguntamos porque no fueron capaces de reconocer que un voto de NO en el referéndum constitucional de diciembre 2007 tampoco era un SI para la constitución corriente. Es un descrédito enorme para ellos que adelantaron un argumento tan débil a favor de la abstención esta vez.
El oportunismo de izquierda y la oposición estudiantil
La única tendencia ultraizquierdista que conocemos en Venezuela que ha hecho un llamado a favor del voto del NO fue la morenista Unidad Socialista de los Trabajadores (UST), un pequeño grupo afiliado a la Liga Internacional de los Trabajadores (LIT). Hicieron un llamado a favor del voto del NO pero con una horrible justificación falsa de que era principalmente necesario, ¡intervenir en le movimiento estudiantil clase-media que se oponía al referéndum! Mientras que seria equivocado argumentar que la posición estudiantil es totalmente derechista y financiada por la CIA, es definitivamente un movimiento que reclama los derechos democráticos basados en la libre empresa y no tiene nada que ver con las metas del movimiento obrero y la lucha contra el imperialismo.
La mayoría de la izquierda, llámese marxista o bolivariana o ambas, todavía celebran a Chávez — con todas sus criticas precisas sobre como se llevó acabo el referéndum. La mayoría de estos grupos no solamente no consideran que la lucha de la clase obrera sea centralmente decisiva; sino que más bien la ignoran virtualmente. Es por eso que la JIR, que en general se opone políticamente a Chávez y se dirige así misma centralmente hacia la clase obrera, merece más nuestra atención.
La derrota del referéndum indudablemente crea aperturas y alienta a la clase obrera a adelantar sus demandas. No ha dado como resultado un crecimiento inmediato de la derecha, por el contrario, ha demostrado a los trabajadores que son muchos los que comparten sus crecientes inquietudes sobre el régimen. Chávez reclamó convenientemente que el voto contra el referéndum demostraba que la clase trabajadora no estaba lista para el socialismo. Lo opuesto se acerca más a la realidad.
on June 9, 2008 on 9:32 pm
[...] BOLIVARIAN CAPITALISM… colonel hugo chavez’ pro corporate… Roots of Bonapartism. Chávez argued that he is uniquely endowed with the ability to make decisions for the good of the masses. [...]
on June 19, 2008 on 12:29 am
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