This Week: Venezuela, Part IV -- The Series Concludes

"Quote" of the Week

The Venezuela Series Concludes: What To Do?

Socialism of the 21st Century

Further Reading on Venezuela Today

 

Greetings,

This week is Part IV of the Venezuela Series, and it's (reluctantly) the final part. I appreciate the feedback and questions that people have sent in along the way. Thank you!

Next week Nygaard Notes moves on to something else. As usual, I don't know what it is—so many options! We'll see in a week or so, I guess.

In solidarity,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week

Last winter, Florida Republican Representative Connie Mack directed a number of questions at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Here's part of one of them:

"Madam Secretary, last week, Venezuela's self-proclaimed communist President Hugo Chávez was granted free rein to accelerate changes in all areas of society by presidential decree. This action, granted to him by the National Assembly which is completely under his control, is putting Venezuela on a rapid path toward dictatorship."

Now, here's the "self-proclaimed communist" himself, being interviewed by CNN in 2004:

"I am not a communist. If I were, I would say so without hesitation. Had I had a Marxist project for Venezuela, I would have said so from the first day I stepped into the political arena. So, I am not a Marxist. I feel close to socialist and progressive thinking, but I am not a Marxist."

The Florida Republican is hardly alone in spewing misinformation. Searching for the sentence "Chávez is a communist" on Google returns 12,400 hits, including this headline from the blogoshpere: "Chávez To World: ‘I Am A Communist'"

The Venezuela Series Concludes: What To Do?

This week marks the end of the Venezuela series in Nygaard Notes and, although we've covered a lot of ground—almost 11,000 words worth!—much remains unsaid. That's why this week's Part IV also includes a somewhat-lengthy list for further reading.

We started out by looking back at the history of covert U.S. operations around the world, especially in Chile, which has echoes in today's Venezuela. We know how the Chile story ended. What awaits Venezuela?

After the Cold War ended, the "threat" changed but U.S. interventions remained the same, which is what I looked at in Part II. I also looked at the demonization of Venezuela in the U.S. media. The media problem goes beyond the relentless focus on bad news and propaganda. Perhaps even more dangerous is the blacking out of truly newsworthy stories from Venezuela, preventing the United States audience from learning some important lessons. I tried in Part III to address this by pointing out some of the major stories involving Venezuelan foreign and domestic initiatives. I also explained a little bit about the U.S. intervention that is already underway.

This week's Part IV attempts to place the Venezuelan project in some sort of historical context, focusing on the process of developing what some are calling "Socialism of the 21st Century."

After all my research, I am not uncritically supportive of Hugo Chávez, nor of the Bolivarian Revolution that he is leading. If this series makes it appear that I am, that is likely because I have chosen to provide an "unbalanced" report as an alternative to the relentlessly-negative propaganda that is all that can be found in the corporate media. Every week I see another scare story in the media about Venezuela, and part of my goal in offering this series is to help people to receive such propaganda critically, and keep a balanced perspective.

Robin Hahnel states that Venezuela under Chávez represents "the first, great social experiment of the twenty-first century." That may or may not be true but, whatever is going on, the U.S. government hates it, and is acting on that hate. Furthermore, it is acting in my name. And in the names of anyone who pays taxes or participates in the U.S. political system. We all thus have a responsibility to educate ourselves about what is happening in Venezuela, and to take a stand. I hope this series will help you decide to do something in accord with your conscience.

Socialism of the 21st Century

Developed in 1996 by the German political analyst Heinz Dieterich, the concept of "Socialism of the 21st Century" spells out "a socialism in which the majorities have the greatest historically possible degree of decision-making power in the economic, political, cultural, and military institutions that govern their lives." We in the U.S. have been taught to separate the two concepts—socialism and democracy—but Dieterich is here talking about socialism AS democracy. That is, social control of a society's institutions.

For those who believe that the "Cold War" was a contest between capitalism and socialism, the question is now settled: Capitalism "won," and Socialism is dead. For the rest of us, the search is on for something new, something that is fundamentally different from either Capitalism or State Socialism. That "something new"—a "Socialism of the 21st Century"—may be taking root in Venezuela.

Although there is nothing democratic about capitalism—where it's "one dollar, one vote"—it's also true that 20th-century attempts at socialism typically relied on a "planning bureaucracy" that was equally undemocratic. A Socialism of the 21st Century, Dieterich argues, would need to go far beyond simply having a strong state that distributes wealth in a different way.

Building a Participatory Economy

American University economist Robin Hahnel, in an excellent piece called "Venezuela: Not What You Think," published last November in Monthly Review, explains a little bit about the difference between what is going on in Venezuela today and what has gone on before—anywhere.

Following two visits to Venezuela, Hahnel commented that "practically nobody in the United States ever hears anything about truly newsworthy stories in Venezuela." And there are many, including...

THE GROWTH OF COOPERATIVES: Not only has the number of co-ops increased dramatically under Chávez (fewer than 800 co-ops with roughly 20,000 members in 1998; over 100,000 co-ops with over 1.5 million members by 2006), but they are supported by the Ministry for the Communal Economy, which, in addition to technical assistance "also teaches participants about cooperative principles, economic justice, and social responsibility."

PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING: "Participatory budgeting is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, in which ordinary city residents decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget." In Venezuela, says Hahnel, "the President and Congress are now fully supportive of participatory budgeting and busy building complementary components of a full-scale ‘social economy.' In Venezuela, participatory budgeting is viewed by many not merely as a better way to make decisions about local public goods, but as part of a process to democratize all aspects of economic life."

COMMUNAL COUNCILS: Venezuela also has a "Ministry of Participation and Social Development," or MINPADES, and a "Ministry for the Communal Economy", or MINEC. These two ministries are in charge of supporting "communal councils in every neighborhood" that have been kept very small so as "to ensure that every family, even in rural areas where small villages are often distant from one another, would have a real chance to participate in the most fundamental political decisions that affect them." Hahnel gives several examples of what sorts of things these councils do, from building housing to starting a chicken farm to repairing roads.

Hahnel says that members of the "radical wing" of the Chavista movement "see what is happening as a revolution because they see it as a profound social transformation and dramatic change in power relations among social groups... These ‘Bolivarian revolutionaries' call their vision ‘socialist,' but they do not emulate any models of socialism developed by those who called their societies socialist in the twentieth century.... Instead, Bolivarian revolutionaries are socialist in the sense that they are committed to achieving what they believe those who have called themselves socialist dating back to the nineteenth century have all aspired to—an economy qualitatively distinct from capitalism, where production is for use not profit, and where workers and consumers plan their own activities democratically and equitably."

To illustrate, Hahnel tells this anecdote about being invited to speak at a school run by the Planning Ministry: "I began my talk by saying that if they thought their job was to make better and better plans, I thought they were wasting their time at best, and having a negative effect at worst. After an embarrassed silence, I went on to say that instead I thought the job of people working in the Venezuelan Planning Ministry was to help workers in cooperatives and consumers in communal councils and assemblies plan how to cooperate more effectively among themselves. To my surprise my audience agreed. Moreover, they said they understood this meant they rejected the foundation underlying previous conceptions of socialist planning, and had, in effect, accepted a new prime directive: ‘Do not plan for others, facilitate planning by others.'"

All of this leads Hahnel—who has studied and written extensively on "participatory economics"—to state that "all the essentials for a truly participatory, social economy are already in place in Venezuela—worker cooperatives, communal councils and assemblies, and participatory budgeting. A strong political campaign encouraging popular participation, economic justice, and solidarity is in full swing. And the search for practical ways for worker cooperatives, communal councils, and communal assemblies to coordinate their interrelated activities themselves -- democratically, fairly, and efficiently -- is on..."

In short, there is plenty going on in Venezuela that offers important lessons to pro-democracy activists in the United States. Next, I conclude with a list of sources for further reading.

Further Reading on Venezuela Today

I utilized well over 125 sources in preparing this series, and I thought some of you may want to take a look at a few of them. So, here they are.

If you think you already know enough and wish to take a more active role in solidarity with the Venezuelan majority who support the Chavista project, here are a few groups to contact: In Minnesota we have the Minnesota-Venezuela Solidarity Committee. If you're not in Minnesota, try the Venezuela Solidarity Network (U.S.) or the British Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. There are solidarity groups all over the world, actually. Look here.

On U.S. Covert Operations history:

Philip Agee's "Inside The Company: A CIA Diary," from 1975, remains the clearest and most detailed explanation of CIA operations in Latin America.

William Blum's book, "Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II," is indispensable. The relevant section on Chile is excerpted online at Third World Traveler.

Another very useful book is "The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents" By William Matthew Leary Published 1984 University of Alabama Press

Online is an official 1992 CIA overview of "Managing Covert Political Action" (including the Chilean operation).

On U.S. Operations in Chile 1963-73:

Find the National Security Archive's collected documents on U.S. covert activities in Chile in 1964 here.

Former CIA agent Ralph McGehee's take on the Chilean operation can be found here. (Irritating pop-up ads!)

On the Venezuelan Economy:

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) published a study in July 2007 called "The Venezuelan Economy in the Chávez Years"

If you like graphs, you'll LOVE the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network's "Basic Economic Data on The Bolivarian Republic Of Venezuela" from February of 2007. I've never seen so many graphs.

Venezuelan Background, Context, Breaking News:

WikiSource has an English translation of the Venezuelan Constitution about which the U.S. media seems so worried and about which they tell us so little. It's really worth reading. Then read the U.S. Constitution, and compare.

Essays About and News from Venezuela:

The Best: Venezuelanalysis.com

ZNet has a special "Venezuela Watch" page.

A really fine list of recent articles, with summaries and links, can be found at the Global Policy Forum.

Venezuelan Information Centre (Including: "Venezuela: The Headlines You Missed in 2007")

The Venezuela Information Office is a semi-official office in D.C. The list of Internet links on their site is outstanding.

To learn more about "Just War Theory," check out the BBC summary.

The Washington Consensus and the Alternatives:

A good book (at least the introduction, which is all I read in full) is "Neoliberalism, Globalization and Inequalities: Consequences for Health and Quality of Life" edited by Vicente Navarro.

A lengthy and informative essay by Lee Sustar appeared in the International Socialist Review of July–August 2007 (30 pages long, 103 footnotes!). Called "Where is Venezuela going? Chávez and the Meaning of Twenty-first Century Socialism."

I cited Robin Hahnel's piece, "Venezuela: Not What You Think." It's worth reading the whole thing.

For an overview of the South American Community of Nations, see the founding declaration—the Cusco Declaration on the South American Community of Nations—signed on December 8, 2004.

The followup declaration, signed on December 9th 2006, is the "Cochabamba Declaration." It can be read at http://www.art-us.org/ Click on "Other Documents" and look for the declaration.

For an introduction to the Bank of the South, I recommend a short article by Stephen Lendman from last October called "The Bank of the South: An Alternative to IMF and World Bank Dominance."

To read about the unreported U.S. intervention in the recent Venezuelan referendum, go (again) to Venezuelanalyis.com and see Eva Golinger's story.

For those who read Spanish, Heinz Dieterich's 75-page treatise from 2002 is worth reading: "El Socialismo del Siglo XXI"

Canadian economist (and advisor to the Venezuelan government) Michael Lebowitz published a short book in 2005 called "Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century." The last three chapters deal specifically with Venezuela.