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Venezuela's record on social justice progress is impressive. As the article details...
"VENEZUELA’S 'BOLIVARIAN Revolution' is moving ahead fast. ..Revenues from the state oil company, PDVSA, have funded vast increases in social spending. Targeted outreach to the poor via government 'missions' have largely bypassed the old state structures and have achieved spectacular results.
"These include
--a reduction of poverty from 55 percent of the population to 34 percent as the share of gross domestic product (GDP) on social spending has increased from 7.83 percent to 14.69 percent; the achievement of literacy for 1.5 million adults;
--the virtual elimination of hunger through subsidized grocery stores that service 13 million people; medical care provided by Cuban doctors via free clinics in slums, reaching 18 million people, nearly 70 percent of the population;
--access to higher education for the poor and working class;
--and special affirmative action programs for indigenous people. (1)
--The minimum wage is now the highest in Latin America at $286 per month, and the workweek is to be shortened from forty to thirty-six hours by 2010. (2)
--Land reform has shifted 8.8 million acres to impoverished families, more than half of that from private owners. (3)
--Government seed money has increased the number of cooperative enterprises from fewer than 800 to 181,000 to try and provide more stable employment for the approximately half of Venezuelan workers who toil in the informal sector of the economy. (4)
"All this is being achieved despite the implacable hostility of Venezuelan capital and of U.S. imperialism, which supported the failed 2002 coup against Chávez, and the subsequent oil industry employers’ lockout that did enormous economic damage."
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The first half of this article is a history of Chavez's rise to power, well worth reading. One particular point is especially important--the role of the military in Venezuela and South America, in both rightwing and leftwing nationalistic coups/stabilizations. Chavez belonged to a leftist faction of young officers in the Venezuelan military, who revolted against the government after a brutal massacre of poor leftist protesters. He was jailed for it, and it was in jail that he became a popular hero, and forged ties to the civilian leftist groups--which eventually led to his electoral victory in 1998. The article provides important background notes like this, as well as a thorough discussion of the Bolivarian Revolution, which points out, among other things, that Chavez is actually a CENTRIST--in many ways. Private financiers are making scads of money from Venezuela's booming economy, for instance! Corporations have been fairly compensated for various nationalizations. And private property is protected by the Constitution and the Chavez government. In summary, 'better Chavez than the revolution' (i.e., the guillotine). On the other hand, the Bolivarian Revolution is producing great strides for the poor--in income, in education, medical care and other services, in worker coops and small business, and in the level of citizen participation among the poor and working classes, and has been very innovative both in analyzing and addressing the huge problems that have been created by US-dominated neoliberalism ("free trade," global corporate predation, "trickle down" economics that never trickles down, and the loan shark policies of the World Bank/IMF).
The second part of the article is heavy on Marxist jargon, which I truly hate. (The dullness that enters the language from Marxist ideology is an evil all unto itself.) But if you can manage to translate it to yourself--to take its deadening phrases and try to imagine what they stand for, in real terms, to real people--it is instructive. And it is important to get some feel for it, if you are going to understand Venezuelan and South American politics. There is a significant political faction TO THE LEFT OF Chavez, which fears that the Chavez government is out not to empower but rather to coopt labor, in a way that will undermine organized labor. The upshot is that workers must gain more than a mere share in the profits of production; they must gain power as decision-makers. There are also warnings about the lack of democracy in the military (where power relations remain top-down).
I think the problem is that Marx and Engels were Germans. Really. Their ways of thinking--for instance, the "abolition of all right of inheritance"--just don't apply well to real human beings, who will ever be tied to each other by the physical FACT of birth, to one mother, by DNA, and by the role of father-protector. Parents have an overwhelming desire to GIVE something to their children--a home, land, a herd of goats, skills/knowledge, money, advantages--and you can't just eliminate this desire by fiat. And German thinking doesn't apply well to the warm cultures of the south, where indigenous spirituality regarding the sacredness of the earth mixes together in an intuitive (I was going to say baffling) way with the Catholic religion, which itself contains the seeming contradiction (somehow living side by side) of Liberation Theology and Opus Dei (wealthy fascist Catholics). In short, people are HUMAN. They do what they like. They have free will. And they have deep, emotional family and community ties. They are NOT "workers." They are NOT "the proletariat." And this is more evident in Latin American culture than in any other. People are COMPLICATED. They are not "units" of "production." The Marxist mode of thought has that Germanic habit of making broad generalizations and 'a priori' edicts that leave out the details of human life that actually make human life interesting and unpredictable. The result is often DULL discussion. End of rant.
Still, to understand Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution--a most colorful and interesting phenomenon, full of contradictions--you do need to know the role that Marxism plays in South American politics.
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