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<h1 id="reader-title">Which Way Out of the Venezuelan Crisis?</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By George
Ciccariello-Maher – Jacobin, July 30th 2017</div>
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<p>When revolutions stagnate, confusion reigns, and both
are palpably true of Venezuela today. Amid a deep
economic, political, and now institutional crisis,
many on the ground in Venezuela and even more
observing from abroad don’t know what to think or to
do. But rather than abandon the Bolivarian Process by
echoing mainstream denunciations of the government of <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolas-Maduro">Nicolás
Maduro</a> as undemocratic, repressive, and even
authoritarian, it is precisely in this most difficult
of moments that revolutionaries must think clearly and
carry the fight forward.</p>
<div>
<p>The causes of the crisis are many and their
explanations well-worn. The 2013 death of <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hugo-Chavez">Hugo
Chávez</a> left a symbolic crater at the heart of
the Bolivarian Revolution, and coincided with a
collapse in global oil prices that severely limited
the maneuvering space of a Maduro government already
faltering out of the gate. Seizing upon this
weakness, conservative elites at the head of the
US-backed opposition went on the offensive in the
streets in <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/16/protests-venezuela-capriles-nicolas-maduro">April
2013 protests</a> that left eleven dead and set
into motion a strategy of tension that continues
four years later.</p>
<p>Rather than acting decisively from the outset, the
beleaguered Maduro government opted for a pragmatic
approach. A failing system of currency controls
governing the distribution of oil income was never
fully dismantled. The result was a destructive
feedback loop of black-market currency speculation,
the hoarding and smuggling of gasoline and food, and
an explosion of already rampant corruption at the
intersection of the private and public sectors.
Confronted with street protests and food shortages,
Maduro responded erratically, supporting grassroots
production by communes while simultaneously courting
private corporations in a bid to keep food on the
shelves.</p>
<p>The whirlwind that has ensued is not the one we had
hoped for. As is often the case, the pragmatic path
promised to be safest when it was in fact the most
treacherous, and Maduro’s hesitance backfired
spectacularly when the opposition won a decisive
victory in the <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/world/americas/venezuela-elections.html?_r=0">December
2015 National Assembly elections</a>. What has
followed is a full-blown institutional crisis in
which the <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/venezuela-crisis-maduro-opposition-violence-elections-economy">opposition
has sought to stoke crisis</a>, destabilize the
government, and to make the country ungovernable.</p>
<p>Having seized one branch of government, opposition
forces immediately demanded all three, constantly
violating Supreme Court rulings and brazenly
attempting to topple the executive. They continue to
encourage violent protests in the streets that have
left more than one hundred dead — where the cause is
known, most have been killed directly or indirectly
by the protestors themselves. This is not the
picture of government repression painted by the
international media, and in a country where 55
percent of Venezuelans continue to approve of Chávez
and nearly half are opposed to the opposition’s
violent tactics, those seeking to overthrow Maduro
do not enjoy any great popular legitimacy.</p>
<p>The international media has played its role,
framing the question as simply a matter of time:
when will the democratically elected and legitimate
president step down? Never mind that, even amid the
crisis, Maduro is still more popular than Mexico’s
Enrique Peña Nieto, Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos,
and the unelected and illegitimate Brazilian
coup-president Michel Temer. These important details
disappear in the fog of a relentless media
onslaught, backed by both the CIA and the Trump
administration.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It’s difficult to find a path forward. There is
talk of dialogue — the liberal panacea of panaceas —
but it remains unclear with whom the dialogue should
take place, or what kind of solutions it might
bring. While arguably necessary to stop the
violence, absent concrete solutions to the
underlying contradictions of the petro-state, such
dialogue would merely ease the political crisis at
the expense of resolving the economic crisis. The
situation that prevails is not the result of too
much socialism, <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/unfinished-business">but
too little</a>, and any path that attempts to
split the difference between socialism and
capitalism will endure the worst of both worlds.</p>
<p>In the context of this acute institutional crisis,
Venezuelans go to the polls this Sunday to elect a
Constituent Assembly empowered to revise the
nation’s Constitution for the second time since the
emergence of Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian
Revolution. In the elections, Venezuelans will elect
not only 364 regional representatives, but also 8
indigenous representatives and 173 additional
sectoral representatives, including workers,
farmers, disabled people, students, retirees, and
representatives of businesses, communes, and
communal councils.</p>
<p>This process is far from perfect and faces many
obstacles, including an unresolved legal debate
fostered by an apparent contradiction over who can
convene a constituent assembly: is it “the people”
(Article 347) or the president among others (Article
348)? Claiming that Maduro has violated the former
but refusing to cite the latter, the opposition is
threatening to boycott Sunday’s election and even
physically obstruct polling places. After previously
courting the idea of calling a constituent assembly
to undermine Chavismo, opposition leaders now recoil
at the idea of an assembly that might deepen the
Bolivarian process rather than rolling it back.</p>
<p>The opposition has suffered the disastrous
consequences of electoral abstention in the past:
after boycotting the 2005 Assembly elections, they
were left without a voice in the legislature. But
2017 is not 2005, and the ebullience of early
Chavismo has given way to a deep and sustained
crisis that has its opponents looking for an endgame
to bury its gains once and for all. Months of street
blockades and looting have developed into bombings
and infrastructural attacks on public transport,
hospitals, state television and, recently, state
milk production facilities. The opposition has
threatened to name a new government-in-resistance,
and promises heightened clashes this weekend,
including a possible march on the presidential
palace much like the one that provoked the 2002 coup
against Chávez.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>In such difficult circumstances, what is a
revolutionary to do? The Constituent Assembly is not
perfect, but we are not in the terrain of perfect
solutions. Blind support is not useful, but nor is
the opposite path, what we might call — borrowing a
phrase from Lenin — an “uncritical criticism” that
refuses to get to the heart of things and grasp
revolutionary change as a dynamic process. Nothing
is harder than making a revolution, and little is
easier than prematurely forecasting failure.</p>
<p>In a recent article, Mike Gonzalez <a
href="https://jacobinmag.com/2017/07/venezuela-maduro-helicopter-attack-psuv-extractivism-oil">pronounced
the Bolivarian Revolution dead</a>: “This project
has failed.” Needless to say, this cavalier
suggestion would come as a surprise to those on the
ground still fighting for revolutionary change,
precisely because they have no other option. For an
article entitled “Being Honest About Venezuela,”
Gonzalez begins with a strange conspiracy theory:
that a helicopter attack against government targets
was really a false flag operation carried out by the
government itself. Unfortunately for him, this
unsubstantiated innuendo — which echoed right-wing
talking points — didn’t age well: less than a week
later, <a
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40429867">Oscar
Pérez</a>made an appearance at an opposition
rally.</p>
<p>Gonzalez’s goal is to reveal Maduro’s “betrayal” of
the Revolution, but this betrayal takes the form of
a catch-22: the government is ineffective, but if it
attempts to act, it is authoritarian; when it
defends itself in a far less heavy-handed fashion
than most governments would, it is repressive; it is
fiscally irresponsible, but criticized for turning
out of desperation to extractive projects like the
Arco Minero; if it fails to fill the shelves, it is
useless, but collaborating with private companies to
do so is high treason; and when an admittedly
problematic socialist party (the <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Socialist-Party-of-Venezuela">PSUV</a>)
acts in a partisan way — this being, after all, what
revolutionary parties are meant to do — it becomes
an “instrument of political repression.”</p>
<p>Amid hyperbolic denunciations of the “systematic
undermining of democracy, the demonization of
dissent,” Gonzalez dismisses the Constituent
Assembly in a paranoid fashion: “There will be no
debate, no transparency,” he tells us, with no need
to explain. And for a revolutionary socialist, the
author seems to hold liberal democracy in high
esteem, misleadingly decrying Chavismo’s “packed
institutions” and deeming the government
“increasingly antidemocratic” without specifying by
what measure. Gonzalez claims that the government is
“prevent[ing] the constitutionally protected right
to protest” — this would come as a surprise to those
whose neighborhoods have seen nothing but protest
for months on end.</p>
<p>With little more than a nod to imperialism, global
capital, or the brutality of the Venezuelan
opposition, Gonzalez heaps blame on Maduro’s
shoulders. Corruption thus appears as state policy
with no mention of the private “briefcase companies”
that simply took billions in government funds before
disappearing into thin air. Empty shelves are left
to speak the truth of a failed political project,
with no mention of capitalist sabotage of
production. And Gonzalez points cryptically to the
murder of indigenous cacique Sabino Romero, while
failing to mention that he was killed by wealthy
landowners. The “gains of Chavismo” are indeed
slipping away, but this does not absolve us from the
task of explaining why.</p>
<p>Ultimately, for Gonzalez, Chavista elites and the
bourgeoisie who have “happily colluded” with them
are one and the same. But this leaves him unable to
answer the most basic question of all: if they are
the same, then why are they fighting a bloody battle
in the streets? The answer is that, however
imperfectly, the Maduro government still stands for
the possibility of something radically different, as
the many grassroots revolutionaries that continue to
support the process can attest.</p>
<p>By portraying a chaotic constellation of facts
without explaining their causes, by heaping blame
onto the government while letting the opposition and
imperialism off the hook, Gonzalez’s account shares
much with its professed adversaries. Like the
mainstream media, he doesn’t tell us who is
responsible for the deaths in the streets, and like
the mainstream media, he offers decontextualized
tragedies as proof of the government’s failure. But
most of all, like the mainstream media, he erases
the very same revolutionaries that he claims to
speak for: left almost entirely out of this picture
are the hundreds of thousands <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/03/venezuelan-jacobins">struggling
for socialism on the grassroots level</a> and
having to make difficult decisions — with real
consequences — amid the crisis of the present.</p>
<p>“We should support those in struggle in rebuilding
the basis for a genuinely democratic society,”
Gonzalez writes. In order to do that, he might heed
José Miguel Gómez, a revolutionary organizer from
the Pío Tamayo Commune in Barquisimeto who has long
been struggling for communal power:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The government is not the Bolivarian project,
which goes far beyond the presidency — this is why
they haven’t been able to defeat it and why it is
still in the streets today. We need to continue to
resist and to build a truly revolutionary option
that can transform the very structure of the
state. The Constituent Assembly is a step toward
this, but we also need to cleanse the government
and the institutions, where there is too much
corruption and bureaucracy. We have to wrest power
away from the military. There are too many
financial mafias — we need to eliminate the
currency controls and nationalize banking and
foreign exchange. The Right will never be an
option. We must be critical toward the government
and build a true alternative capable of governing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, Gómez expresses many of the same critiques
voiced by Chavismo’s critics, but he tethers them to
a revolutionary vision of social change and an
understanding of what would happen if the opposition
were to seize power.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>We should be clear about the stakes of the coming
weeks and months: victory for the Right means
austerity at best, and civil war at worst. We know
this because we know exactly who they are: the
opposition leadership is drawn from the most
reactionary sectors of the old elites, and the
masked youth in the streets — as I show in <em>Building
the Commune</em> — are the fruit of a dangerous
alliance with the forces of Latin American fascism
under the leadership of Colombian death squad guru <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alvaro-Uribe-Velez">Álvaro
Uribe</a>. Their return, which promises to
reestablish the smooth functioning of capitalism,
would only do so — as Marx insists that it always
has — through the most brutally repressive means.</p>
<p>Of course, the opposition’s undemocratic
aspirations come draped in the language of
democracy. A recent opposition “consultation,”
carried out entirely informally and without official
support from the electoral council, spoke of
defending the 1999 Constitution. Meanwhile, it
tacitly asked the Armed Forces to take a side in the
conflict by “supporting the decisions of the
National Assembly” (one branch of government), and
called for “the establishment of a government of
national unity” through early elections — in clear
violation of constitutional norms.</p>
<p>Despite opposition claims about government
repression, few can forget the bloody retribution
exacted by the opposition during the brief 2002
coup, in which Chavista leaders were hunted and
beaten, and sixty were killed in less than two days.
The fact that several people have been lynched,
burned to death, and even killed with homemade
mortars in recent months for looking too much like
Chavistas (i.e., too dark-skinned and poor) is only
a taste of what is to come if the opposition
destabilization campaign succeeds.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>There is no coherent understanding of revolution
that doesn’t involve defeating our enemies as we
build the new society. Corruption, bureaucracy, and
the complacency of new elites are all plagues to be
fought and defeated — but merely criticizing these
does not make a revolution. We cannot defeat such
dangers without weapons, the most important of which
are the <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/chavez-maduro-venezuela-mud-psuv/">weight
of the masses in the streets</a>, popular
grassroots struggles for self-determination, and
control of territory and production. While the
Bolivarian government — from Chávez to Maduro — has
helped to sharpen those weapons, it has also relied
on them for its own survival.</p>
<p>Revolutions are made by the masses in motion,
gripped by revolutionary ideas. No single individual
was more effective at helping to set the Venezuelan
masses into motion than Hugo Chávez. And yet that
motion collides inevitably with obstacles in its
path to be struggled with and overcome, from
economic realities to the ferocious enemies of
change. In that process, and even without it, a
certain slow exhaustion is inevitable. This goes by
the name <em>desgaste</em> in Venezuela today — a
wearing-down of revolutionary fervor, especially
when times are tough.</p>
<p>For the Trinidadian revolutionary <a
href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-L-R-James">C.L.R.
James</a>, there existed an undeniable gap between
the Jacobin leadership of the French Revolution and
the grassroots fury of the sansculottes. The former,
like Robespierre, were authoritarians; the latter,
radical democrats. But they coincided momentarily
and strategically toward the goal of defeating a
brutal enemy on the field of battle: “Never until
1917 were masses ever to have such powerful
influence — for it was no more than influence — upon
any government.”</p>
<p>No one would claim that the Venezuelan masses are
in power today, but the past twenty years have seen
them come closer than ever before. Their enemies and
ours are in the streets, burning and looting in the
name of their own class superiority, and we know
exactly what they will do if they are successful.
The only path forward is to deepen and radicalize
the Bolivarian process through the expansion of the
radically democratic socialism embodied in
Venezuela’s grassroots communes, which help to
overcome the economic contradictions of the
petro-state while expanding participatory political
consciousness.</p>
<p>The only way out of the Venezuelan crisis today
lies decisively to the Left: not in the neither-nor
of “que se vayan todos” (“out with them all”), but
in the construction of a real socialist alternative
that will emerge alongside the Maduro government if
possible, but without it if necessary.</p>
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