Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, has become Enemy Number One for US imperialism in Latin America. Alex Cowper answers some frequently asked questions about the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ in Venezuela.

Why has Chavez become such a beacon for the left in Latin America and an enemy for imperialism?

Not just in Latin America, but increasingly in the global anti-capitalist movement. In January, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, he was cheered by the crowd, while Lula, the Brazilian president, was booed. Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution represent an alternative to neo-liberalism for millions of people.

So what has he done to deserve this praise?

The Chavez government is implementing land reform which has benefited thousands of peasants, a literacy programme which has already helped 1.5 million people, free education from primary to university level for the poor, an urban housing programme, free healthcare (delivered by 20,000 Cuban doctors) and subsidies on basic foods. Over 70 percent of Venezuelans have benefited from these reforms.

How has he been able to do this?

Oil, plus mass support. The US relies heavily on Venezuelan oil and the oil price is currently high. This would have previously only benefited the rich elite, but the Venezuelan government has sacked the old corrupt management of PDVSA, the state oil company, allowing its revenues to be used for social and economic development. The rich and their US backers staged a coup against Chavez in 2002, but after mass demonstrations Chavez was returned to power within 48 hours. The bourgeoisie then tried shutting down the economy, but this was again defeated through mass mobilisations and through the action of workers in key industries. They then tried to remove him from office through a referendum in 2004, but Chavez won with 59 percent of the vote. His support has now reached 70 percent, but the right and their US allies continue to seek ways to overthrow him.

Is Chavez a reformist or a revolutionary?

Don’t know. He is definitely a pragmatist. He uses what he thinks will work.

But where is he going?

He is moving to the left. He used to think there was a third way between socialism and capitalism, but he said earlier this year that socialism is now the only road. The eventual outcome of this ‘revolution in the revolution’, as it is called, cannot be predicted with any certainty. Marxists aren’t weather forecasters – we try to change the world, rather than simply interpreting it. So every bit of effective solidarity by the left outside Venezuela at this stage will encourage him to keep moving leftwards, as will every effective intervention into the Bolivarian movement by Marxists in Venezuela. Anyway, to say that Chavez will sell out, or conversely, to say that we simply need to have faith in him, is to fall into the old trap of seeing the individual as unchanging and self-contained. Chavez exists in a dialectical - dynamic and interactive - relation with the mass movement. He has been pushed to the left by the mass movement, but this in turn has been given leadership by him and those around him.

Can Chavez rely on existing state structures to carry through his reforms?

In the end, no. There is a vast civil service and local government bureaucracy - 800,000 in a country of 25 million (not counting their dependents) - that has been an obstacle to pushing through his measures and has already shown that it is a base for counter-revolution. Up to now Chavez has partially circumvented this institution by using PDVSA to fund his programmes and the army to implement them. But in order to root out obstructionism and corruption, the government bureaucracy, including in PDVSA, will need to be replaced by democratically elected local and regional committees in the neighbourhoods and workplaces, with representatives on an average worker’s wage and subject to recall at any time, who will monitor the delivery of services. As Venezuelan Marxists have argued, this is not an abstract demand. There are already the beginnings of mass self-organisation in the shape of the local committees which have been involved in organising the delivery of healthcare, housing, education and land reform, as well as the committees which organised the referendum victory (formerly called the Electoral Battle Units, now renamed the Endogenous Battle Units) and the trade unionists of the UNT (National Workers’ Union) campaigning for workers’ control in industry. These are Chavez’s best allies.

But what about the army? What has been its role so far?

For now, it appears that the bourgeoisie has lost control of the army, which in the main seems to support the Bolivarian process. Chavez began organising in the army in the 1970s, supported by soldiers who, like him, came from humble backgrounds and who thought that the duty of true patriots was to fight both imperialism and the domestic elite. Chavez’s comrades in the military supported his unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992 and it was army loyalists who helped restore him to power after the coup against him in 2002. Since then, the army has been purged of many counter-revolutionary elements, and for some years it has been involved in the delivery of the social programmes. But to really defend the revolution against internal and external threats, what is needed is the arming of the people, on a non-professional basis, with officers subject to election. Chavez is setting up a citizens’ self-defence force, but at the moment this will only be an adjunct to the regular army.

So there have been major reforms, but is the economy being organized differently?

Chavez’s team is trying to construct an economic model based on solidarity, social need and endogenous (self-sustaining) development as an alternative to the exploitative model favoured by the domestic elite, who have kept the country dependent on imperialism. The government has funded numerous small-scale co-operatives. More importantly, Chavez has announced that the owners of unproductive firms will be expropriated - albeit at the market price- and their firms turned into Social Production Enterprises. Earlier this year Venepal, a big paper mill, and CNV, a company which makes valves for the oil industry, were nationalized under ‘workers’ co-management’, the new buzzword. At Alcasa, the state aluminium processing plant, for example, co-management includes a real degree of workers’ control, where those elected as managers are accountable to the shop floor. Many UNT activists are pushing for these measures to be extended across all sectors.

OK, so workers’ control sounds good – but why do socialists go on about nationalization?

There is no point in having worker-run enterprises competing against each other in an unplanned market framework. The heights of the economy have to be nationalized under the democratic control of workers and service users, so that resources can be efficiently planned and allocated for the good of society as a whole. This includes the banks and the oil industry. A workers’ government must have control of credit and the currency. All this is on the agenda, now that the competence of existing owners and managers to run industry has been put into question.

But won’t pushing things too fast at this stage lead to a backlash from the ruling class and its US allies?

The point is that over-cautiousness and indecision invite aggression in any case, as we saw when Chavez failed to put the coup plotters on trial. Within a few months the right tried to shut down the economy. Things will not stand still. Venezuela will either go forward to socialism, or back to the worst neo-liberalism. Now is a good time to accelerate the process, when the domestic opposition is divided and demoralized, and the US is bogged down in Iraq.

But won’t Venezuela be isolated if it moves towards socialism?

In the worst case, possibly, but Cuba has survived with many fewer resources. There could be sanctions against Venezuelan oil, but the US is still heavily dependent on it, and Venezuela is trying to diversify by selling oil to other countries such as China. What will ensure the survival of the Venezuelan revolution will be if it spreads to other countries. Chavez has publicly stated that Trotsky, not Stalin, was right on this – socialism cannot be built in one country. With pre-revolutionary crises in Bolivia this year and in Argentina in 2001, with mass movements on the continent which can overthrow presidents, the notion of the revolution spreading is not at all far-fetched.

But will Chavez and his governmental supporters take the Cuban road? Will they be driven to expropriate the bourgeoisie as a whole?

We shouldn’t rule it out. Castro did so in Cuba, but in Cuba there was an armed revolution and a mass revolutionary party, not to mention the support of the Soviet Union. The disappearance of the Soviet Union, however, makes it much less likely that the Venezuelan revolution would be distorted by a bureaucratic clampdown on workers’ democracy, as happened in Cuba.

Does Chavez have the backing of a mass revolutionary party?

No, which is why one will have to be built. Chavez has been trying to radicalize and democratize the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR), his party, but at the moment it is not an effective revolutionary instrument. It is affected by bureaucracy and corruption and has no clear ideology or line of march. Activists on the ground call it ‘Bureaucratic Action’, in reference to the old ruling party, Democratic Action. As the saying goes in Venezuela, ‘the problem is not with Chavez, nor with the base, it is in the middle’. Carlos Lanz, who was appointed by Chavez to oversee workers’ co-management at Alcasa, has identified conservative forces in the government itself which have tried to block co-management and other radical measures. But Chavez has mass support among activists in the UNT, in the barrios, in the land committees. That is where a revolutionary organization will have to be built, but it is not excluded that it might attract support from leftist figures in the government, and that it could end up working with the left in the MVR.

So what is being done to build such an organisation?

On 9 July, in Caracas, 400 people met to begin a process of regroupment. They have formed a committee, UNIR (Unite) to work towards the setting up of a revolutionary party in January, with the provisional title of the Workers’ Party for the Socialist Revolution (PTRS). The principal force in this regroupment is the Trotskyist OIR (Revolutionary Left Option), which is in the leadership of the National Workers’ Union (UNT). Three radical trade union currents and a leftist student group were also involved. Many industrial working class militants attended and spoke, including oil and steel workers, but there is also a need to build among the semi-employed and unemployed urban poor and among the peasants and rural landless. The Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, part of the international current led by Alan Woods, is also active in Venezuela.

How important is solidarity work?

Very. Even if Chavez remained a reformist, like Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s, that would be no excuse for refusing to do solidarity work. He is still seen as a threat by imperialism and the local elite, and, like Allende, he could be assassinated. In any case, solidarity is not with one person, but with the Bolivarian movement. The building of trade union links, school and university links and community twinning is therefore key. The revolutionary left internationally (with notable exceptions – see box) has been slow to cotton onto the need for solidarity. It has been caught ball watching – reacting to what the US and its allies do in the Middle East, but not focusing on pro-active moves that anti-imperialists can make elsewhere. We now have to build for a big international delegation to Caracas for the World Social Forum in January. The Fourth International is also planning to organize youth brigades to Venezuela next year.

Useful websites:

www.venezuelanalysis.com
www.internationalviewpoint.org
www.marxsite.com
www.aporrea.org (in Spanish)