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From International Socialism 2 : 109, Winter 2006.
Copyright © International Socialism.
Copied with thanks from the International Socialism Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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Marta Harnecker is a Chilean journalist and activist, exiled in Cuba after the coup of 1973, who is now working in the Ministry of Popular Participation in Venezuela. A book of her interviews with Hugo Chavez has recently been published in English. This interview is translated from Siete sobre Siete in Uruguay. |
What stage is the Bolivarian Revolution at?
At the stage of the deepening of the revolution – of an effort
to make the state apparatus more efficient, fighting against
corruption, purifying the police and the organs of state security,
and working to deepen participatory democracy and to implement a
different economic logic, a humanist logic based on solidarity.
What have been the most important steps in the political process since Chavez defined the socialist direction of the Bolivarian Revolution?
I might surprise you when I say that there has not been any step relevant to that definition. What is happening is that practice has been showing the leadership of the process that the humanist logic based on solidarity that they have been implanting at every level, especially on the economic terrain, has been clashing with the capitalist logic of profit with every step taken.
For example, you cannot create agricultural co-operatives or produce basic industrial products successfully if the state does not take on a big role in the buying and selling of such products. You can’t control the impact of the increase in monetary circulation resulting from the enormous number of grants the government is giving to all the Venezuelans studying in the various misiones if you don’t find a way of controlling the prices of the products that make up the basic diet of the poorer section of the population. How can you resolve this within a capitalist logic where the motor of the system is profit and not the satisfaction of human need?
An emergency measure adopted when the opposition wanted to stop the process through the attempt to make the mass of the population give in through hunger during the lockout at the end of 2002 – the purchase of foodstuffs for improvised popular markets – showed the way. Today there are hundreds of popular markets across the whole country, accounting for 40 percent of food consumption, offering products much cheaper than the private commercial establishments. Their prices have been maintained through state subsidies at the same level as at the beginning of the experiment. Moreover, this is encouraging firms to produce stuff domestically that had previously been imported, by assuring them a market for their products and avoiding intermediaries.
As you can see, ‘socialism’ in Venezuela did not start when Chavez announced it at the beginning of 2005, but considerably earlier. And I speak of socialism in quotation marks because in reality what is happening in Venezuela is not socialism but a road which can lead to a society ruled by a humanistic logic based on solidarity, in which all human beings can achieve their full development.
Chavez does not deny that at the beginning he thought it was
possible to resolve the deep economic and social problems of
Venezuela through a third way – he believed it was possible to
humanise capitalism, but history has shown him this is not possible.
The insistence on socialism as the only road comes, paradoxically, at the same time as efforts are being made to incorporate the private sector in the economic plans of the government.
This is something contradictory for the classic vision of socialism as a society in which all the means of production must be in the hands of the state, eliminating the roots of private property. In this classic vision the emphasis is put on property and not on control of the means of production. When Chavez speaks of the socialism he intends to be built in Venezuela he always makes it clear he means ‘socialism of the 21st century’, and not a copy of previous socialist models.
What is central in Venezuela today is getting rid of poverty. A short while ago I heard a young leftist criticise the vice-president of the republic as a reformist because he had said the main enemy was poverty, and that it was necessary to eliminate poverty instead of talking of the necessity of eliminating the bourgeoisie! What is the point of attacking private enterprises at the moment? These are radical slogans that have little to do with an analysis of the real situation. Does this young man not understand that to get rid of poverty it is necessary among other things to create productive employment, and that the reactivation of the private sector has been the principal source of employment in the country in recent months? Why doesn’t he ask himself why the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, which threw everything into trying to get rid of Chavez in the past, is desperate to collaborate with the government today?
Even Lenin himself did not think it was necessary to eliminate private property in order to begin to construct socialism. Few people have read one of the first decrees of the newly established Soviet government – the decree over private publicity, which started from the premise that those private capitalists disposed to collaborate with the government would have to have space to publish their advertisements. It was not the socialists who marginalised the capitalists in Russia – it was the capitalists who marginalised themselves by refusing to collaborate with the Soviet government and opting for civil war.
In analysing this problem one must not forget the question of the
correlation of forces. So long as the bourgeoisie feels strong and
believes it can dominate the situation through ballot boxes or
weapons, it is understandable for it not to be disposed to
collaborate with a revolutionary project that goes against the logic
of capitalism. But what can the Venezuelan bourgeoisie do when it has
suffered a triple defeat – the failure of the military coup in
April 2002, its failure to achieve its objective through the lockout
at the end of that year, and its failure in the referendum of 2004?
There remains no alternative for it other than to leave the country
or to collaborate with the government in return for credit facilities
and an assured market.
But isn’t there a danger in coexistence with the bourgeoisie?
Clearly there is a danger. The logic of capital will seek to impose itself. This means a constant struggle to see who defeats who. We are at the beginning of a long process. The control of political power, control of the exchange rate, a correct credit policy so that capitalists who receive loans accept conditions determined by the government – these are the formulae used by the Bolivarian government to make the medium and small Venezuelan businesses promise to collaborate with the government’s programme, of which the axis is the elimination of poverty. These were precisely the sectors most affected by neo-liberal globalisation.
But we must not forget that we come from a society in which the logic of capital rules, with a culture which inclines both the owners of capital and the worker to work for individualist objectives. So socialism can only triumph over capitalism if it puts under way, together with the transformation of the economy, the transformation of people. To the extent that people see the positive effects of the new attempted economic model oriented to the new humanistic logic of solidarity, to the extent that they see the defeat of individualism, consumerism and the profit motive in their everyday practice, they will arrive at the same conclusions that Chavez has – the only alternative to the harmful consequences of neo-capitalism is socialism. It is significant that recent opinion polls show that 40 percent of the population already consider socialism something positive. This is a great advance, considering the ideological bombardment to which they have been subjected. The practical effects of the measures of solidarity adopted by the government are weapons more powerful than all the media missiles launched by the opposition.
And, being clear that we are dealing with two contradictory economic models, it is fundamental that an important part of the resources of the state go to finance and develop the state sector of the economy, since control of strategic industries is the best way to ensure the triumph of the new humanistic logic of solidarity and adequately to fulfil the national plan aimed at eliminating poverty.
The search for collaboration with private capital must only take
place to the extent that it allows advance in this sense.
This definition implies a conceptual change in what constitutes ‘socialism’ in the 21st century and in a Latin America under severe US hegemony. What theoretical innovations are most urgent?
More than theoretical innovations, I think there were many elements to be found in the classic Marxist thinkers that were ignored or forgotten. ‘Socialism in the 21st century’ would have to take them up again at the same time as having to invent new solutions to the new problems created by the change in the world in these last years. One of them, socialism, is the most democratic society. Lenin said, ‘Capitalism equals democracy for the elite, socialism democracy for the great majority of the people.’ Another is the theme of workers’ control. You can have state property, but without workers’ control it is not socialism. On the other hand you can have private property under workers’ control and perhaps that can be closer to socialism than the first case. Yet another – every country must find its own road to socialism. That which can or cannot be done will depend to a great degree on the correlation of forces in the country and at the global level.
If we want to be effective radicals, and not just radicals in words, we have to commit ourselves to the daily work of building up the social and political forces that enable us to bring about the changes we want. How much more fruitful politics be would if those who go in for words were committed to this daily militancy instead of seeing their writing as militancy.
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