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From: Lee Vanderheiden <•••@••.•••>
Subject: What does 'Bolivarianism' entail? from Sanders Research Associates
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:59:34 -0800
To: Richard Moore <•••@••.•••>,
•••@••.•••
Dear Richard,
This article by Gabrial Ash discusses in good
detail what participatory democracy can
achieve.... Venezuela as example.
Hope this finds an audience.
Cheers,
Lee
---------
Thanks Lee,
A good article. Again, as with Cuba's
transformation to sustainability, we see the
all-important synergy between local initiative
and top-level government initiative. In Cuba's
case the transformation was compelled by lack of
oil, while in Venezuela's case it is being
enabled by oil abundance. Chavez deserves extra
credit for taking the initiative without the
necessity.
I found Mr. Ash's report to be positive and
objective, however I take exception to this one
sentence:
"...Under pressure from Venezuela's poor, on whose
support Chavez's political survival depends, the government
moved decidedly leftwards over the course of the last few
years..."
I think he is misunderstanding what motivates
Chavez. Rather than "moving decidedly leftwards"
due to being "under pressure from Venezuela's
poor", I believe Chavez has "mobilized
Venezuela's poor" in order to "move decidedly
leftward". Chavez is an inspired visionary, an
effective activist, a dedicated revolutionary,
and a true champion of democracy. In Cuba and in
Venezuela we can see examples of what the
transition must look like, if we are to achieve
democracy and sustainability. It does not come
about by a few changes in policy, but through a
full-scale mobilization of the national will and
the dedication of its resources.
I am encouraged by the many parallels between
these real-world developments and the scenarios I
present in ETM (http://EscapingTheMatrix.org).
The emphasis on local autonomy, the necessity of
property redistribution (what I call 'reclaiming
the commons'), the return of more people to the
land, the emergence of co-ops, the use of
open-process decision making, the experience of
empowerment and enthusiasm, and the peaceful
nature of the overall process. All of these are
anticipated in the book, based primarily on
system considerations. I take encouragement from
this as to the viability of the book's other
theses.
rkm
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Original source URL:
http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1170
Venezuela: The Times They Are A-Changin'
By Gabriel Ash
Mar/29/2007
Venezuela is changing. Fast. No other word
captures the speed and magnitude of change as
well as that weighty word--'revolution.' This is
indeed the word used by many of the Venezuelans I
had the privilege of meeting and interviewing
during ten days in March. Venezuela is undergoing
a 'Bolivarian' revolution. But what does
'Bolivarianism' entail? . . .
To be honest, Zhou Enlai's quip about the results
of the French Revolution-that it is 'too early to
tell'-is doubly applicable to Venezuela.
Radically different constituencies, political
visions and potential futures are today
co-existing more or less harmoniously within the
dramatic process of change. This is perhaps
inevitable. But some of the wide ranging
ambiguity about the future direction of
Bolivarianism has to do with Chavez's crucial
strategic choice in favour of peaceful social
change. Contrary to the image often portrayed in
the foreign media, Chavez has gone overboard in
seeking to include as many as possible in the
Bolivarian state. He has time and again extended
an olive branch to his enemies.
For example, immediately after the failed coup
against him, his first act was to guarantee the
constitutional rights of the coup leaders, none
of whom have been harmed. Likewise, he has
consistently avoided using military and police
forces under his command to repress the
opposition, and had been exceedingly cautious
towards foreign companies and investors. Some of
his strongest supporters therefore consider
Chavez excessively soft. The ideological message
of Bolivarianism is straddling this society --
deeply divided by class -- with a strong
Venezuelan and pan-latinoamerican nationalism.
The ambiguity is patently visible in the street
iconography of Caracas, which combines the faces
of the aristocratic liberal Simon Bolivar and the
radical communist Che Guevara, both sharing the
landscape with huge billboards of fashionable
young women advertising beer.
Yet if the future is foggy, the present is
dramatically clear. Under pressure from
Venezuela's poor, on whose support Chavez's
political survival depends, the government moved
decidedly leftwards over the course of the last
few years. This leftward move consists in two
processes: democratization and redistribution.
First, redistribution. Having wrestled control of
the national oil company from the old oligarchy,
Chavez redirected a portion of Venezuela's
significant oil revenues to new social projects,
called missions, each targeting a specific social
privation. The bulk of the resources were
earmarked for non-cash benefits such as education
and health. But government policies have also
helped more people to move out of the informal
economy and take formal jobs, affecting a
significant rise in cash wages for the poorest
workers. An international chorus of snickers
erupts whenever these social spending programs
are mentioned. Most completely miss the point. Is
there corruption? Inefficiency? Probably. But by
relying on the army, the national oil company,
and ad hoc communal organizing rather than on the
traditional state bureaucracy, the social
missions manage a level of efficiency that is
quite stunning.
As a small example, take the latest mission,
'energy revolution,' announced in November 2006.
Its first project was to change all the light
bulbs in Venezuela (52 million of them) to
energy efficient ones by the end of 2007. The
goal is to reduce the consumption of oil in
electricity generation by about 25 million
barrels a year, and cut a typical family's
monthly expenses by $4.6 (a non-trivial sum in
the poor neighborhoods). The distribution of free
bulbs is carried out by different means: youth
organizations, community councils, and reserve
units. By mid February 2007, over 30 million
bulbs have been distributed, 10% faster than
planned. The white glow that rises at night from
both the poor neighborhoods and the houses of the
better-off confirms the statistics.
More complex missions, such as mission Robinson
and Riba, which provide adult primary and
secondary education with Cuban help, have been no
less spectacular. "Proofs" that these missions
are bogus are a dime a dozen in the Western
media. Yet in Venezuela, even fierce Chavez's
critics I spoke with conceded that the missions
were having a strongly positive effect on the
life of the poor. The change is fast and visible.
In a peasant community's primary school in
western Venezuela, I saw the preparation for an
internet room for both the pupils and the larger
community. In the nearby high school-a school
that only a few years ago did not exist-students
who divided their time between the classroom and
their families' coffee fields talked of going to
university.
Another common criticism is that the missions are
not sustainable because they depend on oil prices
remaining high. No doubt a drop in oil prices
would force the government to cut spending
(leaving aside the unresolved question as to
whether high oil prices are themselves
sustainable or not.) However, the thousands of
people who learned to read during the oil boom
would remain literate even if oil prices dropped.
Nor would such a drop deprive the beneficiaries
of an oil-financed cataract removal. A more
enlightened view would note that access to such
basic services as dental and eye care is valuable
in itself.
But even if one were to look at Venezuela from
the most narrow-minded economic perspective, one
that only values economic growth, it would be
impossible to find an oil-producing country that
uses its oil bonanza in a better way. Improving
health, education, housing and infrastructure
contributes more to prosperity and overall
economic growth than the preferred choice of
conventional wisdom-hoarding a large portfolio of
U.S. bonds.
The proof is in the pudding. Caracas is booming.
Fancy consumer malls are mushrooming, trendy
shops and restaurants ring the cash register. In
one mall, strongly anti-Chavez store managers
expressed gloom and resignation about the
government's economic policies while conceding
that business was excellent. But in a restaurant
off the airport highway, the owner, a man of
humble background, took us with pride through the
private orchard from whose fruits he serves fresh
juice to his customers, and explained the
situation thus:
"Chavez is good for people who want to workŠ.they [the
bosses?] dislike Chavez because the government now collects
taxes from businesses."
The opposition to Chavez is surely more than just
about reinvigorated tax collection; a recent (and
perhaps not fully trustworthy) survey shows a
loss of income over 20% at the high end of the
extremely skewed income pyramid. But there is
little doubt that the boost to the income of poor
households (80% of the population) is driving
Venezuela's impressive economic expansion (9.4%
in 2006) and also trickling up significantly to
the better-off, especially those in the fast
expanding retail sector-the delivery period for a
new imported car, including luxury models, can be
longer than six months.
The democratization focus of the Bolivarian
revolution involves structural changes to both
politics and economics. Politically, those
measures that help the foreign media paint Chavez
as an autocrat are precisely those perceived in
Venezuela as means of political decentralization
and democratization-
* the rule by decree,
* the formation of a unified party, and
* the direct executive control of funds.
To understand the paradox, it is necessary to
grasp the historical context: the political
parties, the parliament and the governmental
bureaucracy have been, and still are, bastions of
corruption, clientelism, providing the main
interface between political power and economic
wealth. It is quite possible in theory that the
creation of alternative political mechanisms
under Chavez's personal rule will lead to a new
centralization of autocratic power. But
mitigating that danger is the new sense of
political entitlement of commoners, a deep
cognizance of their own rights, and foremost the
right to organize and take control over decisions
that affect their lives. Encountering the
strength of this democratic consciousness,
fostered by education, public awareness
campaigns, Chavez's speeches, and the recurrence
of popular mobilizations, is one of the most
intense experiences one has as a visitor to
Venezuela today. While Chavez is the undisputable
hero of this popular awakening, the latter is
anything but a docile body of followers. On the
contrary. Visiting a community center in
Barquisimeto, we saw a local TV and radio station
run by locals. The organizers were supposed to be
trained by a professional government manager.
Relations with the official boss however soured
quickly and the community expelled the imposed
manager, locking her out of the building. It took
a month of struggle, but the new locally chosen
administration was eventually recognized as
legitimate. He would be a strange autocrat who
encouraged small communities to run their own TV
and radio station, free of government control.
But this is exactly what the current government's
policy is. Finally, the most important political
development following the last elections is the
plan to constitutionally empower local councils
(of 200-400 households each) to take control of
budgetary priorities and local services. This
institutionalization of participatory democracy
would irreversibly transform Venezuelan politics.
The linchpin of the change is economic structure
is the fast growth in co-operatives-worker
managed businesses with a variety of internal
democratic structures. The co-operative movement
in Venezuela predates Chavez. However, with
government support, this form of economic
organization changed from a radical but marginal
element to a significant component of the
economy. Already in 2004 4.6% of jobs in
Venezuela depended on co-operatives. By
extrapolation, the over 100,000 co-operatives
operating today in Venezuela probably account for
15% of jobs.
Government help consists in technical support,
managerial training, loans on preferential terms
and often the rent-free provision of facilities.
There are co-operatives everywhere, from street
vendors to textile manufacturing, from organic
agriculture and up to the hotel we stayed in,
which used to belong to the ministry of tourism
and became a co-operative in 2001. The hotel's
kitchen workers explained that most decisions
were taken by general consultation but an
executive committee elected for three year terms
was in charge of salaries. Building successful
cooperatives in Venezuela is not easier-indeed is
probably more difficult-than starting a viable
business anywhere. There is bureaucracy,
corruption, competition, personal frictions, lack
of capital, lack of know-how, etc. Time will tell
how many of these co-operatives survive. It is
too early to declare that Venezuela has found a
cure to the endemic poverty of the urban slums
that weighs so heavily on the Third World. But
the Venezuelan experiment is not only real,
serious and popular, but also quite uniquely so
in the world.
One thing the many co-operative members we met
had in common was that they were all glowing with
pride about their work. Finally, it is worth
mentioning that co-operatives are not the only
form of entrepreneurship blossoming in Venezuela.
The government is pushing banks to make more
small business loans to the poor, and a general
sense of optimism is both palpable and reflected
in surveys. We visited the home of a woman who
had recently turned the front of her slum house
into a general shop and ran into a young man who
was planning to start a tourist business in the
mountains. How unwelcome multinationals like
Verizon are in Venezuela is an open question, but
there is clearly a new feeling of opportunity for
regular people to work and to improve their lives.
There is a lot to be fearful about in
Venezuela-the high level of crime, the dead
weight of entrenched corruption, the unresolved
tension between consumerist and socialist values,
the danger inherent in Chavez's outsized shadow,
and not the least the certain intensification of
U.S. destabilization efforts. But outside the
small pockets of privilege and affluent
resentment, the Venezuela I saw is not in the
grip of fear. On the contrary, it is in the grip
of hope, pride and an infectious sense of
self-confidence and ownership.
--
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