“A socialist conscience signifies a change of the social conscience, it does not happen out of preaching. Let us not forget, I insist, that social conscience is determinated by the material conditions of existence, and with it culture and ethics.” Alí Rodríguez Araque, Antes de que se me olvide, pg 186, Editorial Politica, La Habana, Cuba.
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The core of the problem that a Socialist Revolution has to face and solve sprouts from the economy. If what exists is a fully developed economy with the means of production totally in private hands, the solution is relatively easy: transfer the property from private ownership to the workers of each factory. Albeit, if the real thing is an underdeveloped and backward economy things have to be faced in a different way.
Of course, if this is the case, it is fundamental that the Revolution has to start a process of development with the State contributing with capital, social enterprises organization, technical support and others. This route has to answer many questions, like: has the State a rent to back up his contribution of Capital? If the capacity to deliver Capital is limited, what are the priorities? Are you going to call for foreign investment? Which are the areas for exclusive State industries, which for collective ownership of factories and which for private entrepreneurs?
If we add the political factor to the scenery we will find more complexities to face and solve. Did you acquire power through a heroic armed struggle that defeated the armed forces of the ancienne regime or through democratic and popular elections? Do you have to coexist with parties, Non Governmental Organizations and free press, all typical of open society?
Which are the answers to these questions? Pol Pot had a solution: everybody, at gun point, had to move out of the urban concentrations to work the fields in order to sow and harvest and feed the population; before that, Stalin collectivized state work and enforced it rigorously and drastically. Is this the appropriate course of action?
There is something else that has to be taken into account. Capitalism is an immoral and unethical system, because is founded in act of robbery that the owner of the mean of production executes over the work that is accumulated in the produced good and is unpaid to the worker. From then on, the education received from the status quo and the environment in which everybody leaves under Capitalism alienates the human being and exacerbates individualism. This stimulates people to anxiously keep on searching for a benefit taken from the work of others and in its deviations many people even assume criminal behaviors in order to fill their pockets with money no matter if it is by fraud or plain hold up.
Socialism stands from a different moral principle: all should receive according to his needs, according to his merits, according to his capacities.
Other problems add to the economic core quoted above. One of them is: with whom do you count to build socialism, overall if it is the case of an underdeveloped country with scarce manufacture industries? Is the enlighten vanguard who will take care of everything? Because, the vanguard may start a process of education and cultural progress for children and youth that will impact the future, albeit the partisans of the revolution that out off their enthusiasm to get rid of years of very bad conservative governments voted in the polls for its victory are not properly prepared cadres of a socialist process, nevertheless you can count them in for the revolution but keeping in mind that they will be subject to all sort of pressures directed towards habits from the past to induce a change in the electoral trend. What I am trying to get at is that in a first phase of the process of installment of Socialism, you can only have support from a limited number of people prepared to create, induce, enhance and maintain changes; the rest of technical, professional and bureaucratic back up will come out of the same people that for years served in the old system, and probably carry with them the virtues of a third and fourth grade university degree, but also with the vices proper of the capitalist system.
Another protuberant obstacle is about processing a socialist revolution in an open and mutipartisan society under the vigilance of “free press”. This last difficulty lies on the fact that the owners of practically all the media are enemies of socialism and are associated in a capitalist cartel that despites and strongly fights against whatever progressive movement is doing in their homeland to change the old society.
Also we must take into account that most of the countries of the planet are capitalist, even those that emerged free -or almost free- from the ties of colonial times are capitalist due to the way they relate with what were their metropolis. This environment is not just floating around whatever country is building a model to change society structures and move away from capitalism, no, it is organized and guided by centers of economic and financial power that have control of governments of USA, Canada and countries of Europe. They all work to destroy the model and for that purpose they wage a real war in the mass media front, in the economical front, in the financial front, in the internal political and social desestabilization front. They use all sort of means: sabotage, hoarding, speculation, accusations of human rights transgressions, actions to create social chaos, immense amounts of money funneled to the opposition´s actors and activists. All this is very difficult to combat in an open and democratic society.
Now after this very general addressing of the highlights of problems any country has to face nowadays in his intention to create a socialist society, I do have some ideas on how to deal with them but I will not explain them to whomever they concern because, first of all, I am not entitled to give universal formulas and, second of all, every country has the right to follow his own path in the construction of a new society, more democratic and egalitarian, clearly separated from the unfairness and vices of capitalism, no matter with which name is baptized. Therefore, I will refer to my homeland: Venezuela.
The Bolivarian Revolution initiated by Hugo Chavez in 1999 clearly opted to undergo political, economic and social changes within the scope of Socialism through a gradual process. Years of social segregation of vast portions of the population that left them marginalized from the economical system and in situation of impoverishment was the first enormous problem to face. To supply food and health to an ample poor sector of society, to handout jobs, to proportion working fields to pheasants, all were tasks that needed urgent attention. This explains the origin for “2000 Bolivar Plan” by which the military was incorporated to national wide circuits were food was sold at very low prices and health was serviced for free; also for the approval of the “Land Law” whose purpose was to deliver working fields to pheasants and the “Fishing Law” that, among other things, prohibited trawling in coastal waters because it eliminates the possibility of fish reproduction since it sweeps with de medium and small size catch as also ruins the income of artisanal fishermen.
The answer of the conservative foes of the Revolution was a coup d’état staged in April, 2002 and the separation of power of President Chavez for 48 hours, when a national popular reaction backed up by the armed forces reestablished his government.
The same year of 2002 the opposition -taking advantage of the management control they had over the oil industry (PDVSA) – staged an oil stoppage that lasted almost three months (November and December of 2002, plus most part of January, 2003). Oil production went down as low as twenty thousand barrels per day (from three million barrels per day) and all residents of Venezuela suffered the lack of domestic gas for cooking and gasoline for transportation. Albeit, the difficulty was overcome and, step by step, retired managers, workers, military, all loyal to the Revolution, normalized the situation and defeated the new intent to overthrow President Chavez.
During the rest of the year 2003, opposition groups took some streets in main cities to create chaos by interrupting traffic of vehicles, stone police and National Guards in what they call “Guarimbas”, demanding the resignation of President Chavez. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Government created the first missions for free health care (Misión Barrio Adentro I y II), for free education in the three levels of it (Misión Robinson, Misión Ribas, Misión Sucre), for subsidized food (Misión Alimentación).
The following year the opposition collected the number of signatures required to hold a recall referendum against President Chavez. This happened in august, 2004 and Chavez won it with a handsome majority.
After the first five years, since 1998 December´s presidential elections, Hugo Chavez was unable to dedicated himself to govern in order to make happen the economic changes necessary to start the process of creating the new society, because till then he was busy avoiding been overthrown. Only, after his victory in the recall referendum he did properly initiate, with an abundant amount of measures, the path to recreate the Venezuela society.
Is important to point out that all the attacks to terminate early with the presidential period of Hugo Chavez received support from extraterritorial powers, the most prominent were from US and Spain.
The economic conspiracy during those days propitiated the flight of national capitals that could be around two and a half billions of dollars, something that required an exchange currency control that operated fairly well and for the next six straight years the economy grew with vigor.
Chavez won the 2006 presidential elections with more than 66% of the votes and until his cancer illness was disclosed the Creole opposition kept a moderate behavior, but since then they reinitiated open and clandestine actions of conspiracy. This never cease, on the contrary were increased with each word of news about the deterioration of the health of President Chavez.
Commander Chavez wins October’s 2012 presidential elections but, as a probable product of the physical effort he made during the campaign, suffers a relapse of his cancer condition and has to be interned in a Cuban hospital to receive surgery. From then on his weakness grew steadily through December, 2012 and January, 2013, to enter in an agony that rose to a pick the first days of March, 2013 till he passes away, on Tuesday, March, 5th, 2013.
During this lapse of three months, the local opposition increased the actions of sabotage to the electric national system, to the economy with speculation, hoarding, extraction smuggling of subsidized products and reached a climax in post electoral protests of April, 2013, when spurred by the inflamed words of the candidate that lost the presidential elections, took the street and set fire to party houses of the PSUV, popular health clinics, public libraries and left a balance of more than 11 killed and dozens of wounded.
President Maduro called for a national dialogue between the opposition parties and the government, also with other sectors: manufacturers, agro industry, the mass media representatives, etc. Albeit, none of that diminished the economic war, the sabotage, on the contrary it got worse, overall after the MUD (opposition parties organization) decided to abandon the dialogue without a public explanation.
In December of 2013, local major elections took place and the PSUV and allies won by over 11% difference, but that only stimulated the aggressiveness of the opposition that on January, 2014 started to gather in different places to release their new watchword: “La Salida” (The Exit), meaning by it the departure of President Maduro and, on the twelve of February, launched again “The Guarimbas”, which is a systematic positioning of violent groups on specific streets and avenues to put barriers and suspend traffic of vehicles and persons and when the police or National Guards come to remove the obstacles are received with stones, Molotov cocktails and sniper fire. On top of that, public and private buses are set on fire, public and private buildings are harassed and invaded to loot computers, TV sets and furniture. During this chaotic behavior 43 people died, only 6 belonged to the opposition the rest were Police and National Guard officers stroked by gun fire as also innocent by standers or pedestrians that tried to take away the barriers or go through them. By the way, the public security functionaries accused of being responsible for the 6 political opponents killed are all under custody and submitted to judicial trial, while the snipers that shot the other 37 remain at large.
The situation left after all the above narrated, is very difficult because the model of Bolivarian Socialism is in serious trouble: 1. Inflation rate of over 45%; 2. Shortage of medicines and manufactured goods; 3. Difficulties to find in the supermarket shelves certain type of products for personal cleansing like soap, deodorant; 4. High prices; 5. Non-existing or poor production efficiency of manufactures; 6. Less revenue of US dollars because the decrease of world oil prices plus the reduction of the oil export national offer because much is used to pay for advanced currency (The Chinese Fund); 7. The decrease of currency income harms the import capacity; 8. Although the government has strongly fought the extraction smuggling and the internal deviation of food to be sold y parallel to the public and private sale points, the shortage of consumables has not been completely avoided; 8. Gasoline price is less than a penny per liter, way under the production cost, and PDVSA sells his dollars to the Central Bank at an exchange rate of VEB 10 per dollar (till a few weeks ago is was at VEB 6,30), both factors affect the oil corporation cash flow in national currency to attend expenses related to investment needed to increase oil production, which means there is no expansion of the oil offer in a near or middle term; 9. Like the US is doing with its dollars to pay debt, we are printing more Venezuelan Bolivars to increase salaries and cope with current and investment expenses, which means the inflation pressure is enlarging.
Meanwhile the Government gathers with entrepreneurs, investors, owners of factories. Offers them credits to expand production and productivity but not much happens, because the best business is to buy US$ at an exchange rate of VEB 6,30 or VEB 10 (Sicad II) or at VEB 49 (Sicad III) under pretext of importing needed consumer goods but bringing only a small portion, keeping dollars in a foreign banking account and selling the balance in the open Venezuelan market at a rate of VEB 99.
What to do?
After all the comments we have made so far about sociological performance of the people we have backing up the Bolivarian Process, their habits of individualism, their attachment to cultural trends of consumerism that have penetrated us for many year, their knowledge of an big oil rent and an almost natural perceived right to take a chunk of that rent no matter how, we can only face them as problems that can only be solved in a middle and long term with education and the example of the leadership that accompanies the message with their own behavior. Commander Chavez spent hundreds of hours during his presidential terms talking about this precise topic in his Sunday TV program “Alo, president” and many speeches he delivered. We have no doubt that his gigantic leadership capacities kept under control this inherited trends from the previous thirty years of local political life, albeit, after President Chavez fell ill, overall the last six months before his earthly departure and since he passed away, the sack ripped and appetites moved fast and freely.
The projected and immediate actions are to be taken in the field of the macro economy. The foreign currency control that worked fairly well the first a few years after its creation because of the ethical neatness of the people that originally headed the entity in charge, succumbed to a reality of webs of corruption that blossomed after new people were put in charge. Now the illness is so extended that there is no way to gain control, no matter who is designated to operate it. The business of buying dollars at a very cheap price (VEB 6,30, or VEB 10 or VEB 49) and selling them a VEB 99 is invincible, no other activity can overcome this one and not even a saint brought from heaven may do anything to change if we stand still and the actual currency exchange system remains the same.
This means the answer is that you have set a free market dollar with an overshut price of around VEB 40 like Mark Weisbrot* explains to start getting more Venezuelan Bolivars for all national expenses that are taken from the normal flow of cash in the hands of the people. This way you can act upon inflation as well because you no longer have to print money, you are actually using the same money that is already in circulation.
Does this mean we are renouncing Socialism? Of course not. It is a necessary measure to save the path to follow towards it. Is a small step backward to guard what we already have and what we can do in addition. The reasoning is that we need local money to face the payment of salaries, food subsidies, all the missions, etcetera, plus we now may incentive for real the owners of factories to enhance production instead of receiving bank credits and use them to buy subsidized dollars that are used to import a little, save most abroad and the rest directed to be sold in the national market and obtain enormous benefits.
We can picture than the first week of the application of the measure the dollar will hit a peak of perhaps VEB 200 or more per dollar, but also we can bet that many buyers of dollars at the actual parallel exchange rate of VEB 99 or less, will start selling them and as the price declines the trend to sell will speed up until it settles for a substantial lower rate.
With this same purpose the gasoline price has to rise if not to international standards, at least in an amount that will serve the needs of PDVSA of local money to start new drillings and increase the oil output, as it also will discourage the gasoline smugglers that take it to Colombia and Brazil.
On the other hand. We need a plan. We have a perception there is none. The leadership will tell you that we do have it. Yes, we have “El Plan de la Patria” (Mothers land Plan), a national project Commander Chavez designed. But we are not talking about a plan that goes down from big goals to details with duration of more than twenty years in order to develop our country and create a Venezuelan Socialism. We are talking about a contingency plan to solve the critical juncture of our economy that surfaced from the second half of 2012 till nowadays.
This plan has to fight off corruption with special dedication, even more, with devotion. There is a perception that criminal acts against public funds go unpunished. This perception does not come from guesswork or conjectures. Everybody sees how many militants of socialism assume an official post and till then had no vehicle, use to leave in a leased flat or a hut in the outskirts of the city or in the hills (barrios) and 5 or 6 months later move to an expensive apartment, have two 4×4 Station Wagons and travel abroad for weekends. Naturally, according on how high in the ladder of ministries, public corporations and other estate and municipal entities the functionary is, he will have more than one house, more than one or two cars, etc. This has to cease and the only way is that this acts of corruption have to be prosecuted and punished. What we are actually doing is not enough.
Crime has also to be stroked with energy. There cannot be exceptions. Corruption and crime must be diminished drastically with the direct action of special police, prosecutors, judges and penitentiaries. We have to build more penitentiaries, well prepared to receive inmates, to humanize them with education and work. Later around –when they are not needed- this establishments can be schools and universities.
We are aware that there is a war dedicated to create difficulties and end the Bolivarian Process. The General Staff of this war has many “Generals and Admirals” constantly thinking on how to pursue this goal. They are from the US, Canadá, European States and our Venezuelan conservative opponents.
Another important theme to approach is the determination of which area of the national economy will be left to the private sector. It should be a regulated area with open access to the national market.
In Venezuela approximately 45% of the economy is State property (Oil industry, iron, steel and aluminum industries as all tributary factories, electricity, water service, communications, and transportation systems). We also have an incipient capacity of social industries related to food production and textiles. We have increased the number of hectares of sown fields but with not enough production to satisfy the national market because we have not been able to provide enough credits, supplies and other inputs or perhaps not in the correct opportunity and/or with sufficient control of the destiny of the funds.
We think is time that instead of only delivering land to pheasants that individually or in groups sow it, the Venezuela Government creates corporations like PDVSA in order to, in an organized and technical and financial supported way, generates a vigorous output of agricultural products.
To determine a space of the economy for the private sector is not an abomination of Socialism. Is recognition that there must be room for the activity of individualism in a way that it does not go against the interest of the collectivity. Remember when we wrote about the immanence of individualism and solidarity and how Capitalism enhances the first in detriment of the second. In Socialism is exactly the contrary but this must not be taken as the suppression of the second over the first. **
In Venezuela an important part (more that 30%) of the working force acts as private street vendors that exercise economic liberalism (Capitalism) in absolute terms. Perhaps it should be better to have them in private shops and stores that operate under regulations and pay their taxes.
Also, is urgent that we send a clear message to investors of middle size and even big corporations, that we have an area of the economy were they can work without the hazard of being expropriated, this does not mean they are not going to be supervised to control if they abide with the regulations. This area has to be drawn by the Government taking into account social priorities.
We have a final word for what we think is the biggest contribution of the Bolivarian and Socialist Revolution as a creation that enhances Democracy. I am talking about Popular Power that is implemented through Communal Councils and Communes (the gathering of various Communal Councils). As is stated in the Communal Laws, they emerge directly from the people that live in barrios, neighborhoods, outskirts of cities, villages and small towns. They elect their Speakers that join in Committee to project civil works, pavement of roads, schools, cultural clubs, stadiums, parks, house building and house improvement. To this end they receive financial support from the National Budget as also technical support from the Government. The social monitoring and control of the spending is exercised directly by the community as also by official Comptrollers of the State.
This is the strongest foundation we have to support the endurance of this extraordinary revolutionary event we are experiencing in Venezuela. Popular Power is a colossal pillar of the Bolivarian and Socialist Revolution. We must cherish and strengthen it. Partisanship ill conceived is a natural enemy of the progress of Popular Power. The more direct democracy is exercised in the selection of their leaders and the actions of self control of the collectivity over them, the better. The PSUV and allies have to be the purest and more dedicated vanguard regarding this matter.
I cannot leave behind a word about the defense of the Revolution because we are always thinking about an epical armed struggle against the natural enemies which are the conservative forces and specially the Imperialism. This is something that cannot be dismissed. It is proven fact of history that war is a resource than can be used any moment by this arch-enemies of Socialism, but the complexities of a world in which communications have grown in an exponential way sort of have left it as their last resource and, of course, we will always keep in mind that it is a pending peril. By this we want to stress that we are certain that the best capabilities possible of our revolutionary armed forces must be kept at all times.
Once stated this, we can establish that the immediate menace is the destruction of the Venezuela Revolutionary Model to show the world that there is no viability of it because it only generates impoverishment, chaos, criminality, diseases and death. This is the front in which we have to fight each day of our existence. This means we have to make the model work fluidly. We must overcome whichever difficulty arises. All of us have to direct our efforts towards that goal. Public functionaries, state corporation managers, prosecutors, judges, workers, teachers, professors, students have to do their best to comply with responsibilities with ethical behavior. The biggest compromise of all belongs to the vanguard that must be absolutely unified, dedicated, loyal, honest and brave.
Caracas, Nov/14/2014.
*Mark Weisbrot, “Un Nuevo sistema cambiario para Venezuela”; essay appeared in the Venezuelan journal Ultimas Noticias, edition of Sunday, november 2, 2014. Mark Weisbrot is president of Just Foreign Policy, Washington D.C.
**When in Socialism the authorities or the people award a personality for a creation (book, music, scientific invention, and sports) they are directing the action on the individual immanence of the person, although these creations are always related to a social purpose as should also be any role in the economic area.
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1 Comment
This is one of the best and most comprehensive brief articles I have read about the situation in Venezuela.