Introduction to an Article on Chavez by Lil Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] What is absent from the article by Gott, below, is an economic analysis of relations of production in, and therefore class formations of Venezuela, and their mutually exclusive class interests, and thus political combat between them. Gott's article superficially dividing Venezuela's society into "rich and poor" is without content, politically hollow rhetoric.
Saying there is an opposition of "rich and poor" explains nothing. There has always been, since the origin of private property and exchange "rich and poor" -- e.g. wealthy political elites and priestly castes and poor farmers and workers in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt; wealthy patricians and poor plebeians in Rome; rich aristocrats and poor peasants in Feudal Europe. And so on into rich capitalists, entertainers and politicians and poor proletarians, farmers, and unemployed classes in contemporary U.S. In Venezuela the growing lumpinproletariat is increasing from the failing businesses of the petty-bourgeoisie, migrants from the countryside, as well as increasing unemployed workers, making the urban poor 60% of the Venezuelan population. The lumpinproletariat historically plays a role in revolutions when swept up into the revolutionary fever -- joining the proletarian sections of sans culottes in the bourgeois-democratic French Revolution; but also the opposite e.g. in Italy and Germany joining forces with the fascists and nazis against proletarian revolutions. Unlike the bourgeoisie and proletariat, whose positions in production and production relation's cements each into a class in opposition to the other, the destitute lumpinproletariat is each man and women must hustle for himself or herself. It is this destitute lumpinproletariat that is Chavez social base. Their loyalty is based on what the Chavez government of the state can provide them in terms of material benefits. It therefore makes perfect sense that he is taking profits from oil to provide the Venezuelan lumpinproletariat with bread and circus! This is only a brief indication of the kind of class analysis of Venezuela that is needed. The "progressives" in the United States and Social-democrat leftists in Europe are enthralled with Chavez. But, they go too far when they classify him as a "revolutionary", because revolution is an act of violence whereby once class takes the productive forces from another, thereby destroying the existing economic order and radically changing the mode and relations of production. One would expect that Richard Gott would have told us not only that Chavez ran for office "armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme", but what he has achieved in this "revolution". In Venezuela only a sweeping, radical proletarian revolution can win the trade union rank in file into the Revolution, breaking them from the union bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. By sweeping and radical I mean a worker's state power turning the industries, transportation and banking sectors over to armed factory committees and agriculture over to armed peasants associations, and fully integrating Black and Indian workers and peasants into the revolutionary economy as workers and peasants. This would bring the Venezuelan working-class including the rank and file of the trade union opposition into the socialist revolution. As it now stands the trade unions are opposed to the anti-labor elements in the "Chavez revolution", including wanting to Peron-like bring the trade unions under government control if not management. This has resulted in trade unionists forming an unholy alliance with the bourgeoisie in street demonstrations against the Chavez government. Thus, both the bourgeoisie and U.S. operatives against the government are manipulating the unions. Yet, Chavez's government has not even completely nationalized the economy, but in actuality leaving the major productive forces as private property of the foreign investors and the native bourgeoisie. The oil industry was already nationalized as a sector, but it is also so in Mexico, Iraq, Libya and other 3rd world oil based economies. In a capitalist country, where the means of production and finance are the property of the bourgeoisie, nationalized industries such as rail, coal and oil only serves the bourgeoisie by making the workers share the costs (taxation) and the bourgeoisie benefit by gains. Venezuela under Chavez, economically and his rhetoric aside is no different than any other capitalist 3rd world country with nationalized sectors. Nationalizations, the creation of state-monopoly capitalism are only the first stage in communistic proletarian revolutions. Bourgeois regimes also nationalize key industrial sectors. Proletarian revolutions require the working-class lifting itself to the power of state and this as the preconditions for completely nationalizing the countries natural resources, factories and banks, placing them under armed workers committees for control and management. This alone is revolutionary praxis of implementation of "socialist revolution". The difference being is that the Chavez government wants to redirect some of the oil profits to "help the poor". This however is a variation of the "redistribution of the wealth" in Social-Democratic capitalist Europe and Canada where progressive income tax ostensibly takes from profits and fund social welfare programs. The "progressives" in the United States, in particular the New Deal and Great Society creation of social welfare programs was not a revolution, but measures against working-class consciousness, and workers revolutions. The emancipation of the working classes is the task of the working classes themselves; thus, the economical emancipation of the working-class is the end, to which political organizations are subordinate as means. Working-class revolution is not getting a "friend" in the bourgeois state who will "help the poor", but workers as an organized state destroying the bourgeois military-bureaucratic state, and seizing the productive forces to help themselves. On the social-democratic program has the government the implementation of its "social-democratic program" commenced work at full employment? What progress has been made in universal free health care as well as universal, compulsory free education? This social-democratic program is consistent with enlightened capitalism and should not be confused with proletarian communistic revolution. Such exist in most advanced capitalist countries as well as 3rd world "socialist" countries (China, Cuba). What Gott writes about Chávez being allied with Castro and denouncing Bush is nothing but diversion of the social and economic analysis of Venezuelan economic and social issues into the 'politics of the individual', which is misleading leftist rhetoric. What has been the Chavez government's policy toward U.S./ European Union investments in Venezuela? This is the issue. Not whether or not Chavez the individual joins Castro the individual in denouncing Bush the individual. Gott writes about the collapse of the ancien régime in Venezuela. We all know what that means: it is a reference to the French revolution. He says that elements of the ancien régime are still fighting Chavez "revolution". Is such a comparison valid? I think not! If the Chavez government were a revolutionary bourgeois regime modeled on the French National Assembly, its economic policy would have been the expropriation of landed property, and its redistribution to the peasantry. This would include the farms owned by foreign investors. This has not been done in Venezuela. And, politically, the opposition elements representing the ancient regime's counter-revolution should be rounded up and guillotined. This would mean rounding up and killing of the expropriated landed aristocrats as well as their media and political partisans. This has not been done in Venezuela. References to the destruction of Venezuela's "ancien régime" are therefore nothing but rhetoric. There is no bourgeois revolution in Venezuela minutely comparable to the French Revolution, let alone a socialist one comparable to the Russian Revolution, or even the Cuban Revolution that expropriated landed property. What position ought socialists and communists take toward the existing situation in Venezuela? First of all, recognizing the Bonapartist nature of the Chavez nationalist regime. In France, Louis Bonaparte had been elected to the office of presidency in 1848. Three years following, on 2 December, 1851, he staged a coup d'etat against his government, setting up a military dictatorship in its place. Marx soon after wrote a popular pamphlet called the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte "demonstrating how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm Chavez, based in a section of the military and the urban unemployed masses of the poor -- including the street peddlers, lumpinproletariat, and the lower paid proletarians that are the majority in Venezuela -- mediating between class forces playing the urban poor against organized labor on one hand, and the bourgeoisie on the other. Yet, like all nationalist Bonapartist regimes Chavez represents, in the last analysis the interests of capital. To not expropriate capital is to defend it from expropriation. Yet, with no illusions socialist ands communist revolutionaries, while engaging in scathing expose of the capitalist nature of the Chavez regime, must defend it against American imperialist attacks. It is up to the Venezuelan proletariat to settle accounts with its own bourgeoisie, and Chavez as well. Lil Joe _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
