Workers Never Ruled Venezuela

Karyn Pomerantz

With the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998, workers and students in Venezuela and around the world rejoiced in thinking Venezuela created a socialist state. The new government under Hugo Chavez supported popular participation in the economy and government. It promoted communes to produce goods collectively and the Councils to make decisions democratically.

Chavez, a military officer and a social democrat took power with elections, not by a working-class revolt. In 1998, he won by a slim margin that enlarged in subsequent elections through 2012. He led and championed a radical Bolivarian government with social spending and nationalization of industries that countered the austerity, and neoliberal policies of the time. (Bolivar was a Venezuelan general who led revolts that liberated people in South America from Spain in the early 19th Century). Chavez denied he was a Marxist or communist but asserted that he was not anti-Marxist or anti-communist. He believed in a mix of capitalism and socialism and relied on voting to maintain control.

Chavez died from cancer in 2013; he chose his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, to replace him as president. Today, twenty-six years after Chavez’s initial election; Venezuelans are experiencing a massive decline in economic security.

 Neither Maduro nor his opponents serve the working class. Favouring the enemy of my enemy, Venezuela over the US leaves people with evil whether it is lesser or greater. Billions of workers, predominantly black and brown, already live under the precarious and fascist conditions that US voters fear from Trump. Voting for the “lesser” evil will not change that.

Venezuela has a population of 28,405,543 (about the population of Texas); all living in urban areas. It has an average life expectancy of 76 years but a large infant mortality close to 15 per 1000 live births. Over half of its inhabitants are mestizo or “mixed, “a combination of black and indigenous traits. Over 42% of people of European and Arab descent are labelled white. Spanish colonialism enslaved black and indigenous people leaving inequitable conditions with mestizos more exploited and oppressed than the better-resourced whites.

After Chavez died of cancer in 2013, the US challenged Maduro’s elevation to the presidency and created an American puppet, Juan Guido, to replace him. They failed, and Maduro assumed the office as the economy tanked. The July 2024 presidential election has thrown Venezuela into more chaos as the current president, Maduro, and the rival US-backed candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, claim victory.

The US led the opposition, vigorously opposing Maduro’s claim that he won 51.2% of the vote. Until 2024, the government election body published the machine-by-machine vote counts within three days. Now close to a month after the election, Maduro refuses to release the ballots.

At a glance, it seems all too familiar. Another hotly contested election in Venezuela, another victory for the long-besieged Chavista government, and another round of fraud allegations by the US-backed opposition.

 Against this backdrop, it may be tempting for those who backed or still back what Chávez called a Bolivarian Revolution—a movement that aims to make Venezuela and later the rest of Latin America more responsive to popular needs—to dismiss opposition claims that Maduro stole elections for a new six-year term of office. All the more so when the US government announced that it would recognise the opposition victory even as most countries in the region withhold making that call.

 But the reality is that this time is different. Ten days after the vote, there can be little doubt that Maduro lost his bid for re-election and that his government intends to remain in power, defying the will of Venezuelan voters. The evidence is partly in the continued refusal by electoral authorities to release precinct-level data for public scrutiny, as it has speedily done in previous elections and as the law requires, or to offer proof of what it claims is a “brutal hacking campaign” targeting its election system.

 To be sure, US sanctions have exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis. But they are not its cause nor do they explain why sectors loyal to the government for 25 years turned away from it at the polls. Austerity, corruption, repression, and dollarisation under Maduro have decimated Chavismo’s historic bases of support.

 On July 28, Maduro lost. If revolution is to win in Venezuela, its supporters at home and abroad must first recognise defeat and the many missteps that led here, then begin the work of supporting Chavismo in opposition, not in power (MLT).

 Venezuelans continue to fight to see which wealthy group will win: the imperialist US or the homegrown Venezuela elites. Clearly, the working class is losing.

The US has imposed sanctions against the government, industries, and individuals identified as terrorists and human rights abusers (as if the US can talk). The US hopes to initiate a popular uprising that can replace Maduro with a US-friendly ally.

Health problems have increased dramatically. The Center for Economic Policy and Research estimates a 31% increase in overall mortality with 300,000 people at risk for illness and death, including 80,000 with HIV, 16,000 who need dialysis for kidney disease, 16,000 with cancer, and 4,000 with heart disease. One-third of the doctors have left the country. In addition, inadequate food, electricity, clean water, and sanitation contribute to high rates of premature deaths.

Flush with the world’s largest oil reserves, Chavez continued nationalizing the oil industry run by the PDSV, the state-owned oil company, and parts of the agricultural, mining, and banking sectors. The wealth from its oil exports financed social programs that improved the standard of living for its working class. Many of us may remember Venezuela funding heating oil for poor families in the US and exporting oil to Cuba suffering under US trade embargoes.

Venezuela’s economic prosperity and collapse follows the history of its oil industry. When times were good, the petrodollars allowed Chavez to establish social services, the Misiones. He established medical clinics staffed by Cuban doctors in exchange for oil, free compulsory education, and successful literacy campaigns. Poverty fell from 40 percent in 1996 to 7.3 percent in 2013, and infant mortality dropped to 13 per 1,000 live births from 25 per 1,000 by 2013. He opened discount stores, food banks, and restaurants, and increased housing for low-income groups When the petrodollars dried up as the price of oil fell and the US applied sanctions, Venezuela workers lost this safety net and became desperate for jobs, food, education, and health care. Saddled with debt, Venezuela owed billions to the IMF that required cutbacks in social spending.

Rivalries among the world’s imperialist powers for oil and minerals, trade deals, pipelines, and geopolitical positions, such as access to seaways, intensify the threat of wider wars. The need to profit from oil in the Middle East or cobalt in the Congo drives these capitalists to fight for dominance and influence through diplomacy, tariffs, tax policies, and war. The US and the Soviet Union battled for supremacy after WWII during the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of US power, other countries have formed alliances to counter US imperialists and its G7 allies. Many so-called leftists support these alliances because they oppose the US although the coalitions include countries with repressive governments, such as Hungary and Egypt. The adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, anyone opposed to the US ruling class, steers people to support groups like Hamas, Iran, and China. It is a losing nationalist idea if there ever was one.

China has used its Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI) to make loans for infrastructure projects in less industrialized countries. It allows China to profit from its loans and ownership of companies, including cobalt mines in the Congo where young, impoverished kids extract the toxic mineral in extremely hazardous conditions. More importantly, China uses its Belt and Road Initiative projects to extend its sphere of influence against the US. It has made significant headway in Africa and South America.

Venezuela suffers from internal and external threats. Its reliance on one source of income and its maintenance of profit-making labour practices belies its reputation as a Bolivarian socialist state. When it reaped riches from oil under Chavez, government reforms created prosperity – but not socialism. As the communist Progressive Labour Party wrote about Chavez’s reform programme:

 “The reform will facilitate state expropriation of private companies for the “social interest.” But this maintains “just payments” to private owners for their holdings.

This is just a “change” from one form of capitalist property to another. It will guarantee “mixed-capital” ventures like those PDVSA (the state-owned oil company) now has with big international oil corporations — again another form of capitalism. The reform will institute a 6-hour workday and “popular councils,” supposedly organs of “people’s power.” However these councils will be limited to the municipal level. In Venezuela, these “popular councils” will have no power over national policies, the state budget, the PDVSA, the armed forces or the judicial system.

The constitutional reform fight is one about which kind of capitalism will rule Venezuela, not one about destroying capitalism and putting workers in power under a system based on workers’ needs not on profits.
The communist party of Venezuela, the PCV, also criticised Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the PSUV:

 “(The government) often talks about “Bolivarian socialism” which is absurd for us as no socialism exists here. To talk about socialism here is mere propaganda, because wages are below extreme poverty levels, and our healthcare and education sectors are destroyed. We made huge achievements under Chavez, but we are in complete rollback now; come visit our schools and hospitals and you will see the real, disastrous state of our public services which should guarantee people’s wellbeing. But the concept of Bolivarian socialism or socialism of the 21st century is still used (MLT, 2022).

The left parties in Venezuela, including the PCV, rely on elections to take power. It is unclear whether there is any revolutionary organising for a seizure of power. Socialism or communism has never been achieved through negotiations or the ballot box. It appears that Maduro lost the election. Whether Maduro or Gonzalez won the July 2024 election does not change the capitalist nature of Venezuela.

Creating a socialist or communist society requires a violent overthrow of the government led by workers, students, and the military. It means ending the wage system that creates hierarchy and disparities in income and wealth. It means prioritising equity to erase the effects of racism, sexism, and other means of discrimination and division.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 12, Sep 15 - 21, 2024