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From International Socialism 2 : 109, Winter 2006.
Copyright © International Socialism.
Copied with thanks from the International Socialism Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Venezuela has caught the imagination of people internationally. Three times in three years the country’s upper class, supported by the Bush administration, tried to get rid of Hugo Chavez – once with a coup, once with a lockout and finally with a recall referendum. On each occasion mobilisations of the lower classes defeated them. Since then accounts of real positive reforms from the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ have been greeted with enthusiasm in a world where its seems that only neo-liberal counterreforms are the order of the day. And the enthusiasm has been heightened by Chavez’s upstaging of Bush at November’s Summit of the Americas.
But enthusiasm often slides into a way of looking at Venezuela which is the obverse of that in the mainstream media. They depict what is happening in terms of one man – and much of the left accept that depiction. It is an approach which is inadequate for understanding real social and political struggles. Such struggles necessarily involve a multiplicity of actors – and not just individual actors, but social forces, classes in motion as masses of people see for the first time the chance of lifting the weight of oppression from their lives. From these emerge contradictory notions of what should be done and where society should be going.
The process in Venezuela is far from over. There have been significant reforms, but not yet revolution in the classic sense of the term. The ruling class remains intact, symbolised by the continuing existence of the Venevision and Globovision media empires that backed the attempted coup against Chavez. And most of the old state remains in place, putting a brake on further reform even when this is called for from the president. It certainly does not provide a guaranteed mechanism for transforming society in the interests of the mass of workers, the urban poor and the peasantry.
This is producing a growing debate inside the popular movements as to the way forward – a debate which parallels that of workers’ movements of the 20th century over reform and revolution. Here we present the views of some of the protagonists. On the one hand there are interviews with Chavez’s vice-president, Vincente Rangel, and with Marta Harnecker, often described as an important adviser to Chavez. On the other there is an interview with one of the country’s new left wing union leaders, a statement by certain social movements, and a text from two members of the recently formed Party of Revolution and Socialism.
ISJ 2 Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 30 December 2016