[News] Venezuela - The People, Representation, and Revolutionary Culture

[Anti-Imperialist News]

May 15, 2013
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/15/the-people-representation-and-revolutionary-culture/


<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/15/the-people-representation-and-revolutionary-culture/print>
An Interview with Reinaldo Iturriza, Venezuela's New Minister of Communes


  The People, Representation, and Revolutionary Culture

by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

/I conducted the following interview with Reinaldo Iturriza, Venezuela's 
New Minister of Communes, in the aftermath of Hugo Chávez's re-election 
on October 7^th 2012, but two factors have increased its relevance for 
the present moment: first, the tight margin of victory in Nicolás 
Maduro's election on April 14^th 2013, which points toward a sharpening 
of the conflicts Iturriza notes below; second, the fact that Iturriza 
himself was recently named to Maduro's cabinet as Minister of Communes. 
I have edited the interview for clarity and relevance. Iturriza's 
description of his first days as minister can be found in Spanish on his 
blog 
<mailto:http://elotrosaberypoder.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/mis-primeros-dias-en-el-gobierno/>./

*/GCM: How do you see the political scenario in the aftermath of Hugo 
Chávez's re-election on October 7^th 2012?/*

RI: What is interesting to me about the political situation is that 
October 7^th wasn't the overwhelming victory that some polls were 
predicting, but nor was it the technical tie that the opposition had 
been claiming. We need to recognize there are deficits, things that 
aren't working, there is a certain exhaustion of the model, which 
doesn't mean that we've entered into a phase of decline, nothing of the 
sort, but simply that there are things that aren't working.

In this sense, there are several things that we need to discuss. First, 
the subject of representation. It seems like a waste of time to plunge 
yet again into the question of bureaucracy and the PSUV [United 
Socialist Party of Venezuela 
<mailto:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Socialist_Party_of_Venezuela>], 
internal elections, internal democracy, the need to democratize, to 
listen to the bases. We can say all of those things, but the problem 
isn't the actually existing Party. The Party /is/ a problem but it won't 
necessarily be solved with new faces, by getting rid of so-and-so.

I think that what we need to identify is a political /logic/, a /way/ of 
doing politics. The Bolivarian Revolution cannot be understood without a 
critique of the idea of political representation. In fact, this was put 
forth explicitly during the first years of the Revolution, which has in 
a series of opportunities attempted to resolve the problem of the 
/instrument /[i.e. the Party]. I believe that at this point, we need to 
recognize that this problem was not resolved, and insofar as it hasn't 
been resolved, we need to return to these original debates on the crisis 
of representation.

*/GCM: So the question of internal democracy isn't going deep enough?/*

RI: It's about a political /logic/, and we need to identify the concrete 
practices that define that logic. If we say, "we don't want the 
endogenous right [moderate Chavistas] anymore" we aren't saying 
anything, because we aren't identifying a /way/ of doing politics. We 
need to identify in detail a /practice/, a set of practices, what could 
be called an "apparatus" [/dispositivo/], a way of understanding 
politics, and it seems to me that all of this passes through the 
question of representation, as Foucault would say "speaking for others." 
The Bolivarian Revolution is the creation of those who didn't have a 
voice, it is the process through which the people, the vast majority who 
never had the possibility of speaking could speak, the historically 
invisibilized made themselves visible.

What I call "officialism" invisibilized part of the people once again. 
We can look the other way if we want, but this has a political cost, and 
this political cost in Venezuela is fundamentally expressed through 
elections. Venezuelan elections are not a concession we are making to 
liberalism: elections are referendums in which not only Chávez or the 
homeland is at stake, but the process as a whole, which is subjected to 
permanent elections.

When we evaluate Chavista mayors and there is abstention, it is because 
the people don't believe in them, because they are terrible, because 
they turn their backs on the people, because they have thirty 
bodyguards, because they aren't in close contact with the /barrios/. 
When we don't vote, we aren't saying that they aren't resolving our 
problems or their administration is bad, we are evaluating the process 
as a whole: the way these mayors do politics is a lot like what existed 
before, and I don't believe in that.

Chavistas protest with their votes, and I believe this was expressed on 
October 7^th .  Despite its effectiveness as an electoral machine, the 
PSUV doesn't manage to convoke the people, it isn't imbricated with the 
popular masses, it doesn't do mass work, it doesn't do political work. 
The people don't identify with this party, they identify with Chávez, 
which is a completely different thing.

I have seen the most radical critiques of the PSUV right now during this 
campaign. I visited Valles del Tuy and I didn't know there were places 
that were so Chavista, huge areas with tens of thousands of residents, 
and they are /radically/ Chavista. But those people don't want anything 
to do with the Party or with mayors, they vote for Chávez. Elections are 
moments when the process as a whole is evaluated, so when we're talking 
about the margin of victory, about where there was abstention or not, we 
are evaluating the entire process.

In the Great Patriotic Pole 
<mailto:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Patriotic_Pole>, which was 
not simply supposed to be an alliance of parties, and which succeeded in 
collecting the discontented and dispersed elements of Chavismo, 
nevertheless reproduced the same thing, and so it's important to 
determine what that logic is. And it's not enough to identify a logic, 
we need to identify practices. So this is relevant to your book 
<mailto:http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php%3Fproductid=19397>, 
when you discuss the moment when the left begins to revise its 
understanding of vanguardism. Because this remains intact today, the 
very vanguardist idea that I'm the one who knows and that the problem 
with the revolution is that the people don't understand, the people 
aren't at the height of my theory.

*/GCM: There is a tendency to dismiss the people as bearers of false 
consciousness?/*

RI: Yes, and with all that might exist of this, I think the point is 
exactly the opposite. I believe that there's a Chavista political class 
that is /very/ far behind popular consciousness. I'm not trying to 
reproduce a romantic view in which the people know everything, not at 
all. I'm talking about the Chavista people in all their misery, who have 
time and again shown their political clarity.

*/GCM: Like in resisting the coup of April of 2002?/*

RI: Exactly, and like October 7^th too.

*/GCM: So it's not as simple as critiquing the PSUV or building an 
alternative?/*

RI: No, because despite the votes won by the smaller parties, the 
problem is how to do politics with the /6.5 million/ who voted for the 
PSUV. Who are those 6.5 million? /That's/ where Chavismo is, popular 
Chavismo is /there/ voting for the PSUV, despite not recognizing 
themselves in it. Why? Because that's the party of Chávez. The votes won 
by other parties were important and significant, but for example for the 
Venezuelan Communist Party 
<mailto:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partido_Comunista_de_Venezuela> 
(PCV) to say those 500,000 votes were their militants or the result of 
their political work... you can't be very serious about politics and say 
things like that.

That is very common in Venezuela, to say, "that was thanks to me." 
/Hermano/, you need to put yourself on the level of the people. We are 
too lacking in humility, we need to really get inside the people and 
listen to what the people are thinking, what they are feeling, what is 
bothering them, why they vote or why they don't. But in terms of 
representation and of the Party there's none of this. No one should be 
taking credit for what isn't theirs, and insofar as this happens, it 
means we haven't overcome that defect inherited from the traditional left./
/

*/GCM: So the question isn't one of rejecting the PSUV and creating 
another structure, but of first understanding why people vote for it. 
This reminds me of when C.L.R. James' critiqued Trotsky for arguing that 
Stalin had simply duped the workers./*

RI: Yes, C.L.R. James would say something very similar about Venezuela, 
but what you raise is also very important because what is happening in 
Venezuela isn't unprecedented, it's more or less the history of the 
left. You need to get your teeth into it, to work on it, to think it 
through, and to think it through /popularly/. The key in Venezuela is 
the category of the popular [/lo popular/]: how it is expressed, how it 
is translated. Instead of trying to /represent/ the social base of the 
revolution, I believe that what needs to be done is to give the people 
the free rein to express themselves. How? Well, that's the political 
challenge we have ahead of us.

It's not that we can't be critical, but we need to make sure our 
critique is on target, because what if we take the ideal situation of 
the radicals and we replace the PSUV with something that winds up being 
the same thing? We replaced the MVR [Fifth Republic Movement 
<mailto:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Republic_Movement>] with the 
PSUV, and Chávez's early speeches about the PSUV were historic speeches 
about making it the party we all want. So then why did it become what it 
is? Not because I say so, but because the people don't identify with it.

*/GCM: Do you believe that among the leadership of the PSUV there exists 
the will, capacity, or culture to look at things this way?/*

RI: On the intellectual level, I would say no, I don't see it among what 
is often recognized as the intellectual stratum of Chavismo. I /do/ see 
many people building, experimenting with organizational forms, working 
all the time, inventing, and I believe that there is a disjunction 
between that stratum and those practices. It's not that nothing is 
happening: there is /a lot/ happening, but we aren't /understanding/ it. 
My perspective isn't that of the traditional pessimistic observer, no, 
I'm telling you that some extraordinary things are happening and we are 
missing them.

So there is unhappiness with the party, and this needs to be resolved. I 
might not agree with how things are being understood, but I need to link 
up with a machinery that functions effectively, but which we also need 
to work on so that it functions more like a /popular/ machine.

What's the difference between a traditional machine and a popular 
machine? In Petare, which we lost as a parish but won in the popular 
/barrios/, with significant reductions in abstention, what the 
/compañeros/ told me was that one of the phenomena that emerged is that 
people were organizing and working for Chávez's victory without 
expecting anything in return. The people are no longer waiting for the 
Party to provide propaganda, the people are taking care of things as 
well as they can with the few resources they have, but they aren't 
waiting for anyone, they are /activated/.

The question of representation includes all of this, because it's a 
question of culture, and this connects to the question of the middle 
class, to how the Revolution has not been able to communicate with or 
persuade the middle class. I /do/ believe that the revolution has the 
obligation to do work for the middle class: the middle class must be 
won. But it's obvious that this can't be the main work of the 
revolution, although this isn't obvious for some people.

There are people who during the campaign said that there is a discontent 
within Chavismo, but that this was within the middle class. No, /pana/, 
the discontent is fundamentally in the popular sectors! And that's your 
foundation, your social base! I don't understand this view, I think it's 
a very middle-class way of looking at the question of the middle class, 
and I think what we need to do is to focus on the popular question.

The institutions are in the hands of the middle class, politics is 
directed by the middle class. I'm not saying that this is necessarily 
bad, but it's a fact, that's how it is: the institutions are in the 
hands of people who have been educated in a certain way, who have 
certain values and prejudices toward the popular sector, and on the 
cultural level this seems absolutely clear to me. It is expressed in the 
movies and television programs we make, in the literature we create, it 
is expressed generally in the field of culture./
/

*/GCM: Is the idea that the poor are already with us because they are 
attached to Chávez, so we need to focus strategically on winning the 
middle class?/*

RI: Yes, because as some people would put it, "the people have benefited 
tremendously from the revolution." What the hell is that? That isn't 
what has happened here. This isn't to imply that the people /haven't/ 
benefited, but that firstly, the people /won/ this and have defended it 
and defended Chávez when they put him back in power after he was 
overthrown in April 2002, when they resisting the oil sabotage [December 
2002-January 2003] and opposition /guarimbas /[street blockades that 
emerged in 2004]. If the people have done all this, it is because they 
believe that this government needs to be in power for them to continue 
to advance, to have the right to keep winning new rights.

But to return to the question of political logic and representation, 
it's clear that officialism, which doesn't mean the entire government or 
all the ministers, is a practice. What is this practice? Contempt for 
the people, privileging clientelistic relations instead of political 
relations, seeing the people as beneficiaries rather than as a 
protagonists. You hear this all the time in public media: 
"beneficiaries, beneficiaries, beneficiaries."

Where are the popular aesthetics? Where are the properly popular 
discourses? Where are the people making their own programs? Where is 
popular film? This is a very delicate and polemical subject, because it 
touches on the question of delinquency, but there you have [the 
notoriously violent homemade film] /Azotes del Barrio/, a scandalous and 
abominable thing that can't be mentioned in middle-class Chavismo. There 
are many of those cultural codes, that middle-class imaginary that is 
still prevalent.

The popular sector appears in the public media in Venezuela is as 
beneficiaries, as recipients of our good efforts. If they complain it's 
because they are ungrateful, and so they don't complain, I deepen the 
clientelistic relation, I give them everything, but only so they won't 
complain. And all this reproduces a profoundly anti-popular logic.

*/GCM: This is very similar to the question of the /buhoneros/, or 
street vendors, who many Chavistas dismiss as petty-capitalists or even 
lumpen. We saw this as well in the 2011 London riots when people on the 
left like David Harvey 
<mailto:http://www.thenewsignificance.com/2011/08/12/david-harvey-feral-capitalism-hits-the-streets/> 
dismissed the rioters as a reflection of savage capitalism. There is a 
tendency in the history of the left, or a certain kind of Marxist 
orthodoxy, that says that there is a historical subject, and those black 
people selling drugs on the corner aren't it, that street gangs have no 
political relevance. You have been involved in the Chávez Es Otro Beta 
movement 
<mailto:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chavez-ES-OTRO-BETA/331343150283402>, 
which seeks precisely to reclaim, dignify, and resignify the negative 
aspects of /barrio/ youth culture. Has there been resistance to Otro Beta?/*

RI: Within Chavismo? Not publicly, but of course there has. The PSUV in 
Petare /detests/ the kids from Otro Beta because they are political 
competition, but beyond the question of political quotas and their fear 
of losing influence, there is also prejudice---prejudice, /chamo/! And 
it's a /class/ prejudice! They behave like an elite. It's that same 
culture all over again, George, vanguardism, the same old thing, /la 
misma vaina/. But now it's people who dress in red and repeat everything 
Chávez says that consider themselves the vanguard. They aren't a 
vanguard at all, and that's why the people don't respect them./
/

*/GCM: This cultural prejudice among Chavistas has left the door open to 
the opposition, which has for years strategically targeted /barrios 
/like Petare with sports programs. While some argue that the strategy 
has failed, others claim that the opposition has made serious inroads 
into Chavismo's urban base. How do you see the situation?/*

RI: There is a powerful political, cultural, and economic potential that 
is being wasted simply because we don't like the music they listen to, 
we don't like the way they talk, we don't like how they dress, because 
they are abandoned to the market, they are alienated... But that's not 
all: how is it possible that the prison population in Venezuela has more 
than doubled since 2005 due to the criminalization of micro-trafficking? 
How is this even conceivable in a revolution? So you have /muchachos/ in 
prison for smoking marijuana. Inconceivable!

*/GCM: The recent crisis in Venezuelan prisons led Chávez to create a 
new Ministry of Penitentiary Affairs in 2012. What is your opinion of 
the Minister, Iris Varela, who has been committed to halting 
imprisonment and releasing as many inmates as possible?/*

RI: She doesn't have the support of the penal system as a whole, and is 
in permanent conflict with the attorney general and the entire judicial 
structure. But I have been very impressed with her, because the first 
thing she did was to travel to /all/ the prisons and listen to what the 
prisoners had to say. That seemed absolutely correct to me, it was what 
had do be done, and that Iris deserves a lot of respect for that. 
There's still a great deal to be done to fight the mafias, and there are 
still riots and massacres.

*/GCM: Do you believe it's possible to humanize prisons?/*

RI: Absolutely: in revolution, anything is possible, and I don't mean 
that as a cliché.

/*George Ciccariello-Maher*, teaches political theory at Drexel 
University in Philadelphia. He is the author of We Created Chávez: A 
People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822354527/counterpunchmaga> 
(Duke University Press, May 2013), and can be reached at 
gjcm(at)drexel.edu./

-- 
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