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<h1><b>Venezuela<br>
</b></h1><h3><b>Class struggle heats up over in battle for workers'
control</b></h3><font size=3>July 27, 2009 By <b>Federico Fuentes</b>
<br>
<a href="http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/804/41392" eudora="autourl">
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/804/41392<br><br>
</a>Caracas: </font><font face="Verdana" size=3>On July 22, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez again declared his complete support for the
proposal by industrial workers for a new model of production based on
workers' control. <br><br>
This push from Chavez, part of the socialist revolution, aims at
transforming Venezuela's basic industry. However, it faces resistance
from within the state bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement.
<br><br>
Presenting his government's "Plan Socialist Guayana 2009-2019",
Chavez said the state-owned companies in basic industry have to be
transformed into "socialist companies". <br><br>
The plan was the result of several weeks of intense discussion among
revolutionary workers from the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG).
The CVG includes 15 state-owned companies in the industrial Guayana
region involved in steel, iron ore, mineral and aluminium production.
<br><br>
The workers' roundtables were established after a May 21 workshop, where
industrial workers raised radical proposals for the socialist
transformation of basic industry. <br><br>
Chavez addressed the workshop in support of many of the proposals.
<br><br>
But events between the May 21 workshop and Chavez's July 22 recent
announcement reveal much of the nature of the class struggle inside
revolutionary Venezuela. <br><br>
Chavez's announcement is part of an offensive launched after the
revolutionary forces won the February 15 referendum on the back of a big
organisational push that involved hundreds of thousands of people in the
campaign. <br><br>
The vote was to amend the constitution to allow elected officials to
stand for re-election allowing Chavez, the undisputed leader of the
Venezuelan revolution, to stand for president in 2012. <br><br>
With oil revenue drying up due to the global economic crisis, the
government is using this new position of strength to tackle corruption
and bureaucracy, while increasing state control over strategic economic
sectors. This aims to ensure the poor are not made to pay for the crisis.
<br><br>
<b>Workers' control</b> <br><br>
On May 21, Chavez publicly threw his lot in with the Guayana workers,
announcing his government's granting of demands for better conditions in
state-owned companies and the nationalisation of a number of private
companies whose workers were involved in industrial disputes. <br><br>
"When the working class roars, the capitalists tremble", Chavez
told the <br><br>
To chants of "this is how you govern!", Chavez announced his
agreement with a series of measures proposed by workers. <br><br>
However, like an old train that begins to rattle loudly as it speeds up,
more right-wing sectors within the revolutionary movement also began to
tremble. <br><br>
With each new attack against the political and economic power that the
capitalist class still holds in Venezuela and uses to destabilise the
country the revolution is also forced to confront internal enemies.
<br><br>
The radical measures announced at the May 21 workshop were the result of
the workers discussion over the previous two days. <br><br>
Chavez called on workers to wage an all-out struggle against the
"mafias" rife in the management of state companies. <br><br>
Chavez then designated planning minister Jorge Giordani and labour
minister Maria Cristina Iglesias, who both played a key role in the
workshop, to follow up these decisions by establishing a series of
workers' roundtables in the CVG industries. <br><br>
The CVG complex is on the verge of collapse in large part due to the
privatisation push by pre-Chavez governments in the 1990s. State
companies were run down in preparation to be sold off cheaply. <br><br>
In the Sidor steel plant, for example, the number of workers dropped from
more than 30,000 to less than 15,000 before it was privatised in 1998.
<br><br>
Chavez's 1998 election stopped further privatisation. But the government
has had to confront large scale corruption within the CVG, continued
deterioration of machinery and, more recently, the sharp drop in prices
of aluminium and steel. <br>
The plan drafted up by workers and given to Chavez on June 9 raised the
possibility of "converting the current structural crisis of
capitalism" into "an opportunity" for workers to move
forward in "the construction of socialism, by assuming in a direct
manner, control over production of the basic companies in the
region". <br><br>
The report set out nine strategic lines including workers' control of
production; improvement of environmental and work conditions; and public
auditing of companies and projects. <br><br>
Measures proposed include the election of managers and management
restructuring; collective decision-making by workers and local
communities; the creation of workers' councils; and opening companies'
books. <br><br>
The measures aim to achieve "direct control of production without
mediations by a bureaucratic structure". <br><br>
The report said such an experience of workers' control would undoubtedly
act as an example for workers in "companies in the public sector
nationally, such as those linked to hydrocarbons or energy
companies". <br><br>
<br>
<b>Bureaucracy bites back</b> <br><br>
Sensing the danger such an example represents to its interests,
bureaucratic sections within the revolutionary movement, as well as the
US-backed counter-revolutionary opposition, moved quickly to try and stop
this process. <br><br>
A wave of strikes and protests were organised in the aluminium sector
during June and July, taking advantage of workers' disgruntlement with
corrupt managers and payments owed. <br><br>
The protests were organised by union leaders from both the Socialist
Bolivarian Force of Workers (FSBT), a union current within the mass party
led by Chavez, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and those
aligned with opposition parties such as Radical Cause. <br><br>
Revolutionary workers from Guayana condemned the unholy alliance of
bureaucratic union leaders and opposition political forces, which aimed
to stifling the process initiated on May 21. <br><br>
This alliance was supported by Bolivar governor, retired General
Francisco Rangel Gomez, who called on the national government to
negotiate directly with local unions. <br><br>
Opinion pieces began to appear in the local press, calling on the
government to once again make Rangel president of the CVG in order to
bring "stability". <br><br>
The alliance between Rangel and union bureaucrats in Guayana is long
running. <br><br>
Officially part of the Chavista camp, Rangel has long been accused of
being corrupt and anti-worker. During his term as CVG president before
becoming governor in 2004, Rangel built up a corrupt clientalist network
with local union and business figures. <br><br>
He stacked CVG management with business partners and friends. <br><br>
While on the negotiation commission to resolve the 15-month long dispute
at Sidor, Rangel ordered the National Guard to fire on protesting Sidor
workers. <br><br>
Also on the commission was then-labour minister and former FSBT union
leader from Guayana, Jose Ramon Rivero, who was similarly accused by
Sidor workers of siding with management. <br><br>
He was also criticised for using his position as labour minister to build
the FSBT's bureaucratic powerbase by promoting "parallel
unions" along factional lines and splitting the revolutionary union
confederation, National Union of Workers (UNT). <br><br>
In April last year, Chavez disbanded the Sidor negotiation commission and
sent his vice president, Ramon Carrizales to resolve the dispute by
re-nationalising the steel plant. <br><br>
Rivero was then sacked. Today, he works as the general secretary in
Rangel's governorship. <br><br>
The forces behind Rivero and Rangel hoped not only to stifle the radical
proposals from the May 21 workshop, but also remove basic industry
minister Rodolfo Sanz. <br><br>
Sanz has moved to replace Rangel's people with his own in the CVG
management. <br><br>
In the recent dispute, Sanz accused aluminium workers of being
responsible for the crisis in that sector. He worked to undermine the
proposals of the roundtable discussions. <br><br>
After several days of negotiations union leaders essentially sidelining
the workers roundtables Sanz agreed on July 20 not only to pay the
workers what they were owed, but also to restructure the board of
directors in the aluminium sector. <br><br>
Through this process, the radical proposals for restructuring the CVG
appeared to have been push aside which suited both Sanz and Rangel.
<br><br>
<br>
<b>Revolutionary leadership</b> <br><br>
However, Chavez intervened with his July 22 announcement, which came
after a meeting with key ministers and advisors involved in the May 21
socialist transformation workshop. <br><br>
Chavez said his government was committed to implement the recommendations
of the "Plan Socialist Guayana", placing himself clearly on the
side of the workers. <br><br>
He said the workers' proposals, embodied in the plan, would "guide
all the new policies and concrete and specific measures that we are
beginning to decide in order to consolidate a socialist platform in
Guayana". <br><br>
When a journalist directed her first question to Sanz regarding the plan.
Chavez stepped in to respond, by-passing Sanz and handing the microphone
over to Giordani, who many revolutionary workers identify as strongly
committed to the process of socialist transformation. <br><br>
Rangel, who had been at the May 21 workshop, was not at the July 22
meeting. <br><br>
Chavez also appeared to differentiate himself from other sectors within
the revolutionary movement, such as those behind the "A Grain of
Maize" daily column, whose authors are linked to a political current
involving oil minister Rafael Ramirez. <br><br>
This current has recently been vocal in arguing that socialism simply
entails state ownership and central planning from above with minimum
participation from workers. <br><br>
For Chavez, state-owned companies "that continue to remain within
the framework of state capitalism" have to be managed by their
workers in order to become "socialist". <br><br>
The Plan Socialist Guayana is Venezuela's first example of real
"democratic planning from below", Chavez added. <br><br>
The battle in Guayana is not over. Workers from the Alcasa aluminium
plant told <i>Green Left Weekly</i> that management at aluminium plants
met on July 25 to continue the process of restructuring agreed to by Sanz
and union leaders in direct opposition to Chavez's statements.
<br><br>
Other fronts of intense class conflict have opened up. Various struggles
have emerged involving different forces and interests in the electricity
sector, as well as the still-emerging communes, which unite the
grassroots communal councils, to name a few. <br><br>
A central arena of struggle is the PSUV, which is in a process of
restructuring ahead of its second congress in October. <br><br>
But the battle in Guayana may be one of the most decisive as it involves
the largest working-class population. This is in the context of a
revolution whose weakest link has been the lack of a strong, organised
revolutionary workers' movement. <br><br>
<br><br>
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