[News] Venezuela: Counter-revolution Throws down a New Challenge
Anti-Imperialist News
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Thu Apr 1 11:39:53 EDT 2010
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 peoples 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
----------
Source URL (retrieved on 01/04/2010 - 10:38am):
<http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5236>http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5236
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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