Stuart Munckton
"The only way to overcome poverty is to give power to the poor", Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly declared. Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution, led by the Chavez government, has captured the imagination of people around the world who believe that there has to be an alternative to the injustices of capitalism.
The experience of Venezuela's historic battle between the poor majority, led by Chavez, and the rich elite, backed by the US, holds many lessons for those struggling for a better world. Can you simply get yourself elected into government and then remake society by imposing legislative change from the top down? Or does it require a revolutionary movement based directly on the power of ordinary working people to fundamentally remake society? What course: reform or revolution?
If you believed the corporate media's accounts of the Bolivarian revolution, you might think the whole process comes down to Chavez's role as president. The media papers over the role of the mass of ordinary Venezuelans in the revolution. The driving force of Venezuela's revolution is the struggle being waged from one end of the country to the other by the poor majority, which is trying to take power out of the hands of the rich elite and develop popular power in order to transform the economy and society, and is facing fierce resistance from the privileged minority.
This struggle for power is necessary because the interests of the poor and the rich are directly counterposed. Confronting and challenging the exploitation of workers means undermining the basis of the bosses' profits. Landless peasants can only get land at the expense of the large landowners, who have far more than they need.
While the political system inherited by the Chavez government — a two-party "liberal democracy" — supposedly represented everyone, it was really established to rule on behalf of the rich and exclude the poor from any real control over society.
A central part of the Bolivarian revolution has been the fight to replace the system where the people get to vote once every few years — to decide who will have the honour of screwing them over until the next election s — with a system of "participatory democracy" that lets the poor directly participate in governing.
When Chavez became president in 1999, all of the political institutions were dominated by the wealthy elite. In order to achieve any change at all, he had to turn to the people. A constituent assembly was elected to draw up a new constitution. Mass meetings were held across the country to discuss what statutes the constitution should include. The new constitution, which established the principles of participatory democracy, was then ratified by a national referendum, although there is still an ongoing struggle to make these principles reality.
As soon as it became clear that Chavez was serious about radical social change, the wealthy began organising for his overthrow. In April 2002, a US-backed military coup overthrew Chavez and installed the head of the chamber of commerce as president. The coup leaders proceeded to dissolve the national parliament and revoke the constitution and the pro-poor laws.
The poor responded with a mass uprising that was backed by soldiers loyal to Chavez. The coup-makers' government was overthrown and Chavez reinstated. The power of the rich elite wasn't defeated via official channels: it was defeated on the streets through an insurrection.
When the capitalist class tried to bring Chavez down again in December 2002 — through a bosses' lockout that shut down much of the economy, including the sabotage of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, by its pro-capitalist management — again, it was the power of ordinary people that defeated them.
Millions protested in the streets, dozens of firms were taken over by their workers and re-opened, and closed-down schools were re-opened under community control. The oil workers took over PDVSA and stunned the world by getting the company up and running again in a matter of weeks. This enabled the Chavez government to purge the oil industry of its corrupt management clique and bring it under genuine government control.
This paved the way for the redirection of oil revenue into an ever-growing number of social programs ("missions") to tackle poverty. These missions have not only helped reduce the number of people living in poverty — by 2 million people in 2005 alone — they have been a concrete example of popular power. The missions have been run under community control, outside the official state structures. The government took this route after realising that the old top-down state institutions were dominated by a corrupt bureaucracy that slowed down or actively sabotaged any attempt to implement pro-poor policies.
The latest attempt to create new democratic structures is the formation of communal councils. These elected councils, each composed of 200-400 families, bypass existing state structures and are directly accountable to the community. Four-thousand such councils have been created, with plans to establish 15,000 by the end of the year. It remains to be seen if they prove to be effective vehicles for popular power, but they are an important political experiment.
The survival and deepening of the revolution is dependent on the growing development and consolidation of popular power. Within the revolutionary movement there are many opportunists, and corruption is still a major problem. Many officials are not trusted by the people, despite their claims that they support the revolution.
Chavez is leading the offensive against corruption, and has sacked three government ministers this year over the issue. The government has mass-distributed free copies of anti-bureaucracy writings by Che Guevara, one of the heroes of the Cuban Revolution. The Bolivarian revolution is fighting to move beyond mere reforms of the capitalist system to create a new democratic socialist society based directly on the power of the people. As Chavez insists, "There is no other road but revolution".
The battle for Venezuela's future is still a long way from finished. The country is facing a serious threat of attack by Washington, which means that people around the world need to build a movement of solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution. Resistance is part of the Venezuela solidarity movement and supports the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network. Venezuela solidarity activists in the US have called for an international day of solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba against US aggression on May 20. The AVSN is organising actions in Australia to support the initiative. For more information visit <http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org>.
From Green Left Weekly, April 26, 2006.
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