New kind of democracy in Venezuela: Michael Albert by Howard

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New kind of democracy in Venezuela: Michael Albert

POSTED BY: HOWARD
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 09:47
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Sunday, November 06, 2005 4:45 PM

Venezuela's Path by Michael Albert November 06, 2005 Going to Venezuela? There are beautiful waterfalls and mountains. There is rich surf, sand, and sun. But nowadays the biggest attraction is revolution.

This October I spent a week in Caracas. That's not much information to work with but for what it's worth, here's what I found and felt.

Toward a New Political System

My first and arguably most personally surprising encounter with the Bolivarian Revolution was at the Ministry for Popular Participation, which was created in accord, I was told, with Chavez's desire "that the people should take power."

I asked the officials we interviewed, "What does that mean, that the people should take power?" After noting thousands of years of "empires obstructing people from participating in politics," all culminating in "the North American empire," the official said the "U.S. has had 200 years of representative government, but in your system people turn over control to others." Instead, in Venezuela, "we humbly are proposing a system where people hold power in a participatory and protagonist democracy. We want a new kind of democracy to attain a new kind of society."

On the wall was a diagram of their aims. It had lots of little circles, then other larger ones in another layer, and so on. The idea, they said, "was to establish numerous local grassroots assemblies or councils of citizens where people could directly express themselves." These local councils would be the foundational components of "a new system of participatory democracy."

The bottom layer of the vision focuses on communities with "common habits and customs," the officials said. "We define them as comprising 200 to 400 families, or 1000 to 2000 people each." One could of course imagine sub units within each local unit, as well, but that wasn't immediately on their agenda, nor was it in their diagram. The local units would in turn send "elected spokespersons" to units another layer up. Units in this second layer would "encompass a broader geographic region," and then from there, "spokespeople would be elected to another layer, and so on," creating a network covering "parishes, municipalities, states, and the whole society."

The participation officials, explaining their diagram and their goal, said the smallest units were meant to become "the decision-making core of the new Venezuelan polity." Chavez and this ministry hoped to have, they said, "3,000 local assemblies in place by the new year." Their goal was to have "enough in place, throughout the country, in 4 or 5 years, to account for 26 million Venezuelans."

They didn't want "a dictatorship of the proletariat or of any other kind," they said. Strikingly, they also said they didn't want "what Che died for, though they wanted to learn from that." They wanted to build something new, from the bottom.

I asked, "What happens if the local assemblies want some new policy, and the ministers, legislature, or Chavez don't want it?" "No matter," they said, "the assemblies, once they are in place and operating, rule."

But, I said, "you don't want an assembly of 100 families making a decision for the whole country, surely." "Correct," came the answer, "the local assemblies can only make final decisions bearing just on their own area."

"Suppose one assembly decides it wants some change bearing on crime that has to do with federal courts or police or whatever, extending beyond that community?" I asked. "What happens? When does the law or policy change?"

"On every level there should be a response" came the reply. "On the lowest level assemblies would do whatever they can within their community. But crime goes beyond a community, and requires going to the next higher levels where the issues would have to be confronted, too. On the municipal level they might change ordinances, etc., to also respond. And it could go higher, then."

Okay, I asked, "Suppose one local assembly wants a younger voting age. They bring it to the next higher level and members there are excited about it too. Does it go up to a legislature and does the legislature have any choice?"

I was told the local unit would - through its spokespeople - send the proposal to the next layer of the popular democratic structures. "Had they decided something bearing only on their local neighborhood, which is all that is happening now, such as the age required for local votes, it would simply be enacted, under their supervision, for them, without having to be discussed more widely." But if their desire stretched wider, as a general new voting law for national elections would, "their proposal would go up, as far as is relevant. Then the proposal would go back to the base of all assemblies for all to consider."

These Bolivarians, entrusted by Chavez's administration with building a new, parallel polity, didn't want any more representative decision making than absolutely necessary. They wanted the proposal from one assembly to go up not so that it could be decided by representatives, but so that it could be discussed by spokespeople and then be brought back to other local assemblies by their spokespeople, eventually to all of them, to be decided at large. "If support came," I was told, "then the goal is that it would yield a new voting age, whether Chavez or mayors or the legislature or anyone else wanted the change or not."

I said surely there must be many elected or just appointed mayors, governors, or bureaucrats who would obstruct this vision, not wanting their power reduced or that of the populace increased. Yes, I was told, "many bureaucrats have held positions for twenty or thirty years and about sixty percent of them are putting breaks on the proposal."

"Even among ministers in the Chavez administration," I asked, "do some resent that they would go from having power to just obeying the public? Cuba's poder popular began with many of the ideals you express," I noted, "but never got to the point where the national power was participatory. Do you believe that the Chavez government will help the assembly system reach its full development, or that after awhile the assembly system will have to push against the government to get full power?"

The answer was "only the organized population can decide. We are on a path to invent a new democracy. We have gone forward from what we had before. There are no guarantees, but we are trying to go further." There was no need, however, the officials said, to remove or otherwise forcefully conflict with the old structures. Rather, the new system would be built alongside what now exists and would prove its worth over time, in parallel. Many in the old would come around, others wouldn't. But either way, in time the old forms would be replaced by the impressive reality of the new forms' success, not by fiat or by force.

"How will Chavez's initiative encourage people to create these local assemblies?" I wondered. The whole assembly structure was a project in development, the officials said, and there were diverse ideas about how to make it happen. Here was the most striking and instructive one I heard. "We Bolivarians have a program for citizens in barrios to gain ownership of their current dwellings. They need only petition to do so, but they have to do that in groups of 200 families or more for the petition to be accepted." In that case, the dwellers get their homes and the community of families hopefully becomes a grassroots assembly.

I asked, "Do you find that the government has to prod the people to participate?" The officials replied, "The people are taking initiative, but it is very important that the government supports them." People taking power involves "a new way of thinking and a new culture," the officials said. "The president and we are working hard to make participatory democracy happen, but we all have limitations in our heads to overcome, as well as old structures." This was a recurring theme. In Venezuela, while there have been coups and thus struggle against capital and also external imperialism, at the moment the struggle seems to be more against the imprint of the past on even poor people's habits and beliefs.

"How many people," I asked, "already support this program?" "The full picture of assemblies is very new, just about to be announced," they said, "but the general goal of people's power maybe about a quarter understand and strongly support, with more soon." They emphasized they didn't want a system "that gives power to another person." They didn't "want representative democracy." The people elect, in the Venezuelan model, "spokespeople, not representatives." What will be proposed in one unit will get to the other units by going up via elected spokespeople, and then back down to the base, through other spokespeople, for further discussion and decision. What will be decided at lowest levels will be binding. "The country has 335 municipalities," they noted. About 255 are with the president."

Discussions about police and courts are also proceeding, I was told, but I didn't get to talk with people working on that dimension of change and apparently it was, as yet, not nearly as far along. These officials told me that the "socialism we are trying to construct incorporates understanding the history of past efforts in Russia, Cuba, etc., but it is not about state run enterprises or a dictatorship. We have to create our own model to reduce the work week, to defend nature, and to create social justice for both the collective and the individual. If it continues, capitalism will put an end to the planet. We have to find a way for everybody to have a better standard of living but also preserve the planet. A virtuous individual thinks about the community. That is what we are looking for."

Additional Examples

Regarding health, though I didn't get to talk to any government officials directly involved with the program, or to any doctors dispensing medicine, it was clear that again the government hadn't simply taken over the old structures and as yet had no inclination to do so. Instead, in cooperation with Cuba, which sent 20,000 doctors, the government had set up new clinics all over the country, dispensing health care locally in barrios, bringing to the poor their first local health care. We were told these clinics serve people's needs, operate pretty democratically, and have doctors who earn typical workers pay and often less. The people love the clinics and the Chavista health officials, I would bet, look for the old structures to bend and break under the competitive pressure of the new ones, but without having been directly coerced.

We visited barrios, which were gigantic stretches of hillside covered with small shack-like homes, and we saw intermittently the newly constructed small but clean medical clinics the Cuban doctors worked from. Compared to nothing, which was the correct comparison, it was a huge improvement and helps explain Chavez's support from the barrio communities. We also heard about a plan for eye care, even offering free eye operations of diverse kinds, 500,000 operations over ten years, to poor U.S. citizens. The Venezuelans would provide the transportation. The Cubans would do the surgery. Having eye problems myself, I listened closely, smiling at the thought.

The same general pattern was true of a project aimed at raising literacy throughout Venezuela. With the same logic and methodology, this project also proceeded by not fighting with the old, but instead existing alongside it. In under two years, Chavez reports and apparently UNESCO verifies, Venezuela has eliminated illiteracy.

Indeed, this same pattern is being employed, we saw, even for higher education. The government didn't take over the national universities, private or public. Instead, after the oil industry strike failed during the last coup attempt, when almost a third of the industry's managers and other technical workers were fired for having participated in trying to bring down the government, many of the prior oil administration buildings were no longer needed. Obviously the bureaucratic waste and fraud had been enormous. A group of these liberated buildings were transformed into the new Bolivarian University.

Workers councils ruled the new university. The government minister of education became its Rector. In time, he overrode the council, determining instead that there would be only meetings of smaller groups, and that he would only interact with representatives from those. This characteristic pattern of a central planner interacting with a workplace and demanding a chain of command in it and in that way interfering with direct self management was disturbing. The Bolivarian revolution is juggling many tendencies with roots in many aspects of social life. But the pedagogy of the new university is, I learned by interviewing a professor there, very innovative, emphasizing serving diverse communities by students having to do projects at the grassroots, having to relate their studies to social conditions and needs, and having grading being a shared task for students, faculty, and community residents.

In an interview with Justin Podur the then University Rector put it this way, "We will prove that you can have quality and equity in education. We will form holistic professionals who are citizens. They will learn ethics, social responsibility, respect for a Latin American and Caribbean identity, solidarity, respect. The professional produced by this institution will work for the transformation of society. She will be a critical thinker who can stimulate others and generate questions. Our curriculum is based on 'axes' of education. Any plan or program of study - say an engineering or teaching professional program - is your 'professional axis'. But you also have a cultural axis, a political axis, ethical axis, aesthetics axis, a social-community interaction axis where you work directly with sectors of society outside of the university from the start."

Bolivarian University has about 7,000 students, we were told, and about 700 staff of whom 250 are non-faculty but only 120 are full-time professors. Some faculty resist the new pedagogy as too flexible. Some see it as too community oriented. In meetings there are radicals and reactionaries. Some faculty resist the trend toward providing classes for non-teaching staff. Some resist having steadily more equitable pay relations among all employees. Some resist the drive to bring the school's resources out into the country, setting up missions beyond Caracas, promoting higher education while reaching out educationally to Venezuela's rural areas for the first time.

Looked at in the large, Bolivarian University competes with the rest of the system of higher education by offering an evolving, but already dramatically different experience. The minister heading Bolivarian University might not be optimal in terms of workers self management, but we were told he does talk frequently and forcefully about proving that the new approaches are better and replacing the old ways via having people see the benefits of change. The students at Bolivarian University, not surprisingly, are mostly poor, which is the opposite of the old system. Ties between the school and local co-ops, which are in turn constructed with uniform wages and council self management, are continually extended, building a kind of parallel world to what has gone before.

Considering still another key domain of social life, media, the emerging pattern continued. A look at the daily newspapers showed that of the first 25 articles, reading from the first page forward, fully 20 were broad attacks on or highly critical of Chavez. The rest were on entirely other topics. And this was typical, day after day, I was told. The papers are privately held corporations, not surprisingly hostile toward Chavez's inclinations. Chavez doesn't restrict them, however, much less nationalize or otherwise take them over. The same situation holds for key TV stations. Regarding the TV stations, however, and I bet something like this will also happen with print before too long, the government has a strategy.

VIVE TV is a new station created, like Bolivarian University, by the Chavez government. We visited and enjoyed touring its facilities. The widest salary difference, from the head of the company to people who cleaned up, was three to one, but the new payment policy, being steadily if slowly enforced, was to attain equal hourly pay for all by periodically raising wages of those at the bottom until they reached parity.

VIVE has roughly 300 employees. Their equipment wasn't like CBS, but it was certainly excellent and far reaching in its potential. The new VIVE website presents their shows, archived, for the world to see. The station's governing body is, of course, a worker's assembly. Workers at VIVE lacking skills are encouraged to take courses, including in film production and other topics, given right on the premises, and those facilities are also used to teach citizens from Caracas and more widely how to film in their own locales.

Indeed, the station's mandate was to provide a voice for the people. Its shows, we were told, routinely present citizens speaking their mind, including voices from well outside Caracas, which was a first for Venezuela. To that end, VIVE undertakes lots of community training, distributing cameras to local citizens as well, so people around the country can send in footage and even finished edited material, for national display.

In some respects VIVE is like a local community cable station in the U.S., except that it is national and the élan is far, far higher, and the desire to incorporate the seeds of the future in the present structure is far, far more explicit and radical, with the employees seeing themselves as presenting to the country and the world a new kind of media that, they hope, will be a model picked up elsewhere as well.

VIVE takes no ads, "to avoid being controlled." There is actually, on the shows, much criticism of the government, since the shows convey grass-roots opinions. But this criticism, unlike that on mainstream private stations, is honest and heartfelt, not manufactured. Rather than trying to create dissension, it is constructive.

Along with VIVE and a national public station directly under government control, there is also a new federal law which imposes on private stations that 25% of their shows must be produced by independent producers, not by the stations themselves. This is a kind of service requirement, but, interestingly, it is VIVE who trains many of these contracting producers. Here again is evidence of a kind of multi-pronged, legal, almost stealth-like incursion on old ways, both within the new institutions which are creating new approaches even against recalcitrant attitudes and habits, and also via the new institutions challenging the old ones, by a contrast effect or by outright competition, and injecting ideas into them through the independent producers as well. Venezuela has also embarked on a continental station, to broadcast news and the voices of the poor throughout Latin America, but we didn't have a chance to visit so as to comment on that.

Regarding the economy, Venezuela starts out with huge advantages compared to other third world countries. The oil industry is nationalized and is the centerpiece of the society's economy. Moreover the oil industry provides a gigantic flow of revenues, unlike what any other dissident country has ever enjoyed while trying to chart a new path for itself. Likewise, oil not only provokes great U.S. interest, it also provides considerable defense against U.S. intervention.

We were told by an oil industry official, however, that there are still many transnational firms who contract for various aspects of oil business in Venezuela. The government's reaction, he said, was not to challenge them, much less expropriate them, but to form new co-ops doing the same functions, intended to out compete the transnationals. These new co-ops are worker self managed. They usually are seeking equal wages and even in the least egalitarian ones the ratio is at most three to one. In addition, a minimum social wage is guaranteed. An idea slowly being implemented is to federate the coops, facilitating their interacting and exchanging via social rather than market norms. The vision, it seemed to me, is that in time contracts will go almost exclusively to the co-ops so that the transnationals will simply leave, of their own accord, no confrontation needed.

I asked if officials thought using competing on the market as the strategy to drive out transnationals risked entrenching market mentalities, but the question wasn't really understood. Similarly, my asking whether officials were worried that utilizing as a key strategy market competition would impose on self management old style aims and means, greatly reducing its latitude for change and perhaps even causing it to give way to new hierarchies, also didn't resonate. There is immense opposition to capitalism and its private ownership. There is major opposition to large disparities in income. There is considerable opposition to gaps in job types yielding passivity versus domination. But only a few people seem to be hostile to markets per se.

One of the few who seem to reject markets, however, is Chavez himself. How else can we explain his approach to international economics which not only predictably rejects the IMF, WTO, World Bank, and particularly the FTAA, but is beginning to hammer out an alternative based on mutual aid and, in effect, violating market exchange rates to instead undertake transactions in light of true and full social costs and benefits, and with a commitment to sharing gains from exchanges not just equally, but more advantageously for the poorer participants. This certainly seems to be the logic of the wide array of agreements into which Venezuela is entering with not only Cuba but many neighboring countries, as well as specific occupied factories throughout Latin America, for example providing oil at amazingly low rates and beneficial terms, often in exchange for goods, not payments. This is quite like Cuba's historic sending of aid and items to poorer countries at cut rates, but the scale is tremendously increased, and where Cuba primarily offered people, as in doctors, Venezuela is doing this with resources and economic products, more directly subverting specifically market logic.

Returning to my exchange with the oil official, when I asked about CITGO - the oil industry owned by Venezuela operating in the U.S. - moving toward having a workers council to self manage it, moving toward equal wages, and changing its division of labor, not only on behalf of those working at CITGO but as a demonstration inside the U.S. for other U.S. workers of the potential of self management and equity, the official was very excited, even wanting to immediately call others to talk about this idea. Later discussion of the related possibility of Venezuela making inroads, via CITGO or otherwise, into media and information dispersal in the U.S., instead of information incursions always occurring only in the reverse direction, caused still more excitement.

We were told by the oil ministry officials and also by trade unionists and others how in Venezuela, like in Argentina, there was a movement, just getting up to speed, to "recuperate" failing or failed workplaces. The difference was that while in Argentina this occurs against the inclinations of government, in Venezuela the government welcomes and even propels it. Indeed, the government has now assembled a list of 700 such plants and is urging workers to occupy and operate them on their own. Another difference, however, is that in Venezuela the method of decision-making adopted for the recuperated plants is called co-management and involves both a workers council and government representatives. The upside of this is that the government is often to the left of the local workforce in the affected workplace helping educate and prod it. The downside is that the centralizing inclination of the government and the participatory inclination of real self management are in opposition. We saw both these tendencies in the Bolivarian University, with the government minister pushing radical pedagogy on sometimes contrary faculty, but also reducing the influence of the workers council. In fact, however, it seemed for the moment, in any case, the government was so over stretched that if there are widespread recuperations, government involvement will be slight and workers will in practice be left to self manage.

Beyond a factory recuperation movement in Venezuela the government also creates new co-ops from scratch. These are also co-managed, at least in theory, and also tend to seek equitable remuneration, etc. These co-ops have often been small and local, everything from little dress shops to small construction projects, but plans exist for creating new firms to produce computers, mine resources, run an airline, etc.

As I understood what I heard, the co-ops are expected to out-compete old capitalist firms - a very reasonable expectation given that the co-ops have lower overhead (due to reduced management pay rates, reduced numbers of managers, and altered job roles), and that co-op workers have an inclination to produce more consistently and energetically under the new social relations. The danger of the co-op strategy, however, is that operating via market norms and methods and specifically trying to out-compete old firms in market-defined contests may entrench in them a managerial bureaucracy and a competitive rather than social orientation, leading more toward what is called market socialism, which in my view is a system that still has a ruling managerial or coordinator class and that operates in light of competitive prices and surplus-seeking, instead of the approach pushing them toward what the most radical Venezuelans clearly desire, which is a classless, participatory, and self managing economy, in which people are socially motivated and are well off and efficient, operating in light of full social implications seeking both personal and collective well being.

In capitalist firms, still dominant in economic sectors other than oil, there is a change in mood as well. Workers identify more with the state and feel it is an ally, providing by its initiatives, in the words of a trade union leader, "a more promising moment for change." This has led to workers in capitalist firms "challenging old union norms and methods" and feeling uncomfortable being "stuck in old relations while others are building new co-ops." This trade union leader estimated that "80% of Venezuela's workers firmly support Chavez." She also said this is why the better unions are thinking about pushing for self management even against capitalist owners. She said "while at first occupying failing firms was just self defense" seeking to protect "jobs and union freedoms," more recently more radical unions are seeking "more consistent strategies to win co-management or self management."

She told us that "five or six years ago the typical Venezuelan worker would not exhibit any class consciousness, but now the Bolivarian revolution was awakening class consciousness not only in workers, but in all people." I asked what would happen if "workers in a successful capitalist firm, knowing friends in coops or recuperated firms who enjoyed controlling their conditions and having equitable incomes, struck against their owners and petitioned the government to take over the firm and make it self managed." She talked about how arrangements would likely be made providing the private owners "credits and investments if they would undertake co-management with the workers." I wondered why businesspeople "would make such a stupid deal when it was clearly just a first step toward their disappearing. Why would they do it, even with short term benefits?" I also asked again about "workers wanting to take over a really successful firm, not giving the owners anything, but just taking over? Why weren't workers all over Venezuela seeking that? And what would happen if they did?"

The trade union leader replied that "of course the businesspeople are not stupid, but they believe we are." She talked about unions spreading "the revolutionary virus into the workers" and I asked again, how come it didn't spread quickly, all on its own? She blamed "old union leaders, afraid of taking new steps." But she also said that "just two years ago no one would have believed a worker managed factory was possible but now there are over 20, with over 700 under study for occupation to get them back to work." She pointed out the need to do all this "along with raising consciousness of people." She said, "going too fast, without people wanting it, wouldn't work." And she noted that the businesspeople are "still trying to manipulate and buy off the workers, and especially the leaders."

I also asked this trade union leader, who was explicitly responsible for international relations, about links with movements and unions in the U.S. She reported Venezuelan Chavista unions having links to the "AFL-CIO in California, some grass-roots unions, and the antiwar movement," but not with the national AFL-CIO because they are still giving money to those imposing old bureaucracy and fomenting coups."

I asked her what proportion of the paid workforce was female and she replied, "about 50%." I asked about women's salaries compared to men's and she said there was no difference for the same jobs, but "women didn't get as good jobs as men." I asked if things were better in the occupied factories, and she said "As far as I can tell things are somewhat better, yes, but not ideal." She said "The double duty of women is the biggest obstacle to their deeper involvement in union work." I asked if the Bolivarian movement was trying to address this and she said "The new constitution says domestic work has to be acknowledged as work for social security purposes," but I asked about men and women doing it more equally and she said that that "was progressing very very slowly. At the grassroots level lots of women participate, despite double or even triple work, but our men are very macho, and regrettably many women spoil them by doing all household work." She said her situation was unusual because she got lots of help at home.

Overview

From my trip it seemed to me that…

(1) The Bolivarian movement, and in particular President Hugo Chavez, is pushing the population leftward. Even more, the Bolivarian movement, and particularly President Hugo Chavez, is seeking to replace old capitalist forms with new forms that they call anti-capitalist, participatory, socialist, and Bolivarian, among other labels. They are not directly and forcefully challenging and taking over or removing old structures. They are operating legally in the interstices of society to nurture new forms into existence and to then show by contrast and via socially acceptable competition that Venezuela's old forms are inferior, expecting that in time the new forms will legally win out over the old. But as to what these new forms are, there is far more clarity concerning political norms and structures than economic ones. One would like to see a national exploration, debate, and consciousness-raising campaign aimed at clarifying and advocating the ultimate goals of the revolution, and at making knowledge of its goals and continuous critique and enrichment of them a national possession, not a possession only of some leaders.

(2) The Bolivarians' unusual transitional approach has as its vanguard aspect that the Bolivarian leadership is ideologically and programmatically far ahead of its populace and trying to get that populace to move further and faster than it is alone inclined to. It has as its anarchist aspect, however, that the movement is being nourished, even if by a national president, mostly from the bottom up. It seeks to exist in parallel and to become prevalent without violence and even without confrontation. It seeks to embody the seeds of the future in the present to avoid generating a new domination. It is trying to win adherents by evidence, not force.

(3) The centrality of a single leader, at least that it is Hugo Chavez, seems to be a highly unexpected benefit. Chavez, so far, has not just been congenial and inspiring, audacious and courageous, willing to step outside every box and implement program after program, experimenting and learning, but has also shown remarkable restraint in utilizing the accoutrements of central power and has even been a key source of anti-authoritarian influence. At the same time, it is also true that the centrality of a single leader, Hugo Chavez, though perhaps unavoidable, is also a debit. The leader could turn bad, or could disappear, and at this point either turn of events would be calamitous. A related problem is the lack of a serious opposition on the left. Revolution benefits from disagreement, debate, and diversity, but those attributes have trouble arising amidst a siege mentality. One wonders who will succeed Chavez, and how the people will succeed the leaders, unless there is massive popular education in leadership and the revolution's aims.

(4) Finally, the idea of out-competing the old system with a new one created in parallel is very cleverly beneficial in that it avoids undue premature conflict that might bring down holy hell on the Bolivarian project even as it also draws on strengths and sidesteps weaknesses. But the idea of out-competing the old system with a new one created in parallel is also at least in one respect detrimental because it risks ingraining competitive qualities and methods and buttressing bureaucratic and classist structures, and because it may ignore some recalcitrant features from the past that need early dramatic attention lest they later drag down the whole project.

My overall impression was that the Bolivarian revolution is still vague. It doesn't have clearly enunciated feminist politics, anti-racist politics, or even anti-capitalist politics, though in all three cases the inclinations are incredibly humane and radical and are moving rapidly forward toward enunciating full aims and proposing immediate program in that light. Chavez appears to be a remarkable detonator of insights, himself moving leftward at a great pace. The Bolivarian revolution is most ideologically clear, which is ironic and a powerful testimony on his behalf, given Chavez's military background, regarding political democracy and political participation where it seems to be already committed to a well conceived, compelling and innovative institutional vision that outstrips what any other revolutionary project since the Spanish anarchists has held forth.

The future is not certain. The Bolivarian revolution could still stall in social democracy. Co-management and not self management could lead that way. It could still stumble or even rush into typical old style "socialist" channels. Its market strategies and lack of clarity about class divisions based on divisions of labor, not property, push that way. There is always a danger of authoritarianism when a government is prodding a populace, of course. But the Bolivarian revolution could also, however, provide a remarkable model, both of a better world and of a very original way to arrive at that better world. Which of these results, or of others, happens, is largely going to be up to Chavez, the Bolivarian movements, and the Venezuelan people, though mass external support, not least to restrain U.S. aggressive inclinations before they can corrupt or destroy the experiment, are also profoundly needed.

I left Venezuela inspired and very hopeful. Venezuela looks to me like Uncle Sam's worst nightmare. I was humbled by Bolivarian ingenuity and steadfastness and by my own continued citizenship in the world's most rogue and brutal nation, against which I and other radicals have had such limited organizing success. Hopefully my country can follow Venezuela's lead rather than crushing its aspirations. Hopefully, citizens in the U.S. can make that happen. Officials won't, of course.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 4:50 AM

LOGGERHEAD

It's often fun to see old hippies pushing a system that has been an abysmal failure in every instance it has been tried. Very Quixote-esque.

Not so much much fun when it's your own country, though. A quick review of the author's body of work is quite revealing.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 5:37 AM

DREAMTROVE

Loggerhead,

I really agree. The word you're looking for is quixotic.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 6:25 AM

HERO

Quote:
Originally posted by loggerhead: It's often fun to see old hippies pushing a system that has been an abysmal failure in every instance it has been tried. Very Quixote-esque.

Not so much much fun when it's your own country, though. A quick review of the author's body of work is quite revealing.

Seemed very socialist to me. I wonder if the Chinease are their advisors.

I'll be interested to see if it works the way they plan or if its just another way for Chavez to set himself up as the "Great Leader" ala Kim Jung Il, Mao, or Castro. The proof that govts like this are a fraud on both democracy and socialism is when 15 years from now they still have the same ruler.

H

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Monday, November 07, 2005 8:58 AM

DREAMTROVE

Hero,

Yes, it would be intersting, but there are some other concerns.

1. Chavez has already become convinced, as socialists often are, that it will work even though it has not yet been tried, rather than wait and see what happens in practice. 2. So he has decided to spread it around the region, supporting the idea of socialist revolution around the region which is likely to create some real disasters.

It's an interesting thought though, do you think the chinese are behind Chavez? They have been looking for an oil-rich socialist state, and had designs on Iraq at the same time as we did. They were planning to support Iran into a dominant military position in an effort to control mid-east oil. That's not a conspiracy threory, BTW, I read it in the people's daily, it was an official chineses govt. position back in 2000 or so. Interceding events have undoubtedly upset that plan, and they have undoubtedly cut a deal with us for uninterrupted oil flow as part of Bush's China-appeasement policy. I imagine this would probably end up being some oil-for-debt program (to offset the tremendous amount of cash we owe China now due to the overspending by this govt.), should we ever happen to secure Iraq.

But it's possible that they would hatch a Venezuela plan for that reason, to be sure to secure an oil source.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 9:00 AM

CITIZEN

Hero, I feel compelled to agree.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!

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Monday, November 07, 2005 9:06 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove: 1. Chavez has already become convinced, as socialists often are, that it will work even though it has not yet been tried, rather than wait and see what happens in practice.

I agree, probably more than you realise. I've never seen a time when pure socialism has actually been put into practice, and I know that it wouldn't work if it did.

I agree with what your saying of China as well, America has done similar things through the years, and America is a freedom loving and 'enlightened' society. China isn't, not really (though they are improving, only time will tell on that).

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!

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Monday, November 07, 2005 11:44 AM

DREAMTROVE

Sorry about losing it earlier. I was very tense as you get when everyone is arguing against you at once, it wasn't your fault, and it wasn't really your post I was angry at, I just got into a very bad mood.

That said, moving on. Yeah, America does the same thing, no doubt about it. It's important to remember, that whether a society is freedom loving or oppressively totalitarian is really just a representation of its domestic policy. Foreign policy is almost always self serving, from the point of view of a nation. Everyone pretty much is going to say "oh we're freeing these people" but really their not. For Chavez this is "socialist revolutions across latin america" is his way of establishing a network of trading partners, because he knows he's going to end up with an embargo otherwise. For us in Iraq "making the world safe for democracy" is really about making sure America has a steady stream of oil, just as venezuela may be for china. My object to our own current foreign policy is not that it's self serving, it's that it's short sighted and destructive. A truly visionary US would realize that it has the technology right now to become energy independent, and that in 5-10 years it could make a total transition. The amount of oil we would have to buy in that time would not be more costly in a war in Iraq, to say nothing of the long term impact costs of our own self-image destruction.

"Pure" anything is probably impossible because all ideas are enacted by imperfect humans. The larger any implementation becomes, the more imperfect it will become because it will involve a larger number of imperfect humans, and therefore, even if they are selectively chosen, they will increase the average imperfection and multiply it.

China long term can probably not sustain its one party rule. When it crumbles I expect it to fragment like the Soviet Union. But it might not be for many years to come. Two things that I see lead directly to the collapse of the USSR:

1. The cost of maintaining it was an increasing strain on the overall economy compared the benefit of doing so. 2. There was a lack of will at the top to perpetuate it in the face of this cost.

Since this could take decades to come to pass in China, it's possible that we may be facing another cold war.

On the bright side, the cold war wasn't really all that bad.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 12:19 PM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Dreamtrove: Sorry about losing it earlier. I was very tense as you get when everyone is arguing against you at once, it wasn't your fault, and it wasn't really your post I was angry at, I just got into a very bad mood.

Yes, these issues can get that way at times. For my part in that little 'exchange' I apologise, as with all things it was half a dozen of one, 6 of the other. I never meant to insult or attack you or anyone personally, points or their arguments yes, but not them, it's a distinction I try to keep to fairly rigidly because of the natural adversarial nature of these boards. If I came across otherwise I apologise. Anyway. Yeah, foreign policy of any nation is pretty self serving, the major differences between America and China is probably Chinese isolationism, imho, and it should be noted that the US has done 'good' in the world, where as China, hasn't, not really on a recent timeline at least. I agree largely on the issue of Iraqi oil, that is largely why the first Gulf War was fought, I think. In other words protecting the oil reserves of Kuwait, although it should be noted that the first and second Gulf wars are entirely different situations for various reasons. I don't think the USSR could ever have sustained an Arms race with America, America was always more affluent, for various reasons, including the communist in Russia element. Personally I think China may be a harder situation to judge, since they are beginning to move toward a more capitalist stance, their economy is blooming, and they simply have more man power and resources than the Soviets, it's possible rather than collapsing like the USSR they'll 'transform' into something else. But on that point only time will tell.

As for the cold war, it was a mixed thing, the world was more 'stable' if you catch my meaning, but there was the possibility of mutually assured destruction, and it's scary how close we all came at times...

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!

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Monday, November 07, 2005 1:29 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
Chinese isolationism, imho, and it should be noted that the US has done 'good' in the world, where as China, hasn't, not really on a recent timeline at least.

I know a lot of Chinese and am related to a fair number, so I spend a lot of time focussing on China.

I don't think China is isolationist at all. I think they like to make it look that way, but I think of it as slow-motion imperialism. Recently they have annexed Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. They would never do what we just did and blatantly invade a country on another side of the world. The gradually annex things, building their claim over decades, setting up puppet govts so friendly that they claim to be part of China, and then 'transferring' troops to defend this 'chinese province.' And so Tibet, QiangXang (sp?) even manchuria should probably be considered a separate country. But they slowly incorporate and then homogenize territories to destroy the local national identity.

In addition though, they do run support programs to other countries who they see as allies, just not as often as we do. A google of "chavez china" produced so many pages proposing the same idea, that he is their new oil kitten, that I think it's definitely worth looking into as a possibility.

Re: The first gulf war

WHAT? You don't think we were just being great defenders of democracy?

Just kidding. What democracy, right?

But seriously, I do think that it's rare to have a blatant situation in which one country openly invades another with the intent to occupy it and add the territory and wealth to its own.

I support our decision to defend Kuwait, and I would like to think that we would do such a thing even if there wasn't oil there, but I am also realistic. But it's not that Kuwait got treatment that it didn't deserve because it had oil. It received the treatment that all sovereign nations deserve and they should get it even if they don't have oil.

Strangely, and I'm not sure why this is, but Darfur which is only really a territory of the Sudan as a result of colonialism, and used to be an independent country, and has virtually nothing in common with its Sudanese occupying force, is getting no help from us, in spite of the fact that it actually does have oil.

Is it possible that the "Bush doesn't care about black people" factor outweighs the "Bush only cares about oil" factor?

It is of course widely know that Clinton doesn't care about black people, as witness his total failure to defend the people of Rwanda, but intervened in Europe.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 3:15 PM

FLETCH2

The really interesting thing will be if China doesnt break apart. There is nothing inherent in Capitalism that says that it HAS to be partnered with a democratic political system. The message we chose to take from the fall of the Soviet Union was that the people wanted freedom -- I'm not sure that's true I think they wanted blue jeans and consumer goods.

In the Delaration of Independence it says this.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

So there is a possibility that the Chinese system may reform into something quite different from a Western style representative democracy.

As for Chavez --- he's full of himself, I can't see any chance of this thing working even in the short term.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 3:36 PM

HOWARD

Name three countries where this has been tried?

I am curious to see your interpretation of this.

I am curious to see how laughable your examples are and how you misassociate conflicting examples. I also find it interesting how the mere suggestion of real democracy offends you.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 3:56 PM

SEVENPERCENT

Quote:
Originally posted by Howard: I am curious to see how laughable your examples are and how you misassociate conflicting examples.

Howard, have you ever managed to participate in any debate where you weren't blatantly rude, insensitive, or didn't use an ad hominem attack?

It's no wonder you have the time to find all these articles and facts; if you talk to people in the non-cyber world like you do on this board, you probably spend a lot of time at home in the basement with no friends and no dates.

Holy crap, dude, try and be civil for like, one thread. Try "I disagree" or "the facts don't match that assertion" instead of "you're too ignorant to know so I'll tell you." It's not that hard.

------------------------------------------ He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 5:06 PM

DREAMTROVE

Fletch,

An interesting point.

I, as I said, know quite a few Chinese, maybe other people here do as well. What I find is their tolerance for the foibles of the Chinese communist govt. is very limited, and as affluence grows, that tolerance may be pressured to break, and the communist may fall, but you are absoultely right that there is no reason that the next reform or revolution will lead to a western style democracy. It's probably a cultural bias that makes us think our system is more or even most ultimately equitable, or that equality is in some way desireable. But an entirely new system may sping forth, or the old system may come back.

I was reading somewhere about Japan and the troubles of it's prime minister and the long term depression, and it made the interesting observation as a side note that Hirohito, as emporer, had reign over almost the entirety of Japan's economic growth, from an isolated and not particularly worldly or technological island republic into the most sophisticates and the most per capita wealthy nation on earth. Curiously his death in 1989 heralded the start of a great depression which is still going on.

I tend to think that Democracy is in a way the greates manipulative govt. in that in a system like ours it is possible to create the illusion of choice and the illusion of self rule without actually offering either.

It's also possible that the advent of technology will make entirely new govtl. forms possible. Consider the concept of direct democracy instead of representational democracy. In theory, on the internet, barring all sercurity problems, that the people could simply go online and vote on every issue. A referendum, or to quote Mao, a revolution every day.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 5:13 PM

DREAMTROVE

Howard is intentionally trollish I suspect. I don't know him from adam, but I tend to ignore it. I have examined the possibility that Howard actually lives in an institution, so I have to endeavor not to be too rude to him, because, quite frankly, you never know what someone's problems are. To Howard I say this:

Howard,

How to win friends and influence people, by Dale Carnegie.

Great book, look into it. Get back to me. After you've read it.

I'm serious about this. I also just recommend it generally. I find when I'm losing a lot of agruments like I have lately, it's time to go and return, reread it again.

That and my other master.

The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse.

This pretty much covers my inspirations, unless you want to check our Carl Jung or Nietzsche.

Actually maybe I'll start a new thread on this topic.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 5:47 PM

FLETCH2

There are definately cultural biases in our ways of working. We did some cultural studies classes at work a few years ago. The crux of it is that commercial relationships in Northern European cultures are determined entirely by contract while those in southern europe and the mid east are governed more by personal relationships. If you read things like the US constitution, Magna Carta etc the thing they have in common is that they are worded in contractual terms, in Europe we talk of the social contract --- an agreement between government and governed. All of it is effectively contracts.

If you look at government systems in the Mid East they are all done through personal contacts and favours. Now it could be that this system works better than we chose to accept or it could be a disaster. The point is that the government interaction with the governed in any society is a business relationship following the standard form used for any business relationship.

My understanding of native Chinese business systems is that status of the two parties involved in a deal greatly effects the expectations on both sides, Question is how this would refelect "scaled up" to a bigger level? I have heard others say that communism never really effected rural China and that in effect the top levels of the old feudal hierachy were just sliced off and replaced by the party with the peasants doing the same as they had for generations. Maybe the system in China will go that way, kind of a class system with multiple levels reporting up and orders coming down....

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Monday, November 07, 2005 6:16 PM

DREAMTROVE

The ruling relationship in China historically has been the Guanji. (gwaan zhee) It's similar but not identical to the original relationship os feudalism in Europe (I got into a big argument when I posted this before, because people mistook it for late feudal europe, which was more like indentured servitude, but I got my degree in ancient europe, I do know (at least a little) what I'm talking about) but to clear things up to be very sure:

The original feudal relationship in Europe was a contractual one, more or less, and was there when the romans first came. The owner of a piece of property, be it land or something else, would loan out it's use for a percentage of the take. In times before the application of money, this was typically in yield. A vassal was simply the person who was using, say, a piece of land, and whatever he did with that piece of land, he would give, typically about 15% to the lord of that land, ie its owner. So if he grew potatoes on that land, he would give three in twenty potatoes to the lord. In time it became a system where a whole village would rest on a piece of land, and the lord of the village would be both lord in that he lent land to the villains to harvest, and that he had borrowed the land upon which the village stood from another lord, say a count or a duke. As time progressed and this system was overrun by the more monetary labor system of the Romans, the incorporation of the two led to some rather unfortunate developments, whereby the nonyeilding peasant, rather than being expelled, could fall into a debt of service, and over time long term financial contractual relationships and feudalism became almost synonymous with de facto slavery.

In the Guanji, the relatioship is built on a complex system of favors. If you wish to advance you would ask a favor from a person in the guanji, usually to get yourself some training, an apprenticeship, some sort of education or employment. It would be easy to advance in your profession this way, but as you do so, for every favor you request, you own one in return. This meant that people in a position to provide these services became very powerful, because they could call in favors from a wide variety of people. If you remember the recent collapse of Suharto in Indonesia, one of the major reasons this caused such a quake was that he was the head of the global Guanji. Because of his nature of calling in favors in a way which trumped the extant or what we would consider in the west the legitimate social orders, capitalist and government, Suharto was considered to be incredibly corrupt.

I guess what these both show is that old systems and new ones don't really mix without bad consequences, but it's always possibly that people will find news ways into intertwine them.

re: communism in western provinces, I hear that too, particularly the benefits, what little there are, have failed to reach, the pain in the ass factor is pretty widespread.

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Monday, November 07, 2005 10:19 PM

FLETCH2

That explains the "status" thing I heard. Does this imply that Chinese deals tends to be inherently Asymetric? Doesn't this mean that in effect you promise to pay back the "favour" done for you at some future time without really knowing what you may be asked or the scale of it? Wonder how that would reflect as a government?

The deal with S European/Mid East "personal" business relationships is that you create commercial "friendships" and then execute commercial "favours" which are equivalent to N European contractual obligations but perhaps not as clearly defined. I don't think you end up owing favours in that situation though obviously the closer you build the relationship by doing extra "favours" the greater customer loyalty you get.

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005 4:10 AM

DREAMTROVE

I'm not an expert on china, but as I said, I know some people who are, not just chinese but two americans who've studied it extensively. That's really just a vague disclaimer that all of this is "near as I understand it."

1. Yes, deals tend to be assymetric in that manner. There is often a favor aspect to a deal. This doesn't mean that the guanji plays in to every deal that's made in China, but it is a factor.

2. Yes. This is a big disaster re: the hidden favor. The guanji is so culturally ingrained that if a Chinese firm make a deal with you they may expect that favor later. There have been a few notable cases where when that favor has been called in, and the American company has not complies, because by our code, if I contract with you to supply me with trucks, that does not obligate me to use your friend's company for fuel, etc. And so the Chinese may react in a seemingly random or what we would perceive as corrupt way by cancelling the first deal for trucks because we didn't buy fuel from the friend's fuel company. Some real examples are actually much worse. I assume the scale of the favor is probably in line with the initial favor, or such a system wouldn't work. It can't be I lent you my pencil so now you will lend me your wife.

3. From what I understand, it has profound influences on ascension through the party hierarchy. It doesn't really mean that a two party system presents a problem though. I don't know what howard dean did to get dem. party chair, or what kerry did for the nomination, but I don't think these were really free and fair elections without meddling. Dean sharp shift away from his former more anti-war views shows that he may have cut a deal. Generally I think democratic party deals involve bets with gold fiddles, but alas, I'm beginning to expect that GOP deals may also these days. But I think this is still a long way from saying that the Guanji IS the govt. If that were so, Suwarto would rule everything. I think it's more like the mob. Which reminds me. I had to go and look it up when the left started calling Alito "Scalito" but it's not so. Alito is just a regular italian name. For those who like this kind of conspiracy theory, Scalia is Sicilian

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005 7:48 AM

HOWARD

Why do you people not know how to read discourse?

Why do you people always get personal?

Why do you presume that the method or tone of my response to you has any bearing on how I communicate in conversation or in writing with other people?

In fact I have had some perfectly nice exchanges even on this site.

Give me shit and I'll give you that tone back. Give me an intelligent response that is something other than snide ridicule of other peoples work and I will give you a pleasant time.

Why have you lot entered into a discussion about CHINA? What has China got to do with the article I posted?

You are such a bloody waste of time the bloody lot of you.

Its been not nice knowing you. I am out of here!!

Contrary to you lot I DO have a life!

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005 9:47 AM

DREAMTROVE

Gee

Howard is an ass. I was just trying to be understanding. I was quite litteral about where I thought he might be coming from. Little things like that he didn't understand the concept of wrap-around text and felt it necessary to his the return key ever eight words made me think he might not be all there. I guess we failed to worship Chavez enough for him. I think the rest of that doesn't actually merit a response. I'm done actually trying to talk to him, it wasn't worth the effort.

Let's get back to China,

I did some googling on China Chavez, which turns up a lot as I said, and here's what I found:

Chavez threatens to share US military tech with China if US doesn't continue to supply him with arms. This seems to me to be an unreasonable request. There was also some talk about Chinese weapons in venezuela. Shades of Cuban missle crisis. This one is a little scary.

Next. Chavez has given free oil rights to China. WTF?

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/12-30-04.asp

The US had to invade Iraq to get oil rights. China gets them for free? We're playing the wrong game. Clearly we should have been monkeying in Venezuelan politics. This stikes me as one of the most corrupt deals in world history, and I know that says a lot. It's similar but more blatant to what goes on in Russia. I hope everyone remembers Yukos and Lukoil and Russneft.

Well so far we have the possibility of chinese weapons in Venezuela, Venezuela giving its oil to China for free.

Curiously, this is covered more solidly in the international press because of the other things it uncovers, so here's more or less a summary of what I gleamed, and if you want to refs, it's all in the top dozen or so google matches for "chavez china"

1. Chevron had a sweetheart deal before Chavez for $3/barrell. Condi was a Chevron exec. Condi pressed for Chavez' removal. 2. Citigroup (read Saudigroup) has been pressing for control of these assets. If we believe Michael Moore, which I do some of the time, Saudigroup is basically responsible for W. Bush being the GOP's presidential candidate. Ironic given what happened in september of 2001, but not by itself a conspiracy. 3. China has gotten free access to Venezuelan oil, a reserve which experts predict once fully explored will become the world's largest oil reserve, displacing Saudi Arabia and moving Iraq into third place. 4. Cuba also has free access to that oil. 5. It looks quite possible that we may see a build up of chinese firepower, but not manpower, swelling up uncomfortably closer to our borders to secure this oil. 6. Venezuela elections seem to be completely flawed.

So the best solution I can think of is to start participating in Venezeulan elections. Why? When these are basically rigged? Because doing so will force international attention on their legitamacy. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to underhandedly support an opposition stooge candidate, and push him to cheat. Never allow a connection to be drawn back to us, but a total fraud opposition candidate would cause international observers to go in. They would be defending Chavez, but their presence would make it harder for Chavez to cheat, and then in the subsequent election it might be possible to defeat him. If we fail to become thus engaged, Chavez will take his successful election cheating and use it as a stepping stone towards a flatout dictatorship in which the election is really just a formality, but the winner is always decided before the ballots are cast.

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