By Pablo Velasco
Around 6,000 workers marched through the streets of Caracas on Thursday 8 February demanding nationalisation of all strategic industries under workers’ control.
Workers welcomed the Chávez government’s nationalisations of EDC, Venezuela’s largest electric company and the Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV) telecom company. But they called for others such as steel firm Sidor and bathroom firm Sanitarios Maracay to be nationalised - and for workersÕ control in all these industries.
The day began with two marches. The first organised by the Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria y Autónoma (C-CURA), led by Orlando Chirino; the second by the FsBT (Fuerza Socialista Bolivariana de Trabajadores - Socialist Bolivarian Workers’ Force), formerly the FBT - the longstanding pro-Chávez union fraction. However the two marches converged in a show of unity.
The difference between the nationalisations demanded by the workers and what the government is doing was well brought out soon after the demonstration. Firstly, Venezuela’s state owned oil company PDVSA agreed to purchase a majority stake in EDC, for $739 million. The agreement was formalised in a memorandum of understanding with AES, the US-based company that currently owned 82% of EDC.
Even though AES purchased the company for $1.6 billion and is selling it now for $739 million, it made a handsome profit of $1 billion in the six years it owned the company. A few days later the Venezuelan government and US owner Verizon signed a memorandum of understanding over the company’s majority stake in CANTV. The government will pay just over US$572 million for Verizon’s shares.
In other words, the nationalisations have been a financial transaction between different capitals, rather than the expropriation of capital by the state. How will compensation be funded? Ultimately, Venezuelan workers - through taxes or through services foregone.
There have also been some developments regarding Chávez’s proposed ruling party (PSUV) and its relationship with the unions. Chávez already has blocs of supporters in the unions, such as the FsBT and the Workers Collective in Revolution (Colectivo de Trabajadores en Revolución, CTR) around Marcela Mespero, who will join the PSUV when it is formally established.
More worryingly, it appears that a layer of militants with a long history of struggle may also join.
According to the JIR, the socialist youth group in Venezuela, leaders of the C-CURA have pledged to “join the process of construction of the PSUV, promoting in the bases of the union movement a debate over its creation, its programme and its methods of struggle”. Although C-CURA leaders promise not dissolve in the PSUV and to fight for the right to exist as an internal current of the party, it is difficult to see how this will contribute to the fight for working class independence.
C-CURA produced an open letter to Chávez for the demonstration on 8 February, highlighting basic issues such as the anti-union laws, inflation and low pay, as well as nationalisation and problems in the oil industry and in public administration.
These are all perfectly reasonable things to mobilise workers around. They also issues the government could tackle, but hasn’t done so. But joining the PSUV will make it harder to mobilise workers against the government when it doesn’t deliver.
Don’t join the ruling party!!
What attitude should Marxist take to this development?
1) The character of the ruling party is bourgeois. The initiative for it has come from Chávez i.e. from above, and not just from anyone – but a ruling Bonaparte with substantial backing from national capital. The PSUV or whatever name it takes will be a ruling party – i.e. a party of the bourgeois state managing the capitalist mode of production in Venezuela.
The mere fact of unions joining a party does not transform it into a workers’ or even a bourgeois workers’ party. The best example is the PRI in Mexico, but similar developments occurred under Peron in Argentina and still occur in some Asian and African labour movements. The test is, where does it leave working class representation? In no sense is the PSUV being formed like – for example – the Labour Party in Britain was a hundred years ago – or like the PT was in Brazil in the 1980s.
In fact, if the UNT and C-CURA do end up joining the PSUV, it may be a defeat on the same scale as Mexico and Argentina – i.e. the defeat of independent working class politics for a whole era.
2) The current situation. The new party has not been formed. No one knows exactly what form it will take, how much democratic space there will be for publications, criticism etc – nor do we know how labour will be represented. Personally I think it will be very poor – a “popular front in the form of a party” – but we’ll see.
At present the C-CURA leaders say they want to discuss the new party. Not all the militants agree (e.g. the JIR, quite rightly in my view). But while the discussion is going on, it would be foolish for Marxists in Britain to advocate entry i.e. help the Chavistas take the best militants into the proposed party. Far better to advocate a workers’ party, independent of Chávez, as the best means to fight for reforms and for a workers’ government. Far better to back those who are not collapsing into chavismo.
Paul