[News] Chavismo and Its Singularities

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13996


  Reinaldo Iturriza: Chavismo and Its Singularities

By Reinaldo Iturriza and Cira Pascual Marquina - August 13, 2018
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/Reinaldo Iturriza has engaged with the Chavista project in a wide range 
of roles, from participation to critical and creative reflection. He is 
a blogger <https://elotrosaberypoder.wordpress.com/> acclaimed by Hugo 
Chávez, the author of the book El //chavismo////salvaje//(Wild Chavismo) 
and former Minister of the Communes and of Culture. At present, Iturriza 
is completing a book called Caribes while working in the National Center 
of History and as a communal agricultural worker in Lara state. In this 
interview for Venezuelanalysis, he addresses some of the most difficult 
questions facing Chavismo today. These include the dialectic between 
internal democracy and leadership in the PSUV party, the rural 
//comuneros//that are facing off with the regional oligarchy and its 
allies in the government, and the perception of Chavismo internationally./

*Hegemonic historiography interprets history as developing linearly, 
implicitly looking for continuities. By contrast, your reading of the 
Chavista phenomenon points to singularities and ruptures. Can you 
explain this to us?*

This is indeed a key point. Conservative historiography makes an 
enormous effort to demonstrate Chavismo’s kinship with the most 
“backward” elements of Venezuela’s political tradition. Internationally, 
there has certainly been an attempt to dispel the phenomenon by relating 
it to the “populism” said to be characteristic, once more, of “backward” 
countries. It focuses attention on the figure of the leader and 
relegates the popular classes to the background. Tacitly, the latter are 
considered incapable of political activity and the same goes for our 
countries too, which are presented as predisposed toward disorder, 
irrationality and violence. How often one hears this kind of opinion! 
However, the uniqueness of Chavismo consists, among other things, 
precisely in popular protagonism. Chavismo is the result of an 
extraordinary process of forming a political subject that has its origin 
in the 1990s, due to a set of historical circumstances. Moreover, 
Chávez’s leadership is itself inconceivable without that popular 
upsurge. Chávez is a purely popular construct: the result of a process 
and not the other way around. His leadership has to do with his 
resonance with the people, his translating the desires and aspirations 
of the popular subject.

Then, of course, it is surely possible to point to relations of 
continuity with the political culture Acción Democrática [a right-wing 
political party that ruled alongside COPEI for many decades as part of 
the so-called Punto Fijo Pact]. This culture was clientelist, based on 
the logic of representation, and relegated the popular classes to a 
subordinate role, allowing “participation” only through traditional 
political forms (parties, unions, etc.), and privileging corporativism. 
The most conservative tendencies in Chavismo feel very comfortable 
reproducing these same practices, but, again, that is not what defines 
the nature of Chavismo. What is new in Chavismo is precisely everything 
that breaks with the old culture, giving birth to a new one: the 
Chavista subject is essentially Venezuela’s majority population, that 
has historically been invisible, marginalized, which feels a deep 
distrust of traditional forms of organization, and which wagers on the 
logic of direct participation and spaces of self-government. Ignoring 
this leads to all kinds of errors regarding the Bolivarian Revolution.

*The IV PSUV Congress (July 28‐30) concluded recently and the debates 
were intense, even difficult at times. The most trying debate focused on 
the topic of internal democracy in the party, which has millions of 
members. One PSUV tendency proposed proclaiming Nicolas Maduro as 
president of the party and also argued that (given the difficult 
conditions generated by imperialist aggression) he should personally 
select the PSUV’s national leadership. Another tendency wanted the 
party’s national leadership to be elected by the bases while maintaining 
Maduro as party president. The first proposal held the day. Thinking 
creatively about the present and the past, what type of party do you 
think is needed to build socialism in the twenty-first century? 
Obviously, the question of democracy (and debate among equals) is key, 
but it is also important that communal projects should have autonomy.*

First of all, I consider it correct that the IV PSUV Congress decided to 
ratify Nicolás Maduro as party president. Chavismo’s unity turns on 
recognizing the President’s leadership, not the other way around. 
Second, it’s urgent to renew the party's national leadership. The best 
way to do it would have been to appeal to the party’s bases, to cast 
one’s lot with the bases. I do not agree at all with the idea that more 
democracy generates disunity. It is a fallacious argument. Too often, 
the Chavista political class decides not to pay attention to the popular 
masses’ deep discontent with the political class in general, Chavista 
and anti‐Chavista, considering them to be disconnected from reality, 
without real knowledge of the problems that the population has to face 
every day. There is a very severe crisis of political mediation, between 
the party direction and its bases, that must be faced with courage and 
audacity. Among other things, a party of twenty-first-century socialism 
must be one that is willing to do so. We have already had too many mid- 
and high-ranking politicians who ask the people to make sacrifices that 
they themselves are not willing to make. Instead, they take advantage of 
the positions they occupy to obtain benefits, perks, and privileges.

*Today it seems as if the rural areas are where the struggle against the 
despotism of capital (and a part of the bureaucracy) is most active. 
Examples of such struggles include El Maizal commune [in Lara state] , 
the resistance in the Sur de Lago [in Zulia state] and the Admirable 
Campesino March <https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13966>: the 
protesting peasant farmers who recently walked from interior regions to 
the capital to make themselves heard. Why do you think that the rural 
areas are now the most active and mobilized regions in this political 
process that, until recently, was focused on urban zones, especially in 
the poor barrios?*

In each of the foci of rural struggle, organized popular-class movements 
are confronting the regional oligarchy and powers-that-be, who 
undoubtedly think that they are in a position to “restore” their power 
in the countryside. The popular movements are also confronting the 
aberrant alliance of a part of the state forces (bureaucrats, police, 
military personnel, judges, etc.) with these same regional power groups. 
It is simply unacceptable that this alliance should take place in a 
situation where, in fact, we are called upon to dedicate all our efforts 
on using arable land and must give all the support needed to the real 
subject of revolutionary politics (peasants and comuneros, small and 
medium producers). For it is among the latter that the revolutionary 
government continues to operate and hold sway.

In fact, what would really be strange is if the rural situation today 
did not generate a popular response! The meeting of the peasants and 
comuneros with the President, and particularly everything they said 
during the time they had the opportunity to speak (in a national 
television broadcast), is one of the most important political events of 
recent times. I believe one could say that the majority of the country 
felt represented in their words: in their criticisms and demands. What 
we heard there is the same political clarity found in the people of El 
Maizal and other communes, in the people in Sur del Lago, and in general 
in all those who are aware that, in order to overcome this historical 
crisis, we will have to be able to produce what we eat.

*In the international context, some sectors of the the Left say that 
they are neither with Chavismo nor with its enemies, neither with 
imperialism nor the Bolivarian government. In truth, that is a false 
dilemma, since there is a third option: grassroots Chavismo. The latter 
is of course closer to the government, or at least is willing to form a 
front with the government to face down imperialism (at the same time as 
it expresses sometimes quite strong differences with the ruling bloc).*

It seems to me that this is the typical position of those who idealize 
power relations. Despite all the disagreements one might have with the 
government, it is absolutely clear that anti-Chavismo is simply not an 
option. Those sectors of the Left, which you just mentioned, like to 
flaunt their right not to choose. But when you live in a society like 
ours, where we are trying to carry out a revolution -- with both its 
wonders and its failures -- and in which it is not an option to be 
governed by the criminals who ruled in the past (the same people who are 
recurring to absolutely all forms of struggle to defeat us, including 
assassination), then that “neither-nor” position looks a lot like 
imposture: ”My position is not to take a position.” Frankly, however, 
one can go light on such people. They will understand, when they do 
their own revolution. When imperialism tries to suffocate them, they 
will come to understand that the only option is to breathe.

-- 
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