VENEZUELA
The specter of counter-revolution
By Andy McInerney
The democratic revolution led by Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez faced its first serious challenge on Dec. 10.
Bosses around the country staged a lockout, shutting thousands
of businesses around the country, to protest Chávez's
new economic policies favoring Venezuela's poor and working
classes.
The 12-hour action passed without major incident. But it
raises urgent questions for all partisans of the working class.
The traditional Venezuelan elite--the bosses, landlords and
U.S. lackeys--is now openly organizing to destabilize the
Chávez government.
Workers in the United States and around the world need to
stand shoulder to shoulder with their Venezuelan sisters and
brothers against the U.S. government and the old Venezuelan
ruling class's efforts to roll back the process unleashed by
Chávez's election in 1998.
Chávez opens political space
The 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, a former junior
officer in the Venezuelan military, represented a massive
rejection of the corruption of the traditional political elite
in the oil-rich South American country. Chávez had led
an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992 in solidarity with a
movement against price hikes.
During the first years of Chávez's presidency, the
new government--a coalition of progressive military officers
and leftist parties--broke the back of the old political
system. It instituted a new constitution and a new National
Constituent Assembly to give voice to millions of Venezuelan
poor and oppressed traditionally excluded from politics.
Although Venezuela is an oil-rich country--it was the
largest supplier of oil to the United States at the time of
Chávez's election--80 percent of the population lives in
poverty. One percent of the population owns 60 percent of the
country's land.
Beginning in June, the Chávez government began what
one leader called a "thrust toward the economy." A high
priority was a new land law, announced in September, aimed at
expropriating idle land from absentee landlords.
In November, Chávez employed special powers granted
to him by the parliament to sign 49 economic laws, including
the land law and other measures aimed at strengthening state
control over oil, land, fishing and other key sectors of the
economy.
These are the measures that pushed the country's former
elite--out of political power but not expropriated--from
grumbling to active opposition.
A lockout--not a strike
In order to protest the economic measures, the country's
largest bosses' federation, Fedecamaras, called for companies
to shut their doors for 12 hours on Dec. 10. The bosses' group
claimed that thousands of businesses closed for the day.
The business federation employs 8 million workers out of the
country's workforce of 11 million and population of 24
million.
Although the bosses' action was widely portrayed as a
"strike," most workers were not given the opportunity to
express their support or opposition to the action. A move by
bosses to shut their doors to the workers is not known as a
strike--it is a lockout.
The business leaders and their backers in the former
political establishment made much out of the endorsement by the
Venezuelan Workers Federation (CTV), the country's largest
official union group. But with the endorsement, CTV leaders
exposed their utter bankruptcy, tailing behind the bosses
against the Chávez government.
The CTV leadership is historically tied to the Democratic
Action (AD) party, one of the two traditional parties of
Venezuela's elite. Since Chávez's election, workers have
been organizing to break the corrupt leadership's hold on the
union.
Despite the backing of the CTV--which represents only the
more privileged workers, less than 10 percent of the total
workforce--no class-conscious worker should have any illusions
about the Dec. 10 action. When the bosses organize, it is only
in their own interests--and against the interests of the
working class.
Chávez mobilizes the masses
Despite the mobilization, Chávez maintained a firm
position in support of the economic reforms.
On Dec. 11, the French News Agency AFP quoted Chávez
saying that if the elites opposed the new laws, "that merely
indicates that they must be enacted--and quickly."
"If an extreme situation develops," Chávez warned on
the eve of the strike, "if the leadership, this privileged
minority, try to alter the democratic process, I will have no
choice but to come down hard...I won't hesitate."
"Nobody, and nothing, will stop this revolution."
In fact, despite the Dec. 10 lockout, the only mass
mobilizations in the capital city of Caracas were in support of
the Chávez government. Some 30,000 peasants and other
Chávez supporters rallied in Caracas as Chávez
defended the land law.
"I'm here to defend Chávez and the revolution,"
street vendor Anabel Cortez told the Dec. 11 AP. "They're
selling out the country. The poor, the peasants, the
dispossessed, we love Chávez."
"They want to stop the revolution," Manuel Huerta told the
New York Times. "Fedecamaras never supported the workers. They
support the entrepreneurial elite."
Police also prevented pro-Chávez demonstrators from
ransacking the bosses' Fedecamaras headquarters.
In another display of support, the Venezuelan military
changed their annual air force day celebration from an air base
to Caracas. The display of support was significant because the
elite has attempted to foster support for a coup against
Chávez.
Class against class
The Dec. 10 bosses' action marks an important step in the
process underway in Venezuela that was opened up by
Chávez's election. The stakes in this process go far
beyond the fate of any individual political leader.
Since 1998, the country's ruling class maintained a cautious
attitude toward Chávez. The factory owners and landlords
counted on the fact that as long as Chávez restricted
himself to rhetorical attacks, their power was safe. They
clearly hoped that the government's inability to solve the
grinding poverty of the masses of Venezuelans would wear down
Chávez's tremendous popular support.
But now the Chávez government has crossed a line: it
is aiming at restricting the ruling classes private property
rights. And the exploiting classes will spare no expense to
defend their right to exploit property.
For the first time, the political process that Chávez
calls the "Bolivarian revolution" has gone beyond the borders
of bourgeois democracy. The fact that his movement has dared to
cross the ruling class's "sacred right" to exploit property for
their own private gain has generated an open struggle pitting
the propertied class against the class without property.
What will be the attitude of the popular forces--the
workers, peasants, students, unemployed who are anxious to take
advantage of the Chávez movement to press their class
gains?
Chávez took the reigns of government after an
election--not after a revolution. That presents a practical
problem: the workers and peasants have not developed the
struggle-tested organs of popular power--councils, strike
committees, picket defense guards--that are the surest defense
against counterrevolution.
There is every indication that the forces closest to
Chávez are trying to organize such committees. The
announcement in June of "Bolivarian circles"--local committees
entrusted to defend the gains of the Chávez movement--is
a first step in that direction.
The role of the U.S.
The attitude of the ruling class in Venezuela mirrors the
attitude of the U.S. government toward the Venezuelan
presidency. In early November, the Bush administration recalled
its ambassador to Venezuela for a "high-level review" of its
policies toward Caracas following Chávez's criticism of
the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.
The growing arrogance of the capitalist class in Venezuela
bears an eerie resemblance to the CIA-backed movement that
deposed and assassinated the democratically elected president
of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973.
Key to that right-wing campaign was the image of a "popular
movement" against Allende based on business owners and
middle-class elements.
Decades later, the CIA and U.S. copper corporations' covert
involvement in that rightist movement became well known. At the
time, the U.S. government claimed it was a "spontaneous"
movement.
As the struggle sharpens in Venezuela, the progressive
movement in the U.S. must demand that the government reveal all
its files on covert operations to destabilize the Chávez
government.
Reprinted from the Dec. 20, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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