Roberto Jorquera
On the day after his decisive victory in the August 15 presidential recall referendum, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told a victory celebration by tens of thousands of his supporters: "The recall referendum was not just a referendum on Hugo Chavez, it was a referendum of the revolutionary process, and a majority of Venezuelans articulated their support! It is time to deepen the revolution!"
During a televised speech a week later, Chavez said the time had come to "accelerate the transformation" of the "capitalist economic model into a social, humanist and equality economy" that would meet the needs of the poor, who make up at least 70% of the oil-rich South American country's population of 25 million. He also said that the "Bolivarian Revolution" has to organise a "revolution within the revolution" and that one of its most important tasks is to "create a new state".
While the US-backed pro-capitalist opposition to Chavez is now in disarray, Washington has stepped up its attacks. On September 10, the White House announced the imposition of economic sanctions on Venezuela under the claim that the Chavez government is not doing enough to combat the trafficking of women and children "for the purposes of sexual exploitation". US officials have indicated they will seek to block loans — totalling US$290 million — requested by Venezuela from the Inter-American Development Bank and aimed at combating poverty.
In response, a Venezuelan government spokesperson said on September 10: "We have signed and ratified the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, and the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which the United States has yet to ratify."
The defeat of the opposition's drive to oust Chavez through the recall referendum was all the more remarkable given the still-considerable ability of Chavez's opponents to influence public opinion through the corporate media. As US Latin America specialist James Petras noted in a September 2 article on the Counterpunch website: "In Venezuela the right controlled 90% of the major television networks and print media and most of the major radio stations. Yet the referendum was crushed by an 18% margin (59% to 41%). The results of the referendum demonstrates that powerful grassroots organizations built around successful struggles for social reforms can create a mass political and social consciousness which can easily reject media manipulation. Elite optimism in their 'structural power' — money, media monopoly, and backing by Washington — blinded them to the fact that conscious collective organization can be a formidable counterweight to elite resources."
A major issue that confronts the Chavez government and its working-class supporters is the need to overcome the bureaucratic structures of the capitalist state. In a September 15 article posted on the Venezuelanalysis.com website, Gilbert Wilpert observed: "The transformation of the Venezuelan state, however, not only has to deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, career civil servants who oppose the Bolivarian Project, and vague ideas as to how to go about the transformation. It also has insufficient professionals who have the training and experience of managing large bureaucracies who also support the project.
"Chavez has hoped to get around this problem by appointing many high-level government officials from the military, but this has been no guarantee of success. A longer term project for ensuring decent state management by people who share the goals of the Bolivarian project has thus been the new Bolivarian University, which will train civil servants for the new state."
A key means of overcoming the domination of the administration of government policy by privileged, careerist officials in the civil service has been the expanding of social service programs outside of the bureaucratic civil service's control — the "social missions".
These social missions provide Venezuela's poor with free community health care, literacy training and primary education, high school completion, university scholarships, subsidised food markets, employment training and public works and housing. These programs are financed via a social fund that the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, provides.
Furthermore, as Wilpert notes, "the missions have created state structures that for the most part operate outside of the normal structures of the ministries and other state institutions. For example, Mision Ribas (high school completion) and Mision Robinson (literacy) have been organized through the state oil company. Their organization and budget come from PDVSA and not the ministry of education, as normally should be the case.
"Government spokespersons have repeatedly explained that this is intentional because the state structures are so inefficient that to organize such programs through the ministries would take much more time and money. In effect, government representatives say that the existing state structures are too inefficient and too unwieldy to properly manage existing programs, let alone to institute new ones."
The Chavez government has announced its intention to turn these ad hoc parallel state structures into official government bodies. Thus on August 29, Chavez announced that the new "revolutionary mission" dedicated to overcoming the housing crisis in Venezuela — which aims to build 130,000 houses by the end the year — will become its own government ministry by December 31.
On the economic level the changes have been slower and more difficult. This was inevitable considering the large interests that are at stake for the Venezuelan capitalist class and its US backers. However, there is a process under way that will begin to erode the capitalists' economic power and bring the Venezuelan economy increasingly into public hands.
Referring to the issue of economic policy, Wilpert reported: "No significant change has been announced in this area of government policy for the near future. However, outlines of new areas of emphasis are identifiable. First, while the government has not been pursuing a strategy of nationalizing privately held companies, as some would expect a left government to pursue, it is more likely that the government will start its own public enterprises from scratch, which will compete with the private sector. For example, the recently created state-owned airline, Conviasa, and a new state-owned telecommunications company, Covetel, are the two most recent examples of this type of effort. It is entirely possible that if these succeed, the government will launch more companies like this."
The ousting of the pro-capitalist management from PDVSA earlier this year — after the government organised oil workers to break a management lock-out — has already taken Venezuela's largest company out of the capitalists' hands. PDVSA accounts for 30% of the country's GDP and 80% of its export earnings.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 6, 2004.
Visit the