With Chavez gone, the vultures want back in.

Venezuela extreme poverty rates. Source

by Richard Mellor

The latest Bloomberg Business Week has a piece on Hugo Chavez, more accurately on his failures as they see it. He never completed his “Bolivarian revolution” that Business Week refers to as a “vaguely defined utopia.”. 

The problem now this respected journal of the 1% claims, is whether or not “Chávez’s supporters can continue to afford Chavismo.”  The problem that the coupon clippers have with Chavez’ policies is that he “..bolstered his popularity among Venezuela’s 9 million poor by subsidizing food and housing, expanding education and health care, and reducing poverty

Yep, that’ll make you popular for sure. Not with Business Week and its readers, but with the vast majority of workers and particularly the poor and in this part of the world, the indigenous population.  US capitalism considers Latin America its own back yard and Chavez wasn’t playing by the rules.

Chávez’s critics blamed him for the nationalization of more than 1,000 companies or their assets, as well as currency controls and price caps, which they said discouraged investment…” Business Week write, and this “..created food shortages, and fueled inflation. Above all, his critics condemned Chávez’s use of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, as a source of nearly unlimited funds for social programs."

Unemployment

The nerve of Chavez; he used the nation’s oil wealth to feed, cloth, educate and provide millions of people with security. This is the vague utopia that BW must be referring to.  Business Week doesn’t explain how these policies created fuel shortages but I might hazard a guess that it has something to do with the economic war US capitalism launched against Venezuela and Chavez in retaliation for his refusal to give oil away to the US energy giants. Venezuela sits on the largest “proven” oil reserves in the world and before Chavez the US oil giants had a great deal for oil at bargain basement prices in partnership with a Venezuelan ruling elite that took their cut in the plunder of the country’s resources.

Exxon and ConocoPhillips are still trying to get money out of Venezuela for nationalizing what they refer to as “their”fields with “inadequate compensation.”   According to BW, oil production is down since the nationalization as Venezuela lacks some of the technology and human capital to maintain the fields. This is also part of US capitalism’s war against the nation for its opposition to the market and refusal to hand over billions in oil revenue to international investors.  If the next president were to stop funding social programs through the state and introduce market friendly policies it will be able to “recruit outside partners to help repair the fields. Says” BW. 

US capitalism and global investors have not simply waged an economic war against Venezuela for the nation’s transgressions, there is a global strike of human capital as the energy companies have somewhat of a monopoly on the possession the human capital (engineers, geologists, scientists etc.) necessary for oil production.  With the rise of China and Russian capitalism this dynamic has changed somewhat one would think but the technique and know-how necessary for oil production is still mainly the possession of the established conglomerates.

There is not much detail in Business Week’s article about the incredible gains made since Chavez came to power, the object is to focus on the problems, problems generated by the response of the owners of capital to the policies of the Chavez government.  Venezuela sends 97, 000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba that sends doctors to Venezuelan clinics in return.  This irks the US capitalist class.  It’s staggering when one reflects that for more than 50 years, the US government has waged a violent economic war against the tiny Island of Cuba while it has supported numerous murderous undemocratic regimes throughout the world. Regimes like the Saudi’s, Mobutu, the Shah of Iran etc.  Cuba supplies doctors to impoverished overseas countries and the US supplies attack helicopters.

Gini Coefficient

Business week and its clients have high hopes, “A market-friendly president would probably cut the costly subsidies many Venezuelans enjoy for gasoline and food, seriously trim the ranks of the bloated civil service…”  all in the hope of attracting capital and foreign investment.   Workers in the US should think about this: In a somewhat similar way, we are being demonized much like Chavez is by the mouthpieces of US capitalism like BW and the mass media. Public services are attacked for the same reason and privatization is presented as the alternative.  In auto, it was the autoworkers the 1% blamed for the crisis in that industry, generations of families that helped make this country a global power.  The guilty always blames their victims.

The mass media refers to the public US workforce and sector as “bloated” just as it does with regards to Venezuela. The venom and demonization of Chavez, Cuba US trade unions or any force that undermines the market, either physically or ideologically is capitalism defending itself. Capitalism was dragged form the abyss by state/public money and cannot abide anything that undermines the view that the market has the answer to all things.  It is this that draws capitalism’s ire, not a lack of democracy or dictators.  The US has supported or installed some of the most ruthless undemocratic regimes on the planet. We have had numerous posts on Venezuela and the Chavez legacy.  We posted a balanced assessment on this blog a few days ago from South Africa’s Democratic Left Front:

Given the potent anti-capitalist symbolism that Chavez represented, it is not a surprise that capitalists, the imperialist United States of America (USA) and Europe, neo-liberals, post-liberation political elites and mainstream media including the ANC-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) produced false propaganda that Chavez was a dictator, a populist and so on. Strange dictator he was: since he was first democratically elected in 1998, there have been 17 elections and referenda, all of whom were declared free and fair by international bodies, and most of which he won. He was elected with 56% of the vote in 1998, 60% in 2000, defeated a coup in April 2002 on the back of mass power, received over 7 million votes in 2006 and secured 54.4% of the vote in October 2012. Even the former US President Jimmy Carter conceded that “of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” Beyond the state and formal democratic institutions, Chavez also opened the path to the emergence of nascent participatory democracy institutions such as communal councils with competencies to plan and allocate resources, solidarity and communal enterprises, cooperatives and financing institutions like the Women’s Development Bank.

Chavez's problem and shortcomings laid elsewhere. No social transformation or a transition to socialism can ever depend on one person or through a compromised political infrastructure in a self-declared socialist state or even in a self-proclaimed socialist party. Any such change crucially depends on the self-organised and critically conscious class power of the vast majority of poor and working people. The still-to-be achieved socialist alternative that Chavez envisioned was clearly different from Stalinism, as he grappled with how it must be based on democracy and popular participation, and how this socialist alternative must learn from the self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ but ultimately disastrous and failed statist experiments of the 20th century. Read more here.

One of the “experts” BW quotes in its article is Peter Hakim.  And who might he be? Hakim worked for the Ford Foundation in New York and Latin America (in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru). He has been a member of the board at the World Bank, Council on Competitiveness, Inter-American Development Bank.  Having enemies like these is a good thing.

The death of Chavez is a loss for workers throughout the world.

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South Africa: DLF on the legacy of Hugo Chavez

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

www.democraticleft.za.net

10 March 2013

PRESS STATEMENT

TAKING FORWARD THE REVOLUTIONARY LIFE AND SYMBOLISM OF HUGO RAFAEL CHÁVEZ FRÍAS

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) joins the millions of poor and working people and their mass movements in Venezuela, the Caribbean, Latin America and across the world who celebrate the revolutionary and emancipatory life and symbolism of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. Since his tragic passing away on 5th March, our hearts draw inspiration and courage from his example and symbolism. As the 9 million people who attended his funeral on Friday showed, Chavez represented and personified immense hope and possibility: hope for the wretched of the earth, hope and faith in the ability of the mass of exploited and oppressed people to self-organise and challenge inordinate power relations in society, and thereby be their own liberators, and realistic hope in the possibility of constructing a socialist alternative to the barbarism of capitalism.

His unique role in history was to defiantly and positively affirm the absolute necessity of a democratic, feminist and ecological socialism relevant for the 21st century as a response to capitalism, neo-liberal globalisation and imperialism. Chavez’s public pride in his provenance from African slaves was another powerful personal statement against white supremacy and racism that remains responsible for genocide, humiliation, subjugation and oppression of indigenous peoples and descendants of black African slaves in Latin America.

During the 14 years of his democratically elected and widely popular government, Venezuela witnessed immense socio-economic progress based on wealth redistribution. As reported in www.venezuelaanalysis.com, the facts speak for themselves: “the percentage of households in poverty fell from 55% in 1995 to 26.4% in 2009. When Chávez was sworn into office unemployment was 15%, in June 2009 it was 7.8%. Compare that to current unemployment figures in Europe.” This was reaffirmed by a 6th March article published in the capitalist, London-based Independent newspaper (www.independent.co.uk): after 14 years of Chavez’s rule in Venezuela there are six million children who receive free meals a day; near-universal free health care has been established; education spending has doubled as a proportion of GDP; and education is free from daycare to university. Since, 2011 over 350,000 homes have been built, taking hundreds of thousands of families out of sub-standard housing in the barrios. Whilst the country remains dependent on oil, his government had begun to envisage a transition plan to structurally diversify the Venezuelan economy beyond oil. This remains a major structural challenge and vulnerability.

Thanks to its embrace of neo-liberalism, Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa cannot even dream of similar transformative socio-economic indicators, not for the last 18 years of its rule, not for any time in the foreseeable future. Venezuela’s transformative socio-economic achievements were not made possible by the ANC kind of neo-liberalism but by a redistribute economic policy which included the nationalisation of oil, telecommunications and other key strategic sectors of the Venezuelan economy with the proceeds from these nationalised enterprises redistributed to transformative socio-economic programmes in education, health and housing. In contrast to the Bolivarian process in Venezuela, the ANC in South Africa has shaken and conceded to capitalism at every conceivable moment. Every progressive programme, strategy and intention is either abandoned or rejected by the government in the face of the brutal logic of managing a capitalist state. The ANC has shied away from confronting capital and white privilege that was left largely intact when the end of apartheid was negotiated. This has resulted in a situation where the ANC leadership has adapted itself to the power of capital. No wonder then that post-apartheid capitalism is leaving a trail of hunger, poverty, anger and misery. The wealthy elite, the bosses and their hangers-on refuse to concede a single inch to the urgent needs of the majority. This is the example that Chavez stood against and actively built an alternative to.

After addressing an October 2008 international solidarity conference held in Caracas, the African socialists present there appealed to him to work with popular and socialist forces here given that “Africa was now in a sorry state of its former revolutionary self”. His response was to challenge African socialists and popular movements to reclaim the essence of human liberation from below. As this African appeal and his response to it show, Chavez holds a useful mirror against which to assess the extent to which the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and other African national liberation movements have long abandoned any hope, belief in, and commitment to socialism given their active political agency to maintain and reproduce capitalism in South Africa and other African countries that they govern. As a response to the failure and limits of national liberation politics in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa, the DLF is a modest initiative in South Africa that seeks to support the growth and solidarity of anti-capitalist mass movements and construct an alternative eco-socialist political pole. As part of its growth, the DLF is critically studying and debating lessons, impacts, outcomes, contradictions and possible future trajectories of the Bolivarian revolutionary process that Chavez initiated and led.

Given the potent anti-capitalist symbolism that Chavez represented, it is not a surprise that capitalists, the imperialist United States of America (USA) and Europe, neo-liberals, post-liberation political elites and mainstream media including the ANC-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) produced false propaganda that Chavez was a dictator, a populist and so on. Strange dictator he was: since he was first democratically elected in 1998, there have been 17 elections and referenda, all of whom were declared free and fair by international bodies, and most of which he won. He was elected with 56% of the vote in 1998, 60% in 2000, defeated a coup in April 2002 on the back of mass power, received over 7 million votes in 2006 and secured 54.4% of the vote in October 2012. Even the former US President Jimmy Carter conceded that “of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” Beyond the state and formal democratic institutions, Chavez also opened the path to the emergence of nascent participatory democracy institutions such as communal councils with competencies to plan and allocate resources, solidarity and communal enterprises, cooperatives and financing institutions like the Women’s Development Bank.

Chavez's problem and shortcomings laid elsewhere. No social transformation or a transition to socialism can ever depend on one person or through a compromised political infrastructure in a self-declared socialist state or even in a self-proclaimed socialist party. Any such change crucially depends on the self-organised and critically conscious class power of the vast majority of poor and working people. The still-to-be achieved socialist alternative that Chavez envisioned was clearly different from Stalinism, as he grappled with how it must be based on democracy and popular participation, and how this socialist alternative must learn from the self-proclaimed ‘socialist’ but ultimately disastrous and failed statist experiments of the 20th century.

The Chavez-led revolutionary process has not yet transformed and placed all power firmly in the hands of the working class. Insufficient independence and autonomy of popular movements, the significant power held by the Chavista bureaucratic and political elite, and problems in the functioning of the state are ever-present subjective dangers. If the mass movement does not swiftly claim the example and symbolism of Chavez and deepen the revolutionary process, there is a real possibility that the Chavista bureaucratic and political elite may entrench itself and constrain the promise of liberation, solidarity, people’s power and socialism that Chavez had opened. The struggle to build a new and different kind of society continues.

Beyond these internal challenges, the Bolivarian revolutionary process faces guaranteed counter-revolution from the oligarchs in Venezuela and Barack Obama’s imperialist government in the US. The same mass forces facing the challenge to deepen the Bolivarian process internally must now also continue to organise and defend the autonomy and sovereignty of Venezuela. The struggle continues on all fronts!


FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:

Mazibuko K. Jara: cell - 083 651 0271 & email: mazibuko@amandla.org.za

Vishwas Satgar: cell - 082 775 3420 & email: copac@icon.co.za

Brian Ashley: cell - 082 085 0788 & email: brian@amandla.org.za

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Venezuela: Greg Palast on Hugo Chavez

Greg Palast defends the legacy of Hugo Chavez The so-called liberal New York Times, Pat Roberson the Catholic Church and all the other apologists for capitalism all vilified Hugo Chavez.  Chavez made mistakes and was by no means perfect but by any standard what he accomplished in Venezuela, for the poor, the indigenous and working people of that country put him head and shoulders above his critics. He is vilified for the same reason public sector workers and public services, (socialized medicine, the USPS) are vilified in the US---it undermines the lie that the market is the most efficient way of producing social needs.  Here's a few reasons why they hated him.

Chavez on racism: "Racism is very characteristic of imperialism and capitalism. Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth and curly hair. And I'm so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it is African." - Hugo Chavez, September 21, 2005

Chávez on Women: "Women] work so hard raising their children, ironing, washing, preparing food … giving [their children] an orientation … This was never recognised as work yet it is such hard work! ... Now the revolution puts you first, you too are workers, you housewives, workers in the home."

“No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity.”

“I have said it already, I am convinced that the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell.”

“I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.” “A coup happened in Venezuela that was prepared by the U.S. What do they want? Our oil, as they did in Iraq”

"That's why Pat Robertson, the spiritual adviser of Mr. Bush, is calling for my assassination. That would be much cheaper than an invasion,”

“[The planet] is being destroyed under our own noses by the capitalist model, the destructive engine of development, ... every day there is more hunger, more misery thanks to the neo-liberal, capitalist model.”

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The end of Chavismo?

by Michael Roberts

The international media that supports the strategists of capital have been delighted at the news of the death of Venezuela’s socialist president Hugo Chavez.  And they are now predicting the quick demise of Chavez’s government and political movement, either by defeat in the ensuing presidential elections or by some ‘popular’ uprising against his ‘autocratic’ and ‘dictatorial’ rule.  We’ll see.

The pro-capitalist media both inside and outside Venezuela has been unending in its claim that Chavez was a dictator and yet, as one commentator put it, “Every sin that Chávez was accused of committing—governing without accountability, marginalizing the opposition, appointing partisan supporters to the judiciary, dominating labor unions, professional organizations and civil society, corruption and using oil revenue to dispense patronage—flourished in a system the United States held up as exemplary.”

Over the last 14 years, Chávez submitted himself to fourteen national votes, winning thirteen of them by large margins, in polling deemed by Jimmy Carter to be “best in the world” out of the ninety-two elections that he has monitored. And in the last presidential ballot, which Chávez won with the same percentage he did his first election yet with a greatly expanded electorate,even his opponents have admitted that a majority of Venezuelans liked, if not adored, the man.  And why was that?

Well, we have to go back to before Chavez.  Venezuela’s economic fortunes are tied to world oil prices.  Petroleum prices began to fall in the mid-1980s.   Venezuela had grown lopsidedly urban, with 16 million of its 19 million citizens living in cities, well over half of them below the poverty line, many in extreme poverty. In Caracas, as in many other Latin American countries, poor people lived, cut off from municipal services.  The spark came in February 1989, when a recently inaugurated president who had run against the IMF said that he no choice but to submit to its dictates.  He announced a plan to abolish food and fuel subsidies, increase gas prices, privatize state industries and cut spending on health care and education.  That’s when opposition to the rule of Venezuela’s rich, in league with American imperialism and the IMF, began.

When Chavez finally came to power he promised broad reforms, constitutional change and nationalization of key industries under his so-called Bolivarian Revolution.  In some ways (but not all!) that was no more than even right-wing governments had done.  After all, a real vicious dictator, General Pinochet of Chile, who led a coup to overthrow the democratically elected President Allende with the backing of the CIA back in 1973 that led to thousands of deaths and ‘disappearences’ had also presided over the nationalisation of Chile’s key asset, the copper mines – and they remain nationalised to this day.  Like the PDVA, the state oil company in Venezuela, Chile’s Codelco is a major contributor to the government coffers.  Codelco pays income tax, all dividends go to the government and it also pays a 10% tax on the export value of copper products.

Venezuela, rich in natural resources and with one of the largest oil and mineral reserves in Latin America and the Caribbean, is also a country with huge potential to reach sustainable economic and social development.  Chavez’s programmes, aimed at helping the poor, included free health care, subsidised food and land reform.  This succeeded in decreasing poverty levels by 30% between 1995 and 2005, mostly due to an increase in the real per capita income.  Extreme poverty diminished from 32% to 19% of the population.

A recent IMF report (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40024) showed that the gini coefficient (a measure of inequality of income between the top and bottom income earners) in the US had jumped from 30.5% in 1980 to 38.6% in 2010, the largest rise in the whole world with the exception of one country, China, where it has risen from a relatively low 28% to a very high 42% during ‘the move towards the market’ in China over the last 30 years.  The most equal society in the advanced capitalist world is Norway (24%), which is also the richest.  All the Scandinavian ratios are relatively low while Germany and France are  in the middle (low 30%).  Only the UK at 33.5% is close to the US – the rise since 1980 in the UK has matched that of the US, making it the most unequal society in Western Europe!

But there was one country that has become more equal over the last 20 years – Venezuela.  And all that improvement was under the presidency of Chavez, with the gini coefficient falling from 45.4% in 2005 to 36.3% now.  Venezuela is now the fairest country in Latin America on this measure. Brazil maintains its status as the most unequal, while South Africa with a hugely rich tiny white minority has the infamous status of being the most unequal country in the world (63%).

Oil gives Venezuela a competitive advantage in international trade. But it also throws the domestic economy off balance, as it accounts for more than 30% of the gross domestic product (GDP), approximately 90% of exports and 50% of fiscal income. When Chavez first came to power, the price of oil was less than $20 a barrel; by 2006, it was more than $60 and rising. Chávez was able to pour money into social programmes and engage in a burst of petrodiplomacy – subsidising like-minded governments not only in Cuba but also Bolivia and Nicaragua.   Even many poor Americans benefited from aid from Venezuela.  When the US Congress decided to cut 25% from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Citgo Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, said that it would be continuing its six-year-old program of providing heating oil to poor Americans free of charge.

What does the future hold for Chavismo?  Any new government will be desperate to sustain revenue and to see oil prices remain as high as possible. The power to achieve that, however, lies elsewhere and in economic terms Venezuela is a price taker. It must deal at whatever price the market sets and in the end that means relying on the Saudis to maintain Opec discipline.

Venezuela’s relative isolation has meant that the currency, the bolivar, had to be devalued in order to sustain dollar-based oil exports.  More dollar revenues had a price, inflation spiralled, way more than in other Latin American countries (see the  graphic below of inflation since 1999).  That hit the savings of the middle-class, in particular.  As a result, significant opposition to Chavismo has been maintained, even among relatively lower middle-class strata.  And in the last couple of years, oil revenues began to mark time, forcing Chavez to cut back on government spending and devalue even more.  As a result, living standards stopped rising and social problems (especially crime) began to erupt.

Also, investment in extracting the massive oil reserves has been lacking, partly because foreign investment and expertise have been absent.  This is the blackmail card that international capital has to play.  ‘We shall invest, if you end Chavismo’ and return to being a compliant oil producer for American energy needs (Venezuela is America’s biggest provider of foreign oil).  It remains to be seen how the Vice-President Madero and the Chavistas deal with this blackmail.  We can only hope that the spirit and determination of Hugo Chavez will prevail.

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