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Should the Left Cheer the Dollar's Drop? How to make the bankers scream: Robert Pollin, world's best obituarist of Clintonomics, explains it all for you. Do police states make people feel safer? Vicente Navarro on Franco's Spain, Cockburn on Ireland in the Fifties under the Catholic Hierarchy, Alevtina Rea on growing up in Brezhnev-time. Capitalism's true utopia? St Clair on the Pentagon's no-bid arms contracts. How's the press doing in Iraq? Patrick Cockburn tells all to Omar Waraich. Get the answers you're looking for in the latest subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
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Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison by KATHY KELLY  Today's Stories May 28 / 30, 2005 Richard
Lichtman Dave
Lindorff
May 27, 2005 Gary
Leupp Daniel
Estulin Kevin
Zeese Robert
Fisk Dave
Zirin Website
of the Day
May 26, 2005 Yuki
Tanaka Ray
McGovern Arthur
Mitzman Jack
Random Britt
Bailey and Brian Tokar Rebecca
Rush Jorge
Mariscal Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
May 25, 2005 Camilo
Mejia Dave
Lindorff William
S. Lind Chris
Floyd Brian
Cloughley Lenni
Brenner Sean
Cain Karl
Shepard John
Ross Website
of the Day
Dave
Zirin Michele
Bollinger Winslow
Wheeler Uri
Avnery Michael
Donnelly Joshua
Frank Stephen
Dunifer Paul
Craig Roberts
May 23, 2005 Esther
Sassaman / Thomas Nagy Mike
Whitney Ramzy
Baroud Michael
Dickinson Walter
Brasch Dick
J. Reavis Maria
Tomchick Norman
Solomon Kevin
Zeese Website
of the Day
May 21 / 22, 2005 David
H. Price Gabriel
García Márquez Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Laith
al-Saud Elaine
Cassel Greg
Moses Fred
Gardner Dave
Lindorff Alan
Maass William
Blum Tom
Crumpacker Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Doug
Giebel Evelyn
J. Pringle Carolyn
Baker Chris
Floyd Frederick
B. Hudson Ben
Tripp Poets'
Basement
May 20, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Paul
de Rooij Christopher
Brauchli Mark
Engler Joshua
Frank Robert
Jensen Jeffery
R. Webber
May 19, 2005 Bill
Forman Stan
Goff Neve
Gordon Michael
Dickinson Karyn
Strickler Andrew
Freedman Paul
Craig Roberts
May 18, 2005 Jean
Bricmont Laura
Carlsen Mike
Whitney Joshua
Frank George
Galloway Manuel
Garcia, Jr. Dwight
D. Eisenhower Dave
Lindorff
May 17, 2005 Mickey
Z. Petuuche
Gilbert Paul
Craig Roberts Ramzy
Baroud Robert
Jensen / Pat Youngblood Stan
Cox Dave
Zirin Diana
Barahona Website
of the Day
May 16, 2005 Michael
Gillespie Jason
Leopold Jesse
Muldoon Norman
Solomon Robert
Cray Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
May 14 / 15, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Saul
Landau Gary
Leupp JoAnn
Wypijewski Ben
Tripp Brian
J. Foley Tom
Barry Mitchell
Verter Mike
Ferner Dan
Smith Mark
Scaramella Don
Fitz Diane
Farsetta Michael
Dickinson Ron
Jacobs Fred
Gardner Farrah
Hassen Douglas
Valentine Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
May 13, 2005 Tom
Stephens Patrick
Cockburn Mike
Whitney Chris
Floyd Jenna
Orkin Dave
Lindorff Joshua
Frank Website
of the Day
May 12, 2005 Paul
Craig Roberts Uri
Avnery Greg
Moses Carolyn
Baker Pat
Williams William
S. Lind Jack
Random Gary
Leupp
May 11, 2005 Patrick
Cockburn Kevin
Zeese Christopher
Brauchli Zalman
Amit Robert
Shull Mike
Whitney Dr.
Teresa Whitehurst Norman
Solomon
May 10, 2005 Richard
Drayton Dave
Zirin Jackie
Corr Dave
Lindorff Michael
Donnelly Reza
Fiyouzat Scott
Parkin Stephen
Babcock Alan
Farago Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
May 9, 2005 Louis
Proyect Robert
Fisk Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Sasha
Kramer Andrew
Wimmer Jeffrey
Webber Jeffrey
St. Clair
May 7 / 8, 2005 Alexander
Cockburn Gary
Leupp Saul
Landau Joe
DeRaymond Daniela
Ponce Heather
Williams Gregory
Elich Anis
Memon John
Chuckman Mike
Whitney Ron
Jacobs Colin
Kalmbacher Lance
Selfa Fred
Gardner Ben
Tripp Mickey
Z. Richard
Joseph Dr.
Susan Block Poets'
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May 6, 2005 Patrick
Cockburn Erin
Yoshioka Sam
Husseini Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Joshua
Frank Dan
Bacher P.
Sainath
May 5, 2005 Carles
Mutaner Carl
G. Estabrook Farrah
Hassen Kevin
Zeese Michael
Leonardi Bennett
Ramberg Ray
McGovern Norman
Solomon Nicole
Colson Brian
Concannon, Jr.
May 4, 2005 Colin
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Walsh Greg
Moses Ali
Khan Chris
Floyd Linda
S. Heard Dave
Zirin William
S. Lind Gary
Leupp Website
of the Day
May 3, 2005 Dave
Lindorff Brian
Cloughley Ira
Kurzban Seth
Sandronsky Gilad
Atzmon Michael
Donnelly Alex
Sanchez Peter
Linebaugh
May 2, 2005 Ron
Jacobs Stan
Goff Karyn
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Frank Kevin
Zeese Vicente
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April 30 / May 1, 2005 Alexander
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Frank Doug
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Weekend Edition What's Next in Venezuela?Chavez Gets ProactiveBy LEE SUSTAR THE NATIONALIZATION of a bankrupt and closed-down paper company, Venepal, under workers' self-management late last year signaled a new turn in Venezuelan politics. Soon afterward, Chávez used the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil to talk about "socialism of the 21st century," and has continued speaking on that theme ever since. "It is impossible that we will achieve our goals with capitalism, nor is it possible to find an intermediate path," Chávez said in a May Day speech in the capital city of Caracas. "I invite all of Venezuela to march on the path of socialism of the new century." This shift to the left coincides with a new surge of activism in the social movements and National Union of Workers (UNT, by its initials in Spanish), a new labor federation that is fast displacing the conservative Venezuelan Confederation of Labor (CTV), which aligned itself with employers during the failed U.S.-backed coup of 2002. Moving beyond his regular denunciations of U.S. imperialism, Chávez is advocating a new economic and political direction for Latin America and the developing world. And by injecting socialism back into the international debate, Venezuela is challenging the free-market mantra coined by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: "TINA"--There Is No Alternative. The leverage to chart a new economic course is the surge in oil prices, which, according to the International Monetary Fund, fueled a 17.3 percent growth rate in 2004, the third-fastest in the world. Now the question of socialism has sharpened the debate in Venezuela over the nature of "the revolutionary process" itself. The emerging struggle in Venezuela over the meaning of "socialism for the 21st century" will have a major impact on the left internationally. FOR THE U.S. government and Venezuelan big business, the discussion of socialism has vindicated their claims that Chávez is a would-be Fidel Castro with oil, driving toward a one-party dictatorship fueled by petrodollars. Venezuela has strengthened economic ties with Cuba. But the two country's political systems are vastly different. Chávez has won a series of elections since 1998 by big majorities because the Venezuelan ruling establishment had been thoroughly discredited through decades of corruption and, finally, economic collapse. Chávez's movement arose following the collapse of the two-party power-sharing scheme between the nominally left-of-center Democratic Action (AD) and social Christian COPEI, established in 1958. The government's embrace of International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures in 1989 provoked a spontaneous insurrection in which the armed forces killed scores of people. Thus, when Chávez mounted a failed coup in 1992, even mainstream politicians had to admit that he was widely seen as a heroic populist. The 1990s saw further economic unraveling, with real wages plummeting 23 percent, and some 60 percent of the population forced to rely on the informal sector of the economy to make a living. Out of a population of some 25 million, about 80 percent lived in poverty. Even the conservative North-South Institute at the University of Miami published a collection of articles in 1995 that showed how Venezuela's state and party institutions had lost all legitimacy. "The parties and their tactics are blamed for most of the perceived principal problems in their country: corruption, the high cost of living, the inefficiency of public services and personal insecurity," went a typical contribution. Meanwhile, the wealthiest Venezuelans--known as the oligarchy--and the upper middle class maintained living standards comparable to their U.S. counterparts. Mountaintop villas, gated suburban communities, luxury SUVs and private schools seal off moneyed Venezuelans from the crowded Caracas barrios and hillside slums that are vulnerable to rainy-season mudslides (an estimated 10,000 poor people on the outskirts of Caracas died as torrential rains washed away their homes away in 1999). This inequality is what won Chávez the support of the poor for his "Bolivarian revolution"--named for Simón Bolívar, the 19th century leader of the independence movement against the Spanish colonists--and set the stage for Chávez's first electoral victory. DURING HIS first three years in office, low oil prices and a severe recession pre-empted Chávez's planned economic programs. Instead, his focus was on changes to political structures through a constituent assembly that wrote a new constitution. A new presidential election followed. This, however, was threatening enough to the oligarchy, which used its control of the private media to relentlessly criticize the government and incite the middle class and military. A mass march of the middle class and a strike called by the CTV union federation on April 11, 2002, served as a springboard for the short-lived military coup that abolished the national legislature and conferred dictatorial powers on the head of the chamber of commerce. A popular mobilization defeated the coup makers, and Chávez returned to Venezuela in triumph. The opposition's next move was a "strike" in the state-owned oil company, PDVSA--in reality, a lockout by top management and technical personnel. Backed by the CTV, the lockout-strike was aimed at crippling the economy and driving Chávez from power. Instead, rank-and-file oil workers, along with soldiers from the armed forces, kept production and transportation of oil going through two difficult months. These two months of effective workers' control in the oil industry--and in other companies that closed during the strike--became a touchstone for a split within the CTV. The new UNT broke from the CTV's decades of labor cronyism and corruption to revive class-struggle unionism in Venezuela. At the same time, the worldwide surge in oil prices enabled the Chávez government to fund a series of "missions"--social programs that bypassed the dysfunctional state bureaucracy in which the old parties remained entrenched. The new NGO-style programs included funds for Cuban doctors to bring medical care to the slums; literacy and high-school equivalency courses to help workers and the poor gain access to higher education; subsidized grocery stores in the barrios; land reform for poor farmers and the landless; support for indigenous peoples; the creation of new universities and more. The government missions, supported by the booming oil economy, gave Chávez the momentum to win 59 percent of the vote in the August 2004 recall referendum organized by the opposition. Despite funding by the U.S. government-backed National Endowment for Democracy, opposition groups lack a credible leader. Divided among right-wing authoritarians, business executives and parties that were formerly part of the socialist left, the opposition had greater room to criticize Chávez when the economy was in crisis, but has offered no alternative other than the discredited old order. Meanwhile, Chávez has responded to U.S. government threats by purchasing military gear from Spain and 100,000 AK-47 rifles from Russia--which will be used by a popular reserve militia directly under the control of the presidency. Yet continued social and political polarization has also pressured the Chavista movement itself to put forward a more coherent political alternative--an explicit goal for the "revolutionary process" beyond the vague nationalist aims of the early years. CHÁVEZ'S DISCUSSION of socialism is about filling this gap and providing a new orientation for the "Bolivarian revolution." Government economists increasingly call for "endogenous economic development"--an effort to divert the country's oil wealth to spur economic development, create jobs and raise the standard of living for workers and the poor. Within the state bureaucracy, the debate on socialism is being used to separate supporters of the "revolutionary process" from those who oppose or sabotage it. At the same time, new laws call for co-management in state-owned enterprises--most importantly, the big oil, metals and power-generation companies. Enterprises are to be placed under control of elected delegates from technical personnel and the workers, alongside government appointees. The government has even raised the possibility of making this a law for all Venezuelan businesses--which would force companies like General Motors, Chrysler and Ford to install worker delegates in their auto plants. Chávez has also spoken of a system of employee ownership in which capitalists would control a maximum of 30 percent of company stocks. Yet although Chávez speaks of taking a different path to socialism, distinct from Stalinism or European social democracy, previous efforts to introduce socialism by means of government laws, co-management or state ownership have failed. For example, in less developed countries, the ouster of colonial governments or puppet states in the 1950s and 1960s saw various attempts at "African socialism" or "Arab socialism"--which turned out to be a variant of capitalism, with the state running things. Venezuela itself nationalized the oil and metal industries in the 1970s, which didn't challenge capital or democratize the economy. It is this history that has spurred discussion in the popular movements over how to achieve socialism--and Chávez, for his part, continues to call for such a debate. For example, the Venezuelan left is critical of the fact that some 21 percent of the government budget for 2005 is being used to repay foreign debt racked up by the corrupt governments of the past, rather than social programs. Meanwhile, the "classista," or class-struggle current of the UNT--led by former textile union leader Orlando Chirino and Marcela Máspero of the pharmaceutical workers' union--has put forward its own vision of socialism: nationalization and workers' control. For example, a meeting of regional UNT leaders in the state of Carabobo in March issued a final declaration that condemned efforts by management of the state electrical power company, CADAFE, to denounce UNT union leaders as "counterrevolutionaries" for demanding greater workers' input in the co-management scheme. The UNT--which has been denounced by the AFL-CIO as an "arm of the state"--isn't shy about criticizing government policies, in particular, a currency devaluation that has cut purchasing power for workers and the poor. "There are no reasons that justify this measure, which only favors big business and the bankers; the workers and the poor see that it has produced a wave of price increases in basic products," said the declaration of a UNT meeting. UNT leaders also called for the independence of the unions from the employers, the government and political parties. Militants in the UNT have mounted a challenge to more moderate elements led by steelworkers' union leader Ramón Machuca, whose union remains independent, but who wields influence in the new federation. In the all-important oil industry, leading union members recently launched the Workers' Class-Struggle Option (OCT) to challenge what they called the "new technocratic bureaucracy" in PDVSA and to build on the legacy of workers' control during the oil strike. Aiming to unite workers in different unions, the OCT is trying to lead new fights--for example, to restore contract workers to the status of full-time employees with benefits. In its founding statement May 14, the group criticized union leaders for "the most deficient contract negotiations in our history" and failing to attain major gains for the workers in view of the record oil industry gains. More generally, the socialist left is taking the opportunity to spell out its own vision of Venezuela's revolutionary transformation. "One cannot speak of socialism without proposing to break with the perverse logic of capitalism, without attacking individual property by radical means, without speaking of democracy--more precisely, the workers and the people deciding in their majority what is to be done," a member of the group Revolutionary Left Option (OIR) wrote in a recent pamphlet on workers' control and co-management. Certainly the expectations of workers in the big state industries--who haven't seen real wage increases since the 1980s--are rising. And with high oil prices, exceptional natural resources and a developed manufacturing base and sizeable population, Venezuela has far greater scope for economic and social change than, for example, the Nicaraguan revolution, in which a small and shattered economy was battered by U.S. sanctions and a Washington-funded civil war. Nevertheless, Venezuelan capital and U.S. imperialism are digging in against further change--which points to an even greater level of class confrontation in the future. VENEZUELA'S TURN to the left coincides with a new wave of mobilizations in Latin America, this time directed mainly at the new populist and center-left governments--new mass protests in Bolivia over proposed privatization of gas, a strike wave in Argentina and renewed marches by the landless workers' movement in Brazil. The biggest revolt so far has been in Ecuador, where President Lucio Gutiérrez, was forced from office in April by a popular rebellion. Gutiérrez himself had led an uprising that ousted a president in 2000, and then campaigned as a Chávez-type populist to win the presidential elections of 2002. In office, however, Gutiérrez implemented the International Monetary Fund's economic policy and embraced Plan Colombia, Washington's program to militarize the Andes. Gutiérrez was even praised by Bush as "the United States' best ally in the fight against drugs and terrorism." His fall is a major blow to Washington, which counted on Ecuador to revive the stalled Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and give momentum in Congress to the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA, an extension of NAFTA). Another linchpin of U.S. policy in South America, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, has failed to consolidate power and is in danger of losing upcoming presidential elections. Meanwhile, in Mexico, the recent mass protest in defense of the populist mayor of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, forced President Vicente Fox to drop attempts to prosecute him. Even Brazilian President Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva--a former union leader and head of the Workers' Party, whose conservative policies have disappointed supporters, but pleased the White House and Wall Street--has raised Washington's ire by hosting a recent Latin American-Arab summit and challenging the U.S. trade agenda. In this context, Chávez is projecting Venezuela as leader of an alternative to the FTAA--and using oil to advance regional economic and political ties. One such effort is Petrosur, an association of Latin American oil companies. These setbacks for U.S. imperialism in Latin America have only put more pressure on Washington to turn the heat up on Venezuela. The upcoming Summit of the Americas, set for Buenos Aires in November, has effectively given Washington a deadline to try to recapture momentum in its own "backyard." But the dynamics of Venezuelan politics and the debate on socialism highlight the fact that the opposition to Washington and neoliberal free-market economics goes far beyond the policies that have so far been pursued by the center-left governments. The debate in the Latin American left is moving from what the labor and social movements are against--free trade deals, privatization and "flexible" labor policies--to what it is for: an economic and political system based on genuine democratic control by workers and the poor. Lee Sustar is a regular contributor to CounterPunch
and the Socialist Worker.
He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
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