Showing posts with label Axis of Hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Axis of Hope. Show all posts
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Venezuela's Process of Struggle
Read the excellent article (via SW.org) here. The analysis is right on target: hopeful and supportive of the emancipatory developments in Venezuela, but sober about the challenges facing the possibility of revolutionary transformation. The article nicely walks the line of "critical support"; avoiding uncritical cheer-leading on the one hand, and eschewing the ultra-leftist anti-Chavez line on the other. I like especially that the article is framed from a left-wing point of view, no time is wasted wading through the right-wing bullshit pedaled by the consensus media in the U.S. (which, of course, includes the NYTimes and their resident-hack Simon Romero).
Friday, July 3, 2009
Venezuelan opposition, WSJ, backs coup
Ideological match made in heaven: the good old reactionaries at the Wall Street Journal and their brethren in the Venezuelan opposition.
Unsurprisingly both of these groups have come out in favor of the recent coup in Honduras, criticizing their own respective governments for failing to aver that the coup was a boon to democracy. If you ask the editors at WSJ or in the opposition/corporate media in Venezuela, they will tell you that the coup was justified, they will defend the currently sworn-in 'president', and they'll argue that Zelaya was a power hungry tyrant bent on destruction.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Obama, Washington and the Coup in Honduras
The Official US line on the coup is now one of condemnation. It became clear that all of the OAS countries, including the more conservative and neoliberal leaders such as Mexico's Right-Wing Felipe Calderon, unequivocally oppose the recent violent overthrow of a popular government elected by the people. The worldwide response, it must be said, is condemnatory.
But like everything that governments and their political spokespeople say in public, we should not take the US State dept's statement at face value. Moreover, the only real test of what the orientation of the US government is, will be to see what it actually does and not what it says at press conferences. This is particularly true for the Obama Adminsitration, who has made a rigorous science of making soaring rhetorical flourishes only to renege and opt for tepid alternatives to real reform.
The NYTimes published an article yesterday revealing that the Obama administration had been in contact with the coup plotters for several days before the coup. From the NYTimes:
Also, we read that:"The United States has a history of backing rival political factions and instigating coups in the region, and administration officials have found themselves on the defensive in recent days, dismissing repeated allegations by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela that the C.I.A. may have had a hand in the president’s removal.
Obama administration officials said that they were surprised by the coup on Sunday. But they also said that they had been working for several weeks to try to head off a political crisis in Honduras as the confrontation between Mr. Zelaya and the military over his efforts to lift presidential term limits escalated."
The United States has long had strong ties to the Honduras military and helps train Honduran military forces. Those close ties have put the Obama administration in a difficult position, opening it up to accusations that it may have turned a blind eye to the pending coup.While many NYTimes readers may be surprised to read of the US involvement in violent repression, military dictatorships, coups and so forth throughout Latin American history, there is nothing abstract about this for people who came of age in the 20th century in Latin America. It is therefore totally legitimate for Hugo Chavez, of all people, to make public statements pressing the suspicion that the US may have had a hand in the latest right-wing reaction against a popular government in Latin America. Suspicion, of course, is not tantamount to proof. But it is hardly outlandish to say that the burden of proof is absolutely on the party who has traditionally funded, participated, incited, supported and praised just about every single violent Right-wing military coup in Latin America throughout the 20th century, from Vargas to Allende to the most recent attempt to violently suppress the Bolivarian Revolution and attempts to whack Evo Morales.
But the issue is too unclear to say for sure what the precise role of the US was in the run-up to the coup. Speculation, therefore, is not helpful. What we do have, is a series of facts ripe for critical reflection and analysis.
We know that the US opposed Zelaya and his bid to change the Constitution to enable a president to run for re-election more than once. We know that the US has traditionally (as late as the 1980s) had very close ties to the Honduran military, who have now taken the lead in undertaking this coup. We also know that the US hedged at first and refused to take a clear stand against the coup and in favor of Zelaya. That they have done so now, in light of widespread condemnation globally, is not to say that their position hasn't shifted.
We also know that the US loathes Chavez, Morales, Correa and Ortega. We know that Washington would love to see these pan-Latin American socialists just go away. We know that big multinationals, some of whom have been given the boot from the above countries, feel the same way.
So the US is not heading into this crisis with the best of intentions. And for me, that's all that's important here to understanding this situation. Washington may or may not have been directly involved, they may have protested, they may have been lukewarm in telling the coup-plotters not to go ahead. I must say, however, that it doesn't appear that the US government was ever ademant or united in any kind of support for the coup. Nonetheless, whatever the situation actually is, it doesn't change all sorts of uncontroversial and trivial political facts we know about Honduras, the region, and the relationship of the former with Washington.
Of course, you wont find any critical reflection in tripe written by an ultra-conservative hack like Vargas Llosa for the NYTimes. If you ask him, the coup is a good thing, and moreover it has widespread 'popular support'. We should expect nothing less from Vargas Llosa, though, who has proven so consistently over the years that he has no intention of stating what actually is the case.
The truth is that there is currently there is widespread popular unrest trying to stop the coup-backers. There have been huge mobilizations as well as a general strike demanding that Zelaya be allowed to return. All of this has occured in spite of threats of violent military repression. Over 7.3 million in Honduras live below the poverty line; some 70% of the population.
When Zelaya talked about taking on the sweatshop industry and substantially increasing the minimum wage in his country, its not difficult to see why the majority of Hondurans got behind these reforms. Of course, when he also said he would "force the business oligarchy to start paying what is fair" in terms of taxes, he wasn't making any friends with the forces who are trying to crush democracy in Honduras at present.
Of course, Zelaya is no saint. And, after all, he comes from the Liberal Party in Honduras, which is anything but unanimous in their support social justice or for Zelaya himself (on the contrary, there is a deep split, with many party elites opposing Zelaya's modest left turn). Only recently has he shifted toward more ALBA-centric policies and social reformism. While his populism is a welcomed alternative to the status quo in Honduran politics, it is clear that Zelaya is no Morales or Chavez. Nonetheless, for many in the country (particularly those in student organizations, trade unions and other social movements) the openings created by Zelaya's turn to the Left are likely worth fighting for, particularly when the oligarchs threaten to crush what modest headway Zelaya has attempted to make. I cannot say enough times: those empowered by he current configuration of politics in Honduras are frightened of losing their power. Their subsequent acts must be understood in light of this fact.
After all if, as cynical Right-wing hacks like Llosa would tell us, it is true that the coup has popular support and is backed up by a majority; why were the anti-referendum Oligarchs so deathly afraid of holding a vote designed to take a non-binding national poll over whether it would be a good idea to vote on reforming the Constitution? Why were they so afraid of letting people make their voices heard? Why were they blocking democracy through every institution and avenue available to them through the law (e.g. The Supreme Court, Congress, the Police and Military, etc. all of which the Right controlled in Honduras)? Why were those in power so scared that they eventually resorted to violence to forestall a democratic procedure from occuring?
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Chavez: US-Venezuela Relations Will Improve with Obama Presidency
"Carora, December 14, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that relations between his nation and the United States can only improve under an Obama presidency, and he is ready to collaborate on issues such as drug trafficking, terrorism, and energy.
"There are winds in favor of relations between the Venezuelan government and the new president of the United States, Barack Obama. We must try energetically and with good faith to improve relations, and I am ready to do it," Chavez said on a Sunday political talk show, Jose Vicente Today, broadcast on a private television station... "
Thursday, December 4, 2008
PSUV leader Gonzalo Gomez on the elections and where Venezuela is heading
"To Stop the Advance of the Right, We Must Strengthen People’s Power”Great interview at Venezuelanalysis here.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
Really amazing documentary. The footage is unbelievable.
Just re-watched it here.
It makes me pretty sick to see what went on in Venezuela in 2002. But it's far worse to stomach the omission of these concrete facts about the coup-attempt in so many mainstream accounts of Venezuelan politics. Particularly all of the crap about RCTV and the 'suppression of free speech' that one so frequently hears about... nothing is said about this disgusting attempt to overthrow a popular government by force. Nothing is said about the fact that the coup plotters revealed on private television the day after the coup, how they had carried out their plan and how grateful they were to private media, RCTV in particular, for their crucial help in accomplishing the task. RCTV, it's also worth mentioning, blacked-out all of the events that led to the failure of the coup and suppressed the reemergence of Chavez's ministers in order to deceive the public into believing the lie that Chavez had resigned (he had not) and that the Opposition had total control of the Presidential Palace.
Watching this and thinking about the PBS documentary's treatment of the 2002 coup the whole time was eye-opening. Try watching "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and reading the NY Times's infamous pro-Coup editorial afterwords.
Purchase the DVD here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Responding to the "The Hugo Chavez Show"
In case you haven't seen it, take a look at PBS's Frontline TV-documentary on Hugo Chavez. There is a lot of good footage, information and some of the interviews are interesting.
That said, I think the documentary is a case-study in what is typically wrong with characterizations of Venezuela (indeed, with almost all of the Left governments and movements in Latin America) in our domestic Media (one might as well include Britain also).
Let me preface all of this by directing your attention to the infamous NYTimes editorial that, in complicity with the lies of the opposition military coup plotters, praised the (actually false) 'departure' of Chavez and the installment of a neoliberal military regime by force in which all of the democratically-elected officials and representatives of Chavez's party would be removed from office.
The title of the PBS show is instructive: "The Hugo Chavez Show". The mistake that the documentary makes over and over is to slip into conflations of large-scale economic and political forces with Chavez the person. Frequently, supporters of the government or of the PSUV or the "Revolution" are characterized as people with nothing more than intense emotional investment in Chavez qua person. There is a lot of focus on Chavez's show "Alo Presidente", his antics, his speeches, etc. There seems to me to be no problem with this necessarily, however, its insidious precisely insofar as these looks at him (qua person, public figure) are used as arguments against the policies of his government and the anti-capitalist project. I'll say more on this in a bit.
The interviewees end up making up more or less a chorus. There is 'center-left' neoliberal Teodoro Petkoff who is supposedly given legitimacy as a 'left critic' of Chavez since he used to be a Communist earlier in the 70s. No further context is given for how to situate him in relation to the Bolivarian Revolution. We also hear from "Journalists and Venezuelans who know Chavez well". Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker is interviewed, as is biographer Alberto Barrera, Phil Gunson of the Economist, and former VP Jimenez who has since broken with Chavez.... (one was left dissapointed that arch-hack Simon Romero and reps from the Financial Times and WSJ weren't present as well). We also hear from an opposition goon who was a former finance minister in the early 90s who, every single time he's put before the camera, insinuates with a wry smile that the US should stop purchasing Venezuelan oil since that would topple Chavez "in a matter of weeks". (hint, hint! americans!) He extols the virtues of PDVSA before Chavez and repeats the familiar capitalist dogma that removing elites is tantamount to removing the 'experts' who are the only ones who know how to run things. We can smell his hatred of participatory democracy a mile away: let the indigent masses do the drudge-work, they aren't capable of doing much else without the expertise of capitalists and managers.
What we don't hear in the documentary, is the voice of one single intellectual who actually believes that what is happening on the ground in Venezuela is worth defending. Nothing. We could have heard from Tariq Ali, Eva Golinger, Greg Wilpert, Forrest Hylton, or any number of prominent Left intellectuals and journalists who would dare to defend the project unapollogetically (yet, not therefore uncritically). The tone of the entire piece is one of suspicion and one in which we are encouraged to presuppose that everything about what's going on there is misguided. Therefore, when things are pointed out about the situation that aren't all bad, they can be safely let out in the open without having to worry about sounding, *gasp* fair or worse, sympathetic. The point I'm making about the tone is that it seems crafted to always leave a large amount of outs whenever it presents something that looks appealing about Venezuela. This usually takes the form of presenting 'good' elements of the Revolution as ones with good intentions, but practically useless or failing.
There are no broad strokes to contextualize the movement, facile imperialist buzzwords like 'anti-American' are thrown around copiously without qualification, and everything about the Revolution is characterized in terms of a top-down decree from Chavez to 'subsidize' something. We are told that he 'subsidizes anti-American governments' like Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba, which reeks of Heritage-Foundation-esque propaganda. Moreover, the presentation of Chavez's relation to Castro is played up and used to hint at his authoritarian fantasies that have yet to fully manifest themselves. We shouldn't forget that the opposition has used this line as a talking point for quite some time: "Chavez wants Venezuela to be exactly like Cuba!" PBS seems to have cribbed it right from the headlines of opposition outlets.
One thing I found disturbing was that the documentary rarely mentioned figures about turnout, margins of victory, or democratic mandate for the Revolution. During talk of Chavez's loss during the push for Constitutional reform in 2007, we hear almost nothing about the statistical dynamics of the result. The "por ahora" slogan is spun as a "threat" that the government will "punish democratic decision-makers who buck their will", rather than an injunction to continue fighting for the reforms and social transformation for which the government stands. We heard nothing of the turnout figures which clearly showed that the opposition picked up virtually no more votes in absolute terms than they garnered in 2006, but merely benefited from lower turnout.
The entire discussion of is one-sided. The bullshit about it being a 'free speech issue' is gobbled up, since it so neatly fits in with what we are encouraged to think prior to hearing any facts about Venezuela: in the words of our media, Venezuela is ruled by "a thug", "paranoiac", "dictatorial", a "ruinous and radical leftist demagogue", who is "autocratic." The Economist probably has the rights to this smash-hit tune among the Anglo-American business press.
We hear nothing about RCTV's direct involvement with the 2002 coup.
And on the topic of the coup, the most critical thing that the documentary offers us is a quote by a Chavista official that the US Government might, potentially, have given the coup its blessing, or possibly even helped. That insinuation was left at that. This isn't being 'objective', this is deception. There is absolutely no way to maintain that the US govt did not give the coup its 'blessing'... look at its public statements before and after. They were unambiguously anti-Chavez and pro-opposition and they immediately recognized the illegitimate government the second it went on private television and proclaimed that it had taken power. Moreover, US involvement with the opposition in terms of giving aid and support to the coup-plotters is well documented. This isn't some crazy, out-of-the-blue anomaly to US foreign policy in Latin America, but a continuation of a time honored tradition wherein the US participates in violent overthrows of democratically elected Left governments. A little historical context might have been helpful here, but none was in the offering. The US foreign policy aparatus, let us not forget, is a shinging beacon of freedom that inspires the whole world. And we betray this Absolute Truth only at our own peril, and on pain of succumbing to 'anti-Americanism'. (For a far more extensive and sober documentary look at the 2002 coup, check this video out).
After the coverage of the coup in the documentary, one is left puzzled how Chavez came back to power. They don't really give you enough information to understand the dynamics that forced the coup to fail, other than insinuating that the slum-dwellers from the shacks of Caracas came down from their perch to protest. This is atrocious coverage of the event. Nothing is said about the rank-and-file loyalty of soldiers in the military who refused to go along with the plot. Nothing is said about the conduct of the opposition leaders during the coup, the RCTV involvement with the coup, etc. There is no moralistic condemnation of the coup in the way that there is throughout the entire documentary about how Chavez silences dissent, etc. This is bullshit.
The only ardent pro-Chavez interviewees are slum-dwellers who are made to look as though they are nothing more than uneducated adorers of a man whose policies they cannot comprehend. Leave the commentary to the learned light-skinned men who know better.
The last quarter of the documentary is devoted to showing the failure of all of Chavez's policies. We are given various examples, all very specific. We are given no wider economic/political backdrop against which to judge these developments, but nonetheless encouraged to draw broad conclusions from these examples. We are given no data about how much social spending has increased, how the programs have fared in terms of what existed before them, what the shortcoming might be attributed to, how they might be addressed, etc. We get none of that. But we get insinuations that bottom-up cooperatives are a bad idea because workers cannot self-govern themselves (silly socialists... you're supposed to leave that to the experts, the capitalists and managers!), we get insinuations that the uneducated poor are the only ones propping up a 'failed government' because they 'fear things could be worse'. We also get a spiel about "law and order" in which the problems of crime in Venezuela are really bad (dare I say we are encouraged to draw conclusions between Chavez's urban poor constituents and the 'law and order' hoopla?). No explanations, no comparative figures, no context... just the insinuation that rising crime has something to do with the Chavez regime. It doesn't really matter if they intended for this line of argument to coalesce with the racist and conservative opposition's rhetoric, to be purveyors of this sort of narrative in ignorance of what is frequently said and insinuated is already to be give a nod to the reactionaries.
Amid all of these complaints, not one example of how programs have worked is given. Not one figure about increased social spending, education programs, etc. Not one example of a program that has worked, against the expectations and wishes of the editorial boards of the NYTimes and the Economist and the Western capitalist press. Nothing.
Even the documentary's assessment of the most recent election results, which in many ways represented a small victory for the US-backed opposition, was billed as a case of increasing authoritarianism. We are told, ominously without any further backing that opposition leaders were 'banned' from running for election (the elections were observed by hundreds of international bodies and they all deemed them fair and free). Then we are told that 17 of 22 PSUV governors won, as though this was a bogus victory given the collusion mentioned in the previous sentence. Yet despite the opposition victories, the procedural fairness of the election, the high turnout, etc. The folks at PBS thought nothing of mentioning the US-government's involvement with the opposition and the recent elections. Pathetic, uncritical analysis. I just read, according to Eva Gollinger, that the U.S. Agency for International Development poured $4.7 million into opposition groups for the electoral campaign. This is hardly surprising. Washington is backing the reactionary oligarchic opposition leaders in Bolivia as well. Why would we expect anything less? PBS says nothing about US invovlement or where their sympathies lie with respect to Latin American political and social movements on the Left.
Concerning Chavez's government, there's plenty to be critical of, especially from the perspective of the Left. But regarding this documentary, the entire conclusion you seem encouraged to arrive at is that Chavez is everything the mainstream Anglophone media says about him (he's dictatorial, a caudillo, a strongman, a demagogue, etc.). The viewer is almost led to assume that what the country perhaps needs instead, is a return of the rule of 'educated', light-skinned, enlightened elites who have the know-how, expertise and faith in neoliberal capitalism to make things run right. The film includes a few moralizing moments where the inequality and squalor that many Venezolanos live in is mentioned, yet we are given no evidence that there is a political solution to this social injustice. We get nothing critical of neoliberalism, of the previous regime's policies, or any mention of North American imperialism in Latin America and its long history. We aren't offered any explanations about how this unequal state of affairs in Venezuela came about.
I found this documentary disappointing.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Venezuelan regional elections wrapup
"Chávez Supporters Win 17 out of 23 Venezuelan States, but Lose 3 Most Populous."
This is, generally speaking, an encouraging development for the newly-formed PSUV. Disappointing, though that opposition-candidate Antonio Ledezma defeated Aristóbulo Istúriz in a close race for the Mayorship of the Capital District of Caracas. The victory was somewhat of an upset, and the old-guard Ledezma took 52.45% to his opponent's 44.92%.
Incidentally, turnout was at record levels for a regional election, with 65.45% of potential voters participating. Compare this with our 2006 midterm elections in which 37.1% of potential voters turned out in what was a relatively decisive midterm election in changing tides for the Democrats.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Update on violence in Bolivia
What was being called an 'ambush' this weekend, we now know was a massacre called for by the Right-wing 'autonomist' governor of Pando, Leopoldo Fernandez. He has recently been detained by the government. Apparently, he and his thugs were frustrated by the recall (which he helped instigate in an attempt to bring down the Morales government) referendum in which Pando voted 52% in favor of Morales.
Wielding automatic machine-guns, violent opposition paramilitaries opened fire on a 1000-strong unarmed protest march organized by peasants. The death toll has already reached 30, and is likely to increase as more than several hundred are reported missing.
Other opposition leaders have pledged to make "Bolivia ungovernable", unless the Morales government grants huge concessions to the reactionary opposition and ends plans to distribute resource revenues equitably.
In many areas of the country's "Media luna" region (the resource-rich, wealthy, white areas where the opposition is the strongest), the opposition appears stronger than it actually is. As Forrest Hylton has recently pointed out, this is due to the fact that the opposition (composed of the wealthy business elites and oligarchs) has virtually all control of the media outlets in their regions, owns most of the major economic institutions and has put its tremendous wealth in the service of arming, training and organizing groups prepared to mount a violent attack on the government should it try to assert its democratically-backed power to govern the country. While sizable, these groups of militant reactionaries do not find themselves in environments of unanimous support, as the results of the recent referendum in their prefects clearly demonstrate.
Here we see bolivia running up against a fundamental limitation of liberal capitalist democracy: despite having strong democratic mandates for change, the government is faced with a serious array of 'extra-political' (i.e. according to liberal-democratic orthodoxy, in which the public/private distinction occludes the economy from the realm of "politics" proper) obstructions that aren't all necessary constitued by violent acts. The wealthy elites under capitalism still control the central economic institutions that ensure that society can function (production and distribution of information, food, electricity, etc.), thus they can pull out a lot of stops should they face 'political' opposition in the form of democratic government. They can virtually shut down, lock-out, sabotage and strangle the economy if they like, which gives them tremendous power to push the government into considering their demands. (By the way, they've done it before in latin america: see what ITT and Big Business did to Allende before they resorted to a coup). This is all to say: they have leverage against the political government (not complete control over, but enough power to force compromises), even though they are not accountable to the public and are not subject to democratic authority.
This is a dangerous time for Bolivia and we can only hope that the Armed forces can regain order in the country, allow the December constitutional referendum to continue on schedule and crush the violent opposition thugs who are trying to exact compromises from the democratically-backed government through terrorism.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Violent clashes in Bolivia
Michele Bachelet, moderate socialist president of Chile, has called a summit tomorrow in Santiago to address the mounting violence in Bolivian provinces where the opposition instigated violent and destructive actions to protest the redistributive policies of the Morales government. The eastern province of Pando was declared under martial law by the government after 16 were massacred by opposition paramilitaries in what Morales has called "an ambush." It remains unclear whether or not Morales will attend the summit, since he is holding talks today with an opposition governor. Chavez has already committed to attending the summit.
Opposition leaders have been demanding that Morales cancel a December referendum on a new constitution, which isn't surprising, considering the opposition does not have the votes to block the reform from passing democratically. The draft of the constitution to be ratified if the referendum goes as planned, has a host of provisions that include the transfer of land to landless peasants. The opposition's leaders, the rich, white oligarchs and descendants of colonial settlers, are casting their opposition to the central government in terms of 'decentralization', 'regional autonomy' and recognition of 'cultural differences'... however the fact of the matter is they do not want to be ruled by an indigenous socialist. (For those on facebook... check out the huge number of racist, virulently anti-Morales groups started by opposition youth).
Funny that these 'autonomists' seemed to have little problem with being part of the Bolivian nation-state when conservative forces still had a strangle-hold over the office of the President and legislating bodies. Whatever the opposition propaganda of the day has to say about the reasons for their need for 'independence' (Morales is a dictator, he's authoritarian, etc), this struggle is about the entrenched, landed elite of Bolivia resisting redistributive polices regarding energy resources and fighting tooth and nail against a movement, backed strongly by a majority of the population, committed to land reform.
Despite recently winning over 67% of the vote in a recent recall referendum (convoked by the Right-wing opposition leaders in an attempt to weaken the government), the Morales government is struggling to maintain order and to curtail violence instigated by opponents who are keen on destroying gas pipelines, preventing airplanes from landing, destroying government buildings, and slaughtering campesino supporters of Morales. Despite all of this and pressure to show a "firm hand", Morales has banned the army and police from using firearms against the population. After making serious inroads in provinces where the opposition is strong (taking over 40% in conservative Santa Cruz and over 49.6% supported Morales in Chuqisaca), it seems at least partly unsurprising that ever-desperate opposition hard-liners would resort to trying to destabilize the country through violent clashes.
I'm not sure where the military's allegiances lie, but any anti-government sentiment within the ranks or among officers could certainly be exploited by the opposition. Its also interesting that Morales's government, following a massive show of support in the recall elections, has not taken a more hard-line approach to those groups instigating the violence. It certainly seems to be the case that, in provinces where the local governments are controlled largely by the opposition, the de facto authority and power of the central government is hampered, to say the least.
Amidst this instability, the US ambassador was seen meeting with opposition leadership in east (which he denied, until TV news stations showed otherwise with video footage). Accordingly, Morales expelled him from the country (as did Venezuela, in solidarity with Bolivia). Morales accused the ambassador of inciting violent demonstrations, which the US promptly denied and followed suit by expelling the Bolivian envoy from Washington.
It will be interesting to see what comes of the summit. At least, contrary to African analogues of this situation, the all-South American summit wont be dominated by the US and Britain calling for "power-sharing" arrangements. Nonetheless, as Al-Jazeera has recently pointed out, many South American countries depend on Bolivian natural gas and have a stake in seeing that production is not affected by this instability (i.e. outright destruction of the gaslines by opposition protesters). I hope this doesn't tilt the discussion towards an agreement more inclined to pacify the violent elements of the opposition through concessions... rather than seeing the situation is brought to a just conclusion. Despite at least two very staunch allies in Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and Hugo Chavez, there are still plenty of center-left regimes that may not be committed to fighting against a plotting, obstructionist oligarchy. Correa said today that Latin America "will not permit another Pinochet, nor will we permit the balkanization" of Bolivia, criticizing the "minority separatist oligarchy" instigating the unrest. In a show of solidarity with Morales, Correa said, "Evo... we know well how these elites are... you have the embrace of solidarity of all your brothers in the region."
Chavez, in a speech today, made clear (referring to an attempted coup d'etat) that "if anything happens to Evo, I won't stand passively with arms crossed [and not do anything]...like I am prepared to die for Venezuela, I am ready to die for Bolivia." This comment was, partially, a swipe at the General of the Bolivian Armed Forces for his inaction regarding the violent outbursts by the opposition within the country. Chavez chastised the general for failing to prevent, by way of inaction and passivity, the opposition's "fascist paramilitaries" from "massacring the Bolivian people". "If I'm wrong, please demonstrate how. Support the legitimate President of Bolivia and not the paramilitaries or the yankees who want to derail the President!"
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Thoughts on Bolivia and "Socialism for the 21st Century"
After recently reading this (and this, and watching this as well) in addition to seeing the most recent post at Lenin's Tomb (on Bolivia), I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the current situation in that country. It’s extremely interesting for several reasons.
First of all, for anyone on the Left, the nearly continent-wide resistance to the Washington Consensus and the ascendancy of popular Left-wing governments of various stripes (in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay as well as Brazil, Argentina, Chile) is an inspiring development within the context of otherwise unchallenged, corporate global capitalism. It’s inspiring because in this region of the world at least, ideas about “change”, “hope” and slogans like “another world is possible” actually stand the chance of meaning something.
In 2005 in Bolivia, propelled to power by a groundswell of social movements, Evo Morales was elected as the first indigenous president with 53.7% of the vote (a rare absolute majority in Bolivian presidential races). As Tariq Ali summarizes nicely:
Bolivia has a large Indian population: 62 per cent describe themselves as indigenous; 35 per cent live on less than a dollar a day. It has a turbulent history: wars, coups, revolutions… and numerous uprisings. There were 157 coups between 1825 and 1982 and 70 presidents, half of whom held office for less than a year. Neoliberal slumber lasted throughout the 1990s, before anti-government protests culminated in the ‘water wars’ [over the neoliberal policy of privatizing water.] The government sold the water in Cochabamba to [the huge corporation] Bechtel, who told people it was illegal to collect rainwater. There were clashes with the army, a young demonstrator was killed and the protesters won. The municipality regained control of the water. Such unrest created the basis for the triumph of Morales and the Movement for Socialism in the elections of 2005. Not only was Morales on the left, he was an Aymara Indian, and his victory ended a century and a half of Creole rule. The rich were furious.Recently, Morales won a recall referendum with more than 67% of the vote, giving his movement a strong mandate for “deepening the process of change”. Like elsewhere in Latin America where neoliberal hegemony is being fought head-on, the process of change has not been met without considerable obstruction, violent resistance and sabotage by the ruling classes, the affluent and business elites unaccustomed to power being exercised by popular democracy.
The US, following a long-standing tradition, has not played a passive role in the changing political climate in Latin America. It thus comes as little surprise that the US Ambassador in Bolivia has allegedly voiced support for US intervention in Bolivia and has been caught by TV media conspiring with violent Right-wing elements that have been assaulting public officials, blocking highways and destroying natural gas pipelines in attempts to destabilize the government. But as Lenin’s Tomb points out: “Still, if the US is reduced to sponsoring only regional rightist coups, there may be some cause for hope in that.”
For me at least, there are other reasons why these developments are interesting. I have been reading a great deal lately about the Russian Revolution, pouring through Eric Hobsbawm’s writings on 20th century history, John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World, Trotsky’s 1920 book Terrorism and Communism, as well as polemics between Lenin and Karl Kautsky on the question of gradual reform versus revolutionary change. In this context, I begin to wonder to what extent recent Latin American developments are ‘revolutionary’ and what chance they stand of creating a serious alternative to global capitalism.
It’s undeniably true that radical social and economic changes are occurring in the region (nationalizations of resources, decentralized “Bolivarian circles”, land reform, massive increases in social spending, some exploration of non-capitalist forms of production, etc). However, there is plenty in this recipe of social/economic change that is not new. Although the social/economic conjuncture was vastly different, similar developments occurred in Western Europe during the post-war era: nationalizations of key industries, heavy progressive taxation, strong trade unions, public provision of health care and education, etc. This is not to collapse the recent Latin American leftist developments into the experience of European social-democracy during the 20th century; however, it’s important to place these events in a broader historical context. There are movements professing to have some kind of socialist alternative to capitalism as their goal, however, it remains to be seen how far the oligarchs and conservative business elites (still quite powerful) will let the process of democratic change proceed. Violent overthrow has already been attempted once, with US backing and aid (and the blessing of the NYTimes, incidentally).
There is a long debate on the Left about whether socialism can be built through a gradual, parliamentary path. If socialism means anything, it must have something to do with bringing production under democratic/social control, which means expropriation of the productive holdings of the capitalist class. Socialism wouldn’t be a kind of balance of power, a negotiation between progressive democratic institutions and an equally powerful capitalist class (as was the case in the ‘managed capitalism’ of Scandinavian social-democracies). Socialism must have to do with transforming capitalist social and economic relations, not merely attenuating their worst excesses.
Thus the road to economic democracy must entail wresting the complete control of investment, productive planning and ownership of the means of production from the hands of entrenched and powerful corporate elites. As history has shown, this class will fight viciously against even the modest social-democratic ideal of cooperation with progressive government and labor organizations. And in cases where more radical change enters into the realm of possibility, they will resist by whatever means they deem necessary, often with foreign military aid (the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune, the violent struggles of the Russian Civil War, the murderous coup against Allende in 1973, US interventions in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador...the list goes on and on).
Whatever one might say about Venezuela or Bolivia, however, it would be difficult to argue that their governments are mere conciliators, resigned to accepting as given the tremendous economic power still held by business elites. In Bolivia, Morales is already using his fresh mandate to begin building a publicly-run cement industry to rival the country’s corporate cement sector which is owned by a powerful figure in the opposition. In this way, he is allowing for progressive projects to continue into the future unabated by the politically-fueled obstruction of rich opposition elites.
There are broader questions, no less important, which center on what a socialist economy would look like, and whether it’s possible to build one in an environment of global capitalism. Although the top-down, coercive military-like command economy of the Soviet Union was for most of the 20th Century synonymous with ‘really existing socialism’, this is clearly not what any of the movements in Latin America or what the global Left aspires to create. They’re calling it “socialism for the 21st century” for a reason.
...bringing these thoughts into some sort of a US context: wouldn’t it be nice if we could even hope for the possibility of modest social-democratic reform? Instead of having two ossified masses connected to the ruling classes by an umbilical cord of gold, obstinately committed to the worst features of the status quo… wouldn’t it be something if we had, here in this country, an actual Left to vote for, a serious alternative that even gestured towards the possibility of substantive change?
Evo Morales's 10 Commandments
A few months old, but worth re-printing here...
April 21, 2008
Speaking at the United Nations on the 21st of April, 2008, Bolivian president Evo Morales proposed 10 commandments to save the planet, life and humanity:
1. Acabar con el sistema capitalista
Putting an end to the capitalist system
2. Renunciar a las guerras
Renouncing wars
3. Un mundo sin imperialismo ni colonialismo
A world without imperialism or colonialism
4. Derecho al agua
Right to water
5. Desarrollo de energías limpias
Development of clean energies
6. Respeto a la madre tierra
Respect for Mother Earth
7. Servicios básicos como derechos humanos
Treat basic services as human rights
8. Combatir las desigualdades
Fighting inequalities
9. Promover la diversidad de culturas y economías
Promoting diversity of cultures and economies
10. Vivir bien, no vivir mejor a costa del otro
Living well, not living better at the expense of others
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