[R-G] A Good Example of the Bad Left of Latin America

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The third installment in constructive criticism.

<http://monthlyreview.org/0707lebowitz.htm>
Venezuela:
A Good Example of the Bad Left of Latin America
by Michael A. Lebowitz

Fair wages, a fair day's work! Through their struggles within
capitalism, it has often been possible for workers and citizens to
secure themselves some share of the benefits of social labor.
Capitalist globalization and the offensive of neoliberal state
policies, however, have encroached upon all those gains from past
struggles; and the answer to those who were surprised to find those
victories ephemeral was the mantra of TINA—there is no alternative.

Yet, as the devastation of the capitalist offensive has become
obvious, opposition has emerged especially in Latin America. We warned
you this would happen, say the hucksters and self-promoters; instead
of the good times ahead promised from the neoliberal medicine
prescribed from the 1980s on, Latin America experienced (in the words
of Jorge G. Castañeda) "the persistence of dismal poverty, inequality,
high unemployment, a lack of competitiveness, and poor infrastructure"
("Latin America's Left Turn," Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006). The
left ("rightly foretold" by the prophets) has returned.

This means that hope has returned. Working people around the world
look to Latin America these days for the demonstration that there is
an alternative, that a better world is possible. But, are they right
to look to Latin America? Is a real alternative emerging or is it
merely a negotiation of better terms in the implicit contract with
capitalist globalization? Is Latin America breaking with capitalism or
is it struggling for fairness?

The Good Left and the Bad Left

Of course, we know that all lefts are not the same. And, indeed, that
is a constant theme among commentators of all varieties. While few
would divide Latin America in accordance with dietary practices as did
Alvaro Vargas Llosa (Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Evo Morales being
designated as "carnivores"—Washington Post, August 6, 2006), for many
there is simply the Good Left and the Bad Left. What they have in
common, according to Castañeda, is that they stress "social
improvements," "egalitarian distribution of wealth," "sovereignty,"
and "democracy" (over the presumed opposite package of macroeconomic
orthodoxy, wealth creation, international cooperation, and
governmental effectiveness). What makes the Bad Left bad, though, is
essentially described by one word—"populism."

When they hear the term populism, Latin American intellectuals reach
for their incense. Partly that is because the term conveys people,
masses, the unwashed in motion. When Castañeda declares populism to be
"nationalist, strident, and close-minded," it is hard not to think of
this as his description of the masses themselves. But, there is more
to it (or, rather, there is another aspect of this). When he describes
as among the characteristics of populists in power that they
"nationalized large sectors of their countries' economies, extending
well beyond the so-called commanding heights" and captured "natural
resource or monopoly rents, which allowed them to spend money on the
descamisados, the 'shirtless,' without raising taxes on the middle
class," you know that what makes the Bad Left really bad is its attack
on capital.

Small wonder, then, that the Good Left is said to include the
governments of Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil (and maybe even Nestor
Kirchner's Argentina), while the Bad Left invariably revolves around
Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales. Given that the
distance from Chávez appears to be the true measure of all things, one
might conclude that Ecuador's Rafael Correa will also fall into the
category of the Bad.

Yet, here is where this classification system breaks down. How do we
distinguish between an attack on capitalism as such and an attack on
the current policies and practices of capitalism? Between a struggle
for a new economic system, on the one hand, and a struggle for
fairness on the part of international creditors, in trade relations,
and in the distribution of resource rents, on the other?
Distinguishing between these may be harder than it appears at first
sight.

After all, even a process of despotic inroads upon capital (of a long
march which wrests, "by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie," in
the words of Marx and Engels) is certain to be described as mere
reformism by those for whom anything less than storming the heights
immediately—nationalizing everything with workers' control now—is
simply acquiescence to international capital. Abstract idealists for
whom the correlation of forces (internal and external) and the concept
of process mean less than the pamphlets they have underlined always
sing the same tune of betrayal (changing only the names of those who
have spurned their overtures). But, it does not mean that they are
wrong in particular cases.

How can we identify an attack on capitalism as such? Is an alternative
to capitalism being built in the new left governments of Latin
America?

Identifying an Alternative to Capitalism

What constitutes a real alternative to capitalism? I suggest that it
is a society in which the explicit goal is not the growth of capital
or of the material means of production but, rather, human development
itself—the growth of human capacities. We can see this perspective
embodied in the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela—in Article 299's
emphasis upon "ensuring overall human development," in the declaration
of Article 20 that "everyone has the right to the free development of
his or her own personality," and in the focus of Article 102 upon
"developing the creative potential of every human being and the full
exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society."

In these passages (which are by no means the whole of that
constitution), there is the conception of a real alternative—an
economy whose logic is not the logic of capital. "The social economy,"
President Hugo Chávez said in September 2003, "bases its logic on the
human being, on work, that is to say, on the worker and the worker's
family, that is to say, in the human being." That social economy, he
continued, does not focus on economic gain, on exchange values;
rather, "the social economy generates mainly use-value." Its purpose
is "the construction of the new man, of the new woman, of the new
society."

These are beautiful ideas and beautiful words, but they are, of
course, only ideas and words. The first set comes from a constitution
and the second comes from the regular national educational seminar
known as Aló Presidente. How can such ideas and words be made real?
Let me suggest four preconditions for the realization of this
alternative to capitalism.

(1) Any discussion of structural change must begin from an
understanding of the existing structure—in short, from an
understanding of capitalism. We need to grasp that the logic of
capital, the logic in which profit rather than satisfaction of the
needs of human beings is the goal, dominates both where it fosters the
comparative advantage of repression and also where it accepts an
increase in slave rations.

(2) It is essential to attack the logic of capital ideologically. In
the absence of the development of a mass understanding of the nature
of capital—that capital is the result of the social labor of the
collective worker—the need to survive the ravages of neoliberal and
repressive policies produces only the desire for a fairer society, the
search for a better share for the exploited and excluded: in short,
barbarism with a human face.

(3) A critical aspect in the battle to go beyond capitalism is the
recognition that human capacity develops only through human activity,
only through what Marx understood as "revolutionary practice," the
simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change. Real human
development does not drop from the sky in the form of money to support
survival or the expenditures of popular governments upon education and
health. In contrast to populism, which produces people who look to the
state for all answers and to leaders who promise everything, the
conception which truly challenges the logic of capital in the battle
of ideas is one which explicitly recognizes the centrality of
self-management in the workplace and self-government in the community
as the means of unleashing human potential—i.e., the idea of socialism
for the twenty-first century.

(4) But, the idea of this socialism cannot displace real capitalism.
Nor can dwarfish islands of cooperation change the world by competing
successfully against capitalist corporations. You need the power to
foster the new productive relations while truncating the reproduction
of capitalist productive relations. You need to take the power of the
state away from capital, and you need to use that power when capital
responds to encroachments—when capital goes on strike, you must be
prepared to move in rather than give in. Winning the "battle of
democracy" and using "political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all
capital from the bourgeoisie" remains as critical now as when Marx and
Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto.

Consider these preconditions. Are they being met by the new Latin
American governments on the left? On the contrary, for the most part,
we can see the familiar characteristics of social democracy—which does
not understand the nature of capital, does not attack the logic of
capital ideologically, does not believe that there is a real
alternative to capitalism, and, not surprisingly, gives in when
capital threatens to go on strike.

"We can't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs," announced the
social democratic premier of British Columbia in Canada (in the 1970s
when I was party policy chairman). Here, crystallized, is the ultimate
wisdom of social democracy—the manner in which social democracy
enforces the logic of capital and ideologically disarms and
demobilizes people.

Venezuela, however, is going in a different direction at this point.
While the Bolivarian Revolution did not start out to build a socialist
alternative (and its continuation along this path is contested every
step of the way), it is both actively rejecting the logic of capital
and also ideologically arming and mobilizing people to build that
alternative.

The Initial Venezuelan Path

Although the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999 focused upon the
development of human capacity, it also retained the support for
capitalism of earlier constitutions. That constitution guarantees the
right of property (Article 115), identifies a role for private
initiative in generating growth and employment (Article 299), and
calls upon the state to promote private initiative (Article 112). And,
support for continued capitalist development was precisely the
direction of the initial plan developed for 2001–07. While rejecting
neoliberalism and stressing the importance of the state presence in
strategic industries, the focus of that plan was to encourage
investment by private capital—both domestic and foreign—by creating an
"atmosphere of trust."

To this was to be added the development of a "social
economy"—conceived as an "alternative and complementary road" to the
private sector and the public sector. But, it is significant how
little a role was conceived for self-managing and cooperative
activities. Essentially, this was a program to incorporate the
informal sector into the social economy; it is necessary, the plan
argued, "to transform the informal workers into small managers."
Accordingly, family, cooperative, and self-managed micro-enterprises
were to be encouraged through training and micro-financing (from
institutions such as the Women's Development Bank) and by reducing
regulations and tax burdens. The goal of the state was explicitly
described as one of "creating an emergent managerial class."

The social economy, thus, was to play the role it plays in Brazil and
elsewhere—islands of cooperation nurtured by states, NGOs,
Grameen-type banks, and church charities and serving as positive shock
absorbers for the economic and political effects of capitalist
globalization. Of course, if seriously pursued, this could make things
easier for the unemployed and excluded, the half of the Venezuelan
working class in the informal sector, by providing them with a better
opportunity for survival. But, the social economy was not envisioned
in the 2001–07 plan as an alternative to capitalism (except insofar as
survival within the nooks and crannies of global capitalism
constitutes an alternative).

A Third Way for Venezuela: it would turn its back on neoliberalism,
would change the distribution of oil rents by acting against the state
within the state that was the national oil company (PDVSA), and would
move via an active state in the direction of the "endogenous
development" supported by structuralist economists. The goal, in
short, was a different capitalism. The Bolivarian Revolution at its
outset clearly belonged in the Good Left.

But, it also contained a potential subversive element—its theme of
human development. The Bolivarian Constitution is unequivocal in
indicating that human beings develop their capacity only through their
own activity. Not only does Article 62 declare that participation by
people is "the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure
their complete development, both individual and collective," but that
constitution specifically focuses upon democratic planning and
participatory budgeting at all levels of society and (as in Article
70) upon "self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms"
as examples of "forms of association guided by the values of mutual
cooperation and solidarity." With its emphasis upon a "democratic,
participatory and protagonistic" society, the Bolivarian Constitution
definitely contains the seeds of the social economy, the seeds of
socialism for the twenty-first century.

And, those seeds didn't drop from the sky. They came from the social
movements that were allied with Hugo Chávez's struggle to throw out
the Fourth Republic (and that, through membership in the new
Constituent Assembly, introduced those seeds directly into the
constitution); and, they came from the self-described "subversive in
Miraflores" himself—Chávez, the prisoner who wrote in 1993, "the
sovereign people must transform itself into the object and the subject
of power. This option is not negotiable for revolutionaries."

Of course, contradictory elements such as those found in the
Bolivarian Constitution are not unique, and potentially subversive
seeds often produce nothing. We are all familiar with governments
elected as agencies of working people which, once elected, send the
people home to rest for the next election. Further, there is much sad
experience with the manner in which those social movements then
proceed to self-police themselves—with the result that the seeds
wither. In Venezuela, however, class struggle nurtured the seeds of
that social economy so that it increasingly was seen as the
alternative to capitalist development.

To begin with, Chávez broke with the expectations of many (including
opportunistic supporters) by attempting to fulfill some of his
promises. And, although measures such a new hydrocarbon tax
(increasing royalties on new oil production) which would allow the
government to pursue its Third Way orientation were not an attack on
capitalism as such, they produced a dynamic effect which went far
beyond the initiative of the government. Chávez's determination to
proceed despite opposition within his own camp and the response of
Venezuela's pampered oligarchy (supported fully by U.S.
imperialism)—first through its coup of April 2002 and then through the
bosses' lockout of the winter of 2002–03—not only mobilized the masses
in workplaces and communities behind Chávez but also convinced him
that capitalism could not be a basis for human development. The
Bolivarian Revolution from this point on started to forge a path
moving away from capitalism.

A New Path

With the revival of government revenues in the latter part of
2003—following the effective re-nationalization of PDVSA, the state
oil company—new programs (missions) in health and education began to
demonstrate the real commitment of the Bolivarian government to wipe
out the enormous social debt it had inherited. Further, Mission
Mercal, building upon the experience of government distribution of
food during the general lockout, started in early 2004 to provide
significantly subsidized food to the poor. Soon after came Mission
Vuelvan Caras—a program for radical endogenous development oriented to
building new human capacities by both teaching specific skills and
preparing people to enter into new productive relations through
courses in cooperation and self-management. Its effect was dramatic:
the number of cooperatives increased from under 800 when Chávez was
first elected in 1998 to almost 84,000 by August 2005.

All this occurred in the context of Chávez's attack upon the "perverse
logic" of capital and his stress upon the alternative—that social
economy whose purpose is "the construction of the new man, of the new
woman, of the new society." The deepening of this ideological
offensive was marked by the renaming of the social economy as
socialism. In January 2005 at the World Social Forum, Chávez
explicitly called for the reinventing of socialism—one different from
what existed in the Soviet Union. "We must reclaim socialism as a
thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist
one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of
everything."

Six months later, influenced by István Mészáros's Beyond Capital, he
stressed the importance of building a new communal system of
production and consumption—one in which there is an exchange of
activities determined by communal needs and communal purposes. We have
to "help to create it, from the popular bases, with the participation
of the communities, through the community organizations, the
cooperatives, self-management and different ways to create this
system." The occasion was the creation of a new institution—the
Empresas de Producción Social (EPS). Drawn from a number of
sources—existing cooperatives (pledged to commit themselves to the
community rather than only collective self-interest), smaller state
enterprises, and private firms anxious to obtain access to state
business and favorable credit terms—these new enterprises of social
production were to be committed both to serving community needs and
also to incorporating worker participation.

In 2006, a new building block was added: the communal councils (based
upon 200–400 families in existing urban neighborhoods and 20–50 in the
rural areas). These were established to diagnose democratically
community needs and priorities. With the shift of substantial
resources from municipal levels to the community level, the support of
new communal banks for local projects, and a size which permits the
general assembly rather than elected representatives to be the supreme
decision-making body, the councils have been envisioned as a basis not
only for the transformation of people in the course of changing
circumstances but also for productive activity which really is based
upon communal needs and communal purposes.

With Chávez's re-election in December 2006 on the explicit theme of
building a new socialism, these new councils have been identified as
the fundamental cell of Bolivarian socialism and the basis for a new
state. "All power to the communal councils!" Chávez declared. An
"explosion in communal power" has been designated as the fifth of the
"five motors" driving toward socialism. The logic is one of a profound
decentralization of decision-making and power; and, as with the third
motor, "Moral y Luces" (Morality and Enlightenment) a major
educational and ideological campaign, the consistent theme is the
stress upon revolutionary practice in order to build socialism.*
Citing Marx and Che Guevera, Chávez has insisted (Aló Presidente, no.
279, March 27, 2007) that it is only through practice that new
socialist human beings produce themselves.

The kind of practice required is not that which is based upon
self-interest (the "infection," the virus inherited from capitalism)
and on production for the purpose of exchange. Rather, what is
essential is practice in producing directly for society's needs and
building communal solidarity. In this respect, the third motor of
ideological struggle, and the democratic transformative practices
embodied in the fifth motor's explosion of communal power, can be
viewed as two sides of the same coin and requiring each other. Without
the side of ideological struggle, the focus upon needs becomes a
struggle for old needs, the values generated within capitalist
society; and without transformative democratic practices, the
ideological appeals alone lead ultimately to a combination of
commandism and cynicism.

Socialist practice, though, is not to be conceived as only occurring
within communities. Since his re-election, Chávez has stressed what he
calls "the elementary triangle" of socialism: units of social
property, social production, and satisfaction of the needs of
communities. Will capitalism provide boots for poor children?
Capitalism, he has noted, says the market will solve this, but in
socialism we can plan to produce these directly for the children who
need good boots. Chávez, thus, has taken a further step: while
continuing to stress the importance of worker participation, he argues
that it is not sufficient; it is necessary, for example, to guide
cooperatives to move increasingly to become units of social property
and to produce directly for communal needs.

This emphasis upon the "elementary triangle" also reflects an explicit
self-criticism, a criticism of the government's missteps in dealing
with recovered factories and in developing the companies of social
production (EPS). We made errors, Chávez noted—the new forms did not
go beyond capitalism. Thus, the new stress is not only upon social
production but also social property. And the guarantor of social
property (i.e., property of the society) must be the state—"the Social
State, not the bourgeois state, not the capitalist state" (Aló
Presidente, no. 264, January 28, 2007).

There can be little doubt that a battle of ideas against capitalism
and for the creation of a new socialism with new values is well
underway. Not only is there the growing articulation of
characteristics of socialism for the twenty-first century but also the
development of a mass consciousness—spread through Chávez's televised
speeches and the new ideological campaign. Of course, as indicated
above, "the idea of this socialism cannot displace real capitalism."

Using political supremacy to build new productive relations

More than a battle of ideas, though, is taking place in Venezuela. In
addition to the expansion of state sectors in oil and basic industry,
the new era beginning in 2007 already has been marked by the
nationalization of strategic sectors such as communications, electric
power, and the recovery of the dominant position for the state in the
heavy oil fields where multinational firms had previously prevailed.
Further, the offensive against the latifundia has resumed with several
recent land seizures. New state companies (including joint ventures
with state firms from countries such as Iran) intended to produce
means of production like tractors have been created.

Much more, however, needs to be done: if the Venezuelan economy is to
be transformed and freed from its dependence upon oil, new productive
sectors (in agriculture and industry) and a new infrastructure that
can open vast parts of the interior of the country must be developed.
The resources are there, and so is a working class either largely
unemployed or in the informal sector by default (i.e., part of the
reserve army of labor). If the Bolivarian Revolution is serious about
pursuing the process of extensive development, though, an inevitable
tendency will be to plan and administer this process from above
through the state.

But, where will self-management, co-management, and worker
management—"forms of association guided by the values of mutual
cooperation and solidarity"—fit in? In fact, the experience in the
state sector has not been encouraging: with the exception of the
aluminum firm ALCASA and the electrical distribution firm in the Andes
(CADELA), worker management in the state sector has been thwarted and
has moved backward in what are called "strategic" state industries
(especially PDVSA itself). Rather than a process in which workers have
been transforming themselves in production through self-management,
they have been dominated from the top through the hierarchical
patterns characteristic of state capitalist and statist firms. And
these reversals have demoralized militant workers, confining them to
the adversarial role that they play in capitalism. All the
self-oriented tendencies of the old society (which in Venezuela means
the struggle to capture rents) are reinforced.

The promise now is that this pattern will change—that the motor of
Moral y Luces will involve both ideological education and training for
worker management in all enterprises (through a transforming of the
workday to include education) and that workers' councils will be
legislated in all enterprises not only to take on more and more
functions of management but also to be oriented toward communal needs.
Certainly, these themes are exciting: clear moves toward democratic,
participatory, and protagonistic production are essential if people
are not to remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that
capitalism produces. Yet, the gap between promises from the top and
the realization of promises in practice is often very significant in
Venezuela; and, in this particular case, experience to date indicates
that there is considerable resistance from managers and ministers to
this loss of control from above.

Unfortunately, to counter this problem and to make those promises
real, there is no unified collective subject making demands from below
for workers' control. Not only is the organized working class outside
of state administration small (given the pattern of economic
development and neoliberalism over the last half century), but intense
factional struggles within the Chavist labor movement (UNT) have
effectively crippled the organized working class as a major actor for
now.

Who, then, are the subjects of this revolutionary process? Attention
has turned to developments in the communities, to building the new
communal councils, linking them and stressing their potential to
organize the process of satisfying the needs of communities. For,
certainly, there are active subjects within the communities—people who
have developed individually and collectively through their struggles
and continue to do so.

But, what kind of socialism rests upon communities and communal needs
rather than upon the character of relations within the workplace? Do
communal relations displace productive relations in this new socialism
for the twenty-first century? Does the system of needs dominate the
system of labors here?

One should not exclude this idea by definition. Certainly, in
capitalism, in the statism of the Soviet Union, and also in the
self-managed enterprises of Yugoslavia, the goals of those within the
sphere of production drove the system and dominated it. Perhaps, then,
the "primacy of needs" that Mészáros (Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory
of Transition, 1995, 835) identifies is the appropriate lever with
which to move the world in the direction of socialism for the
twenty-first century.

Yet, while the focus upon communal councils and communal needs
provides an obvious contrast to the production-orientation of the
past, the difference may be more apparent than real. Why not think of
this process as the emergence of a new social relation—the development
of a relation of solidarity among the collective producers? Remember
that merchant capital and money-lending capital emerged as a social
relation before capital invaded the process of production. Why, then,
could not self-conscious collective workers (i.e., producers conscious
of their unity) emerge as the social relation that could ultimately
dominate the sphere of production? Certainly, the concept of
associated producers has always been envisioned as the socialist
relation of production. Never precisely clear, though, is how this new
relation emerges—or, more accurately, what are the ways in which it
develops?

Once we think about the communal councils as sites where people
produce not only solutions to their needs but also produce themselves
as collective workers for themselves, then it is possible to see a
definite link between the explosion of communal power and Moral y
Luces and the other major campaign of this moment—the creation of the
new unified socialist party. In Build it Now, I argued the need for a
party from below that can continue the process of revolutionary
democracy essential to building this new type of socialism. Few
(including the writer) were prepared, though, for the scope of
Chávez's announcement shortly after his December 2006 re-election that
the new party would not unify the existing Chavist parties but,
rather, would be something entirely different—a party built from the
base, starting from communities and neighborhoods, the most democratic
in Venezuelan history.

Certainly, the democratic character of the party-building process now
underway goes well beyond expectations. Although the numbers signing
up to join the new party at booths around the country may fall short
of the four million some hoped for, this new party of socialism will
be the largest party ever created in Venezuela (and a far cry from the
cadre party demanded by assorted dinosaurs on the old left). Once
consolidated in groups of 200, their spokespersons are to begin in
August a three-month process of developing the party program (with
constant consultation with their groups); and a referendum of all
members on December 2 would vote on that program. Not until mid-2008
would the party leadership be determined. What will that new
leadership look like? Chávez's hope clearly is that it will
incorporate the natural leaders of the communities. "The new party,"
he said in December, "cannot be the sum of old faces. That would be a
deceit."

The explosion of communal power and the process of building this new
party have much in common. Both are mobilizing large numbers of people
and have a common enemy in the clientalism and corruption which
continue to infect the Fifth Republic; both potentially challenge
those people in party and state for whom development of the
capabilities and capacities of the masses is not as compelling as the
desire for the accumulation of power and comfort for their families;
and both reflect the link between Chávez and the masses, a dialectic
in which Chávez openly calls upon people to take power ("the
multitude, the multitude!") and is in turn driven forward by the needs
and demands of the people themselves.

But, what about socialist productive relations? To the degree that the
two motors and the building of the unified socialist party of
Venezuela (provisionally designated the PSUV) are successful in
building the capabilities and capacities of the masses and
strengthening a new social relation of collective producers, the
invasion of the sphere of production by this relation is inevitable:
the same people who are transforming themselves "into the object and
the subject of power" in their communities are not likely to settle
for less in their workplaces or in decisions in society as a whole. In
fact, the process is already beginning—with the linking of communal
councils with both local cooperatives and state enterprises in order
to direct production to meet local needs. To the extent that workers'
councils and communal councils begin coordinating their activity, the
collective producers will be well on their way to seizing possession
of production.

However, the success of this process is not at all inevitable. There
are, as there have always been within the Bolivarian Revolution,
powerful tendencies that point in the opposite direction. Not only the
strong inclination of government ministers and managers in important
state sectors to plan and direct everything from above (a pattern
which has successfully crippled independent workers' movements) and
not only the continuing culture of corruption and clientalism which
can be the basis for the emergence of a new oligarchy. There is also a
very clear tendency which supports the growth of a domestic capitalist
class as one leg upon which the Bolivarian Revolution must walk for
the foreseeable future.

No Chavists these days, of course, openly argue that socialism for the
twenty-first century should depend upon capital. Rather, all insist
that the process at this point requires the Bolivarian Revolution to
tame private capital through "socialist conditionality"—i.e., by
establishing new ground rules as conditions under which private
capital can serve the revolution. In its best versions, this may be
seen as a process of transition, that process of making "despotic
inroads" and wresting, "by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie."
Certainly, measures such as opening the books, imposing workers'
councils with power, demanding accountability to communal councils,
and transforming the workday by introducing education for worker
management introduce an alien logic into capitalism—the logic of new
socialist productive relations within capitalist firms.

However, the lack of clarity as to the nature of those ground rules
means that mixed signals are being sent out. The "realistic" message
that Venezuela is likely to have a "mixed economy" for a long time,
that there is a place for private capital in the Bolivarian
Revolution, and that a sufficient condition for access to state
business and state credit is a commitment by capital to the interests
of communities and workers has brought with it the formation of
organizations such as Conseven, the "Confederation of Socialist
Industrialists," and other private capitalist organizations busily
defining private capital as socialist property. "Productive
socialism," it is being said in meetings of "Chavist" capitalists
around the country, requires private capitalists as part of the
socialist model.

In this case, rather than the "elementary triangle" of socialism
(units of social property, organized by workers through social
production, for the satisfaction of communal needs), what is
strengthened is the capitalist triangle: private ownership of the
means of production, exploitation of wage laborers, for the purpose of
profits. However lofty the language of social responsibility, the
pursuit of profits dominates: commitment to the community becomes,
effectively, a tax, and worker participation becomes shares in the
company to induce workers to commit themselves to producing profits.
As may be seen from the disappointing experience of the EPS (which has
followed this pattern), capital accepts these constraints as
conditions in order to ensure its right to exploit and generate
profits until it is strong enough itself to impose capitalist
conditionality.

The Bolivarian Revolution, like all revolutionary processes, produces
its own potential gravediggers. To the extent that it fosters the
infection of the logic of capital, the Bolivarian Revolution does not
walk on two legs but, rather, has one leg walking backward. When we
acknowledge that this tendency is flourishing within the process and
add it to the continuing pattern of clientalism and corruption, the
remaining enclaves of old capitalist power (in banking,
import-processing, land-ownership, and the media), and the constant
presence and threat of U.S. imperialism, it is obvious that there are
formidable barriers to the struggle for socialism in Venezuela.

And, yet, it moves. The Bolivarian Revolution has driven beyond the
barriers constantly placed before it (and has itself developed
qualitatively in the process) precisely because of its dialectic
between leadership and the movement of masses. That is why the
development of the collective worker through the explosion of communal
power, the ideological campaign of Moral y Luces, and the mobilization
of a new party from below are essential for the next steps. The
support of masses and the continued willingness of the Bolivarian
leadership to move in rather than give in when capital goes on strike
(as it inevitably does) drives the revolution forward. As the response
to the recent attempt by capital to challenge price controls on food
(through manufactured shortages and sales above ceiling prices)
reveals, the dialectic of leadership and movement from below ensures
the deepening of this process—if you see the supermarkets speculating,
came the word from the government, the communal councils should take
them over and run them.

Going Beyond Fairness

What about the other new Latin American left governments? Are they
attacking capitalism as such? In some cases, there appears to be no
struggle at all. The Really Good Left is one that behaves. But where
there are indications of conflict, how do we distinguish between a
struggle for a new economic system and the struggle for fairness?

Those who defend the actions of other Latin American governments often
stress the correlation of forces preventing them (for the moment) from
making the despotic inroads against capital that they otherwise would
pursue. It is not an argument that can be dismissed a priori. There
may indeed be conditions which require a government to move slowly.
Yet, the central question has never been about pace but direction. Are
the actions undertaken those which help to reveal the nature of
capital, attack it ideologically, and mobilize the working
classes—increasing their capacities and powers? Or, do they discipline
and demobilize social movements, mystify capital through lack of
transparency, and use the state to enforce on behalf of capital
(rather than use the state to make those inroads—however "economically
insufficient and untenable" they may appear)?

The issue, in short, is not whether these governments begin by
struggling for fairness. Recall that the Bolivarian Revolution began
as a Good Left (although one with a bit of an attitude). And, while
its initial reforms did not go beyond capitalism, they nevertheless
set in motion very substantial changes. This is a phenomenon familiar
in chaos theory—slight changes in initial conditions can produce
dramatic results.

What produced those results? Partly it was the persistence of dismal
poverty, inequality, high unemployment, and exclusion which
characterizes many Latin American countries and indeed countries
around the world. Partly it was the arrogance of the privileged and
parasitic oligarchy—again not unique to Venezuela. What revealed the
fragility of these initial conditions and determined the trajectory of
the Bolivarian Revolution was the nature of the struggle to change
things—a struggle which, even though bourgeois-democratic in its
social content, was revolutionary; it was revolutionary because it
combined masses prepared to struggle and a leadership which urged the
masses forward.

In a relatively short time, the Bolivarian Revolution has come a long
way. It still faces many problems, and its success will only occur as
the result of struggle—not only a struggle against U.S. imperialism,
the champion of barbarism around the world, which is threatened by any
suggestion that there is an alternative to its rule; and, not only
against the domestic oligarchy with its capitalist enclaves in the
mass media, banks, processing sectors, and the latifundia. The really
difficult struggle, I've argued, is within the Bolivarian Revolution
itself—in the divergence between a would-be new Bolivarian oligarchy
and the masses of excluded and exploited.

These are struggles that all Latin America faces. As I concluded in
Build it Now, "every place these struggles proceed, though, will make
it easier for those who have gone before and those yet to come."
Venezuela's lesson needs to be understood and communicated widely: its
focus upon human development and revolutionary practice, its missions
in education and health, and its creation of communal councils as the
basis for a revolutionary democratic state cannot help but inspire
masses elsewhere and create the condition for a revolutionary
leadership to emerge. The real lesson of the Bolivarian Revolution,
though, is what can happen when there is a dialectic of masses which
understand that there is an alternative and a revolutionary leadership
prepared to move in rather than give in.

Some will call that populism. But, I call it the really Bad Left.

Michael A. Lebowitz is author of Beyond Capital: Marx's Political
Economy of the Working Class (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), Build It Now:
Socialism for the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2006),
and The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (Monthly Review
Press, forthcoming in 2008). Portions of this essay were presented as
"Going Beyond Survival: Making the Social Economy a Real Alternative"
at the Fourth International Meeting of the Solidarity Economy, July
21–23, 2006, at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
--
Yoshie