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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.
The reconfirmation of President Chavez in office in the referendum of August 2004 gave new breath to the struggle of the mass of the population to make the conquests of the revolutionary process concrete and effective. It spelt defeat for an offensive by the coupist and pro-imperialist oligarchy against the background of an economic situation marked by the bonanza of high oil revenues.
President Chavez responded to these hopes with the slogans of ‘Deepen the revolution’, ‘Revolution within the revolution’, and for a ‘Leap forward’. More recently he has brought into debate the proposal to go beyond capitalism and to advance towards ‘socialism of the 21st century’.
However, the feeling of the people, palpable in the community, in the workplaces and in the street, is that despite the important advances brought about by the misiones and the other social welfare policies, all this is not enough to resolve the principal structural problems underlying poverty, a product of capitalist exploitation from which the people are still suffering.
People complain that the ministries and the functionaries of the state institutions do not really implement the policies and measures announced by the president, that they do not give material effect to social and economic changes, or to the measures contained in the various Leyes Habilitantes. They notice resistance to breaking with capitalism. There is beginning to be frustration and a lack of confidence in the revolutionary commitment of the circles around the head of state, which he seems unable to control. Growing numbers of struggles demand a deepening of the revolution against the shackles of bureaucratism and corruption. The tendency is for more protests and mobilisations by distinct sectors demanding fulfilment of promises and effectiveness from governmental organisms.
People block roads, demanding homes. Communities take over hospitals protesting at the deficiencies of the health service. Sections of workers protest in the face of obstacles to the application of ‘revolutionary co-management’ and workers’ control that managers and the ‘parasitic technobureaucracy’ put in their way. Peasants march in Caracas against the impunity of hired killers and for the agrarian revolution, denouncing the obstruction of the bureaucracy and corruption when it comes to the application of the land law. Indigenous people have opposed the invasion and destruction of their environment by multinationals out to mine coal with authorisation by organisms of the state. Young people have raised their voices, faced with the crimes and abuses of the old, unpurged, police.
President Chavez has provided justification for these protests and has said the organised people must demand that the ‘negligent functionaries get out’. But the parties with ministers in the government and parliamentary representation have not shown any sign of the political capacity or will to resolve all this and to guarantee moving towards socialism of the 21st century.
This internal weakness of the revolutionary process leaves us even more vulnerable faced with the threats of imperialism, which continues to hold positions in important areas of Venezuela’s productive and financial apparatus (oil, gas, minerals, electricity, telecommunications, industry, etc.), and to encourage conspiracy with the alarming and prolonged impunity of the coupist right, its means of communication and its instruments of violence.
This is happening in contradiction to the anti-imperialist language and policy of defence of national sovereignty that President Chavez presents in the face of Latin America and the whole world. We have an internal enemy concealed in the process, a veritable Trojan horse that is opening the door to the interests of the right and the capitalist oligarchy, so exposing our flank to imperialism.
People are reacting to all this, for we continue to be immersed in a revolutionary process that is part of a class struggle, between the exploited and the exploiters, between the possessing classes and the dispossessed, between the poor and the rich.
All of these struggles point towards the deepening of the revolution within the revolution. They are struggles that are taking place, for the time being, in a dispersed and disarticulated manner. What is urgently needed is a greater unifying force from the social organisations and political fighters.
The first steps are already being taken to channel the struggles around the unity and solidarity of workers, peasants and the oppressed.
A united front is necessary, a big alliance of the social movements in struggle so that we can share objectives and actions, reinforcing each other mutually as class brothers in the mobilisations, and in the construction of popular power in the face of the offensives that the agents of capital are maintaining inside and outside our frontiers. The unity and strengthening of the struggle and popular mobilisation are our main levers for continuing to push the revolution forward. It is the only way of guaranteeing the promised ‘leap forward’ and of ensuring the Venezuelan revolutionary process truly goes towards the ‘socialist revolution’ instead of being reduced to a ‘caricature of revolution’, to use a phrase of Che’s.
Fundamental to this is the role played by the working class as the leading class in the anti-capitalist revolutionary process – in alliance with the peasants and the organised popular communities – in order to conquer effectively the instruments of power, since we do not yet have in our hands the great decisions adopted by the organisms of the state.
As we unify the struggle, it is necessary that the social movements advance the development of popular power at all levels, with citizens’ assemblies, with popular committees of different sorts, with popular constituent processes in all areas of social life, with communal and local councils. There has to be a conquest of genuine representation at the heart of state power and inside the National Assembly – representation that is really subject to and in permanent consultation with the popular movement, the workers, the peasants and the revolutionary rank and file, so opening the way to the direct exercise of government by the workers and the people.
The spokespeople must come from below, strictly linked to the social struggle and organisational processes, coming from and reflecting the discussions taking place at the base. Any other way would leave us still captives of the bureaucratic apparatus, freezing and pushing back the revolution as has happened in the past in the other countries.
Adherents Committee of Urban Lands (CTU), Committees of Health, Bolivarian circles of various districts of Caracas, collectives pushing for social control, volunteers with the misiones, members of the Popular Revolutionary Assembly of Coche, broadcasters from community radio stations affiliated to ANMCLA and from Radio Ali Primera de El Valle, Antiescualidos.com, members of Catio TV, base groups from La Vega, Carficuao and Petare, UTOPIA, Tupamaros de El Valle, M13-PNA, Movimiento 13 de Abril Comuneros, Party of Revolution and Socialism (PRS), participants in Conexion Social, the Venezuelan network against Debt, Organised Popular Anticorruption and Intervention (AIPO), militants of MOBARE, militants of the MDD, militants of the MEP Youth, members of the Bolivarian Association of Lawyers, the Revolutionary Marxist Current, among others.
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