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Obituary: Hugo Chavez Frias, 1954-2013

Dave Stockton

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frías, President of Venezuela, finally succumbed to cancer at 4.25 local time on March 5, 2013.

There is an old Latin maxim, “Speak nothing but good of the dead.” Revolutionary Marxists scorn such piety. In the case of Hugo Chavez, we will leave that to professional flatterers of power, providing it is “anti-imperialist”, such as George Galloway. We prefer Trotsky’s dictum, “Always say what is” and will not change our tune on Chavez just because he has died.

Of course, the news will mean faces wreathed with smiles and smug satisfaction in the White House and Congress. From the first moment of his election, in 1999, Chavez was a sharp thorn in the side of the rulers of the USA as well as the wealthy business and landed elites across Latin America.

The repeated condemnations of Chavez by these gentlemen and ladies because he was a “dictator”, should provoke laughter, coming as it does from people who for decades helped to install and support the likes of Pinochet and Mubarak. The truth is that Chavez received repeated electoral endorsements from an outright majority of Venezuelans.

The reason is clear enough; his “Bolivarian Revolution” brought significant social reforms for the poor; a rarity indeed in our era, when “reform” has come to mean the exact opposite; the destruction of social welfare and public ownership in the interest of a tiny elite of bankers and billionaires.

For the huge numbers of poor, in a country rich in natural resources, whose elite never saw fit to share the country’s income with them, Chavez’ takeover of the oil wealth and his creation of “missiones”, which aimed at giving ordinary people quality healthcare, education, jobs, and access to culture, was the secret of his mass support. These reforms did, indeed, bring real improvements in living standards for millions – although we should not forget that a more than tenfold increase in oil prices for a large part of his presidency allowed their introduction without having to seize the wealth of the capitalist class as such.

Throughout Latin America, his stance of defiance to the USA roused an enthusiastic response and encouraged other governments, those of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and the Kirchners in Argentina, to take up a more independent stance vis-a vis the USA. In this, they were materially encouraged by oil-rich Venezuela as well as by the meteoric rise of China as a customer and investor. The days of total US domination of Latin America are over and, for years to come, Chavez will be associated with the heightened self-respect this has brought to the peoples of the continent.

But was Hugo Chavez a socialist? If by that is meant, Did he carry out social reforms? Did he make the rich squeal when he forced them to give up a bit of the space at the pigs’ trough of the national wealth? then, yes he was. In an era when Social Democracy and Labourism in Europe were represented by the likes of Blair and Schroeder, and Communism by Hu Jintao, looking for anyone in government who actually believed s/he was a socialist was like looking for a needle in a haystack. For this reason, many ordinary people, youth and working class militants, were excited by Chavez’ talk of 21st Century Socialism.

But all that glitters is not gold! Whilst Chavez talked much of socialism and revolution, what he decidedly did not mean was a revolution made by the working class itself against big capital both Venezuelan and foreign (whether that means North American, European or Chinese). His socialism was redistributionist alright, but it stopped well short of the ownership of the means of production.

Likewise, though he created a lightly armed popular militia in the aftermath of coup threats, his regime still rested on the monopoly of force remaining in the hands of the army and the police force. When workers took “unauthorised” action, that is, strikes and occupations, he was perfectly willing to use state forces to restore law and order and safeguard ownership.

In short, for all of his talk, his praise of Marx and Lenin, of Guevara, even of Leon Trotsky, for all of the popular committees and militias, and his claim that a socialist revolution was ongoing, Venezuela remains a capitalist country and the means of production remain in the hands of an exploiting class and a capitalist state.

So what is Chavismo? It is a 21st century version of Latin American left populism, an ideology and programme that seeks to improve the life of the poor without digging up the roots of capitalism; private ownership of all the large scale means of production and distribution.

In the 1930s, Trotsky called similar regimes “left-bonapartism”, or “bonapartism of a special type”. Normally, bonapartism, that is, a regime that rests to an important degree on the military but claims to be above the classes and ruling for the whole people, is a right wing phenomenon, crushing the workers’ organisations and struggles.

But, occasionally, it can take a nationalist, anti-imperialist, left form. This still means relying on the army but, rather than the high command drawn from the old elite, it means promoting the nationalistic colonels and junior officers. Above all, it means mobilising the masses, the workers, the peasants and the urban poor to defend the regime against the local elite and their imperialist backers. Usually, as with Chavez himself, such regimes are headed by a charismatic caudillo from humble origins; Chavez’s parents were poor rural schoolteachers.

Of course, imperialism and its agents in the local elite hate and detest such upstart figures, regarding them as “vulgar” and “disrespectful”. Hence, there were several plots and assassination attempts, the biggest being the coup of 2002, which was only reversed by an incredible mass mobilisation and a mutiny by the junior officers and the lower ranks of the army.

This genuine revolutionary response of the masses fractured and weakened the old state power and opened the way for Chavez’ Constituent Assembly and a new constitution that allowed major reforms. Because this broke the power of the old parliamentary cliques and the judiciary, both drawn from the elite, they, and other US backers, declared it a dictatorship.

Unfortunately, the prestige of Chavez, and the absence of a powerful independent workers’ party with a really anticapitalist programme, meant that the revolution did not move on to extirpate the roots of capitalism. The weakness of the Venezuelan revolution was its reliance on Chavez and the reformist straightjacket he imposed on it. Likewise, the socialist party he created, the PSUV, remained under bureaucratic control and all expressions of working class independence were repressed.

Internationalism is the litmus test of a truly revolutionary and socialist programme. Hugo Chavez laid claim to an international socialist policy, at one time even calling for the formation of a Fifth International and claiming adherence to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. In reality, however, his internationalism was little more than a realpolitik courting of various “anti-imperialist” regimes, that is, capitalist states in rivalry with the USA, as allies for Venezuela.

Thus, he wholeheartedly supported Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his repression of the green revolution and Muammar Gadaffi and his bloody attempts to crush the Libyan revolution. One of his last statements was in support of the Syrian butcher Bashar al Assad. “How can I not support the Assad government?” he asked. “It’s the legitimate government of Syria. Who should we be supporting, the terrorists?”

Will Chavismo and the Bolivarian revolution survive him? Certainly, the parties of the local elite and their backers in the White House will do all they can to take back the power they believe to be rightfully theirs and to reverse the reforms that have “ruined Venezuela”. Independent working class forces and revolutionary socialists should fight all such attempts in a united front with the Chavista forces.

But this does not mean they should endorse the rule of Maduro and the Bolivarian bureaucracy. It does mean doing all in their power to revive the mass mobilisations against the right and against capitalism and imperialism. Starting from defence of the gains made by the masses under Chavez, the struggle must become a genuine, self-organised, permanent revolution, aiming at working class power, expressed through workers’ and peasants’ councils.

Only such a development can fulfil the genuine and justified hopes and aspirations of the mass following of Hugo Chavez, whilst aiding them to shed the illusions in any great leader, alive or dead.

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