Source URL = http://www.620ktar.com/?nid=46&sid=981761

October 29th, 2008 @ 1:51pm
Associated Press Writer

EL SOMBRERO, Venezuela (AP) - Chinese and Venezuelan scientists hovered over radar screens, a Russian combat jet flew overhead and satellite dishes tilted toward the skies as Venezuela tracked the launch of its first satellite on Wednesday.

President Hugo Chavez has increasingly turned toward the East for help in technological development, and his latest endeavor _ at a cost of some $406 million _ will help him spread his revolutionary message across Latin America.

A rocket launched from China's western Sichuan province carried the 5.1-ton satellite into space and it is supposed to reach its final orbit 21,900 miles
(36,500 kilometers) above the earth next week.

It will begin carrying radio, television and other data transmissions in early 2009 after three months of tests.

Chavez watched the launch by television with Bolivian President Evo Morales at an observation center just south of Venezuela's capital.

"This is a satellite for freedom," Chavez said in a nationally televised address following the launch.

The Simon Bolivar Satellite _ named after the Latin American independence hero _ is part of the Venezuelan leader's drive for technological independence
from the U.S. and tighter ties with Latin America.

The satellite could potentially serve military purposes such as listening in on telephone conversations, but Venezuelan officials insist their intentions
are peaceful.

After rejecting offers from France and Russia to build the satellite, Chavez turned to China in 2004. The socialist leader has been building up Venezuela's
military and its technology with help from Russia, China and Iran.

Information Minister Andres Izarra said the satellite will help expand the reach of the Caracas-based Telesur television network, which is financed mostly by Venezuela.

Uruguay joined Venezuela in the project, donating an orbit to which it has rights in exchange for 10 percent of the satellite's transmission capacity.
"The agreement yields great benefits to Uruguay, which does not have the resources to make the investment, and for Venezuela, which does not have an orbit at its disposition," Science Minister Nuris Orihuela told The Associated Press.

With an estimated life of 15 years, the satellite will bring telecommunications coverage to a rugged part of southeastern Venezuela where land lines are difficult and costly to build and maintain.

Brazil and Argentina are the only other South American nations with their own satellites. Venezuela plans another satellite launch in 2013. No Trackbacks

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Source URL = http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19762.htm

" -- -Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez remains the world’s leading secular, democratically elected political leader who has consistently and publicly opposed imperialist wars in the Middle East, attacked extra territorial intervention and US and European Union complicity in kidnapping and torture. Venezuela plays the major role in sharply reducing the price of oil for the poorest countries in the Caribbean region and Central America, thus substantially aiding them in their balance of payments, without attaching any ‘strings’ to this vital assistance. Venezuela has been in the forefront in supporting free elections and opposing human right abuses in the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia by pro-US client regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. No other country in the Americas has done more to break down the racial barriers to social mobility and the acquisition of land for Afro-Latin and Indio Americans.
President Chavez has been on the cutting edge of efforts toward greater Latin American integration – despite opposition from the United States and several regional regimes, who have opted for bilateral free trade agreements with the US.

Even more significant, President Chavez is the only elected president to reverse a US backed military coup (in 48 hours) and defeat a (US-backed) bosses’ lockout, and return the economy to double-digit growth over the subsequent 4 years.
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President Chavez is the only elected leader in the history of Latin America to successfully win eleven straight electoral contests against US-financed political parties and almost the entire private mass media over a nine-year period. Finally President Chavez is the only leader in the last half-century who came within 1% of having a popular referendum for a ‘socialist transformation’ approved, a particularly surprising result in a country in which less than 30% of the work force is made up of peasants and factory workers.

President Chavez has drastically reduced long-term poverty faster than any regime in the region,
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demonstrating that a nationalist-welfare regime is much more effective in ending endemic social ills than its neo liberal counterparts. A rigorous, empirical study of the socio-economic performance of the Chavez government demonstrates its success in a whole series of indicators after the defeat of the counter-revolutionary coup and lockout and after the nationalization of petroleum (2003).

GDP has grown by more than 87% with only a small part of the growth being in oil. The poverty rate has been cut in half (from 54% in 2003 at the height of the bosses’ lockout to 27% in 2007; and extreme poverty has been reduced from 43% in 1996 to 9% in 2007), and unemployment by more than half (from 17% in 1998 to 7% in 2007). The economy has created jobs at a rate nearly three times that of the United States during its most recent economic expansion. Accessible health care for the poor has been successfully expanded with the number of primary care physicians in the public sector increasing from 1,628 in 1998 to 19,571 by early 2007. About 40% of the population now has access to subsidized food. Access to education, especially higher education, has also been greatly expanded for poor families. Real (inflation adjusted) social spending per person has increased by more than 300%.
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His policies have once and for all refuted the notion that the competitive demands of ‘globalization’ (deep and extensive insertion in the world market) are incompatible with large-scale social welfare policies. Chavez has demonstrated that links to the world market are compatible with the construction of a more developed welfare state under a popularly-based government.

The large-scale, long-term practical accomplishments of the Chavez government, however have been overlooked by liberal and social democratic academics in Venezuela and their colleagues in the US and Europe, who prefer to criticize secondary institutional and policy weaknesses, failing to take into account the world-historic significance of the changes taking place in the context of a hostile, aggressively militarist-driven empire.
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No reasonable and rigorous contemporary analysis can seriously provide an accurate assessment of Venezuela while glossing over the tremendous accomplishments achieved during the Hugo Chavez presidency.

It is within the framework of Chavez’ innovative and courageous political-social breakthroughs that we should proceed to an analysis of the advances, contradictions and negative aspects of specific political, economic, social and cultural policies, practices and institutions.

The Advances and Limitations of Economic Policy

Venezuela has made tremendous advances in the economy since the failed coup of April 11, 2002 and the employers’ lockout of December 2002-February
2003, which led to a 24% decline in the GDP.
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Under President Chavez’ leadership and with favorable terms of trade, Venezuela grew by over 10% during the past 5 years, decreasing poverty levels from
over 50% to less than 28%, surpassing any country in the world in terms of the rate of poverty-reduction. The economy has, in contrast to the past, accumulated
over $35 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves despite a vast increase in social spending and has totally freed itself of dependence on the onerous terms imposed by the self-styled ‘international banks’ (IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank) by paying off its debt.
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The government has nationalized strategic enterprises in the oil and gas industries, steel, cement, food production and distribution, telecommunications and electricity industries. It has passed new excess profits taxes, doubling its revenues. It has signed new petroleum and gas joint ventures with over a dozen European, Asian and Latin American multinationals giving the Venezuelan state majority control. It has expropriated several million acres of uncultivated farm land from speculators and absentee owners and, more recently, an additional 32 under-producing plantations.
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The importance of these structural changes cannot be understated. In the first place they increased the capacity of the Chavez government to make or influence strategic decisions regarding investment, re-investment, pricing and marketing. The increase in state ownership increases the flow of revenues and profits into the federal treasury, enhancing financing of productive investments, social programs and downstream processing plants and services. The government is slowly diversifying its petroleum markets from a hostile adversary (the USA) to trade and investment with countries like China, Brazil, Iran and Russia, thus reducing Venezuela’s vulnerability to arbitrary economic boycotts.

The government has started a large-scale, long term project to diversify the economy, and especially to become food self-sufficient in staples like milk, meat, vegetables and poultry.
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Equally important investments in processing raw petroleum into value-added products like fertilizers and plastics are now operative, albeit at a slow
pace. New refineries are on schedule to substitute dependence on US based operations and to add value to their exports. New public transport systems are advancing as is visible in the new metro being built in Caracas, which will lessen the traffic jams and air pollution. Over 2.5 billion Strong Bolivars, the new Venezuelan currency (over $1 billion dollars) has been allocated in the form of incentives, credit and subsidies to promote the increase in agricultural production and processing.
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Investments in new lines of production linked to social programs are underway, including new enterprises manufacturing 15,000 prefabricated houses per year.
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Venezuela, like the rest of the world (China, EU, USA, Australia and so on) is deeply affected by inflation, especially of imported food. Inflation has escalated over the last 3 years rising from 14% in 2005, to 17% in 2006 and 22% in 2007, threatening to undermine the gains in living standards made over the last 5 years.
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Government attempts to impose price controls has had limited effect as big food producers have cut back on production, food distributors have decrease shipments and even hoarded essential goods and retail sellers have traded on the black market. On the surface, the problem is that consumer power has increased faster than productivity, increasing demand relative to supply. However, the deeper structural reason is the decline in capitalist investment in production and distribution – despite high profits. Many capitalist food producers and food processors have diverted their profits into investments in speculative activity, including imports of luxury goods and real estate where there is a higher rate of return. Some have lessened investment because of opposition to the government, others because of fears of agrarian reform, while all complain about ‘price controls’ leading to a ‘profit squeeze’. These complaints do not account for low productivity, which existed before price controls and continued even after the government lifted the controls. Inflation and the resultant negative impact is one of the principle reason for popular abstention during the December 2007 referendum and is the cause
of popular discontent today in Venezuela. Both the far right and the ultra-left (especially in some neighborhoods and trade unions) have been exploiting this discontent.

Inflation is one of the principle reasons for the decline of the popularity of various regimes (Left, Center and Right) throughout history in Europe, as well as in Latin America.
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In large part this is because the great majority of workers in Venezuela are self-employed and have no organization or wage and income indexes to keep
up with the rise in prices. In Venezuela, even the major industries, like petroleum, steel and aluminum, have ‘sub contracted’ most of their workers who
lack any power to negotiate for wage increases tied to inflation. Government subsidies and promotional incentives to industrial and agricultural capitalists
to promote productivity has led to increased profits – without commensurate increases in wage income. During the period from February to April 2008, the state intervened directly in the productive process, through the takeover of unproductive companies and farms. New worker and peasant demands include ‘opening the books’ of the profitable firms and farms in pursuit of wage and collective bargaining negotiations, re-opening closed firms and investments in new public enterprises. Chavez recognized that the problem of production (supply) will continue to lead to too many Bolivars chasing too few consumer goods – inflation, discontent and political vulnerability – unless he accelerates the nationalization process and deepens public ownership.

To effectively intervene and take control of strategic economic sectors, the government requires working class organizations, cadres and leaders able to co-manage the enterprises, ‘opening the books’ on investments, profits and wages and establish work discipline. Under present capital-labor relations, capitalists totally neglect investment in technology and innovations, employ temporary or contingent workers under precarious conditions and depend on the Venezuelan state to enforce harsh labor codes.

In advancing the Bolivarian road to Socialism, President Chavez has to deal with incompetent and reactionary officials in his own government. For example, prior to Chavez’ nationalization of the major steer multinational SIDOR, the Minister of Labor, an incompetent and inexperienced functionary with no prior
relation to labor, sided with the company and approved of the Governor of the state of Bolivar in calling out the National Guard to break the strike. Throughout 2007-2008, management of SIDOR refused to negotiate in good faith with the unions, which provoked strikes in January in February and March 2008. The intransigence of the steel bosses increased the militancy of the workers and led to Chavez’ intervention. In defense of his order to nationalize, Chavez cited the positive role of the steel workers in opposing the coup, the ‘slave-like’ work conditions and the export strategies, which denied the domestic construction industry the steel it needed for high priority homebuilding. He called on the nationalized industry to be run under ‘workers councils’ in a efficient and productive manner.
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Government repression of strikes provoked regional union solidarity and worker-led marches against the National Guard and calls for the resignation of the ineffective Labor Minister. After Chavez nationalized steel, trade unions from major industrial sectors met to coordinate support for President Chavez and press for further moves toward public ownership. Equally ominous, brutality and excess use of force ordered by the general in charge of the National Guard is indicative of a profoundly anti-working class, pro-big business bias of the Guard officers, a potentially dangerous threat to the Chavez government in the future.
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By confronting the problem of inflation and the overvalued, strong Venezuelan Bolivar Chavez is dealing with an issue that is real and deeply felt by most workers. Failure by the government to deal with its structural roots makes it vulnerable to demagogic appeals by the right and the sectarian ultra-left and its principle beneficiary, the US imperialism.

New public investments in fertilizer plants, prefabricated housing, positive measures reducing inflation by one third in the first 2 months of 2008 and policies sharply increasing food supply by 20% indicate that the Chavez government is beginning to confront some of the economy’s weak points. In visits to several public and private retail markets during the last part of February and early March, we did not find any shortages of essential items, contrary to the opposition, and the US and European media reports. An opposition organized protest of shortages of liquid gas in Catia (a popular neighborhood in Caracas) was front-page news (with blown-up photos) in the opposition daily, El Universal, but with no follow up reports when the government sent in supplies the next day.
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By the beginning of 2008, public spending, which is not always efficiently invested or entirely free of corruption, reduced unemployment 8.5%, the lowest in decades.
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However a government goal of 5.5% seems over optimistic, especially in light of the fall-out from the US recession and decline in European demand.

The big challenge to Chavez’ economic policy in 2008, a year of important state and local elections in November, is to ensure that the inevitable mid-year increase in public spending is directed toward productive investments and not to populist short-term programs, which will ignite another wave of inflation. We can expect that, as the elections approach, the capitalist class will once again resort to ‘planned shortages’, distribution blockages, as well as other politically induced economic problems in order to blame and discredit the government. Unless the government reduces its reliance on the private sector
for investments, employment, production, finance and distribution, they will be forced into taking costly and improvised measures to avoid electoral losses and popular abstention. The indivisible ties between private business control over strategic economic decisions and their paramount interest in pursuing political measures designed to undermine the Chavez government, means that the government will remain under constant threat unless it takes control of the commanding heights of the economy. In recognition of those structural factors Chavez has announced plans to nationalize strategic sectors. The Chavez government has become pro-active, anticipating shocks from the economic elite and displacing them from power. Depending on the private sector will force the government to continue to be ‘reactive’, improvising responses to economic attacks during and after the fact and suffering the negative political consequences.

Politics: The Chavistas Strike Back

During the latter half of 2007, in the run-up to the referendum, and early 2008, the rightwing offensive (aided by the ultra-left) took hold and put the government on the defensive. Early March 2008, the pro-Chavez forces regrouped and launched a new political party – The Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV) at a national convention in Maracaibo. In response to the defeat of the referendum, President Chavez called on his supporters to engage in a ‘Three R’s Campaign’: Review, Rectify and Re-launch. This initiative has led to the election of new party leaders, a decline in old guard paternalistic bosses in the leadership of the PSUV, a rejection of sectarianism toward other pro-Chavez parties and a revitalization of grass roots activism.
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The party is intended to oversee the mobilization of the Chavez supporters and to educate and organize potential working and lower middle class constituents.
The party is mandated to evaluate, criticize and correct the implementation of policies by local officials and engage the mass social movements in common struggle. To succeed the party must organize local popular power to counter-act corrupt Chavez-affiliated as well as opposition policy-makers, press local demands and initiatives, counter rightwing infiltration of neighborhoods by Colombian and local terrorists and turn out the vote at election time.

For the PSUV to succeed as a political organization it needs to take power away from the local clientelistic political machines built around some of the state, regional and municipal level Chavista officials. It needs to overcome the tendency to appoint leaders and candidates from above and to deepen rank and file control over decisions and leaders.
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Even during the founding congress of the PSUV several delegations criticized the process of electing the national leadership – for neglecting popular representation and overloading it with much criticized political officials.
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Active communal councils under democratic control have been effective in giving voice and representation to a large number of urban and poor neighborhoods. They have secured popular loyalty and support wherever they have delivered needed services and led struggles against incompetent or recalcitrant Chavista
officials.

Violence, crime and personal insecurity are major issues for most poor and lower middle class supporters of the Chavez government and the police are viewed
as ineffective reducing crime and securing their neighborhoods and as, at times, complicit with the gangsters.
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Proposals by the government for greater cooperation between neighborhood committees and the police in identifying criminals have had little effect. This
is in part because police have shown little interest in developing on-the-ground, day-by-day relations in the poorer barrios, which they tend to view as
‘criminal breeding grounds’.

Armed gangs controlling the poor neighborhoods commit most of the crime. Local residents fear retaliation if they cooperate or worse, they think that the
police are complicit with the criminals. Even more seriously reports from reliable intelligence sources have identified large-scale infiltration of Colombian
death squad narco traffickers who combine drugs peddling and rightwing organizing, posing a double threat to local and national security. While the government has taken notice of the general problem of individual insecurity and the specific problem of narco-political infiltration, no national plan of action has yet been put into practice, apart from periodic routine round-ups of low-level common criminals.
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Venezuela should learn from the example of Cuba, which has had successful crime fighting and anti-terrorist programs for decades organized around a tight network of local ‘committees to defend the revolution’ and backed by a politically trained rapid action internal security force and an efficient judiciary.
Individual security and political freedom depends on the collective knowledge of crime groups’ infiltration and the courage of local committees and individuals. Their cooperation requires trust in the integrity, respect and political loyalty of the internal security forces. Their intelligence, evidence collection and testimony depend on the protection of local citizens by the internal security forces against gangster retaliation.

A new type of ‘police official’ needs to be created who does not view the neighborhood and its committees as hostile territory – they must live and identify with the people they are paid to protect. To be effective at the local level, the Chavez government must display exemplary behavior at the national level:
It must prosecute and jail criminals and not grant amnesty or give light sentences to coup-makers and economic saboteurs, as Chavez did in early 2008. The failure of the current Attorney General to pursue the murderers of her predecessor, Attorney General Danilo Anderson, was not only a shameful act but set an example of incompetent and feeble law enforcement which does not create confidence in the will of the state to fight political assassins.
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‘Popular power’ will only become meaningful to the mass of the poor when they feel secure enough to walk their streets without assaults and intimidation, when the gangs no longer break into homes and local stores, and when armed narco-traffickers no longer flaunt the law. In Venezuela, the struggle against the oligarchs, George Bush and Colombia’s Uribe begins with a community-based war against local criminals, including a comprehensive tactical and strategic sweep of known criminal gangs followed by exemplary punishment for those convicted of terrorizing the residents. This is one way to make the government respected at the grass roots level and to re-assert and make operative the term popular sovereignty. In every barrio today it is not only the ‘right wing
NGO’s’, which challenge Chavez’ authority, it is the armed criminal elements, increasingly linked with reactionary political groups. To successfully confront the external threats, it is incumbent on the government to defeat the gangsters and narco-traffickers that represent a real obstacle to mass mobilization
in time of a national emergency, like a new coup attempt.

Failures by some middle level Chavez officials to ensure security and resolve local problems have eroded popular support for political incumbents. The majority of local residents, popular leaders and activists still voice support for President Chavez even as they are critical of the ‘people around
him’, ‘his advisers’, and ‘the opportunists’.
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How this will play out in the November election is not totally clear. But unless fundamental changes take place in candidates and policies, it is likely
that the opposition will increase their current minimal representation in state and municipal governments.

Social and Cultural Advances and Contradictions

Venezuela, under the leadership of President Chavez, has made unprecedented social and cultural changes benefiting the broad majority of the urban and rural poor, and working and lower middle classes. Nine new Bolivarian universities and dozens of technical schools have been established with
over 200,000 students.
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Over 2.5 million books, pamphlets and journals have been published by the new state-financed publishing houses, including novels, technical books, poetry, history, social research, natural sciences, medical and scientific texts.
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Two major television studios and communitarian-based TV stations provide international, national and local news coverage that challenges opposition and US-based (CNN) anti-government propaganda. A major news daily, Vea, and several monthly and weekly magazines debate and promote pro-Chavez politics.
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Several government-funded missions, composed of tens of thousands of young volunteers, have reduced urban and (to a lesser degree) rural illiteracy, extended health coverage, while increasing local participation and organization in the urban ‘ranchos’ or shantytowns. Major cultural events, including musical, theater and dance groups regularly perform in working class neighborhoods. The Ministry of Culture and Popular Power has initiated a vast number of overseas and local programs involving the Caribbean and Latin American countries.
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Sports programs, with the aid of Cuban trainers, have received large scale government funding for physical infrastructure (gymnasiums, playing fields, uniforms and professional trainers) and have vastly increased the number of athletes among the urban poor. Major funding to defend and promote indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan culture is in the works, and some movement to ‘affirmative action’ is envisioned, though cultural representation in fields other than
sports, music and dance is still quite limited. There is no question that Venezuela is going through a ‘Cultural Revolution’ – reconstructing and recovering its popular, historical and nationalist roots buried below the frivolous and imitative artifacts of a century of culturally colonized oligarchs and their middle class followers.

Cultural Contradictions and Challenges

While the Venezuelan cultural reformation has made a massive impact in raising educational and cultural levels, it has not yet decisively displaced the cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie and US imperialism. The latter still holds sway over the vast majority of the upper and affluent middle class professionals, Central University academics and students, and important sectors of the public and especially private professional groups (doctors, lawyers, publicists, engineers etc). Despite substantial pay increases and additional stipends, these middle class professionals still cling to their reactionary beliefs in a fit of ‘status panic’.

President Chavez, speaking at the first graduating class of the new inclusive (open admission) Venezuelan Bolivarian University, cited a doctoral thesis
which found that 94% of students at the tax-payer funded elite ‘public’ university, Venezuelan Central University (UCV), were from the upper and middle class, while 99% of the students at the private Simon Bolivar University (SBU) were from the same privileged classes. What was especially disturbing was the increasingly exclusive and privileged nature of the UCV and SBU: in 1981 the UCV enrolled 21% from the lower classes compared to 6.5% in 2000; the SBU went from 13% to 1% in the same period. To open higher education to the working class, the poor and the peasants, the Chavez government has begun
the construction of 29 public universities, upgrading 29 vocational-technical schools into Polytechnic Universities, and increasing the number of full scholarships from 6,000 to 10,000.

While the vast number of lower class neighborhoods and individuals have benefited from state health, educational and cultural programs, popular education in creating collective solidarity and class consciousness still has had a limited impact. Some individuals from the lower class who had set up economic cooperatives were either incapable of operating them or absconded with state funds. Similar theft and corruption afflicted some of the ‘missions’, where poor accounting practices facilitated waste and losses. Populist paternalism and official negligence (and corruption) weakened the effort to create a
new nationalist class-consciousness linked to a new popular hegemony. On the other hand, President Chavez’ intervention in nationalizing the steel industry
during the labor-capital dispute heightened class-consciousness and factory worker identification with the Venezuelan road to socialism.

Over the past 5 years the state-financed television programs have greatly improved in terms of their professionalism and programming. They
still have not fully overcome the continued hegemonic hold of the bourgeois media over sectors of the popular majority. In terms of entertainment and
breaking news coverage, especially during the run-up and the day of the December 2, 2007 referendum, the bourgeois media dominated public attention due, in large part, to the absence of pro-government media coverage.

One of the least effective pro-government print media is the daily newspaper Vea, which is read by few people because of its poor news reporting (big headlines, no content) and mediocre columns and essays. The Minister of Culture and Popular Power told me that substantial changes would soon take place.
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The wide reaching cultural programs have improved cultural levels but has not led to the growth of mass Chavista cultural movements. Less than 10% of
the students at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) are active members of Chavista student movements or affiliated organizations (according to a Chavista student leader), despite significant improvements in university salaries and facilities.
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Apparently family and class identification takes precedence over cultural egalitarianism. The vast majority of students and professors at the UCV are
apolitical, indifferent or into strictly vocational training and individual mobility. An active minority supports opposition groups; some are linked to US universities and CIA-funded ‘leadership training’ programs while small Trotskyist, Maoist and other sects agitate against the government.

The emergence of the autonomous pro-Chavez communal councils, linked to the Ministry of Culture and Popular Power, is probably the most effective
counter-hegemonic movement. The political and social activities of party activists and leaders of the PSUV can succeed in creating a new class consciousness so long as they involve the masses in solving their own practical problems and assume local responsibility for their actions. Chavista cadres, which act paternally, create patron-client consciousness vulnerable to quick switches to oligarchic client relations. The key contradiction in the cultural reformation is in the ‘middle class’ Chavista configuration which carries over its paternal orientation in implementing its ‘class conscious programs to the popular classes.

There is a great need for recruitment and education of young local cadres from the barrios, who speak the language of the people and have the class bonds to integrate the masses into a nationalist and socialist cultural-social program. The government’s cultural and popular power movement is a formidable force but it faces tenacious opposition from the virulent and disreputable mass media aligned with the oligarchy. As the Venezuelan process moves toward egalitarian socialist values, it faces the more subtle but more insidious opposition of middle class students, professors and professionals
who in the name of ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘pluralism’ seek to destroy cultural class solidarity. In other words, we have a struggle between the progressive minority from the middle class in the government against the majority of reactionary liberal middle class individuals embedded in academic institutions
and in the community-based NGO’s. Only by gaining the support of the people outside the middle class, that is, the radical and exploited popular classes,
can the cultural reformists in the Culture Ministry create a dominant popular hegemony.

Social Change: the Struggle of Popular Social Movements versus the Reactionary Middle Class Movements

To discuss the highly polarized social confrontation between the pro-Chavez popular movements and the US-backed oligarch-supported middle class
movements, it is important to contextualize the social, political and economic relations, which preceded the ascendancy of the Chavez government. The
United States was the key determinant of the economic conditions and the principle point of reference of Venezuela’s oligarchy and middle class. US-Venezuelan
relations were based on US hegemony in all spheres – from oil to consumerism, from sports to life style, from bank accounts to marriage partners. The role models and life styles of the Venezuelan middle class were found in the upscale Miami suburbs, shopping malls, condos and financial services. The affluent classes were upper class consumers; they never possessed a national entrepreneurial vocation.

The oil contracts between US and European firms and the PDVSA were among the most lucrative and favorable joint ventures in the world. They
included negligible tax and royalty payments and long term contracts to exploit one of the biggest petroleum sites in the world (the Orinoco ‘tar belt’).
The entire executive leadership of what was formally described as a ‘state enterprise’ was heavily engaged in dubious overseas investments with heavy overhead costs, which disguised what was really executive pillage and extensive cost overruns, that is, massive sustained corruption.
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From the senior oil executives, the pillaged oil wealth flowed to the upper middle class, lawyers, consultants, publicists, media and conglomerate directors, a small army of upscale boutique retailers, real estate speculators and their political retainers and their entourage among middle level employees, accountants, military officials, police chiefs and subsidized academic advisers. All of these ‘beneficiaries’ of the oil pillage banked their money in US banks, especially in Miami, or invested it in US banks, bonds and real estate. In a word, Venezuela was a model case of a rentier-bureaucratic ruling class profoundly integrated into the US circuits of petroleum-investment-finance. Systematically, culturally and ideologically they saw themselves as subordinate players in the US ‘free trade-free market’ scheme of things. Chavez’ assertions of sovereignty and his policies re nationalizing Venezuelan resources were seen as direct threats to the upper-middle class’ essential ties to the US, and to their visions of a ‘Miami’ life style.

This deep subordinated integration and the colonized middle class values and interests that accompanied it, was deeply shaken by the crash in the Venezuelan economy throughout the 1980’s and 1990’. Emigration and relative impoverishment of a wide swath of public employees, professionals and previously better-paid workers seemed to ‘radicalize’ them or create widespread malaise. The profound downward mobility of the impoverished working class and lower-middle class, as well as professionals, led to the discredit of the endemically corrupt leaders of the two major political parties, mass urban riots, strikes
and public support for an aborted Chavez-led military uprising (1992). These events led to his subsequent election (1998) and the approval of the referendum authorizing the writing of a new, more profoundly democratic constitution. Yet the middle class rebellion and even protest vote in favor of Chavez, was not accompanied by any change in political ideology or basic values. They saw Chavez as a stepladder to overcome their diminished status, and paradoxically, to refinance their ‘Miami’ life-style, and gain access to the US consumer market.

Time and circumstance would demonstrate that when push came to shove, in November 2001-April 2002, when the US confronted and was complicit in the short-lived, but failed coup, the bulk of the middle class backed the US-Venezuelan elite.
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The US-backed coup was a direct response to President Chavez’ refusal to support the White House-Zionist orchestrated ‘War on Terror’. Chavez declared,
‘You don’t fight terror with terror’ in answer to President Bush’s post-September 11, 2001 call to arms against Afghanistan. This affirmed Chavez’ principled defense of the rights of self-determination and his unwavering stand against colonial wars. US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Mark Grossman personally led an unsuccessful mission to Caracas in the fall of 2001 to pressure Chavez to back down.
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Chavez was the only president in the world prepared to stand up to the new militarist Bush doctrine and thus was designated an enemy. Even worse, from the point of view of the Bush Administration, President Chavez’ nationalist policies represented an alternative in Latin America at a time (2000-2003) when mass insurrections, popular uprisings and the collapse of pro-US client rulers (Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia) were constant front-page news.

In the run-up to the April 2002 coup, the policies of the Chavez government were extremely friendly to what are reputed to be ‘middle class’ values and interests -- in terms of democratic freedoms, incremental socio-economic reforms, orthodox fiscal policies and respect for foreign and national property holdings and capitalist labor relations. There were no objective material reasons for the middle classes or even the economic oligarchy to support the coup except for the fact that their status, consumerist dreams, life style and economic investments were closely linked with the United States. In a word,
the US exercised near complete hegemony over the Venezuelan upper and middle classes. As a result, its policies and its global interests became identified
as ‘the interests’ of the wealthy Venezuelans. Venezuelan elite identification with US policy was so strong that it compelled them to back a violent coup against their own democratically elected government. The Caracas ruling class supported the imposition of an ephemeral US-backed dictatorial political regime and an agenda, which, if fully implemented, would have reduced their access to oil revenues, and the trade and socio-economic benefits they had enjoyed under Chavez. The brief coup-junta proposed to withdraw from OPEC, weakening Venezuela’s bargaining position with the US and EU, expel over 20,000
Cuban physicians, nurses, dentists and other health workers who were providing services to over 2 million low income Venezuelans without receiving any reciprocal compensation from Washington.
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The economic elite and the middle class’s second attempt to overthrow President Chavez began in December 2002 with a bosses and oil executive lockout. This lasted until February 2003 and cost over $10 billion dollars in lost revenues, wages, salaries and profits.
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Many Venezuelan businessmen and women committed economic suicide in their zeal to destroy Chavez; unable to meet loan and rent payments, they went bankrupt.
Over 15,000 executives and professionals at the PDVSA, who actively promoted the strike and, in a fit of elite ‘Luddite’ folly, sabotaged the entire computerized
oil production process, were fired. The principal pro-US and long time CIA funded trade union confederation suffered a double defeat for their participation in the attempted coup and lockout, becoming an empty bureaucratic shell. The upper and middle classes ultimately became political and social losers in their failed attempts to recover their ‘privileged status’ and retain their ‘special relation’ with the US. While the privileged classes saw themselves as ‘downwardly mobile’ (an image which did not correspond with the reality of their new wealth especially during the commodity boom of 2004 2008), their frustrations and resentments festered and produced grotesque fantasies of their being ruled by a ‘brutal communist dictator’. In fact, under Chavez’ presidency (after 2003), they have enjoyed a rising standard of living, a mixed economy, bountiful consumer imports and were constantly entertained by the most creatively hysterical, rabidly anti-government private media in the entire hemisphere. The media propaganda fed their delusions of oppression. The hardcore privileged middle-class minority came out of their violent struggle against Chavez depleted of their military allies. Many of their leaders from the business associations and moribund trade union apparatus were briefly imprisoned, in exile or out of a job.

On the other hand, the pro-Chavez mass supporters who took to the streets in their millions and restored him to the Presidency and the workers who played
a major role in putting the oil industry back in production and the factories back to work, provided the basis for the creation of new mass popular movements.
Chavez never forgot their support during the emergency. One of the reasons he cited for nationalizing the steel industry was the support of the steel
workers in smashing the bosses’ lockout and keeping the factories in operation.

Venezuela is one of the few countries where both the Left and the Right have built mass social movements with the capacity to mobilize large numbers of people. It is also the country where these movements have passed through intense cyclical volatility. The tendency has been for organizations to emerge out of mass struggle with great promise and then fade after a ‘great event’ only to be replaced by another organized ‘movement’, which, in turn, retains some activists but fails to consolidate its mass base. In effect what has been occurring is largely sequential movements based on pre-existing class commitments which respond in moments of national crises and then return to everyday ‘local activities’ around family survival, consumer spending, home and neighborhood improvements. While this cycle of mobilization ‘ebb and flow’ is common everywhere, what is striking in Venezuela is the degree of engagement and withdrawal: the mass outpouring and the limited number of continuing activists.

Looking at the big picture over the past decade of President Chavez’s rule, there is no question that civil society activity is richer, more varied and
expressive than during any other government in the last sixty years.

Starting from the popular democratic restoration movement that ousted the short-lived military-civilian junta and returned Chavez to power, local community
based movements proliferated throughout the ranchos (slums) of the big cities, especially in Caracas. With the bosses lockout and actual sabotage, the factory and oil field workers and a loyal minority of technicians took the lead in the restoration of production and defeating the US backed executive elite. The direct action committees became the nuclei for the formation of communal councils, the launching of a new labor confederation (UNT), and new ‘electoral battalions’, which decisively defeated a referendum to oust Chavez. From these ‘defensive organizations’ sprang the idea (from the government) to organize production cooperatives and self-governing neighborhood councils to by-pass established regional and local officials. Peasant organizing grew and successfully pressured for the implementation of the land reform law of 2001. As the left organized, the right also turned to its ‘normal institutional base’ – FEDECAMARAS (the big business association), the cattle and large landowner organizations, the retailers and private professionals in the Chambers of Commerce and toward neighborhood organizations in the up-scale neighborhoods of the elite centered in Altimar and elsewhere. After suffering several demoralizing defeats, the right increasingly turned its attention toward US funding and training from NGO’s, like SUMATE, to penetrate lower class barriers
and exploit discontent and frustrations among the middle class university students whose street demonstrations became detonators of wider conflicts.
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