[News] Venezuela: Counter-revolution Throws down a New Challenge

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Venezuela: Counter-revolution Throws down a New Challenge

Mar 31st 2010 , by Patrick Larsen - In Defence of Marxism
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5236

In the build up to the September elections, the 
right-wing opposition is preparing on several 
fronts. Economic sabotage is one of them, as are 
the manoeuvres on the part of right-wing elements 
within the Bolivarian movement itself. Meanwhile, 
all this is having a radicalizing effect on the left.

New developments in Venezuela reveal that the 
counter-revolution is organizing to prepare a new 
prolonged battle against the Bolivarian 
government. On top of the deep economic 
recession, we recently saw new shifts in the 
alignments in the political landscape which can 
play a decisive role in the warm up to the 
parliamentary elections in September.

Blue Chavismo

Some three weeks ago, the governor of Lara state, 
Henri Falcón chose to abandon the ranks of the 
PSUV, after a long polemic with Chávez. The 
latter had accused him of being too close to the 
bourgeoisie of Lara and not really serving the 
interests of the workers and youth of that state. 
Falcón replied by slamming the door and joining 
the PPT (Patria Para Todos), a small party which 
supports the government but stayed out of the 
PSUV when it was formed in 2007. Since then, it 
has tried to act as a brake on Chávez, by 
promoting the cause for “reconciliation” and “dialogue” with the opposition.

Falcón spoke demagogically about the need for 
“tolerance”. “A revolutionary must build bridges, 
not put up traps nor denounce the right of the 
people to participate in the political party that 
they want," [i] he affirmed. While trying to 
rally the petit-bourgeois and middle class 
elements around his calls for “democracy” and 
“freedom of political parties” (a strange demand, 
as this is already reality in Venezuela), what 
Falcón is really upset about are the recent 
declarations of Chávez accusing him of being allied to the bourgeoisie.

On March 14, Chávez commented on the case of 
Falcón in his weekly Aló Presidente show. He 
spoke in very harsh terms, not just of the 
governor of Lara, but also of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie as a class:

“Our revolution is not planning an agreement with 
the bourgeoisie. There is no possibility of an 
agreement or any deal with the Venezuelan 
bourgeoisie. There is no possibility of any 
agreement, nor can there or will there ever be 
and he who does think that there can be one, 
should abandon our ranks immediately.

“That is why the question of the governor of 
Lara, about which I was speaking yesterday with 
firmness in Barquisimeto itself, has come up. 
Because behind him there is a lot of manipulation 
going on, to which the governor pays service and 
to which the PPT pays service. That is 
regrettable, but it is a fact. “Oh no, we are 
with Chávez”." That is a lie. It is the 
bourgeoisie who stands behind this game. Don't 
you see that the bourgeoisie is applauding the 
Lara governor? Why don't they attack him? Because 
there are deals being made behind the scenes.” [ii]

This is the truth of the matter. The fact is that 
the vast majority of all right-wing newspapers 
were euphoric about Henri Falcon's desertion from 
the PSUV. Falcon and the PPT assures everyone 
that they stand for a “Blue Chavismo” (“Chavismo 
Azul”), which is supposed to be more “tolerant” 
than the kind advocated by Chávez himself. But 
that is just a smokescreen for saying that they 
have broken with Chávez and are in reality 
fighting for a completely different programme: 
Counter-revolution with a democratic mask.

In a recent interview to Últimas Noticias [iii], 
José Albornóz, the General Secretary of the PPT, 
said that it was a pity that people like Ismael 
Garcia and his party PODEMOS, had left the camp 
of the revolution, as they would have had much 
more influence within it. He thought it was just 
a regrettable misunderstanding and a matter of 
“wild, uncontrolled sentiments” that had led 
PODEMOS to betray the revolution in the run up to 
the constitutional reform referendum in 2007!

This is a most peculiar logic. The truth is that 
Ismael Garcia and his PODEMOS party were never 
revolutionaries, but social-democrats who for a 
time clung to the Chávez coalition, in order to 
try to slow down the pace of the revolution. But 
even the limited constitutional reform was too 
much for them to swallow, so they decided to join 
the opposition, that is the open camp of the 
counter-revolution, and run an anti-communist 
campaign for a NO-vote in the referendum. But for 
Albornoz this was just a misunderstanding!

What Albornóz is really saying is that his party 
is trying to do the same as PODEMOS (and before 
that, the MAS), that is to put a brake on the 
revolution and reach a deal with the ruling 
class. In other words, he represents a fifth 
column within the revolution. Many ordinary 
members of the PPT have understood this. More 
than 200 members decided to abandon the party and 
join the PSUV. But on the other hand, Albornóz 
informed that 20,000 people had applied for 
membership after the incorporation of Falcón. 
There is no doubt which class these 20,000 people 
belong to. It is the layers of the 
petit-bourgeoisie and of the bourgeoisie itself 
who are seeking an option to get rid of Chávez and the revolution altogether.

In recent years we have seen a long list of 
renegades, abandoning the revolution: Ariás 
Cárdenas (who then “rejoined” in 2006), the MAS, 
Pablo Medina, Luís Miquelena, Baduel, Ismael 
Garcia and PODEMOS and we could name many more. 
But this time, it is likely that Falcón will be 
able to organize wider layers of discontented 
middle class and bourgeois elements under the 
banner of “Chavismo azul”, “tolerance” and “reconciliation”.

Counter-revolution promotes chaos and violence

To this should be added recent opposition 
activity which is aimed at sabotaging and 
creating unrest wherever possible. In January we 
had the opposition middle-class students 
demonstrating and promoting violence in the 
streets with the excuse of the supposed closure 
of RCTV (a television channel which was taken off 
the air by its private license owners temporarily 
because they didn't respected Venezuelan 
constitutional rules). These activities left one 
chavista student activist killed in Mérida and 
several injured in other parts of the country.

Then on March 21 we saw the 36-hour transport 
“strike” in Caracas. In reality it was a bosses' 
lockout, where the owners of the privately owned 
means of transportation decided to shut down 
traffic. But workers organized in the United 
Transport Union of Caracas, led by its president 
Richard Manbel, rejected this lockout and most of 
the bus drivers went to work anyway. Only 5% of 
the workers joined the strike [iv] and services 
were therefore running more or less on a normal 
level. Thus the attempt on the part of the bosses 
failed miserably. Just as in the bosses’ lockout 
of December 2002, it was the actions of the 
working class which saved the situation.

Another key aspect of the counter-revolution's 
attempt to destabilize the country is the ongoing 
sabotage and speculation in the food sector. A 
recent investigation shows that the ratio of 
diversity of food products available was at its 
lowest in the months prior to the Constitutional 
Referendum in December 2007, which Chávez lost 
with a narrow margin, while food scarcity was at its highest.

This was by no means a coincidence. The 
capitalists in the food sector made a deliberate, 
and successful, attempt to sow confusion, 
demoralization and frustration among the masses 
who had previously voted for Chávez. They knew 
that they wouldn't be able to win the masses to 
the opposition camp, but their aim was to 
demoralize them. This was precisely what 
happened: Nearly three million people in the 
Bolivarian mass base abstained from voting, thus 
giving the escuálidos a marginal victory. Food 
scarcity in Venezuela is part of a concerted and 
well-organized counter-revolutionary campaign.

The possibility of this being repeated in the 
months preceding the September parliamentary 
elections is clearly present, as the main food 
distributors and markets are still in the hands 
of the Capitalists. Chávez is trying to extend 
the state-owned Mercal food markets, but in 
reality the expansion is very limited and only 
amount to 7% [vi] in total quantity of food 
available. This cannot make up for the colossal 
loss that is created by hoarding, speculation and 
the big inflation in the entire privately owned food sector.

The main problem is twofold: The privately owned 
food sector remains largely untouched (with small 
exceptions, such as Éxito and Cargill) and there 
is no monopoly on foreign trade. On the other 
hand, national food production remains very low 
and the agrarian reform of 2001 hasn't produced 
any significant distribution of the land to the 
poor peasants. Those peasants who did get a piece 
of land were in many cases refused the cheap 
credits that they had been promised and thus the land remains uncultivated.

The logical conclusion from this is that private 
property of food production, processing and 
distribution sectors is in direct contradiction 
with the democratic will of the majority of 
Venezuelans. The only way to solve this problem 
(which represents a deadly threat to the 
revolution) is by expropriating these industries 
and putting them under the democratic control of 
workers, consumers and peasant cooperatives, so 
that they can plan them rationally according to 
the interests of the majority of the people, and 
put an end to this counter-revolutionary and undemocratic sabotage.

The parliamentary elections

Gustavo Tarre Briceño, one of the hardened 
counter-revolutionaries and former leader of the 
social-christian COPEI party, recently said that 
“the government was that bad that it was actually 
possible to win the elections”. Obviously this is 
a crude exaggeration, which turns everything on 
it's head. The governments in the Fourth Republic 
were vicious protectors of Capital and served to 
maintain the exploitation of the great majority 
of workers and poor. Chávez was the first to 
break with this. Nonetheless, it is true that 
many reformists and bureaucrats surrounding 
Chávez are incapable of solving the most pressing 
problems of Venezuela, such as electricity, 
housing, food scarcity and people’s insecurity. 
The main reason for this is that they do not dare 
break with capitalism and private property.

In the same interview [vii], Tarre Breceño 
explains the strategy of the opposition. He 
stated that even in the case of the Opposition 
not gaining a majority in the National Assembly, 
“parliament will convert itself into a center of 
national debate” and that this in itself would 
“represent a qualitative change”. Here we have an 
outline of the counter-revolution's perspective. 
Even if they only manage to win, say 40%, they 
will use all these MP's to block or delay 
government initiatives. They will make these 
legal representatives travel the country back and 
forth and mobilize the volatile masses of 
petit-bourgeois and middle class elements. This 
is the first part of a plan, the goal of which is 
to get rid of Chávez and bury the revolution.

Among the Bolivarian masses there is profound 
concern about this, but also a deep-rooted 
discontent with bureaucracy in the PSUV. This was 
reflected in an interesting interview a couple of 
months ago with Alberto Müller Rojas, the former 
PSUV vice-president, who said that “Chávez is 
sitting in a nest of scorpions” [viii], referring 
to many of the reformists in the government and the party.

In the same Alo Presidente in which Chávez 
attacked Falcón and declared that there can be no 
agreement with the ruling elite, he once again 
stressed that the capitalist state must be done 
away with and criticized those who advocated 
“market socialism”, the most recent mantra of the 
reformists within the Bolivarian movement. These 
ideas connect with the critical mood which has 
developed amongst the rank and file of the PSUV.

It is in this context that the ideas of Marxism 
have a keen audience. Recently, the Assembly of 
Popular Movements in Caracas adopted the proposal 
of a programme for the PSUV presented by the 
Marxists as its own, and as a result it has been 
circulated for discussion to all congress 
delegates. The same ideas were enthusiastically 
received at assemblies of the Juventud 
Bicentenaria, the new front of revolutionary 
youth organizations. This confirms that the rank 
and file will keep struggling to change the PSUV 
and transform it into a tool that can complete the revolution once and for all.

Caracas, March 25, 2010

Notes

i Últimas Noticias, 21 de Marzo de 2010, pag.16
ii Aló Presidente, No. 35. Reproduced in Debate 
Socialista, 21 de Marzo, pag. 8www.debatesocialista.org
iii Últimas Noticias, 16 de Marzo de 2010
iv Correo de Orinoco, 23 de Marzo de 2010, pag. 2
v These statistics are taken from Correo de 
Orinoco, 21 de Marzo de 2010, pag. 6
vi Venezuelanalysis, 
<http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5204>http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5204 
[1]
vii Últimas Noticias, 21 de Marzo de 2010, supplemento dominco, pag. 6-7
viii Venezuelanalysis: 
<http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5116>http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5116<http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/venezuela/estadistica-alimentos.jpg> 
[2] [3]
In Defence of Marxism
http://www.marxist.com/venezuela-counter-revolution-throws-down-new-challenge.htm 


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Source URL (retrieved on 01/04/2010 - 10:38am): 
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Links:
[1] http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5204
[2] http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5116
[3] http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/venezuela/estadistica-alimentos.jpg




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