[R-G] Socialism seems to be working in Venezuela

[Anthony Fenton]

Socialism seems to be working in Venezuela

Peter Phillips • published January 12, 2009 12:15 am
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200990105061

Democracy from the bottom is evolving as a ten-year social revolution  
in Venezuela. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party  
of Venezuela ((PSUV) gained over one and a half million voters in the  
November 23, elections. "It was a wonderful victory," said Professor  
Carmen Carrero with the Communications Studies Department of the  
Bolivarian University in Caracas. "We won 81% of the city mayor  
positions and seventeen of twenty-three of the state governors,"  
Carrero reported.
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The Bolivarian University is housed in the former oil ministry  
building and now serves 8,000 students throughout Venezuela. The  
University, (Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela) is symbolic of the  
democratic socialist changes occurring throughout the country. Before  
the election of Chavez in 1998, college attendance was primarily for  
the rich. Today over one million eight hundred thousand students  
attend college, three times the rate ten years ago. "Our university  
was established to resist domination and imperialism," reported  
Marlene Yadira Cordova, Principal (president) in an interview November  
10. "We are a university where we have a vision of life that the  
oppressed people have a place on this planet," declared Principal  
Cardova.

The enthusiasm for learning and serious-thoughtful questions asked by  
students I saw that day was certainly representative of a belief in  
potential of positive social change for human betterment. The  
University offers a fully staffed free health care clinic, zero  
tuition, and basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all  
paid for by the oil revenues now being democratically shared with the  
people.

Bottom up democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community  
councils elected in every neighborhood in the country. "We establish  
the priority needs of our area," reported community council  
spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the neighborhood council in the  
barrio Bombilla area of western Caracas. I interviewed Carmon while  
visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station—one of thirty-four  
locally controlled community television stations and four hundred  
radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. Community  
radio, TV and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they  
describe the viewers/listeners as the "users" of media instead of the  
passive audiences.

Democratic socialism means health care, jobs, food, and security, in  
neighborhoods where in many cases nothing but absolute poverty existed  
ten years ago. With unemployment down to a US level, sharing the  
wealth has taken real meaning in Venezuela. Despite a 50% increases in  
the prices of food last year, local Mercals offer government  
subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat, powered milk at 30-50% off  
market. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local communal banks with a  
$1.6 billion dollar budget offering neighborhood-based micro-financing  
loans for home improvements, small businesses, and personal emergencies.

"We have moved from a time of disdain [pre-revolution—when the upper  
classes saw working people as less than human] to a time of  
adjustment," proclaimed Gallo Mora Witt, Ecuador’s minister of Culture  
at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Book Fair in  
Caracas on November 7. Venezuela’s Minister of Culture, Hector Soto  
added, "we try not to leave anyone out… before the revolution the  
elites published only 60-80 books a year, we will publish 1,200  
Venezuelan authors this year…the book will never stop being the  
important tool for cultural feelings." In fact, some twenty-five  
million books—classics by Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes along  
with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George Bush—were published in 2008 and  
are being distributed to the community councils nationwide.

In Venezuela the corporate media are still owned by the elites. The  
five major TV networks, and nine of the ten major newspapers maintain  
a continuing media effort to undermine Chavez. But despite the  
corporate media and continuing US taxpayer financial support to anti- 
Chavez opposition institutions from USAID and National Endowment for  
Democracy ($20 million annually), two-thirds of the people in  
Venezuela continue to support him and the United Socialist Party. The  
democracies of South America are realizing that the neo-liberal  
formulas for capitalism are not working for the people and that new  
forms of resource allocation are necessary for human betterment. It is  
a learning process for all involved and certainly a democratic effort  
from the bottom up.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University  
and director of Project Censored. The Censored 2009 yearbook has just  
been released in Spanish at the 2008 International book fair in  
Caracas. This column was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University  
and director of Project Censored. The Censored 2009 yearbook has just  
been released in Spanish at the 2008 International book fair in  
Caracas. This column was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org.