________________________
Editor:
The English in this sucked. I asked a friend with a facility in Spanish to help me “crack the code”. She helped me to put this into order.
BMD
“Made in socialism”… that slogan resonated a lot in Venezuela a few years ago. It was on chocolates, yoghurts, oils, posters, embedded in a heart logo, and the inevitable red five-pointed star. Later on, it became elusive, more exception than the rule… every ministry was “of the people’s power”, and each bakery or route began to be “socialist”. Chávez questioned it on national TV by saying that calling things “socialist” doesn’t make them socialist. If there was something he longed to build, it was a transition to 21st-century socialism. Chavismo must be socialist.
It wasn’t like that from the beginning, at least publicly, perhaps, because he hadn’t yet reached that conclusion. Or, it might’ve been because in the political arena the idea was to reach that conclusion collectively… for the people to move in that direction, developing the historical subject, the epicentre of politics, to create a desire for socialism, which Chávez mentioned for the first time in 2005. Until that moment, in his first writings… for example, the Blue Book… there were strong hints, combining and coming together. It was like the recovery of the betrayed independence project… Bolivarian popular nationalism. It was a vindication of the nation carried out by the humble, with a Latin American dimension… the ethical re-establishment of a devastated country plundered for decades by a corrupt political/business class. The tricolour flag, the red beret, the military authority… plebeian, national, and social liberation in the same movement. Those were converging lines of progress in a country in organic crisis, with the masses in a movement from the Caracazo in 1989 to the emergence of Chávez like a thunderbolt in 1992.
Socialist Roots
The issue… here we can trace socialist ideas before their announcement… was to build that project through the implementation of central mechanisms, spaces for the exercise of participatory democracy, multiplication of popular organisation, tests of parallel institutions articulated to the state, a mission, a confirmation, of a political subject able to face those tasks. The strategic centre of gravity was in the humble classes, the construction of a people’s power took different forms over the years. The state must regain power and regain the economy, and then transfer it to the organised people, who were in the process of learning how to exercise that power. It was a complex architecture, virtuous, possible, and necessary. The socialist scenario appeared before the announcement of the socialist character. It wasn’t about reforming the neoliberal order to stabilise a better-distributed capitalism, but about looking for ways to overcome the order of capital. Chávez explained:
This revolution raised the banner of socialism and that requires and demands much more than any other revolution. We could’ve stayed in a national revolution, but behind that often-undefined term are hidden statements that end up being reformist, they end up toeing the line.
The definition of 2005 coincides with the formulation of communal councils, followed by the communes. Chávez postulated a communal road to socialism, which meant building a new state based on the political, cultural, and economic power of the communes. He left it in writing… the bourgeois state had to be pulverised, and for that, he wrote a plan with steps. It meant building another, on a participatory and self-managed basis, in parallel to the democratisation of the inherited state, a key part of the analysis of Istvan Meszaros. He defined it as a socialism from below, endogenous.
State Socialism
The socialist proposal of Chávez was in tension with another idea, one not formulated openly. It can be summarised thusly. The central role should fall on the state as protector and actor/main subject of the process, forms of popular organisation should be subordinated to institutions and cover limited and controlled areas. The state power should make agreements with old-guard or emerging businessmen, to bet on the creation of a national bourgeoisie, whether external or from Chávez’s trusted political allies. A state socialism on the margins… with capitalism with redistribution of wealth, without removing capital’s foundations. You can ground this debate on concrete policies. This debate is what Chávez did on a national scale, in mass pedagogy, and in his cabinet. Maszaros said:
The measurement of socialist achievement is to what degree the measures adopted contribute actively to the constitution and consolidation of a deeply-rooted substantial democratic process, of social control and general self-management.
The way to build is different if the objective is efficient management of the state, or if, along with that, the advance is towards the recovery of power in the hands of organised communities and the implementation of a new state. The subject of the revolution isn’t a minister or a mayor, but the popular classes in the process of organisation within a power strategy. Chávez then raised a socialism of the 21st-century, communal, with the development of social forms of ownership over the means of production. He left years of trials in that direction, politically and economically, whose balances are still pending.
The various Chavismos in Chavismo watched that project… rather heterogeneous, and, since 2014, with an economy on the ropes. The revolution found itself at a crossroads, with two possible paths… one being a defensive and conservative response, with possible regressions of conquests, close to the historical vision of the community road. The other path was to deepen the changes initiated, with, for example, the “expansion of the fields of action and decision of the people’s power”. The two possibilities are guides to think about the predominant view of the interior of Chavismo… but which Chavismo? Some seem to have opted for the first option, strengthening the agreement with the business community and going back on the communal bet. This debate stirred up history in the present. The analysis, like the actors, has desires, interests, and class tensions. They coexist within the same Chavismo, which somehow stays united. Where is socialism? Expressed in specific experiences that carry power, in dispute as a project within Chavismo, and threatened by asphyxia imposed by a war of attrition and bureaucratic tendencies that disbelieve the historical subject and believe… what do they believe?
Chavismo will be socialist or it’ll cease to exist.
11 May 2018
Mario Teruggi
TeleSur
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Chavismo-Will-Be-Socialist-Or-It-Will-Cease-To-Exist-20180511-0008.html
Voices from Russia 
Chavismo Will Be Socialist or It’ll Cease to Exist
Tags: Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, Hugo Chávez Frías, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, Left, Left-wing, Left-wing politics, political commentary, politics, socialism, Socialist, Venezuela
________________________
Editor:
The English in this sucked. I asked a friend with a facility in Spanish to help me “crack the code”. She helped me to put this into order.
BMD
“Made in socialism”… that slogan resonated a lot in Venezuela a few years ago. It was on chocolates, yoghurts, oils, posters, embedded in a heart logo, and the inevitable red five-pointed star. Later on, it became elusive, more exception than the rule… every ministry was “of the people’s power”, and each bakery or route began to be “socialist”. Chávez questioned it on national TV by saying that calling things “socialist” doesn’t make them socialist. If there was something he longed to build, it was a transition to 21st-century socialism. Chavismo must be socialist.
It wasn’t like that from the beginning, at least publicly, perhaps, because he hadn’t yet reached that conclusion. Or, it might’ve been because in the political arena the idea was to reach that conclusion collectively… for the people to move in that direction, developing the historical subject, the epicentre of politics, to create a desire for socialism, which Chávez mentioned for the first time in 2005. Until that moment, in his first writings… for example, the Blue Book… there were strong hints, combining and coming together. It was like the recovery of the betrayed independence project… Bolivarian popular nationalism. It was a vindication of the nation carried out by the humble, with a Latin American dimension… the ethical re-establishment of a devastated country plundered for decades by a corrupt political/business class. The tricolour flag, the red beret, the military authority… plebeian, national, and social liberation in the same movement. Those were converging lines of progress in a country in organic crisis, with the masses in a movement from the Caracazo in 1989 to the emergence of Chávez like a thunderbolt in 1992.
Socialist Roots
The issue… here we can trace socialist ideas before their announcement… was to build that project through the implementation of central mechanisms, spaces for the exercise of participatory democracy, multiplication of popular organisation, tests of parallel institutions articulated to the state, a mission, a confirmation, of a political subject able to face those tasks. The strategic centre of gravity was in the humble classes, the construction of a people’s power took different forms over the years. The state must regain power and regain the economy, and then transfer it to the organised people, who were in the process of learning how to exercise that power. It was a complex architecture, virtuous, possible, and necessary. The socialist scenario appeared before the announcement of the socialist character. It wasn’t about reforming the neoliberal order to stabilise a better-distributed capitalism, but about looking for ways to overcome the order of capital. Chávez explained:
The definition of 2005 coincides with the formulation of communal councils, followed by the communes. Chávez postulated a communal road to socialism, which meant building a new state based on the political, cultural, and economic power of the communes. He left it in writing… the bourgeois state had to be pulverised, and for that, he wrote a plan with steps. It meant building another, on a participatory and self-managed basis, in parallel to the democratisation of the inherited state, a key part of the analysis of Istvan Meszaros. He defined it as a socialism from below, endogenous.
State Socialism
The socialist proposal of Chávez was in tension with another idea, one not formulated openly. It can be summarised thusly. The central role should fall on the state as protector and actor/main subject of the process, forms of popular organisation should be subordinated to institutions and cover limited and controlled areas. The state power should make agreements with old-guard or emerging businessmen, to bet on the creation of a national bourgeoisie, whether external or from Chávez’s trusted political allies. A state socialism on the margins… with capitalism with redistribution of wealth, without removing capital’s foundations. You can ground this debate on concrete policies. This debate is what Chávez did on a national scale, in mass pedagogy, and in his cabinet. Maszaros said:
The way to build is different if the objective is efficient management of the state, or if, along with that, the advance is towards the recovery of power in the hands of organised communities and the implementation of a new state. The subject of the revolution isn’t a minister or a mayor, but the popular classes in the process of organisation within a power strategy. Chávez then raised a socialism of the 21st-century, communal, with the development of social forms of ownership over the means of production. He left years of trials in that direction, politically and economically, whose balances are still pending.
The various Chavismos in Chavismo watched that project… rather heterogeneous, and, since 2014, with an economy on the ropes. The revolution found itself at a crossroads, with two possible paths… one being a defensive and conservative response, with possible regressions of conquests, close to the historical vision of the community road. The other path was to deepen the changes initiated, with, for example, the “expansion of the fields of action and decision of the people’s power”. The two possibilities are guides to think about the predominant view of the interior of Chavismo… but which Chavismo? Some seem to have opted for the first option, strengthening the agreement with the business community and going back on the communal bet. This debate stirred up history in the present. The analysis, like the actors, has desires, interests, and class tensions. They coexist within the same Chavismo, which somehow stays united. Where is socialism? Expressed in specific experiences that carry power, in dispute as a project within Chavismo, and threatened by asphyxia imposed by a war of attrition and bureaucratic tendencies that disbelieve the historical subject and believe… what do they believe?
Chavismo will be socialist or it’ll cease to exist.
11 May 2018
Mario Teruggi
TeleSur
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Chavismo-Will-Be-Socialist-Or-It-Will-Cease-To-Exist-20180511-0008.html