FRFI 195 February / March 2007
‘The time has come for the end of privileges, the end of inequality, and nothing and no one can make us stop the car of the revolution, cost us what it may…Equality without socialism is impossible.’Hugo Chavez, inauguration speech
On 3 December President Chavez was re-elected for a third term until 2013. He received an overwhelming 4,500,000 of the 7,500,000 votes cast. On 15 December he declared that his majority party in Congress, the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR), is to be dissolved and he will create the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. On 8 January, to the consternation of both the local bourgeoisie and international capitalists, he announced plans to pursue the building of socialism in Venezuela by nationalising key industries.
These decisions are complementary. By creating a new, emphatically democratic party, he invites the members of the MVR – with its majority in Congress – and its coalition parties, to reorganise so that: ‘The corrupt, the thieves, the drunks, the bad lads will be left outside’. Chavez is combating the historical burden of corruption and institutional clientelism and providing a consistent political-economic programme that aims to remove Venezuela from the field of imperialist super-profits.
The steps to ‘21st century socialism’ will now require control of the Central Bank to be taken away from financial capital, and the higher revenues retained by the state to be directed towards building socialism.
At his inauguration, President Chavez spoke of five ‘motors of the revolution’ which will lead into the Simon Bolivar National Project up to 2021. Nationalising the leading sectors is the first ‘motor’. Heading the list to be nationalised will be the biggest private power group, Electricidad de Caracas, majority owned by the US AES corporation, and the main telecommunications company Compañía Anónima Nacional de Teléfonos de Venezuela which was privatised in 1991.
Proper control of gas and oil resources is the second ‘motor’. Negotiations had already started with Chevron, Total and Statoil to secure a majority stake in the heavy oil operations in the Orinoco basin. Chavez wants contracts with ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to be renegotiated so that the state oil company PDVSA takes up to 60% compared to the current 30% to 49%. Exxon had already refused changes to contracts on conventional oil operations and left the business.
Transforming the state
Once the radical new constitution was in place in 2000, President Chavez changed the focus and purpose of government. The government faced massive obstruction from the ensconced middle classes. New laws were introduced, and changes demanded by the majority were met by new health, education and housing programmes, supported by Cuba. Government departments are being replaced to meet the needs of the working class, like the Ministry of Popular Economy. In December 2006 two new ministries were announced, to deal with telecommunications and indigenous peoples. Another, Integration and Foreign Commerce, was closed. The government will not renew the licence for Radio Caracas Television because it participated in the defeated coup of 2002. Land redistribution has accelerated, and abandoned factories have been taken over by the state and workers’ co-management put in place. Since 1998 seven new universities have opened (with 15 more due soon), 50 new high schools, tens of thousands of new college places and 200 new college buses. The third ‘motor’ of revolution will be a new programme to carry education into homes and workplaces. The fourth ‘motor’ will be the president’s expanded capacity to establish laws for a year by decree in order to accelerate change.
A new political party
To build socialism Chavez wants militants to choose a new leadership for the new party. Using the enormous confidence vested in him by the mass of the poor, he has presented supporters and members of allied organisations like Patria Para Todos, the Movemento Electoral de Pueblo and the 60-year-old Communist Party of Venezuela, with a fundamental choice – build a common anti-imperialist programme or be excluded from government.
All of this centres on continued political developments in local communities. Community campaigns have been central to the political development of the masses. The aim now is to bring together the local land, health, defence, sports, water and other committees that have grown up over the last seven years. This will enable communities to look at their problems as a whole. These committees have taken their strength from those working informally, the underemployed and unemployed workers. New communal councils, organised from 2006 in urban neighbourhoods and composed of 200 to 400 families, now receive $1bn directly from the government for projects.
A confederation of communal councils is to be promoted by the state; Chavez calls this a ‘new geometry of popular power’. This is the fifth ‘motor’ of revolutionary change. The president has stated that the aim is to ‘displace the bourgeois state’ with the ‘communal state’. The energy and demands of these councils are needed to motivate those more regularly employed otherwise they will lack the ideological force to fight against the constantly surfacing economism of the old and new trade union leaders. In the new UNT union, struggles over the nature of demands has expressed itself in factionalism, blunting revolutionary initiatives. President Chavez is providing the basis for unity among all workers against the exploitation of any worker.
