chavezoshit is doing a wonderful job destroying what once was a fine
country, which is exactly what socialism always does. anyone who advocates
socialism is a traitor to this country and should be taken out and shot
immediately. no exceptions.
On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Venezuela: the class issues in Chavez's constitutional referendum
> By Bill Van Auken
> 28 November 2007
>
> The approach of the December 2 referendum on the proposed reworking of
> Venezuela's constitution has produced a sharp intensification of the
> country's political crisis.
>
> On Monday, the political violence orchestrated by right-wing opponents
> of the left-nationalist government of President Hugo Chavez claimed
> the life of Jose Oliveros, a 19-year-old oil worker, who was shot in
> the back by opponents of the constitutional reform while heading for
> work at a state-owned firm in the central state of Aragua. When he
> attempted to drive down a street blocked by protesters, he was shot
> and killed.
>
> The young worker's death comes after nearly a month of demonstrations—
> both for and against the reform, which includes 69 additions or
> amendments to the country's current constitution.
>
> Leading the campaign against the reform are the political forces tied
> to Venezuela's wealthy oligarchy, backed by Washington, the same
> forces that sought to overthrow Chavez in the abortive US-supported
> coup April 2002 and which have since staged a series of political
> provocations.
>
> Egged on by Venezuela's privately owned right-wing media, the "no"
> campaign has generated an atmosphere of hysteria over the referendum,
> managing to mobilize demonstrations drawn largely from the most
> privileged sections of middle and upper class students.
>
> These right-wing and often violent student protests have drawn the
> great bulk of the attention of the international mass media, which has
> cast them as a struggle against authoritarianism and in defense of
> democracy. No section of the mass media has taken note of the
> political irony that these supposed champions of democracy were
> precisely the same elements that backed a military coup aimed at
> overthrowing an elected president.
>
> For the most part, demonstrations supporting the reform, consisting of
> more predominantly working class crowds, have been larger, but have
> drawn no comparable media attention.
>
> Conflicting opinion polls have either indicated that the reform will
> pass with a clear majority or placed the "yes" and "no" votes in a
> dead heat.
>
> By every indication, political tensions in Venezuela are sharper than
> at any time since the attempted coup of 2002. The traditional bastions
> of the ruling elite have sought to foment a confrontation. The
> Catholic bishops, for example, issued a statement Monday describing
> the reforms as "morally unacceptable." Similarly, Fedecamaras, the
> main business association, which was one of the principal supporters
> of the failed coup, called Monday for a no vote, while insisting that
> their position had nothing to do with its members' "lifestyle."
>
> "In Fedecamaras we are democrats," the statement read. "We are not nor
> do we want to be communists."
>
> More telling in terms of the depth of the political crisis is the
> defection of some political parties—the social democratic Podemos
> being the most significant—and leading figures previously identified
> with "Chavismo."
>
> Most important among the latter is retired general Raul Baduel, who
> had been Venezuela's defense minister until July of this year. On
> November 5, Baduel called a press conference for Venezuela's right-
> wing media condemning the proposed reform as a "constitutional coup."
> While urging a "no" vote, he also called upon the military to
> "profoundly analyze" proposals for changes to the structure of the
> armed forces and declared that "the capacity of Venezuelan military
> men to analyze and think" should not be underestimated.
>
> The content of such words is unmistakable. Denouncing the referendum
> vote as a "coup" essentially legitimizes the real thing, while the
> appeal to "military men" to "analyze" the political proposals
> presumably implies that once they have done so, action is warranted.
>
> The significance of this veiled appeal to the officer corps is all the
> greater in that its author was one of Chavez's oldest political allies
> and long considered his most important supporter within the Venezuelan
> military.
>
> Baduel was one of the initial members of the Revolutionary Bolivarian
> Movement (MBR-200), the conspiratorial cell formed within the
> Venezuelan military in the 1980s that ultimately gave rise to the
> abortive 1992 coup led by Chavez, then a paratrooper colonel. While
> Baduel did not participate in the coup and apparently questioned its
> feasibility, he subsequently defended Chavez and backed his
> presidential bid in 1998.
>
> More importantly, in 2002, it was Baduel who led the forces within the
> Venezuelan military that ultimately defeated the US-backed April coup.
> In 2004 he was named the army's commander and in 2006 the country's
> defense minister.
>
> This turn by Baduel—who had proclaimed himself a firm adherent of
> Chavez's "21st century socialism"—undoubtedly reflects broader
> divisions within the army as a whole, and the threat of another coup
> can by no means be discounted.
>
> There is also no doubt that the US State Department and the CIA are
> actively fomenting the opposition to the constitutional reform as a
> vehicle for uniting forces that could potentially overthrow the Chavez
> government. Just as in the Middle East, Washington is determined to
> reassert its hegemonic control over a region that contains some of the
> most important energy reserves on the face of the planet by installing
> a more pliant regime.
>
> The mass sentiment in favor of the referendum is founded both on the
> hatred among masses of Venezuelan workers and oppressed for their most
> rabid class enemies, who make up the "no" camp, as well as the
> constitutional reform's promise of various social benefits, which are
> promoted by the Chavez government and its supporters as the
> implementation of "socialism."
>
> These reforms include promises to implement a six-hour workday and the
> establishment of a supplementary health insurance program for the
> millions of Venezuelans—up to half the population—who are classified
> as part of the "informal" sector of the economy, without any regular
> employment. Making these programs into articles in the constitution,
> however, does not create them beyond the level of a legal principle.
>
> The reality is that the changes advanced for Venezuela's constitution
> have nothing to do with putting an end to capitalism or establishing a
> socialist society, and the dangers that the various amendments
> proposed by the government pose to the working class are far greater
> than any promised benefits.
>
> The essential thrust of the reforms is the amassing of greater
> presidential power in the hands of Chavez, furthering the
> consolidation of a personalist bourgeois regime resting on both the
> military and populist appeals to the poorest sections of the
> population, made possible by oil export-funded social programs.
>
> The amendments include an extension of presidential terms from six
> years to seven and allow the unlimited reelection of incumbent
> presidents, both of which are designed specifically to keep Chavez in
> Miraflores, the presidential palace.
>
> While much has been made about the left and even "socialist" rhetoric
> that suffuses the proposed amendments, the reality is that the
> rewritten constitution includes explicit guarantees for the private
> capitalist ownership of the means of production. It also enshrines the
> status of "mixed" private-state enterprises, which exist most
> prominently in the deals signed between the Venezuelan government and
> the foreign energy conglomerates for the exploitation of Venezuelan
> oil. Other clauses in the existing constitution guaranteeing equal
> treatment for foreign and national capitalist enterprises, patents and
> intellectual property rights remain untouched.
>
> To the extent that the document envisions state expropriation of
> capitalist industries, it is within the general framework of its
> defense of private property, to be carried out along the lines of the
> recent nationalization of CANTV, the Verizon-owned Venezuelan
> telephone company, which was accompanied by compensation exceeding its
> value on the stock market.
>
> There are also amendments redefining the Venezuelan military as an
> "anti-imperialist popular entity" and renaming the National Guard the
> "Bolivarian Popular Militia," but, these semantic changes
> notwithstanding, these bodies remain under the same structure and
> discipline of the bourgeois armed forces.
>
> The most significant change in this regard is, once again, a
> strengthening of presidential power, with the president given the
> authority to determine all promotions within the officer corps.
>
> In the political sphere, the reform would give Chavez power to create
> by decree federal provinces, territories and even cities, while naming
> un-elected "vice-presidents" to govern over them, essentially usurping
> the power of elected provincial and municipal governments.
>
> Similarly, the entire public treasury—including the central bank and
> the country's currency reserves—will be placed under the direct
> control of the president. Meanwhile, however, Venezuela's financial
> system remains firmly in the control of the international banks and
> their Venezuelan subsidiaries—which are recording the highest rates of
> profit in all of Latin America—while the government remains committed
> to the repayment of the country's foreign debt.
>
> As window dressing, communal councils are enshrined in the
> constitution, with Chavez and his supporters touting these bodies as a
> form of "people's power" and "parliamentarism of the street." The
> reality, however, is that these are not councils of workers and
> peasants arising from below in the struggle to overthrow capitalism
> and establish a new state based upon the working class, but rather
> structures imposed from above that are totally dependent, politically
> and economically, on presidential patronage and Chavez's disbursement
> of oil revenues. Their function is not to organize the class struggle,
> but rather to suppress it and subordinate the masses to the
> government.
>
> The most menacing amendments, however, empower the president to impose
> a state of emergency in which the government could suspend rights of
> due process, essentially allowing detention without charges, trial or
> legal representation. Also, the reform would remove any limits on the
> length of such states of emergency.
>
> Supporters of and apologists for the Chavez government have insisted
> that such dictatorial measures are needed to combat a reprise of the
> 2002 attempt to overthrow it. The reality, however, is that Chavez did
> not utilize even the legal means available under the old constitution
> to punish those who led the coup against him in 2002, none of whom
> have been tried, much less jailed.
>
> There is a far greater likelihood that the bourgeois state—under
> Chavez's leadership or anyone else's—would employ such repressive
> measures against a revolutionary movement of the working class against
> the rights of capitalist private property enshrined in the same
> constitution than to suppress a military coup.
>
> No such military uprising backed by domestic and international capital
> has ever been stopped through the abrogation of democratic rights.
> Rather, the only force capable of defeating such a coup is the
> independent mobilization of the working class and oppressed masses in
> struggle.
>
> Chavez's choice of the slogan "21st century socialism" to describe his
> oil-export-funded nationalism and social populism has a dual
> significance. On the one hand, it is designed—as he himself has made
> clear—to distinguish his policy from genuine socialism and Marxism,
> particularly in denying that it is based upon the independent
> revolutionary struggle of the working class. Secondly, it serves to
> obscure history and deny the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.
>
> Over and over again, in the struggles of that period the lesson was
> written in blood that the working class cannot defeat the threat of US-
> backed fascist-military coups by subordinating itself to a bourgeois
> government—no matter how populist or "socialist" its political
> rhetoric. Such was the case, most catastrophically, with the Popular
> Unity government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, as it was with
> the "left" military regimes of generals J.J. Torres of Bolivia and
> Juan Velasco Alvarado in Peru—in 1971 and 1975 respectively—or, for
> that matter, Peronism in Argentina in 1976.
>
> Defeating the right-wing forces behind the "no" campaign over the
> present referendum and as well as the very real threat of a US-backed
> coup that would unleash a wave of savage repression can be achieved
> only through the independent struggle of the Venezuelan workers and
> oppressed.
>
> This requires the building of a new, independent revolutionary party
> fighting for the political mobilization of working people in Venezuela
> as part of an international struggle to put an end to capitalism.
> >
>
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