Over the last decade, 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country, settling in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. This is equivalent to 25% of the country’s 2014 population(30.19 million). In fact, the Venezuelan refugee crisis is the largest displacement of people in the world, topping war-ridden countries such as Syria and Ukraine.
The recent post-election protests, which have led to 750 arrests, showcase the political crisis that has rocked the country for years. But this and the mass emigration are ultimately expressions of the deep economic contradictions in Venezuela. In 2014, Venezuelan GDP per capita was US$14,000, competitive with major countries like Russia and Brazil. By this April, however, Venezuelan GDP per capita stood at a mere US$3,870, which puts it in the same league as Bolivia and Bangladesh. In the last period, these countries have experienced reactionary coup d’etats and revolutionary events. Likewise, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab has described the recent unrest as the seeds of a “civil war.”
Recent post-election protests, which have led to 750 arrests, showcase the political crisis that has rocked the country for years. / Image: Wikimedia Commons
So how did we get here? How did Venezuela become one of the poorest countries on the planet? Although there have been no formal wars or civil wars in Venezuela in the past decade, the Venezuelan Revolution—or rather, what late President Hugo Chavez declared the “Bolivarian” Revolution—has degenerated into a humanitarian crisis. Named after the 19th-century revolutionary Simón Bolivar, Chavez led the masses in a mass movement against the country’s corrupt oligarchy. At first, his program could be summed up simply as “against the old order.” But between his election in 1998 and his death in 2013, the revolution took on a life of its own.
Because Nicolás Maduro can claim a lineage to Chavez, the capitalist press likes to paint the pair as one and the same. For instance, CNN glibly writes:
Those of us who have been following Venezuela for decades have seen this movie before: a “sham” election to justify Maduro’s staying in power. Democracy has been gradually weakening in Venezuela over the last 25 years since the charismatic socialist leader Chavez rose to power in 1999.
But when Chavez won by 56% in the 1998 elections, he became the first president in a generation to earn real authority among the Venezuelan masses. His predecessor, for example, won a mere 30.46% in 1993. Chavez’s program was largely limited to drafting a new national constitution, which was overwhelmingly approved by the people in a 1999 referendum. The right to healthcare, employment at an adequate salary, rights for indigenous peoples, and more were granted straightaway.
Huge Chavez was the first president in a generation to earn real authority among the Venezuelan masses. / Image: Globovisión, Wikimedia Commons
The more Chavez’s presidency encouraged the masses—with “Bolivarian circles” mushrooming to organize workers, peasants, and the destitute—the more the Venezuelan oligarchy and their backers in Washington ramped up their campaign to oust him. In April 2002, the capitalists and landlords attempted a coup on the false premise that Chavez’s supporters had shot at unarmed, anti-government demonstrators. But after the illegal arrest of the president, the revolutionary masses poured onto the streets of Caracas, waving copies of the new Bolivarian constitution. There were so many people, especially women, that the police were merely pushed aside. A series of military units ultimately declared for Chavez, and under the pressure of the masses, the coup collapsed like a house of cards.
In December of that same year, the bosses persisted in their sabotage by trying to freeze the production of oil in the state-owned company, PDVSA. But the oil workers fought the bosses’ lockout by taking things into their own hands. The same happened at the SIDOR iron and steel mills. Lashed by the whip of counterrevolution, revolutionary consciousness and organization surged among the workers. They began to take over key enterprises, operating them without bosses or managers. This was the beginning of what communists call “workers’ control.” Incredibly, PDVSA was one of the fifty largest companies in the world at the time. By the new year, the workers had defeated the bosses’ lockout. However, despite some cosmetic changes, the old management system was reestablished—the very same one that started the lockout.
Bosses persisted in their sabotage by trying to freeze the production of oil in the state-owned company, PDVSA. / Image: Pedro Mª Jaureguibeitia, Flickr
This happened again and again during the Bolivarian Revolution. Industrial workers, peasants, and the urban poor moved heaven and earth to advance the revolution, but the conservative state bureaucracy was unwilling to break with capitalism. The same contradiction arose during the debates in the National Workers’ Union over workers’ co-management of industry. Revolutionary workers, inspired by the nationalization of one firm, called for the nationalization of others that refused to pay their workers. But the gains made by workers were undermined by state administrators, who correctly saw the workers’ actions as a threat to private property and bureaucratic privileges..
Ultimately, in Chavez’s struggle “against the old order,” he could rely on no one else but the workers and the poor. Unfortunately, neither he nor the Bolivarian Revolution went far enough. Instead of the halfway house of state intervention and regulated capitalism, what was needed was socialist economic planning and the expropriation of the major industries and banks. Under the pressure of events, Chavez moved with the masses and the left wing of the labor movement, and declared the need for “21st-century socialism.” But his government only expropriated 40 of the then 800 closed factories in the country. Likewise, the introduction of “Social Production Enterprises” turned out to be a long-term failure, because the government did not lay hold of the entire production process and consequently allowed for parasitic speculation that hurt workers and the poor. Chavez was certainly an honest and courageous revolutionary—but he was not a Marxist. To consolidate the revolution, the Venezuelan workers needed a mass communist party with a scientific program that could uproot the capitalist roots of the crisis.
Instead of the halfway house of state intervention and regulated capitalism, what was needed was socialist economic planning and the expropriation of the major industries and banks. / Image: Wilfredor, Wikimedia Commons
Instead, Chavez’s new party, the PSUV, was emptied of any democratic content from the moment it was established. Unlike Chavez himself, leaders like Maduro were opponents of workers’ control and socialist planning. Following Chavez’s death in 2013, the process of counterrevolution within the PSUV accelerated. Despite donning a Bolivarian sash, Maduro personified the counterrevolution. His government quickly made concessions to the Venezuelan oligarchy and US imperialism, sacked ministers like Jorge Giordani who upheld socialist planning, and silenced the left wing of the PSUV.
In recent years, his government has gutted the leadership of the Communist Party of Venezuela using the armed bodies of the state, replacing them with state-appointed stooges. This marks a qualitative difference from Chavez, who never used police or soldiers against the revolutionary masses or left-wing parties. Since 2014, Maduro and the PSUV gangsters have waged a one-sided civil war against the real defenders of the Bolivarian Revolution.
Despite donning a Bolivarian sash, Maduro personified the counterrevolution. / Image: Wilfredor, Wikimedia Commons
In the roughly 15 years the Bolivarian Revolution lasted, the masses won improved working conditions, land reform, and the most democratic constitution in Latin America. But Maduro’s government has since rolled back most of the revolution’s gains. His counterrevolutionary policies led inevitably to eventual electoral defeat, sparking anti-government protests in favor of María Corina Machado and her neoliberal accomplices, who would unleash the counterrevolution in full. Whether Maduro or Machado consolidate power, the Venezuelan working class will lose. This is why the RCA’s comrades in Venezuela are building a revolutionary communist alternative.