While Chávez’s political opponents were never able to remove him from the presidency democratically, it would appear that in the end it was nature that defeated a man whose anti-imperialism and principled siding with the poor and marginalised in his country and elsewhere, inspired precisely this constituency to defend his government with such passion. “Queremos ver a Chávez!” (We want to see Chávez!) shouted the millions of pro-Chávez supporters that took to the streets in Venezuela in 2002 to demand that he be reinstated as president after a US sponsored coup briefly ousted him. This people power played an instrumental role in his return to the presidency less than 48 hours after he had been kidnapped and taken to an island off Venezuela’s mainland. Theirs was truly a love affair with “their” president, whose support base was to be found in the low-income neighbourhoods known as barrios that encircle Caracas and other Venezuelan cities. It was these people who had, more than any other group, experienced a dramatic improvement in their material conditions. They experienced at first-hand what can happen when a government is prepared to stand up for the poor and marginalised.

In contrast to his popularity at home, Western elites viewed Chávez with a cynical disdain. These sentiments spread to large sectors of the general population, through an anti-Chávez mass media campaign that systematically distorted events in Venezuela. Rather than try to explain Chávez’s appeal to large sectors of the Venezuelan population or understand the process of radical change underway in the country, the West’s media class preferred to focus almost entirely on the figure of Chávez. It was precisely this narrative that was so effective in discrediting the Venezuelan process through concealing the role of collective agency, silencing the people from below, rendering them insignificant.

Nevertheless, Chávez still held a wide appeal beyond Venezuela’s borders, especially in the countries of the global South, who understood all too well what imperialism meant in practice. In Chávez, many saw a genuine leftwing icon, someone with the courage to lead the fight against US imperialism, not only in Latin America but across the world. However, there were those on the left, especially in the West, that displayed an increasing antipathy to Chávez, perhaps the result of the distorted picture of Venezuela generated by the media. Others remained suspicious that a man coming from the military could offer a progressive politics, especially in a continent where the military’s record is steeped in blood. A deeper understanding of the specificities of the Venezuelan case is a prerequisite for purging prejudice.

My own decision to spend a year and half in Venezuela between 2005-2007 was the result of my desire to see for myself what kind of process was unfolding under the Chávez government. What exactly was going on that so provoked the ire of the US government and the Western political and media classes?

I found a country in the midst of intense and profound changes, with a new constitution heralded for its progressive content such as the rights it accorded to traditionally ignored groups such as Venezuela’s indigenous peoples. There were government supported community radio and television stations being run by young people; neighbourhood assemblies that discussed how to “transfer power to the people”; government-subsidised supermarkets in the poorest neighbourhoods (where articles of the constitution were explained in cartoon form on the packaging); a plethora of free cultural festivals and debates about socialism on the streets of Caracas and across the country. All this felt like being transported to another planet, one where social justice and human dignity were a priority. In the midst of all of this was the commanding figure of Chávez, whose leadership qualities and charisma were so evident that no credible domestic opponent could deny them. Such opponents included the (generally white skinned) elite that had traditionally ruled Venezuela, whose fury at their loss of political power was only exacerbated by the gradual erosion of their economic domination of the country. Again the private media was harnessed to fuel the fires of hatred towards Chávez and his government.

Of course Chávez’s charisma was a double-edged sword. It served both to placate divisions between various factions of his movement and energise his followers into action (especially at election time); but it also fed into what was arguably one of the major weaknesses of the Venezuelan process: the over-reliance on Chávez. This, in turn, disincentivised the search for a new or collective leadership. Nevertheless, with Chávez around, the movement for radical change in Venezuela felt, for the most part, irrepressible.

Despite this and other weaknesses, I returned from Venezuela convinced that the country’s ‘Bolivarian’ process was a noble experiment; that at its core it was seeking to create a society where human needs are prioritised over corporate needs. In most of the world this is clearly not the case. For me, Venezuela’s “threat of a good example” is a subversive alternative that is not only challenging neoliberalism and capitalism but is laying the foundations for a 21st Century socialism.

I had the privilege of observing Chávez at close quarters when, as part of the team filming with John Pilger for his documentary ‘The War on Democracy’, we were invited to travel with Chávez for two days. After arriving in Barquisimeto on the presidential plane, we drove through the city in a presidential convoy, where thousands of Venezuelans lined the streets and waved the convoy on. This was a genuine expression of affection for someone they considered one of their own. At the first event, in a massive stadium, I was struck by the patient manner in which Chávez explained what his government was doing. At a further three events that day Chávez explained his government’s vision, using metaphors and a language that resonated with ordinary Venezuelans.

It was these Venezuelans, people like Joel Linares, a community activist and friend, who every day invested their time, energy and passion into building the fairer Venezuela Chávez so often spoke about. “Chávez has given the people back their spirit of struggle. Because the ideas of struggle don’t die” was what Mariela Machado, a nurse and community activist in the La Vega barrio, told me when I asked her what she felt was the biggest change she had experienced under the Chávez goverment.

So as the forces of reaction in Venezuela and abroad get ready to step up their offensive against the Venezuelan process while trying their best to conceal their delight at Chávez’s death, we should remember his true legacy.

Hugo Chávez galvanised the Venezuelan people into taking centre stage in the country’s political process. He was a leader and a teacher but above all someone that demonstrated an unwavering faith in the principle that the people are the best architects of their freedom. In doing so he inspired not only millions of Venezuelans, but millions more around the world who believe in the urgency of building an alternative.

Viva Chávez!

This article was first published by Alborada.

Where is Venezuela going after more than 12 years of having the Chavez government in power? Finding answers that actually engage with some of the major initiatives taking place in the country, such as the community councils, and that transcend the simplistic evaluations offered in the mainstream media that focus virtually all developments in Venezuela around the figure of Chavez are not easy to find. Yet one recent comprehensive and considered assessment has been offered by Gregory Wilpert, author of ‘Changing Venezuela by Taking Power’, which deserves to be read widely and debated by those on the left. For Wilpert, Venezuela has made significant progress in the past 12 years of Chavez’s presidency towards creating a more egalitarian, inclusive, and participatory society. However, he warns of important shortcomings and highlights the factors and obstacles that might explain the persistence of these shortcomings.

Venezuela’s foreign policy and what this says about the nature of the Chavez government has once again been in the media spotlight in relation to events in Libya. Prior to the foreign military intervention in favour of the rebels in Libya’s civil war, a number of leftwing commentators criticised Chavez for what they perceived to be his support for Gaddafi’s government in the conflict. A number of these commentators had trouble separating the actual position of the Venezuelan government with mainstream media misrepresentations of it, and one had to turn to informed and independent media sources for clarification on the issue. However, while Chavez and his government will continue to generate debate and controversy on all sides of the political spectrum, the two articles that follow focus on developments in Venezuela itself.

• Venezuela: Putting People First

In the first Jennie Bremner, Assistant General Secretary of the British trade union Unite, argues that the Chavez government, despite suffering from the deep global recession that has led other government’s such as the UK’s to drive through savage cuts to public services and welfare spending, has instead chosen the path of building a fairer and more equal society through investing in people and public services.

• The Path for Venezuela Cannot be Neoliberalism or Stalinism

In the second provocatively titled piece, originally published by Venezuela biggest selling daily newspaper ‘Ultimas Noticias’ and translated into English by the Transnational Institute (TNI), Venezuelan sociologist, Edgardo Lander argues that Venezuela’s ‘Bolivarian’ process is caught between a fundamental contradiction: popular demands for democratic participation against tendencies towards hierarchical decision-making and a concentration of power.

We welcome your comments on any of these articles.

More information: www.venezuelanalysis.com / www.alborada.net



PN: Your new film ‘The War You Don’t See’ focuses on the media’s role in war. I’d like to start by asking you why you felt you wanted to make this film.

JP: Television is most people’s principal source of information. In Britain, much of television journalism is devoted to a mythology of ‘objectivity’, ‘impartiality’, ‘balance’. The BBC has long elevated this to a self-serving noble cause, allowing it to broadcast received establishment wisdom dressed as news. This helps us understand why propaganda in free societies like Britain and the United States is far more effective than in dictatorships. While ‘professional’ journalists, especially broadcasters, present themselves falsely as a neutral species, truth doesn’t stand a chance. This is most vividly demonstrated when imperial power — that is, America with Britain in tow — invades countries it wants to control, regardless of international law. This lawlessness is seldom a yardstick used in the coverage and selection of news. I didn’t really understand this early in my career. Perhaps it was my arrival in Vietnam in the 1960s that helped me understand. ‘The War You Don’t See’ is a product of that, and of routinely deconstructing almost every news item I see, hear and watch.

PN: In an interview with Venezuelan academic Edgardo Lander, he argued that countries that do not have a democratic media cannot be called democratic. Why is a functioning democratic media system so important for democracy in general?

JP: I agree with Lander. Thomas Jefferson said, “Free information is the currency of democracy.” It’s simple. No free flow of information; no democracy. Without an informed public, political or corporate authority — any authority — cannot be held to account, and if it’s not held to account, it’s very soon corrupted.

PN: The British-based media watchdog website Media Lens argues that the increasingly centralised, corporate nature of the media means that it acts as a de facto propaganda system for corporate and other establishment interests. This is a damming verdict on mainstream journalism, but is it a fair one?

JP: Yes, it’s entirely fair. Again, take the issue of war. The United States is a ‘warfare state’ with the most stable and powerful part of its economy devoted to the manufacture of armaments. It sells these armaments, and planes and munitions, to hundreds of countries. Go to any arms fair, and it’s clear these have to be ‘market tested’ in wars. The cluster bombs that rain down on people in Iraq and Afghanistan were tested in Vietnam; the Napalm that has been refined to burn beneath the skin was tested in Korea. Each new war is a laboratory. Much of the media and the arms companies are augmented; in the case of NBC, this is explicit. NBC is one of the world’s biggest news organisations and its parent company, General Electric, is one of the world’s biggest arms manufacturers. In the message of its news, the BBC is not very different. A study by the University of Wales, Cardiff, about the BBC’s role in the run-up to the Iraq invasion found that the corporation’s coverage was found to have been overwhelmingly supportive of the government –  a government then engaged in serious lying, as we now know and as journalists ought to have known at the time. There are of course a number of honourable exceptions — but think of an ‘establishment’ interest, then consider how it is propagated, directly or indirectly, in the so-called mainstream media; and by ‘indirectly’ I also mean a censorship by omission. This surely must explain why so many in the media could barely contain their fury at Wikileaks; how dare these unclubbable types get in the way of the media’s right to be used and flattered and lied to. In ‘The War You Don’t See’, a former Foreign Office official describes in detail how easy it is to manipulate ’lobby’ journalists.

PN: Your film begins with shocking images from a 2007 US Apache helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians which first came out via the whistleblowers’ website Wikileaks. Last week Wikileaks released more than 250,000 classified US embassy cables which have since dominated the global news agenda. How important do you think the work of Wikileaks is and how big a threat does it pose to governments wishing to keep information about their foreign military operations secret from their citizens?

JP: I hesitate to use the word ‘revolution’ but the entry of Wikileaks does represent a revolution. Digital technology has made it possible for governments to read our emails, but it also means we can read theirs. Is this a ‘threat’ to established power? Yes, because, again, information is power. It gives an undemocratic elite its power and secrecy perpetuates this power. When we know the nature of official machinations and deceptions, we the public can act. As the historian Mark Curtis says in my film, “the public is a threat that has to be countered.” When the beans are spilled, the “countering” is all the more difficult.

PN: In your film you also recount how Edward Bernays invented the term public relations and pioneered the modern-day system of propaganda. And you show how the US government used Bernays’ techniques to recruit US citizens to join the First World War. Are governments such as the US still using these techniques today, and if so can you give some concrete examples of how this works?

JP: Edward Bernays said, “The intelligent manipulation of the masses is an invisible government which is the true ruling power in this country.” The same techniques are still being used, such as the creation of what Bernays called “false realities” and the rituals of patriotism devoted to justifying war-making. What’s different these days is that the propaganda is not working. Look at the panic in the responses of governments to Wikileaks’ disclosures. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are opposed not only throughout the world but in the US and Britain. The world wide web has given people a way of finding out without turning on the TV or the Today programme. I write a column for the ‘New Statesman’, which has a modest circulation. Once it goes out on the web, it can reach an audience of several million.

PN: Finally, what would be the best way to make the mainstream media’s reporting of war less subservient to government interests and are you hopeful about the internet’s ability to provide alternative reporting of major events such as war?

JP: The mainstream media will not change until its structure changes. A Murdoch newspaper or TV channel will always reflect the rapacious interests of Murdoch. However, journalists and broadcasters collectively have power, as does the interested public. I would like to see established a ‘fifth estate’ in which journalists, and those in media colleges who tutor aspiring journalists, and the public, unite to begin to change practice from within. During the invasion of Iraq, there were small mutinies in the BBC, but they weren’t co-ordinated. The potential is there. As for the internet providing an alternate reporting of war, that’s already happening. Most of the best reporting of Iraq was on the web — from the likes of Dahr Jamail and Nir Rosen, and ‘citizen journalists’ such as Jo Wilding. And it’s already happening where it probably matters most: at the seats of power, where, it seems, almost everything is leaking on the web; and long may it continue.

‘The War You Don’t See’ is at the Curzon Soho and cinemas throughout Britain from 12th December, and is broadcast on ITV on 14th December at 10.35pm. More info: www.johnpilger.com

Pablo Navarrete is the director of ‘Inside the Revolution: A Journey into the Heart of Venezuela’ (Alborada Films, 2009). He an editor of levelground.info and Alborada.net, a website covering Latin America related issues such as politics, media and culture.

On a crisp April evening in west London, Kareem Dennis, better known as rapper Lowkey, is a young man with plenty to say about why other British rappers are not, unlike him, addressing the political issues of the day in their lyrics. At just 23, Lowkey is taking his fierce denunciations of the state of the world to a rapidly growing audience, increasingly puncturing the confines of the hip hop community to include those on the left, both in Britain and beyond, who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves rap fans.

Born in London to an Iraqi mother and an English father, it was through his family that Lowkey first encountered rap. ‘I just got into rap when I was young, from my brother’s record collection. My parents had a Public Enemy vinyl but I didn’t really find them to be very entertaining at that age to be honest, it just sounded like shouting to me.’ It was through artists such as Gil Scott-Heron that Lowkey’s attraction to rap intensified and at 17 he started taking it seriously and rapping in public regularly. Since then he’s been part of various rap crews, even venturing outside his genre in 2008 when he joined forces with indie/rock musicians from the Arctic Monkeys, Reverend and the Makers, and Babyshambles to form Mongrel, a band playing a hybrid of indie, rock and rap.

Long live Palestine

A watershed in exposing sections of the British left to Lowkey’s uncompromising prose occurred in January 2009 when Lowkey took to the stage and addressed a Stop The War Coalition rally in London against the Israeli military’s devastating assault on Gaza, dubbed Operation Cast Lead. In a poem entitled ‘Long Live Palestine’, released earlier this year as a charity single to raise funds for Gaza’s victims, Lowkey offered a performance charged with both anger and humanity. In one section he rhymed:

Talking about revolution, sitting in Starbucks,

The fact is that’s the type of thinking I can’t trust,

Let alone even start to respect,

Before you talk learn the meaning of that scarf on your neck,

Forget Nestle,

Obama promised Israel 30 billion over the next decade,

They’re trigger happy and they’re crazy,

Think about that when you’re putting Huggies nappies on your baby,

Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza,

This is for the child that is searching for an answer,

I wish I could take your tears and replace them with laughter,

Long live Palestine, Long live Gaza.

Lowkey is nearly always seen performing with a Palestinian keffiyeh on his shoulder, and it’s clear that it’s an issue he holds very dear to his heart. I ask about the roots of this commitment.

‘I can’t lie and pretend it has nothing to do with my Arab heritage,’ he says. ‘But that’s [Palestine] something I always grew up feeling was so misunderstood… In my opinion the actions of Israel point to an attempt to eradicate not just the existence of the Palestinian people but the existence of the word Palestine. They [the Israelis] don’t even refer to them as Palestinians, they refer to them as Arabs. They’re ethnically cleansing Jerusalem as we speak.’

There is an urgency and intensity to Lowkey’s words. Recalling his performance at the London rally he chuckles at the memory that ‘Convincing people to let me speak at that event wasn’t easy… After that the reaction was surprising and that kind of pushed me forward and I’ve moved on from there.’ He’s since travelled and performed in the West Bank, Gaza, and most recently Lebanon.

Soon after meeting me Lowkey is set to fly to the US, where he’s been invited to join Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein on a speaking tour. Unlike many high-profile US rappers, who have been heavyweight champions of Barack Obama, Lowkey is deeply unimpressed with the first black resident at the White House.

These sentiments have been most recently collected in a song entitled ‘Obama Nation’, where Lowkey offers a scathing attack on the policies of the US president. In the first month of the song’s music video being posted on YouTube it was viewed over 80,000 times; Lowkey has also collected an impressive following on the social network site Facebook, with nearly 11,000 ‘fans’. Lowkey’s songs are clearly stridently confronting the global political talking points of the day and reaching an impressive and growing number of people around the world. But, with a general election looming at the time of the interview, how does he feel about domestic UK politics?

Apathy in the UK

‘Here only about 45 per cent of the population voted at the last election,’ says Lowkey, speaking before the 2010 election. ‘This shows the extent to which people do not believe the politicians, do not believe in the politicians, and do not relate to the politicians.’

‘And look at our relationship to Britain’s political history,’ he adds. ‘Words like Balfour Declaration don’t mean anything to the average person here … There’s a gap between the elites and the people.’

Lowkey sees signs for hope beyond our borders. ‘On the Palestinian issue, things are changing, perhaps too slowly and perhaps it’s too late, but they are changing. I’m looking on CNN and I’m seeing [US] General Petreaus saying Israel is hurting the US’s interests in the Middle East. So you do have these changes happening.’

This doesn’t lead him to make unrealistic predictions about the possibilities for change. ‘I’d rather be a pessimistic guy who’s proved wrong than an optimistic guy who’s proved right,’ he says.

Even so, Lowkey carries a certainty about his future that is uncommon in uncertain times. ‘I won’t be dictated to about what I can and can’t say. Under no circumstances,’ he declares. Young though he may be, in Lowkey Britain has found a new forceful and influential voice of rebellion.

Lowkey’s new album Soundtrack to the Struggle will be released later this year. More info: www.lowkeyuk.net. To read a longer version of this interview: www.levelground.info

While hugely popular with many in Venezuela, Chávez’s policies and his outspoken criticisms of the US government have made him powerful enemies, both at home and abroad, especially in the media. Chávez has also polarised opinion on the global left, with a divide becoming visible between those who characterise him as authoritarian and others who stress the democratic nature of his government.

In Venezuela, the first years of the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ saw Chávez speaking about combating ‘savage neoliberalism’ and searching for a more humane capitalism: a Venezuelan ‘third way’ as a solution to the severe socio-economic crisis that the government inherited.

However, the response that these measures provoked among Venezuela’s traditional elites and their allies in the US government led to the radicalisation of the process, and in early 2005 Chávez surprised his supporters and opponents alike when he publicly rejected capitalism as a model for Venezuela and spoke of the need to instead create a ’21st-century socialism’.

Apart from debating what 21st-century socialism should and shouldn’t be – and insisting that it has to be original – nearly five years since Chávez called for its creation in Venezuela, what is the evidence that the country is moving in that direction?

This is one of the key questions I wanted to explore in my new feature-length documentary, Inside the Revolution: A journey into the heart of Venezuela. Filmed in the country’s capital, Caracas, in November 2008, the eve of the tenth anniversary of Chávez’s presidency, I wanted it to go beyond the simplistic mainstream media reporting on Venezuela that focuses virtually all developments in the country on the figure of Chávez, and instead provide a platform for the voices of the government’s grass-roots supporters who are driving the process forward.

Community organising

What came out of the filming was that arguably the most significant development, in terms of pointing to where Venezuela’s 21st-century socialism seems to be heading, is the creation of the community councils.

Joel Linares is a Christian grass-roots community organiser in Winche, a barrio in the east of Caracas. He explained to me: ‘The community council is an organisational expression of the community. It isn’t the only one, but it’s perhaps the most developed one.’ Likening them to a roundtable of the community, where all its social actors get together, Linares described how each council, representing between 200 and 400 families, would meet and agree on the measures to be carried out within that community.

‘The community council has legitimacy because people of that locality know that its members are there by way of an election in a citizen’s assembly, which is the highest authority in the community. The highest authority isn’t the community council – it’s the citizen’s assembly, which is made up of all the people living in that community.’ Linares explained how the councils had the power to manage resources, among other things, which in his opinion gave them the functions of a government.

Unlike Venezuela’s worker cooperatives, another significant initiative promoted by the Chávez government, which are headed by presidents, the community councils are horizontally structured, with all of the spokespeople, or voceros, working for free and considered of equal rank.

The council itself is composed of various commissions, including a communal bank, which looks after the funds; a ‘social controllership’, which monitors spending; and an ‘employment commission’, which registers community members for paid jobs and tries to ensure they receive preferential hiring. No spokesperson is allowed to belong to more than one commission.

Since 2006 an estimated 20,000 community councils have been created in Venezuela, and they seem to be the key component in promoting ‘popular power’ and participatory democracy in the current stage of the country’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’. In our next article, Steve Ellner offers an assessment of their development so far and the challenges they face.

Pablo Navarrete is Red Pepper’s Latin America editor. His new documentary Inside the Revolution: A journey into the heart of Venezuela is out now: www.alborada.net/alboradafilms

–

Either we invent or we err

Steve Ellner considers the achievements, and criticisms, of Venezuela’s community councils

The creation of community councils in Venezuela was partly a reaction to the inefficiency of the state bureaucracy, particularly at the municipal level. In his congressional address unveiling a constitutional reform proposal in August 2007, President Hugo Chávez affirmed that he had ‘misgivings regarding established local authorities’ and had greater faith in the capacity of the people at the local level. He went on to point to the high abstention rates in city and state elections as placing in doubt the legitimacy of local officials.

More recently, Chávez’s proposal to group community councils in a given zone into ‘communes’ (which in turn would form part of a ‘commune city’), in order to solve common problems, threatens to undermine the power of municipal government by creating a parallel structure.

In private, local authorities, including mayors, have expressed fear that the scheme is designed to phase out city government, as Leandro Rodríguez, adviser to the National Assembly’s citizen participation, decentralisation and regional development commission, and Sergio Lugo, an adviser to the Mérida municipality’s department of local planning councils, told me.

Nevertheless, the community councils are not in a position to supplant municipal government. At this point, they are undertaking work only on priority projects, a far cry from taking on the myriad functions of municipal government. Applied to the community councils, the Rousseau-inspired utopian ideal of direct democracy displacing representative institutions – a vision sometimes embraced by Chávistas – is thus highly misleading.

A more realistic assessment comes from Marisol Pérez, who heads the state government of Anzoátegui’s community council office. ‘This is an experimental process,’ she says. ‘The celebrated phrase of Simón Rodríguez [Simón Bolívar's tutor] so frequently invoked by our president, “Either we invent or we err,” is applicable in a big way to the community councils.’

Chávista political leaders, whose rhetoric typically emphasises popular decision making, have increasingly highlighted the activities of the community councils. Aristóbulo Istúriz and Jorge Rodríguez, the Chávista candidates in Caracas’s two major mayoral races in November 2008, divided their respective platforms into two parts: programmes directly undertaken by the state, and support for ‘popular power’, consisting mainly of the community councils.

In another mayoral race in Caracas, the Chávista candidate pledged to construct a ‘metrocable’ up the slum-ridden hills of Petare, similar to another one that is near completion in the barrios of San Agustín. According to the plan, each station would contain a facility, such as a library or theatre, that would be placed under the administration of a community council.

An ‘atom bomb’

Meanwhile, government critics argue that the community councils are inefficient and warn that they weaken representative democracy by undermining intermediate bodies between the national executive and the people, be they the municipal government, state planning agencies, or even the new Chávista party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Américo Martín, a former leftist who ran for president in 1978, calls the community councils an ‘atom bomb’, bound to produce chaos by making clientelistic demands of a magnitude impossible to satisfy. Another leftist turned anti-Chávista, Teodoro Petkoff, harps on the quixotic nature of community councils, which he likens to the worker cooperatives and worker-management schemes also promoted by the Chávez government.

Petkoff argues that these experiments bring to mind Marx’s indictment of the utopian socialists: ‘Instead of recognising the historical conditions of emancipation, they envisioned fantastic conditions and a reorganisation of society invented by themselves.’

These arguments against the viability of the community councils overstate the case against them. The fact is that thousands of projects throughout Venezuela have already been satisfactorily completed, and many more are underway, an accomplishment entirely new in the nation’s history. In addition, community council leaders are engaged in a wide variety of activities and programmes that have no precedent in Venezuela’s community movement.

Politics and the state are very much at the centre of the community council phenomenon. Council leaders often find themselves on both sides of the line separating civil society and political activism. Thus, for instance, council meetings sometimes devote time to discussing electoral strategy and logistics. After the PSUV was created in 2007, it canvassed for Chávista candidates in the communities, causing the community councils to recede somewhat from the electoral arena.

Nevertheless, in early 2009, the participation and social protection minister Erika Farías called on the community councils to form brigades to campaign in favour of the Chávez-sponsored constitutional amendment to eliminate term limits on all elected positions, a proposition that was approved in a referendum held on 15 February 2009. The electoral activity of those connected with the community councils and other government-funded social programs overshadowed the PSUV in the campaign.

Autonomy

Some writers stress the need for Venezuelan social organisations, including community councils, to strive for absolute autonomy vis-à-vis state and party. These include leading Venezuelan activists and writers such as Roland Denis, Javier Biardeau, and Rafael Uzcátegui (of the anarchist periodical El Libertario). John Holloway, a renowned theoretician who defends this viewpoint, stated at the time of the World Social Forum in Caracas in 2006: ‘The great danger that exists in Venezuela today … is that the movement “from above” will swallow … the movement “from below”.’

The fixation on autonomy, however, is somewhat misplaced. Social programmes and the organisations they create, not autonomous social movements, are the backbone of the Chávista movement.

Prior to Chávez’s election in 1998, Venezuela lacked the kind of vibrant, well-organised social movements that paved the way for the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. For many years in Venezuela, neighbourhood and worker cooperative movements were independent of the state, but they failed to flourish or play a major role in the lives of non-privileged Venezuelans. In contrast, the Chávez government’s injection of large sums of money into community councils and other social programmes has served to stimulate the marginalised sectors and show them ways to take control of their lives. Specifically, state resources in the form of allotments for community council projects, loans for worker cooperatives, and stipends for students enrolled in makeshift educational programmes (known as ‘missions’) have been essential in activating people along organised lines.

In spite of financial dependence on the state, rank-and-file Chávistas tend to be critical, and their support for the government is hardly unqualified – thus explaining, for instance, Chávez’s defeat in the constitutional referendum of 2007.

For the Chávistas, the ‘revolutionary process’ consists of people gaining control of their lives in the areas where they live, more so than in the workplace (as communists, Trotskyists and other hard-liners advocate). This emphasis is reflected in the fact that the community councils have received far more attention and resources than the worker-management schemes ever did.

Thorny issues

The councils are subject to a host of problems, including poor financial management, ‘free riders’, and the deep-rooted scepticism among many community members toward neighbourhood leaders’ intentions. Pro-Chávez writers who focus on the community councils and similar social programmes, while providing useful information, generally skirt these thorny issues. The pro-government media also shy away from open discussion of knotty problems of this type, even though they frequently refer to the community councils.

Furthermore, critical debate is lacking within the PSUV. By avoiding nitty-gritty problems, the Chavista leadership ends up glorifying the community councils and creating the myth that they are a panacea for countless problems, a notion that may be designed to pay electoral dividends. The shortcoming is particularly serious given the government’s stated commitment to more than double the programme’s funding in 2009.

As the community councils gain experience, two processes fraught with tension are underway. First, marginalised and semi-marginalised sectors of the population gain confidence and experience in collective decision making. Second, steps toward institutionalisation are designed to create viable mechanisms that monitor and guard against ill-conceived projects and misuse of public funds.

But the effort to achieve incorporation, on the one hand, and institutionalisation, on the other, is a complicated balancing act. Mechanisms and procedures to ensure efficiency cannot be imposed all at once. The massive and ongoing participation of the non-privileged depends on the flexibility and comprehension of those in charge of public financing.

‘We don’t hound the council spokespeople, and we give them the benefit of the doubt,’ says Marisol Pérez of the Anzoátegui state government. ‘After all, many of them are novices who could easily drop out if they perceive that the obstacles are too great.’

In addition to the social and institutional dimensions, a third objective is political: the mobilisation of those who benefit from the community councils in order to defend the government in the face of an intransigent opposition with extensive resources. Achieving these distinct and not always compatible objectives is a formidable challenge for Venezuela’s uncharted path to socialism.

Steve Ellner has been teaching at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, since 1977, his latest book ‘Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict and the Chávez Phenomenon’ (Lynne Rienner Publishers) is out now.

Regional bodies such as the OAS, the Rio Group, ALBA, Mercosur and UNASUR have also called for the restoration of the constitutionally elected president. Furthermore, Zelaya has received the support of the Inter American Human Rights Commission, and been invited to address the UN General Assembly ‘as soon as possible’ by its President, Miguel D’Escoto. After this address, Zelaya plans to return to Honduras, accompanied by Jose Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the OAS, and possibly other regional heads of state, with the aim of being reinstated as president.

The story behind the coup

Honduras is a deeply unequal country, with the richest 10 per cent of the population taking home 43.7 per cent of the national income. In contrast, the poorest 30 per cent take just 7.4 per cent, and just under 40 per cent of the population live in poverty (defined as earning less than double the cost of the basic food basket). Only 4.7 per cent of Hondurans have access to the internet, which might go some way to explaining the social background of Honduran coup cheerleaders on English-language websites such as the BBC.

Since coming to power in 2006 president Zelaya has gradually moved to the left, and at the time of the coup was taking steps to address Honduras’ gross levels of inequality. Predictably, these moves earned him the enmity of much of congress, whose ties to the country’s traditional elites run deep. Zelaya also angered these elites by pursuing a leftist foreign policy, joining the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an alternative regional trade group composed of nine left-leaning Latin American and Caribbean countries. The arrival of Cuban doctors to provide healthcare to the poorest sectors of Honduran society was met with particular hostility by Zelaya’s opponents.
Honduras’ leftward turn also undoubtedly caused significant discomfort among some in Washington, especially at a time when much of Latin America has seemed to move beyond the reach of US political influence.

The catalyst for the assault on the presidential home by the Honduran armed forces, and the subsequent detention and expulsion of the president from the country was the non-binding consultative poll that was due to take place on Sunday (28 June) on whether a referendum ought to be held on the convocation of a constituent assembly, alongside the presidential election ballot in November 2010 (when Zelaya’s term ends). In other words, the coup was sparked by a non-binding vote intended to consult Hondurans on whether or not they wanted to be asked about a constitutional reform, and not because Zelaya wished to extend his term indefinitely, as has been widely reported in the mainstream international media.

This last point is one of several lies and misleading statements issued by the new dictatorship, which have been amply covered uncritically in the mainstream media. Another key one is that the coup is in fact a ‘constitutional transfer of power’. This requires a bizarre leap in logic if we consider the facts of Zelaya’s overthrow: the president’s home was assaulted by the military; after 15 minutes of combat the president himself was kidnapped and bundled into a military aircraft in his pyjamas and flown into exile; his ministers were detained and beaten, alongside the ambassadors of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

While Honduras’ new and illegally installed ‘president’, Roberto Micheletti (the former leader of congress), has declared that ’80 or 90 per cent of the population support what happened today’, this is highly doubtful given the imposition of a curfew, the ongoing street demonstrations by Zelaya’s supporters, road blockades in the west of the country, and the general strike called for by social organisations and the trade union movement. However, as is the norm with coups against progressive leaders in Latin America, Micheletti has received expressions of support from the country’s business sector.

Role of the US

What remains to be seen is whether the Honduran military will be prepared to shed the blood of its people to protect an illegal government with no visible international backing.

And here, as is also the norm with coups against progressive governments in Latin America, the words and actions of the US government, closely watched as ever, will be decisive. While the Obama administration has joined Latin America’s governments in condemning the coup, the US precise role in the days running up to the coup still remains unclear.

While there is little direct evidence of US interference in Honduras’ coup, Eva Golinger has indicated certain similarities between the US-supported coup that briefly removed Hugo Chavez from power in Venezuela in 2002, and the current situation in Honduras. Golinger points out that a New York Times article states that the US government was working for ‘several days’ with the Honduran coup planners in order to ‘prevent’ the coup. Given that around 70 per cent of Honduras’ trade is with the US, its army is heavily backed by Washington, and the Pentagon maintains a military base in the country, equipped with approximately 500 troops and numerous air force combat planes and helicopters, it would seem naïve not to believe that if the US government had expressed their firm opposition to the coup, it would never have occurred. Furthermore, the US track record of undermining and supporting and participating in the overthrow of democratically elected government in Latin America cannot be overlooked.

Regardless of the extent of US involvement in, or support for the coup, the US position in the next couple of days will go a long way to determining whether its already precarious relationship with much of Latin America will deteriorate. The US has several options here: it can send a representative to accompany president Zelaya back to Honduras on Thursday, and it can threaten military, economic and political sanctions, all of which would have a strong effect on the usurpers of power in Tegucigalpa.

If Obama’s government wants to send a powerful message about the sincerity behind the US rhetoric on liberty, democracy, and respect for the rule of law, it needs to accompany words with actions, and use its considerable influence in Honduras to actively support the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya as the country’s legitimate president.

Particularly controversial has been the issue of land reform. Bolivia has one of the most unequal rates of land ownership in the world, with one per cent of landowners owning two-thirds of the country’s farm land. It is no surprise, then, that Morales’s proposed reforms have provoked the ire of Bolivia’s landed elites. In the richer provinces, these elites began orchestrating violence against indigenous people in alliance with crypto-fascist paramilitary youth mobs. Among their demands are regional autonomy and a greater share of oil and gas profits – concessions that Morales is unwilling to give. At the time of writing, the worst of the violence seems to have subsided and talks between the government and opposition have resulted in Bolivia’s Congress approving a referendum on a new constitution early next year. But the underlying conflict is unlikely to be easily resolved and could flare up again at any time.

Conflict of interests

In Civil War is not a Stupid Thing, the political economist Christopher Cramer critically reflects upon the prevailing ideology surrounding conflict in the ‘third world’. He argues that historically the west has looked upon conflict in these places as a ‘deviant aberration from a more normal world of liberal peace, best exemplified by Northern prosperity and stability’. For Cramer, in the past few years this prejudice has been integrated into a neoliberal analysis that emphasises the immediate economic costs to societies of conflict, with these two assumptions combining to support the notion that conflict is ‘development in reverse’.

A cursory look at the British media’s reporting of the crisis in Bolivia supports Cramer’s thesis. Both the Guardian and the Independent observed that Bolivia was beginning to resemble a ‘failed state’. The Daily Telegraph’s Daniel Hannan chided the Bolivian government for placing ideology before compromise, accusing ‘Morales’s palaeo-socialism’ of ‘shrinking the economy’, thereby having the effect that ‘Bolivians are poorer, angrier and more violent than I have ever known them – they deserve better than this’. The Financial Times, meanwhile, harboured doubts about the ability of ‘increasingly politicised institutions to support entrepreneurialism and economic growth’. The message is clear: conflict is antiquated, a distraction from the more civilised business of money making.

It woould be ironic if the west’s detached attitude to events in Latin America were to be explained in part by neoliberal notions, given that the current global neoliberal order had its bloody birth in Latin America – in Chile in 1973. In the wake of the US-sponsored coup that overthrew Salvador Allende’s democratically-elected government, economists from Milton Friedman’s Chicago School rammed through radical neoliberal reforms. Chile served as a laboratory for radical ideas that would later be adopted by the west, with Margaret Thatcher an infamous admirer of the military dictator General Pinochet’s ‘restructuring’ of Chilean society.

There are, in fact, close parallels between the modern histories of Britain and Bolivia. The post-war era in both countries was shaped by popular democratic governments that vastly expanded the public realm. In Britain, the Labour government of Clement Atlee nationalised Britain’s major industries and founded the NHS. In 1952 in Bolivia, the left-wing National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) of Victor Paz Estenssoro nationalised the mines and established national education and healthcare systems. In both countries these reforms remained largely unchanged until the mid-1980s.

Bolivia embraced neoliberal changes in 1985, following the re-election of the MNR – once again headed by Paz. This time, Paz promptly reversed the reforms of 1952, floating the peso, cutting public sector salaries and eliminating food subsidies, price controls and restrictions on foreign commerce. As in Britain, the neoliberal revolution continued through the 1990s with the privatisation of the oil, gas, tin, telecommunications and railway industries.

War on democracy

In Bolivia, the manner in which these reforms were instituted was profoundly undemocratic. Paz had run on a mandate of fiscal responsibility and an allegiance to his ‘nationalist revolutionary’ past. Once in power, though, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was instituted as a presidential decree. The idea was to pass the reforms before trade union and civil and peasant groups had a chance to react. React they did, however, just as the British unions did in response to Thatcher’s reforms, calling a general strike. As Naomi Klein has noted, Paz’s response ‘made Thatcher’s treatment of the miners seem tame’. He declared a state of emergency and rounded up the top 200 union leaders, loaded them on to planes and flew them to remote jails in the Amazon.

The turn to neoliberalism has been a common theme of the past 30 years in much of the world – to the extent that we can now speak of a neoliberal global economic order. In large measure this global revolution has relied upon circumventing national democratic processes. ‘Privatisation’ and ‘liberalisation’, in reality, amount to technical terms for removing critical economic decisions from the realm of public accountability. Democracy is further undermined when national democratic decisions can be vetoed by capital flight as a consequence of international free trade. This is something John Maynard Keynes recognised when he warned that ‘nothing less than the democratic experiment in self-government [is] endangered by the threat of global financial forces.’

In Bolivia, neoliberalism was initially hailed as an enormous success. Prior to Paz’s reforms, inflation had skyrocketed to over 14,000 per cent. Within two years of the reforms it had been brought down to 10 per cent. But as inflation came down, unemployment went up. Bolivia experienced massive lay offs, including 22,000 from the state mines alone, rising to 45,000 by 1991.

Unemployment took its heaviest toll on Bolivia’s fragile industrial sector. Without state backing, factory closures led to 35,000 people losing their jobs. Those that remained in employment did not fare much better, with real wages dropping by 40 per cent. Not only did neoliberalism fail to create jobs, but the dismantling of the central bureaucracy undermined the government’s ability to respond to the damaging effects of joblessness. Many who lost jobs migrated to the east of the country to grow coca, which by the 1980s was Bolivia’s most profitable export.

While ultimate responsibility for the NEP lies with Paz and his ‘emergency team’ of technocrats and business leaders, the reforms were also largely a product of the aggressive influence of international financial institutions, particularly the IMF and World Bank. The NEP was largely designed to court their approval, while the waves of privatisations in the 1990s were on the explicit instructions of the IMF – in fact, the IMF was so impressed with the results that Bolivia was held up as a model for less developed countries around the world.

The Bolivian government’s pandering to the demands of the IMF in the 1990s can be interpreted as a consequence of the devastation wrought on Bolivia’s democracy by the NEP. Having been shut out of the sphere of governance, the public had limited means with which to press the government to act in its interests. The result was a return to an imperial arrangement whereby Bolivia’s elites auctioned off their country’s land and resources to the highest foreign bidders.

The looting of Bolivia reached its nadir in 2000 when the World Bank facilitated the privatisation of the water supply in the city of Cochambamba to a foreign multinational consortium led by London-based International Water Limited (IWL). In exchange Bolivia would receive $600 million of debt relief. The consortium immediately raised water rates by 35 per cent, and in the drive for profit maximisation a law was even briefly passed prohibiting people from collecting rainwater. For the majority of Bolivians, their patience had run out.

Democracy returns

In voting for Morales and his party in 2005, the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), Bolivians voted for democracy. Morales was elected on a platform of facilitating popular participation in the running of the country and the economy through the widening of the public sphere, the representation of social movements in executive office and the introduction of indigenous rights. Nationalisation of key industries ensured that profits stayed in Bolivia and the government had the capacity to govern.

As left historians Forrest Hylton and Trevor Sinclair elegantly put it in their book Revolutionary Horizons: ‘The election of Evo Morales did not bring about a revolution. It was a revolution that brought about the government of Evo Morales.’

Prior to the 2005 election, popular mobilisation had already brought down two presidents and vetoed the accession of a third. The toppling of these governments was not led by MAS; rather the MAS leadership trailed a popular mobilisation led by indigenous groups, trade unions and federations of coca growers.

It was out of this coalition that the proposals for nationalisation, constitutional reform and economic and political restructuring emerged. MAS itself was a political organisation founded by civil groups in the 1990s to articulate popular demands. In his inauguration speech Morales appealed to these groups saying ‘Control me. If I can’t advance, push me, brothers and sisters. Correct me constantly, because I may err.’

Morales was reliant on these groups during the crisis. That Morales’s supporters continue to resist the opposition’s campaign of violence is testament to their overwhelming national support and ability to mobilise to defend the government’s legitimacy.

While the British media openly discussed the possibility of a civil war, Morales’s popularity has risen since the 2005 election, including in the richer provinces. It is this support that pressured opposition members in Congress to ratify a new draft of the Bolivian constitution on 21 October. A national referendum on whether or not to make the document official is scheduled for 25 January next year.

It is significant that Bolivia’s latest crisis coincided with the 35th anniversary of the coup in Chile. It is also worth reminding ourselves that it is doubtful whether the Chile coup would have succeeded without international complicity. The parallels have not gone unnoticed in Latin America as neighbouring countries have queued up to pledge support to Morales and condemn the violence. Argentine president Christina Kirchner warned: ‘If we don’t act now, in 30 years we may be watching documentaries [about Bolivia] like those we see today about Salvador Allende.’ Her statement contained a veiled reference to the US government, whose shadow looms large over the crisis. In September, relations between the US and Bolivia became openly hostile when Morales expelled the US ambassador, accusing him of subverting Bolivia’s democracy by colluding with opposition groups.

A revolution without borders

In the 1980s, the US waged a war against a democratic revolution in Nicaragua. During the revolution, Tomas Borge, a founding member of the Sandinistas, stated his desire for a ‘revolution without borders’. What he meant was that he hoped the revolution could serve as a model for other societies. In the context of the cold war, the US government and its backers in the media did not need to resort to a sophisticated neoliberal analysis to distort the meaning of Borge’s words; it was enough to report that Nicaragua was intent on spreading a permanent ‘Soviet-style’ revolution across the western hemisphere.

The reality is that the distortion was intended to conceal something far more threatening – what Oxfam rather shrewdly described at the time as ‘the threat of the good example’. Bolivia’s experiment with democracy is an example for all of us. At a time in which neoliberalism has hollowed out our democracy while simultaneously propelling us down a path of economic and ecological disaster, the stakes could not be higher. Showing solidarity with Bolivia at this time is undoubtedly important for the people there. It might be just as important for us. n

Under Raul Castro, the Cuban revolution’s leadership has initiated a series of far reaching debates within Cuban society about the type of socialism that it sought. Through various mechanisms Cubans have been actively participating in determining the future direction of the country’s revolution. During this period Fidel has largely remained in the background yet the widely predicted implosion of Cuba’s revolution has failed to materialise. Instead, the revolution has shown that it can both survive without Fidel at the helm and make the type of changes needed to renew the island’s socialist model.

It now seems that Fidel has reached the stage where he feels able to let go and let a new generation of revolutionaries lead the island’s political process. In his resignation letter Fidel said of these: “Some [in the new leadership] were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight in the mountains and later they filled the country with glory with their heroism and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organising and leading a revolution.”

So, rather than a chaotic turn to capitalism, as occurred with the demise of the Soviet Union – and which Fidel has sought to avoid at all costs in Cuba – the changes taking place in Cuba so far seem to be controlled by the leadership yet importantly also contain a significant degree of popular participation in moulding the model of society that Cubans aspire to.

Two inter-related factors have been critical in ensuring the survival of Cuba’s revolution and facilitating the transition currently underway in the face of continued U.S. opposition. The first is the rise to power of a number of left-wing governments in Latin America, the so-called “pink tide” sweeping the region.

In particular, the election of Hugo Chavez to the Venezuelan presidency in December 1998 has been of incalculable importance for Cuba. As well as providing invaluable economic support (especially access to Venezuelan oil), Chavez has spearheaded an ideological assault on the failed neoliberal policies that Washington has promoted in Latin America. With his fiery rhetoric Chavez has also reignited the anti-imperialist discourse that has characterised Fidel’s Cuban revolution and many of the social movements that are once again on the march in the region. By standing shoulder to shoulder with Cuba and daring to talk of “21st century socialism” Chavez has conferred a level of legitimacy on Cuba that many predicted would disappear with the crumbling of the Soviet bloc.

Indeed, Chavez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ – named after Simón Bolívar, who liberated Venezuela and much of South American from Spanish colonialism – has become a reference point for the left not only in Latin America but across the world. And the alliance that Cuba has formed with Chavez’s Venezuela and other governments such as those of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua has meant that Cuba feels more secure that at any point since the end of the cold war, when it was left without friends or support.

The second factor concerns the current US government’s inability to impose its agenda for transition in Cuba due to the severe weakness of its Latin American policy. The Bush administration’s fixation with the “war on terror” and its involvement in Iraq has meant that its policy of “regime change” in Cuba has failed to find public support in Latin America.

Such is the loss of the US political influence in Latin America that a statement released yesterday by the secretary general of the Organisation of America States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, said that the Cuban people should be allowed to determine their own future, free from foreign interference. The significance of this lies in the fact that Cuba was famously suspended from the OAS in 1962 at the behest of the US

In light of all of this, the announcement of Fidel’s retirement seems much less dramatic than what we have been led to expect. The fact is that Cuba is already changing, and rather than signalling the beginning of a move towards a discredited neoliberal model, Fidel’s retirement merely forms part of a home-grown model of transition.

The results were a particularly harsh blow for Chávez, who had told his supporters in the run up to the vote that this was the most important election of his presidency. The defeat came only a year after his resounding presidential election victory, in which he trounced the opposition candidate by nearly 26 percentage points, winning over 63 per cent of the vote. When the results were examined in more detail, it soon became clear that rather than the opposition gaining a significant number of extra votes compared to their performance in the December 2006 presidential elections, Chávez’s defeat was the result of abstentions by an important sector of those who had voted for him previously.