[News] Venezuela: New moves to build people's power

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Venezuela: New moves to build people's power

http://www.zcommunications.org/venezuela-new-moves-to-build-peoples-power-by-frederico-fuentes

By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/federicofuentes>Frederico Fuentes

Source: <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2010/831/42766>Green Left Weekly
Thursday, March 25, 2010

(Caracas, 22 March 2010) -- “The free, sovereign 
and independent homeland of our dreams will only 
come true if we radicalize the process and speed 
up the transition to socialism”, Venezuelan 
President Hugo Chavez wrote in his March 14 weekly column “Chavez Lines”.

The Venezuelan government has launched a number 
of initiatives in recent weeks aimed to tackle 
threats to the revolutionary process ­ including 
from elements within the pro-Chavez camp that 
seek to undermine plans to deepen the revolution.

Central to this are new measures aimed at 
speeding up the transfer of power to organized communities.

Chavez wrote in his February 21 column: “The time 
has come for communities to assume the powers of 
state, which will lead administratively to the 
total transformation of the Venezuelan state and 
socially to the real exercise of sovereignty by 
society through communal powers.”

Participatory democracy

The previous day, Chavez announced the creation 
of the federal government council in front of 
thousands of armed peasants that are part of the 
newly created peasant battalions in the Bolivarian militia.

As well as the vice president, government 
ministers, state governors and mayors, the 
council includes representatives of communal 
councils, communes and other representatives directly elected by the people.

The communal councils are grassroots bodies that 
bring together existing community organizations 
that have sprung up in Venezuela’s poor 
neighborhood around issues such as access to 
health, education, water and electricity.

The councils encompass 200-400 families in urban 
areas and 20-50 families in rural areas. 
Decisions on which problems to prioritize and how 
to tackle them are made in citizen assemblies open to the entire community.

Funding for the councils comes from the 
government, but a strong emphasis is placed on 
relying on local cooperatives, volunteer labor 
and local expertise to bypass private contractors and empower the community.

Communes bring together various local communal 
councils and other social organizations in order 
to tackle problems on a larger scale. There are 
187 communes are in the process of being created nationally.

Communes are being encouraged to play a direct 
economic role, such as creating cooperatives, 
taking over idle factories to be reopened under 
worker-community control, and setting up communal 
markets to sell produces from other communes.

The federal government council brings together 
representatives of the old state structures with 
the new, emerging communal state. The council 
aims to help transfer various powers now held by 
the national government, state governorships and 
mayoralties to these emerging organs of peoples’ power.

Such organs include workers’ and peasants’ 
councils, which will also be represented on the council.

Workers’ control

There are also indications the government is 
moving to transfer control over the running of 
important state industries to their workers.

One example is Plan Socialist Guayana, which 
involves tens of thousands of workers in the 
industrial complex in Bolivar state.

Workers, backed by Chavez, have been discussing, 
and in some cases implementing, a radical 
transformation in the running of local aluminum, 
iron ore, steel and mining companies.

There are also important moves in the electrical 
sector, which has been plagued with problems. 
Hydroelectric dams that are at critically low 
levels due to ongoing droughts generate some 70% of Venezuela’s electricity.

The sector also suffers from years of 
under-investment by pre-Chavez governments that 
were preparing to privatize the state-own industry.

Declaring a state of emergency in the electrical 
sector, Chavez has called on the workers to actively participate in management.

This has long been a demand of the workers 
themselves, who finally won this year an 
important 15-month-long battle against state 
management for a new collective contract.

The new contract not only equalizes pay and 
conditions across the electricity sector (as part 
of integrating newly nationalized companies with 
the pre-existing state industry), it also 
enshrines worker and community participation in management.

Since then, the Federation of Electrical Workers 
(Fetraelec) and new electricity minister Ali 
Araque Rodriguez have been removing managers who 
have operated against the interests of the workers and sabotaged the industry.

In some places, workers have begun to take 
control over local affiliates of Corpoelec, the 
national state-owned power company.

Chavez also named Raul Arocha as president of 
CADAFE, a key component of Corpoelec. Arocha is 
an engineer who was elected by workers as manager 
of the Merida zone of CADAFE and helped develop workers’ participation there.

Fetraelec proposed Arocha’s appointment due to 
his proven commitment to promoting worker participation.

Fetraelec is organizing nation-wide workers’ 
assemblies to develop a plan for how workers can 
run the sector. The assemblies will culminate 
with a mass meeting with Chavez where workers 
will present their proposals to restructure Corpoelec.

In a March 18 press conference with Fetraelec 
leaders, Jaua said: “Chavez wants the workers to 
convert themselves in protagonist subject ... via 
the creation of socialist companies, with the 
decisive and active participation of the 
workers.” In response to allegations by the 
right-wing opposition that Chavez is seeking to 
concentrate power in his own hands, 
Vice-President Elias Juau told the February 20 
gathering of armed peasants: “We did not come 
here to concentrate power but rather to dismantle the national oligarchy.

“For us, the only way to avoid the concentration 
of political and economic power in the hands of 
the oligarchy is to return power to the people.”

This encroachment on the economic and political 
power of local and Western capitalist interests 
has provoked a violent reaction.

One example is the response of large landowners 
to the government’s land reform program, in which 
2.5 million hectares have been redistributed to poor peasants since 2001.

In that time, more than 250 peasant leaders have 
been killed at the hands of paramilitaries hired by large landowners.

In response to this violence, and as part of 
preparing for a potential foreign military 
attack, peasant battalions of the Bolivarian 
militia have been formed this year.

Chavez has also argued for the creation of worker 
battalions organized in factories.

He said: “The Bolivarian Militia, as well as 
community councils, are expressions of the new 
communal state, an integral part of the new 
structure of the communal power we are building.”

A new state

Chavez said creating a new state was needed “to 
demolish the old perverse vestiges and new 
threats of bueaucratizm”. He said, “the best and 
most radically democratic of the options for 
defeating bureaucracy and corruption is the construction of a communal state”.

A recent example of government moves to tackle 
corruption was the arrest of a number of bankers.

Many of the arrested claimed to support the 
revolutionary process. But via deals signed with 
government ministries and other state 
institutions, they had created a network of corruption with state funds.

More than 30 bankers face charges. The state 
intervened into eight banks (of which six are now 
run by the state) and several dozen companies 
owned by the bankers were nationalised.

Reformist and corrupt practices within state 
companies and the government have set back past 
attempts to move towards workers’ control.

The push by electricity workers between 2004-06 
for workers’ participation in management was 
rolled back by reformist sectors within the 
company and the government. The workers are 
confronting some of these same forces in the 
renewed battle for workers’ control.

In Guayana, aluminum workers have denounced a 
number of attempts by management, and national 
and state officials, to sabotage workers’ 
participation ­ which has increased discontent 
and disillusionment among workers toward the government.

One recent example is a contract signed by 
management to sell semi-finished materials to the 
multinational Glencore for the next six years, 
with no consultation with the workers.

Such corrupt deals with multinationals remove the 
possibility of workers deciding where production should be geared.

Venezuela is an underdeveloped nation heavily 
reliant on its oil industry. One of the key aims 
of the revolution is to overcome this through 
national development. Production for foreign 
markets on behalf of multinationals undermines this goal.

It contradicts Chavez’s January 24 announcement 
that all state firms should hand their products 
to a state entity to distribute them according to 
the needs of the people at cheaper prices.

The aluminum workers are demanding such contracts be rescinded.

Revolution, not reform

On February 20, Chavez again called on the people 
to continue to “prepare themselves for the 
transference and redistribution of political, 
economic, social and military power”.

Chavez said on March 5: “We are not here to carry out a reform, no!

“This is a revolution, and if we are not clear 
about what we are dealing with, we could end up 
carrying out a simple reform so that nothing changes in the end.”

Chavez quoted Polish-born revolutionary Rosa 
Luxemburg’s famous 1900 pamphlet Reform or 
Revolution: “Only when the great mass of workers 
take the keen and dependable weapons of 
scientific socialism in their own hands, will all 
the petty-bourgeois inclinations, all the 
opportunistic currents, come to naught.”

Chavez argued that ideological weakness and ties 
to business interests where behind the defection 
in February by Lara governor Henri Falcon, who 
left the Chavez-led United Socialist Party of 
Venezuela (PSUV) to join the Homeland For All (PPT) party.

On March 13, Chavez said: “He couldn’t take it 
any more because he is not a real revolutionary 
... A special fibre is required in order to confront the oligarchy.”

He said the “regional bourgeoisie” surrounded Falcon.

Chavez urged the pre-candidates in the internal 
PSUV elections to determine the candidates for 
September national elections to strengthen 
themselves ideologically by reading Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and Che Guevara.

“We have a clear target for the next elections: 
an overwhelming triumph so that the National 
Assembly continues being a space to strengthen 
and deepen the socialist dynamic.”

Rather than simply being a question of the number 
of PSUV candidates elected, Chavez said, “what we 
are dealing with is a qualitative revolutionary challenge”.

“If we want that the parliament to dismantle the 
old capitalist state and open the doors to the 
socialist state, we have to increase our 
revolutionary conscience and our real socialist praxis [practice].”

Chavez said the aim was moving beyond simple 
representation to a situation where the people themselves will govern.

“This is about legislating in accordance with the 
socialist praxis and obeying the people. Those 
who do not understand it must choose another path.”





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