eyeheartlenin
18th August 2011, 05:02
[Spanish original published by the Fracción Trotskista; unofficial, provisional translation]
Venezuela - New alliances with the business sector
The political erosion of the Chavista project
By Milton D’León
Thursday, August 4, 2011
The meeting was with more than 300 national businessmen [1]. In it, after Vice President Elías Jaua exhorted about the need for participation by all the productive sectors of the country, Chávez took the floor via telephone, and, addressing the businessmen, he appealed to them: "We are going to become allies.... We need you, and you need us.... I want us to go towards 2021 together; I am counting on you." And he emphasized: "I invite you to set up joint enterprises."
But not many days had passed since the government had also addressed more than thirty big transnational firms, inviting them to new alliances [2], while it was dealing with the mechanisms of repatriating profits from the foreign companies that are operating in the country. "We are thinking about expanding your productive capacity with support from the national government," Elías Jaua indicated to the transnationals, seeking a new association with foreign capital, by adapting to the fundamental tendencies imposed by the international market, and he added that another one of the variants is converting the profits of the transnationals "into stock to establish joint enterprises with the Venezuelan government."
Concessions to pro-imperialist businessmen and governments
If Chávez had readapted himself on the regional level, seeking to reduce frictions with US imperialism, by becoming more functional for US interests (as we observed in the recognition of Porfirio Lobo, the Honduran President, who emerged from the coup d'état itself, and the constant collaboration with the Colombian regime in besieging the guerrilla organizations and control of the Colombian fighters in Venezuela, with the handing over of Colombian combatants to Santos), he is also making a domestic turn in hopes of achieving a kind of broader national agreement with strong business groups. Chávez has criticized as "dogmatic" those who "criticize the government's rapprochement with private groups and question the appeals the Executive is making to join Fedeindustria or the Cattleman's Association." Symbolism is not lacking the government's moves: "Why do we always have to wear red shirts?" Chávez wondered, calling for abandoning this custom, while he himself was wearing a yellow shirt. "And forgive me. The same thing happens with the word 'socialism,'" also urging an end to putting "socialism" on every move of the government. The new President of the country's main business association, Fedecámaras, stated that "The time has come ... to draw a line once and for all ... that allows going beyond what happened in 2002, beginning with mutual recognition.... That was a huge mistake."
Responding to the needs of business, Chávez' government has launched the biggest issue of bonds in the country's history, for 4.2 billion dollars, with a high interest rate of 11.95%. These are bonds bought with bolívares that can be sold for dollars overseas, as a means of direct access to dollars for the big economic groups. This, beyond the fact that it facilitates the government's raising bolívares almost automatically, in order to face its local needs, is at the cost of extremely high interest payments in thefuture and increasing the big domestic indebtedness.
Decline of the chavista project
On the other hand, the government is not expanding the promised goals, nor making big concessions to the mass movement. The missions reached a ceiling sometime ago, and many are tending to decline, while there is a lot of social dissatisfaction, and, above all, a big wave of struggles for improving wages has been taking place. There is a severe political erosion of the government, in the context of a general decline, marked by the failure of the chavista project: its "socialism with businessmen." The new political moves by Chávez' government can only be understood under this new political configuration, marked by the international economic crisis, that, from the center of Europe, is threatening to spread to the main world power, the United States.
As we stated in an editorial of our paper, En Clave Obrera: "In these nearly 13 years of governing, he has squandered the support of the masses; he has not advanced in breaking with foreign capital, nor was he able to industrialize the country as he had promised. Neither did he put an end to a single one of the ills that he had promised to remedy, and now, in his political decline, he seeks to be reconciled, by adapting himself ever more to a regional stability more functional for imperialist interests and to new relationships with the transnational corporations and the national business class. All this only shows once again the limits of bourgeois nationalism, its increasing erosion in view of national and international contradictions. Chávez has only proven his class nature, his subjection to, and defense of, the bourgeois order, and his narrow limitations before the most urgent democratic problems" [3].
Undoubtedly, the political crisis and the internal contradictions, in the context of the international economic crisis and a possible sharp class struggle, could open up new prospects for an independent course for the working class, but this, under the perspective that working men and women will begin to understand that the most pressing needs of the mass movement can only be satisfied on the ruins of the capitalist system. We revolutionaries of the LTS are betting on this prospect and on the struggle for the workers' political independence, that, in alliance with all the exploited and oppressed of this society, can open the road to an open struggle against this system of oppression and exploitation.
By Milton D’León
Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (LTS), Venezuela
[1] This was a meeting held on July 27 with business groups to explain the new Law of Costs and Prices to them. The meeting was led by Elías Jaua, Vice President of the Republic.
[2] In a meeting that took place on June 29 with 33 foreign firms that are operating in the country; this meeting was also led by the Vice President.
[3] En Clave Obrera Nro. 26
Venezuela - New alliances with the business sector
The political erosion of the Chavista project
By Milton D’León
Thursday, August 4, 2011
The meeting was with more than 300 national businessmen [1]. In it, after Vice President Elías Jaua exhorted about the need for participation by all the productive sectors of the country, Chávez took the floor via telephone, and, addressing the businessmen, he appealed to them: "We are going to become allies.... We need you, and you need us.... I want us to go towards 2021 together; I am counting on you." And he emphasized: "I invite you to set up joint enterprises."
But not many days had passed since the government had also addressed more than thirty big transnational firms, inviting them to new alliances [2], while it was dealing with the mechanisms of repatriating profits from the foreign companies that are operating in the country. "We are thinking about expanding your productive capacity with support from the national government," Elías Jaua indicated to the transnationals, seeking a new association with foreign capital, by adapting to the fundamental tendencies imposed by the international market, and he added that another one of the variants is converting the profits of the transnationals "into stock to establish joint enterprises with the Venezuelan government."
Concessions to pro-imperialist businessmen and governments
If Chávez had readapted himself on the regional level, seeking to reduce frictions with US imperialism, by becoming more functional for US interests (as we observed in the recognition of Porfirio Lobo, the Honduran President, who emerged from the coup d'état itself, and the constant collaboration with the Colombian regime in besieging the guerrilla organizations and control of the Colombian fighters in Venezuela, with the handing over of Colombian combatants to Santos), he is also making a domestic turn in hopes of achieving a kind of broader national agreement with strong business groups. Chávez has criticized as "dogmatic" those who "criticize the government's rapprochement with private groups and question the appeals the Executive is making to join Fedeindustria or the Cattleman's Association." Symbolism is not lacking the government's moves: "Why do we always have to wear red shirts?" Chávez wondered, calling for abandoning this custom, while he himself was wearing a yellow shirt. "And forgive me. The same thing happens with the word 'socialism,'" also urging an end to putting "socialism" on every move of the government. The new President of the country's main business association, Fedecámaras, stated that "The time has come ... to draw a line once and for all ... that allows going beyond what happened in 2002, beginning with mutual recognition.... That was a huge mistake."
Responding to the needs of business, Chávez' government has launched the biggest issue of bonds in the country's history, for 4.2 billion dollars, with a high interest rate of 11.95%. These are bonds bought with bolívares that can be sold for dollars overseas, as a means of direct access to dollars for the big economic groups. This, beyond the fact that it facilitates the government's raising bolívares almost automatically, in order to face its local needs, is at the cost of extremely high interest payments in thefuture and increasing the big domestic indebtedness.
Decline of the chavista project
On the other hand, the government is not expanding the promised goals, nor making big concessions to the mass movement. The missions reached a ceiling sometime ago, and many are tending to decline, while there is a lot of social dissatisfaction, and, above all, a big wave of struggles for improving wages has been taking place. There is a severe political erosion of the government, in the context of a general decline, marked by the failure of the chavista project: its "socialism with businessmen." The new political moves by Chávez' government can only be understood under this new political configuration, marked by the international economic crisis, that, from the center of Europe, is threatening to spread to the main world power, the United States.
As we stated in an editorial of our paper, En Clave Obrera: "In these nearly 13 years of governing, he has squandered the support of the masses; he has not advanced in breaking with foreign capital, nor was he able to industrialize the country as he had promised. Neither did he put an end to a single one of the ills that he had promised to remedy, and now, in his political decline, he seeks to be reconciled, by adapting himself ever more to a regional stability more functional for imperialist interests and to new relationships with the transnational corporations and the national business class. All this only shows once again the limits of bourgeois nationalism, its increasing erosion in view of national and international contradictions. Chávez has only proven his class nature, his subjection to, and defense of, the bourgeois order, and his narrow limitations before the most urgent democratic problems" [3].
Undoubtedly, the political crisis and the internal contradictions, in the context of the international economic crisis and a possible sharp class struggle, could open up new prospects for an independent course for the working class, but this, under the perspective that working men and women will begin to understand that the most pressing needs of the mass movement can only be satisfied on the ruins of the capitalist system. We revolutionaries of the LTS are betting on this prospect and on the struggle for the workers' political independence, that, in alliance with all the exploited and oppressed of this society, can open the road to an open struggle against this system of oppression and exploitation.
By Milton D’León
Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (LTS), Venezuela
[1] This was a meeting held on July 27 with business groups to explain the new Law of Costs and Prices to them. The meeting was led by Elías Jaua, Vice President of the Republic.
[2] In a meeting that took place on June 29 with 33 foreign firms that are operating in the country; this meeting was also led by the Vice President.
[3] En Clave Obrera Nro. 26