From a Facebook Posting by Federico Fuentes
I have had a few people ask me what I think of the recent article by Mike Gonzalez regarding events in Venezuela https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/02/is-venezuela-burning/
Putting aside the fact he can't even get the name right of the oil minster, here are 3 things that are wrong with the article:
1) “It is no secret that behind the façade of unity, there is a struggle for power between extremely wealthy and influential groups within government — a struggle that began to intensify in the months before Chavez’s death.”
If this was no secret, then surely there would be a mount of evidence to prove this. But Mike offers none.
A more serious analysis, would indicate the opposite: that despite the narrow election victory in April 2013, the immediately wave of opposition violence and campaign around “fraud”, the ongoing economic war against the government, the municipal elections and the most recent events, there has been no visible signs of fractures in the government.
Even serious right-wing analyst can see this: “What makes Venezuela’s government so different is its absolute dominance of all the main levers of political power. President Nicolas Maduro’s administration wields unquestionable control over the Supreme Court, the Congress, the military and the oil industry -- the very institutions that could threaten his regime.” http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-02-25/venezuela-is-no-ukraine
Add to that the solid support the government still maintains among working class and poor sections and you start to see a very different picture to the one Mike paints of a government on the brink of cracking up.
In fact, the only people that continually speculate about such internal struggles (apart from Mike and a few other leftists) are the gossip columnists in the right-wing media.
None of this is to deny that there are *political* differences within the government and Chavismo more generally, which brings me to…
2) “All of this is an expression of an economic crisis vigorously denied by the Maduro government but obvious to everyone else.”
Again, this is just plain silliness to claim the Maduro government is denying economic problems. In fact one of the key triggers to the recent protests (ignored by Mike) was that the government had precisely begun to take measures to address the economic problems, starting with the imposition of set profit margins and accompanying regulations to open company books.
But Mike’s article goes further and also invents a crisis that does not exist. Let’s just look at what Mike says and some of the actual figures:
“2012 had seen inflation rates hovering around fifty percent (officially) and the level has risen inexorably throughout the last year.”
Inflation in 2012: 20.1% http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/actualidad/economia/inflacion-en-venezuela-cerro-2012-en-20-1.aspx
Inflation in 2013: 56.2% http://globovision.com/articulo/inflacion-en-noviembre-fue-de-48-y-la-de-diciembre-22
That is it was not around 50% in 2012 and it did not rise inexorably from that imaginary figure (even if it clearly did rise substantially in 2013)
“The shortages are explained partly by speculation on the part of capitalists — just as happened in Chile in 1972 — and partly by the rising cost of imports, which make up a growing proportion of what is consumed in Venezuela”
Value of imports in 2012: US$47.310 billion
Value of imports in 2013: US$37.802
http://www.ine.gov.ve/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=48&Itemid=33
That is value of imports when down. In fact the value of imports in 2013 was higher in 2007, 2008 and 2009 than it was last year.
“Today, those funds [oil wealth] are drying up as Venezuela’s oil income is diverted to paying for increasingly expensive imports.”
As I showed above imports are not more expensive. But its also not true that funds are drying up:
Value of exports 2012: US$97.340 billion. http://www.bcv.org.ve/Upload/Publicaciones/anuasectorexterno77-12.pdf?id=458
I couldn’t find the figure for 2013, but I doubt exports fell by 2/3 which would indicate Venezuela continues have a nice trade surplus.
I could continue to do the same for almost every other assertion Mike makes (and happy to do so if you want me to). Or point to figures that show despite the “crisis” poverty rates and unemployment continue to fall, unheard of in any other economic crisis. But the main point is not so much the gross errors Mike makes, but why he does so.
The reason is because what he wants to demonstrate is that the government is just as responsible for the “economic crisis” as the opposition. To so he has to make up stuff like the government is going bankrupt, oil money is drying up, imports are skyrocketing while production at home has all but disappeared…. All the same stuff that the right wing media says.
This matters because as the old saying goes: “if you make the wrong diagnosis, you will never apply the right remedy”. The right wing says all this to prove that the Chavista economic model of state control and redistribution of oil wealth to meet peoples needs will inevitable destroy the economy.
But they are not the only ones saying this. There are some in the government who disagree with key economic policies, hence the *political* struggles I referred to above.
This is also true more broadly with the Bolivarian Revolution. For example, Roland Denis, who Mike is so fond of, is part of a group within Chavismo that argues much the same line as Mike when it comes to the government’s economic problems. Unlike Mike, they have put forward their alternative economic policies in the Que Hacer? document http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a167599.html
I’ll let you decide jut how “left-wing” their economic policies are.
Again, none of this is to say there are not economic problems, but behind this debate filled with dubious stats and assertions is a more important political debate of what should happen to Venezuela’s oil wealth.
3) “What can save the Bolivarian project, and the hope it inspired in so many, is for the speculators and bureaucrats to be removed, and for popular power to be built, from the ground up, on the basis of a genuine socialism — participatory, democratic, and exemplary in refusing to reproduce the values and methods of a capitalism which has been unmasked by the revolutionary youth of Greece, Spain and the Middle East.”
This is all well and good, but ultimately a motherhood statement devoid of any content. I wonder if Mike agrees’ with the alternative policies proposed in the Que Hacer document as a way to refuse to reproduce the values and methods of capitalism? Who knows? All Mike has to say can be summed up in a slogan “one solution: revolution!”
But this is not the only problem with such statements. Pretty much since 2002, leftists like Mike have been saying the same thing “Venezuela is at a crossroads, only two options, restore old order or deepen the revolution towards socialism”. But after 12 years should we ask ourselves some questions like: isn’t it perhaps possible that out of every crisis, the government has taken measures to deepened the revolution, hence why the Bolivarian revolution is still going and the old elites are not back in power? Isnt perhaps true that implementing some kind of war communism in Venezuela (which tends to be what calls to deepen the revolution amount to) would not be the best course of action? Isn’t it the case that given the current international balance of forces it is possible for the revolution to continue advancing but that conditions do not exist for Venezuela to implement socialism in one country?
This are serious questions that some of the left continue to paper over, preferring slogans to real action.
Federico Fuentes is a national executive member of the Socialist Alliance (Australia). He edits Bolivia Rising and is part of the Venezuelanalysis.com editorial collective
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