Hugo Chavez’s heart may well have been in the right place and
he may well have good intentions but his “socialist” agenda amounts to little
more than one vast reformist programme that was largely financed by the
country’s oil income. The generous profits from oil went into financing policies
to improve health, provide cheaper food, extend educational access, and to implement
land reform. We don't want to belittle all that progress but it was not
socialism. Chavez and his Venezuelan Bolivarian “revolution” long attracted
sympathisers from the Left. Much of the attraction was the charisma of Chavez
himself, his anti-American rhetoric, plus the numerous reforms he passed.
After the price of oil fell to record lows, the successor to
Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, was unable to maintain those reforms and the problems
inherent within capitalism began to materialize and manifest themselves to
undermine any attempt at sustaining a popular policy of social reforms. He has become
just one more in a string of Latin American political leaders, following the
role of the macho strongman, where politics are a matter of emergency. Maduro
issues top-down decrees for new institutions rather than encouraging real
initiatives from the base.
What passes for
socialism has nothing to do with real socialism. You cannot divorce commerce from
profit. If there is no profit, there is no production, no trade, no goods on
the supermarket shelves. Venezuela became bogged down by the logic of
capitalism. It's a familiar story to members of the Socialist Party.
Left-wing party pledged to bring in pro-worker reforms gets
elected enthusiastically. Puts into practice some of the promised reforms which
do actually benefit some workers. Begins
to ignore that under capitalism profits and profit-making have to have priority
as that's what drives capitalism. So, economic problems (shortages, inflation,
unemployment) develop, causing popular discontent. A majority of voters turn
against the left-wing government and foreign powers foment political unrest to
boot it out. In the case of Venezuela when the price of oil dropped, they were
sunk.
The is lesson is clear - you can't make capitalism work in
the interest of the workers, even though you can bring in some temporary
pro-worker reforms. In the end the economic laws of capitalism assert
themselves. Palliatives can improve living conditions in some respects and
temporarily create a gentler capitalism but ameliorative reforms cannot end
capitalism. The problem is that the left-wing never learn from the history
lesson. The current leftist supporters
of Maduro put their concerns for the national rights of Venezuela before class
solidarity, and in supporting the Maduro government, excusing the repressive
parts of Maduro’s regime as mistakes, or excesses due to the American economic sanctions
against it, the Maduro apologists excuse his actions as a necessary defence
against US imperialist aggression. The shameful actions of Maduro in the suppression
of workers’ rights in the name of protecting Venezuelan sovereignty has been to
strengthen the hegemony of the ruling party elite.
Venezuela’s government does not and never has represented
any kind of military threat to the United States. It has never invaded the United
States. It has never attacked the United States. It has never threatened to do
either, nor does it seem to be equipped to do so if it desired to. Venezuela is
not and never has been either a state or territory of the United States.
Nevertheless, the US ruling class will not tolerate any government that opposes
its financial and geopolitical interests or transfers its obeisance to a rival
nation, like Russia or China, for example. If it chooses to do so it will suffer
either punitive economic sanctions which makes normal governance difficult and which
harms the general population, or it faces subversion by direct or indirect means.
The media is complicit in justifying Washington’s policies and more often than
not applaud them. The news outlets are wedded to our masters. Those who
questioned the media’s presentation are marginalized, chastised or silenced. But,
of course, none of this is new. The world has been here before many times and
has witnessed the sycophancy of the media which has turned a blind eye to the plunder
and destruction of entire regions by various American governments. Few tears are
shed for America’s so-called “enemies” when it comes to “defending US interests.”
Of course, other nations including Russia and China, use brutal repression and militarism
as well to crush dissent but we should not ignore the effectiveness of the
media’s doublespeak dominating the TV news and press, determining public opinion.
George Orwell would not have been surprised.
The Socialist Party does not consider that the best way to
assist the workers of Venezuela is to support a president that dragoons them into
being fodder in a siege warfare with the USA. Instead the better strategy for
ourselves is to urge the spread of socialism to rescue our fellow-workers from
the unpalatable choices set before them. To do that, the Socialist Party
requires to free socialist ideas from the taint of dictatorial methods and
stand clearly for the political freedoms of association and speech, and to campaign
for a truly state-free, class-free worldwide co-operative commonwealth.
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