The new Hands Off Venezuela film No Volverán (Never Again) is misnomer, because inspite of its title, it repeats the mistakes of earlier lefts.
The film follows a delegation to Venezuela at the time of the 2006 presidential election. The first part is largely a propaganda piece for the Venezuelan government, praising Chavez’s achievements without criticism.
The second part shows the delegation visiting occupied factories, including Invepal paper firm, valve manufacturer Inveval and bathroom maker Sanitarios Maracay. The film says that these factories represent the first embryonic stages of socialism in Venezuela. However it completely glosses of the real situation of workers control in the country.
For one thing, there are only a dozen or so factories where workers committees actually run things. There are many more coops, but in strategic industries co-management in non-existent. In the state oil company PDVSA – where workers established control to beat the bosses lock-out in 2002-03, power is firmly back in the hands of state managers.
In the factories visited in the film, there have been big struggles just to get them nationalised. In the case of Invepal, the first to be taken over, union organisation has worsened since the new regime. In the case of Sanitarios Maracay, which is the main focus of the film, the government has still not nationalised it despite demands to do so for over a year, leaving workers in legal limbo. Where the government could have helped the factory, for example through awarding it contracts, it has failed to do so. In one case, PDVSA awarded a contract to a rival private firm.
The film ends by lauding the creation of the PSUV as another step towards 21st century socialism. The problem is that the party is created by Chavez to strengthen his rule. It is a top down party, not one that has grown up from the labour and independent social movements.
The fact that it has millions of members is no surprise given government backing. The fact that it has incorporated some unions and NGOs should not be a cause for celebration. Previous bourgeois populists like Peron and Cardenas went further and had huge support – but ultimately they cut across working class self-organisation and reduced the independent labour movement to tatters.
The Socialist Appeal group and its co-thinkers that lead HOV were previously renowned for their rather stale calls for “nationalising the top 200 monopolies” when they sold The Militant newspaper. Not for them a real revolution; it was enough to pass an Enabling Act through parliament to create socialism. They think they’ve found this utopia in Venezuela and show not the slightest interest in critically assessing Chavez or his effect on the Venezuelan workers.
Their film says “Never Again”. The sad thing is that they are repeating the same old mistakes again.
Comments
Nationalisation
What is a mystery to me given the experience in other antionalised industries - both in Venezuela now, and in other bouregois countries in the past - is why on Earth workers would want to palce themselves under the control of the bouregois state in the first place. What is more amazing given Marx's views on the matter expressed in his criticism of the Lassalleans for raising such demands, is that Marxists should call for it too! Surely, the experience of PDVSA should be a warning as to why workers should rely on their own self-activity and take such enterprises into their own ownership and ocntrol as Marx advised in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Capital Vol III, and his Address to the First International to quote but three examples, rather than place any faith in the bourgeois state. Why Marxists want to sow illusions in that bouregois state, by calling for nationalisation, which is a far more powerful employer than any private capitalist, rather than advising the workers to rely on their own self-activity is beyond me.
Arthur Bough
I presume...
...that workers want the firms nationalized so that they're not in danger of going bankrupt and the workers' jobs are thereby (theoretically) secured. They want to escape the whip of the market as much as possible.
But
a) why does it matter to workers if a capitalist firm goes bust? Its not the workers firm.
b) if the firm is nationalised the first thing it is likely to do is to make some workers redundant, the second is to use its greater power to reduce workers conditions. Look at the statement above in respect of PDVSA. Alternatively, look at the experience of the British Miners. There was not much sign of this company owned by the British bouregois state looking after the interests of its workers was there??
c) I am not aware of any nationalised industry in a Capitalist State that escapes the whip of the market. Usually, the opposite is true. British nationalised industries were used to provide a subsidy to the large privately owned firms they supplied, the NHS is a milche cow for the drug companies and others that leach off it, and so on. When I was studying Economcs a standard textbook of Applied Economics was Prest and Coppock. One of the facts I reemember was that a survey of the British Economy found that the prices charged by private companies was around 10% higher than would have been the case had they charged at the level where Marginal Cost equalled Marginal Revenue i.e. what is supposed to be the free market price. In short they set prices equal to Average Cost not Marginal Cost. Yet, by law nationalised industries were required to set their prices equal to Marginal Cost! What does all that amount to? It amounts to the workers in those industries hugely subsidising private Capital.
d) Unfortuntaely, the idea you express here that the bouregois state is going through its ownership of the means of production act progressively to protect workers, to udnermine the market and so on just illustrates the extent to which Marxists have left Marx, the Marx who decried the Lassalleans for promoting such illusions in the bouregois state, who said that the socialism of those who promoted such ideas was only skin deep, and who through such demands showed they were not ready to rule.
Arthur Bough
First question
"a) why does it matter to workers if a capitalist firm goes bust? Its not the workers firm."
Presumably because they don't want to lose their job, livelihood, home, ...
But
That is no reason as to why the workers should be concerned for the fact that the capitalist has gone bust. Its not the role of workers to worry about the fortunes of Capitalists. The fact of the factory going bust, and whether the workers have a job are two separate issues, unless you beleieve that workers only have jobs because nice capitalists provide them with one out of the goodness of their hearts, which is of course what the apologists of capitalism claim to be the case. Engels sets out what the attitude of workers and socialists should be:
"The matter has nothing to do with either Sch[ulze]-Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both propagated small cooperatives, the one with, the other without state help; however, in both cases the cooperatives were not meant to come under the ownership of already existing means of production, but create alongside the existing capitalist production a new cooperative one. My suggestion requires the entry of the cooperatives into the existing production. One should give them land which otherwise would be exploited by capitalist means: as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale."
Engels Letter to Bebel 20th January 1886
As Marx and Engels proclaimed many times the experience of the workers in establishing co-operative enterprises demonstrated that the workers have no need of capitalists in order to produce effectively. When socialists catch up with Marx and Engels we might make progress.
Arthur Bough
Correction
My statement above "unless you beleieve that workers only have jobs because nice capitalists provide them with one out of the goodness of their hearts" was wrong. What I should have said was "unless you beleive that a condition for workers being able to work is that some nice capitalist or the state of the capitalists enables them to do so, organises production etc., which is what the apologoists for capitalism argue."
In fact its the same argument from some time ago where you ouldn't conceive that workers might be able to build a railway and run it without the good offices of the capitalists organising them to do so here, and as I pointed out in my reply here workers lreaady do build the railways and run them, whilst the capitalists, and their state merely explout their labour in doing so.
Its the same way that the AWL now appear to beleive that workers should count on the bouregois state doing other things for them such as fighting various forms of fascist, or that they should put their faith in the Jewish and Arab bouregoisie together with US imperialism solving the problem of Israel?Palestine via the establishment of two-states (because its only those forces that could bring about such a solution), and that is happy to rely on the bouregois state to continue providing an inadequate, inefficient Health Service without even raising such a simple demand as workers and patients control of it.
IN short its the kind of top-down socialism or more corectly radical liberalism described by Draper in the article refferred to below. Its certainly not Marxism.
Arthur Bough
For Example
This in respect of Chirino from the Venezuelanalysis website as referenced by Paul Hampton. Chirino has undoubtedly isolated himself even within his own C-Cura, but he deserves the support of socialists against his victimisation, a victimisation which demonstrates the foolhardiness of seeing the bouregois state as some kind of progressive body, as opposed to what it is, the main means of oppression of the working class.
Arthur Bough
Ahem.
You may think you're criticizing me, comrade, when you say "the idea you express here that the bourgeois state is going through its ownership of the means of production act progressively to protect workers, to undermine the market and so on just illustrates the extent to which Marxists have left Marx, the Marx who decried the Lassalleans for promoting such illusions in the bourgeois state, who said that the socialism of those who promoted such ideas was only skin deep, and who through such demands showed they were not ready to rule," but you're actually criticizing those workers who are demanding nationalization. I didn't say that I would demand nationalization.
Oh Right
Its just that when you said that YOU presume that this is what those workers want I presumed that you presumed that because you beleived that such a presumption was a logical one for them to hold! I didn't think that it was presumptious of me to presume that.
Actually, my mystification was not a criticism of the workers, but of those Marxists that WERE calling for reliance on the bouregoiis state through nationalisation. I am glad to see that you are not one of them. At least as you say that you were not saying that YOU would demand nationalisation I presume that this is your position, presumably.
Arthur Bough
Draper
A review of the difference between Marx's bottom up socialism based on the self-activity of the Working Class, and the Statist version of Socialism of Lassalle, and copied by the Reformists of the Second International and in a different ofrm by leninists is given in Hal Draper's The Two Sould of Socialism here
A colelction of Marx and Engels quotes in respect of Co-operatives is also given in Thomas Lowit (1962)
Arthur Bough
I Didn't Know That
Just found on the BBC website about an exhibition (2005) which had a copy of a share certifice signed by Marx for a £4 share in a workers newspaper "The Industrial". According to the Curator of the National Archives Sue Laurence,
"Marx played the markets in the UK and the US and this was a bit like a cooperative because the other men were upper middle class and this was a small-scale enterprise."
See:BBC
Arthur Bough
Saving Jobs By Nationalisation
"a) why does it matter to workers if a capitalist firm goes bust? Its not the workers firm.
b) if the firm is nationalised the first thing it is likely to do is to make some workers redundant,"
""a) why does it matter to workers if a capitalist firm goes bust? Its not the workers firm."
Presumably because they don't want to lose their job, livelihood, home, ..."
The capitalist state has come to the rescue again of the capitalist class. Having pumped almost the equivalent of a year's NHS budget (much more according to some accounts) into keeping Northern Rock afloat, and thereby staving off for now an even worse crisis for the financiers - though even with the curent financial turmoil we are not anywhere near a recession as the AWL World economy position paper suggests, see my brief response here, the Government has had to concede that it could not stomach the attempts of Richard Branson and other capitalists to make a quick buck at the taxpayers expense. Before even more money leached away the Government has been forced to nationalise the Rock. Of course, even then the shareholders who gambled and lost want the Government to compensate them for being bad speculators.
And who are the first victims? Of course, its the workers, as the Government has made clear that one fo the first tasks will be to cut jobs. So much for relying on the good graces of the bouregois state!
Arthur Bough