In the ongoing debate on Venezuela, we see interventions that take clear positions, either for or against Maduro. In this regard, criticisms of the regime's authoritarian deviations are often softened by a list of its undeniable social achievements. Even the definition of the Bolivarian Revolution has not contributed to clarity, as the terms have been variously interpreted by those who championed it and by those who, instead, have discredited and opposed it. ---- This polarization of the debate has omitted the historical transitions of the continental Latin American proletariat in its painful process of emancipation. The critique of the Bolivarian Revolution is, however, a critique of a historical process taking place in the "backyard" of US imperialism. From the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and the Spanish-American War (1898), through the Roosevelt Corollary (1904), we arrive at the long series of continental and intelligence interferences, aimed at hindering, influencing and deposing all those governments opposed to US interests, even by fomenting bloody coups d'état and civil wars.
The dramatic events in Venezuela are therefore the latest development in a policy of authentic imperialist oppression, systematically and with impunity pursued by the USA in Latin America for over 170 years.
The following notes constitute a first approach to the phenomenon of the Bolivarian revolution, to highlight how this realization does not proceed in a socialist and libertarian direction, as is sometimes arbitrarily expressed, but falls back, despite itself, into the furrow of "socialism in a single nation".
Bourgeois-democratic critiques of the Venezuelan regime level explicit accusations of fascism, counterposing an abstract concept of democracy, appropriately purified of the centuries-old horrors of imperialism, to the alleged communist dictatorship in Venezuela. Moreover, the arguments of supporters of the Bolivarian revolution are no less compelling and allow us to observe the progressive emergence of a certain conception of socialism typical of the twentieth-century European left and its Stalinist, patriotic, and nationalist tendencies. Indeed, rereading the pronouncements of the main PCI leaders at the time of the Hungarian events of November 1956, it becomes clear that the party's leadership, albeit with some differences and some temporary and tearful hesitations, sided with the USSR's bloody repression of the uprising, a revolt that was strongly class-based, that is, working-class and self-managing.[1]If at the time, by calling for repression, it was believed that socialism was being defended from Western imperialist aggression, today it is possible to witness the affirmation of evaluations that substantially adhere to those pronouncements.
The limitation of this one-sided historical approach, which was already the PCI's and which we define as terminal, in the sense that it dated back to the Bolshevik drift as it took shape from 1918 onwards, consisted precisely in considering the global imperialist dimension as a clash between economic and social systems that in 1956 were still claimed to be opposed: the Western capitalist and imperialist model, to be condemned without reservation, and the "socialist" model of the USSR, to be defended with intransigence. By discrediting socialism, one objectively ended up playing into the hands of Western imperialism and therefore of the "counterrevolution," in alarming harmony with what is being uttered today precisely by the uncritical supporters of the Bolivarian revolution.
In this regard, our comrades from the Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action drew up, already in 1950, a lucid assessment of the drift of Soviet socialism: «In the history of the Communist International[...]the organisation is engaged in an increasingly demanding manner in the foreign policy of the USSR: a foreign policy which translates the process of capitalist restoration underway within the Soviet state into an external imperialist push».[2]
Times have clearly changed, but the ideological, abstract, and unilateral opposition between socialism and imperialism continues to characterize not only the debate, but also the respective interests of private capitalism (which also benefits from state subsidies) and state-based capitalism, which can be defined in general but not generic terms as "state capitalism," if we may be allowed to summarize. Both of these phenomena, in their different phases of economic, social, geographical, and power development, are part of the imperialist competition for control of the world market.
In Venezuela, the evident aggression of the imperialist "external enemy," cloaked in democracy, cannot conceal the pitfalls that also lurk within a specific historical process and constitute the "internal enemy," even if it calls itself socialist. The shift in property relations (from private to state) does not necessarily imply a qualitative and stable reversal of production relations.
In other words: the mere nationalization of the means and systems of production, along with other measures intended to limit, control, or liquidate imperialist penetration, the very social reforms that allow a relative emancipation from underdevelopment of the Venezuelan economy and the subaltern classes, do not constitute any socialist construction. Today, as in 1956, there are no external imperialist actors to condemn and combat, and no socialist actors confined to individual states to be supported and defended.
But real processes intersect: in the US, the Democrat Roosevelt's New Deal was not unpopular with early National Socialism, and Britain's Churchill showed an undeniable, and not just initial, interest in Italian fascism. Moreover, economist John Maynard Keynes identified the role of the state (in public investment) as the main anti-crisis engine, similar to the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany.
This does not mean that bourgeois democracy, Stalinism, and fascism are equivalent phenomena. Bourgeois democracy, fascism, and nationalism in its myriad variants, like Stalinism, are the products of different phases of the capitalist production process, where the bourgeoisies of their respective countries, at different levels of development, used, to assert themselves and prosper, the theoretical, political, organizational, and institutional tools they had developed in response to the historical contexts in which they operated.
But to understand the origins and emergence of socialism in a single nation and its subsequent and diverse developments, which lead us back to the Bolivarian Revolution and the lights and shadows of its achievements, it is necessary to take as a reference the category "Bonapartism," a concept coined by Marx around 1869. In semi-colonial countries (politically independent but economically dependent on imperialist powers), there were Bonapartist regimes that could also be defined as progressive. These regimes implemented a policy of social reforms aimed at both enabling the development of productive forces, hampered by backwardness, and containing class conflict. This resulted in the achievement of inter-class social unity in the interests of the national bourgeoisies which, as in the case of Venezuela, pursued emancipation from US imperialism, clashing with those internal bourgeois elements that benefited and continue to benefit from imperialism itself.
This did not prevent charismatic and authoritarian, if not dictatorial, tendencies. In the USSR, the process that led to the privileging of national interests over those of the Russian and world proletariat did not begin with the death of Lenin (1924) and the subsequent rapid affirmation of Stalinism, but with the "regulation" of workers' councils, with the peace treaty with the Central Powers of Brest Litovsk (1918) and with Soviet foreign policy towards the Turkish revolution (1920); it continued in 1921, with the bloody repression of the revolt of sailors, soldiers and the proletariat of Kronstadt and of the Makhnovist opposition in Ukraine, within the framework of the violent repression of all political, social and class opposition; it then continued, gaining further strength, with the establishment of the NEP (1921), to arrive at the Treaty of Rapallo (agreement between the USSR and Germany) of 1922.
If in Italy and Germany the bourgeoisie, in order to survive, abolishes bourgeois democracy and plays the card of fascist dictatorship, in Russia capitalism, in order to develop, will have no choice but to choose the Bolshevik perspective, now in its drift and counterrevolutionary.
But do elements of fascism also appear in Stalinism, the same ones attributed to regimes like Venezuela that adopted national socialist forms, giving rise to authoritarian tendencies? The question is poorly posed. If formal analogies exist between the institutional systems that develop in the capitalist production process, they must be contextualized and not compared in the abstract. In the New Deal USA, the bourgeoisie was strong enough to defend its imperialist interests by mediating them through bourgeois democracy. In Italy and Germany, however, the bourgeoisie was weaker and delegated the management of the state to fascist parties. The fascists and Nazis assumed power constitutionally and established a dictatorship that eliminated the democratic form that had become an obstacle to bourgeois interests. In the USSR, the bourgeoisie was extremely weak: an armed revolution and a bloody civil war had overthrown the old Tsarist regime, the bastion of reaction in Europe; the post-revolutionary economic situation was dire; the role of the state in the economy and social life was therefore increased, controlled as it was by the sole ruling Communist Party, which, in the nascent Soviet state, began to pursue that "capitalist restoration" that would be fully implemented with Stalinism, the epilogue of the defeated revolution.
Imperialism is a phenomenon that, through the investment of capital, disrupts the economic and social structures of the areas where it asserts itself, creating new economic, social, political, and institutional structures. In Latin America, Asia, and Africa, national bourgeoisies, in order to fully assert themselves, began to play an anti-imperialist role, precisely through nationalism. However, what emerged was not socialism, but Bonapartist regimes aimed at achieving national unity through anti-imperialist means.
We can therefore define Maduro as the continuator of a Bonapartist experience that, begun with Chávez, has unquestionably gained credibility thanks to the social reforms he enacted, aimed at improving the material conditions of the lower classes and achieving the unity of the country against imperialism. Chávez was the charismatic political leader of a Bonapartist front with ancient roots in Latin America; however, he is the product of a social polarization that has seen significant segments of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie demand emancipation from US imperialism, in order to stem and manage the penetration of foreign capital along with the exploitation of the country's significant natural resources, such as oil and raw materials. This polarization opposes those reactionary bourgeois elements within the country that have historically benefited from imperialism and that today, in order to survive, fuel the far-right political, parliamentary, and social opposition, linked to and fueled by US imperialism, of which Juan Guaidó and María Corina Machado are the most recent, unstable, and nevertheless significant offshoots. Despite all the coup attempts orchestrated by the US, this polarization persists with all its convulsions. Thus, the current Venezuelan Bonapartist regime represents an unstable balance of opposing social forces in a reality in which foreign capital plays a decisive role.
Although the Maduro government is losing support even among entire sectors of the lower classes, who are yielding to the calls and maneuvers of the pro-imperialist right, it has not shackled the proletariat and the political and social opposition with a bloody military dictatorship, as has happened in the past in numerous Latin American countries. Instead, it has sought to forge a cross-class front between the proletariat and the Venezuelan national bourgeoisie, determined to exploit the penetration of foreign capital to its exclusive advantage. The economic and social measures implemented by Venezuelan leaders to combat underdevelopment, while constituting a concession to the material demands of the lower classes, have also aimed to strengthen the Bolivarian revolution in its inter-class essence.
Socialist forms that emerge in a single nation should not be demonized, but neither should they be passed off as what they cannot be: socialism. The Cuban revolution also achieved significant social advances similar to those achieved by Chávez in Venezuela: but the driving force behind these achievements was not the proletariat, nor was its liberation their ultimate goal. And if the proletariat was nevertheless involved, more so by Chávez than by Castro, it is the nascent national bourgeoisie that, in its contradictory affirmation, has held and continues to hold the helm for its class hegemony. In a backward context like Venezuela, we cannot ignore those processes that have elevated the material conditions of the subaltern classes by more equitably redistributing the social wealth produced. However, with equal objectivity, it is necessary to note that the social relations of production, and therefore of power, have remained unchanged, that is, firmly controlled by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie. But the bourgeoisie, even the anti-imperialist one, is not a universal class and to defend its hegemony and its interests it can easily replace instrumental progressivism with forms of domination that can materialize in authoritarian and even violent drifts.
Thus, the experience undertaken by Chávez in Venezuela, inspired by national socialism, in accordance with the inevitable historical genesis of Bonapartism, produced the Maduro regime, which represents its authoritarian drift. Furthermore, the critique of the Bolivarian revolution must not assume the abstract concept of freedom and democracy, recognizing that the first step that must be taken in any transition toward the overthrow of capitalist relations of production is precisely the liberation of the subaltern classes from material need, an essential prerequisite for achieving any subsequent freedom. But it is also necessary to avoid falling into the trap of the external enemy, which resolves itself into the unity of the homeland for the defense of socialism from imperialist aggression, to the full advantage of those elements of the national bourgeoisie that hold power. Once again, if the enemy is objectively represented by imperialism, its misdeeds, and its allies, what the German internationalists stated on the eve of the first imperialist war is very true: the principal enemy is the bourgeoisie that each country has in its own country.
From this perspective, Nestor Makhno's experience in Ukraine, which took place between 1918 and 1921, can be a useful reference. Although less accomplished than others (such as the Paris Commune and Spain in 1936 and 1939), it represented a model of economic and social management that could be generalized, albeit with its inevitable limitations, to the post-revolutionary Russian experience. The Bolsheviks, in keeping with their social democratic traditions, instead embarked on the path of establishing a socialist state for the construction of state capitalism, progressively eliminating all political and social opposition.
In any case, Makhno attempted to confront Bolshevism by acknowledging the concrete balance of power, thus avoiding opposition simply because it did not represent his anarchist-communist horizon. He did so generously by choosing, in the heat of revolution and civil war, the uneasy alliance with the Bolsheviks to combat the White counterrevolution, armed by Western imperialist powers, as the main enemy at that precise historical juncture. At the same time, he sought to point to a political, organizational, and social alternative to Bolshevism: the path of direct action and self-management, a path he lacked the strength to sustain due to the adverse circumstances in which this experience unfolded.
From this point of view, the experience of the Makhnovist movement, as a mass movement, could also assume some validity for the future of Venezuela, also considering that between the Bolshevik drift and Bolivarian socialism there are, historically, numerous connections.
Notes
[1]Pietro Ingrao, On one side of the barricade in defense of socialism , «L'Unità», 25/10/1956; Giancarlo Pajetta, The tragedy of Hungary , «L'Unità», 28/10/1956; Palmiro Togliatti, On the events in Hungary , «L'Unità», 30/10/1956.
[2]Initiative Group "For an Oriented and Federated Movement" (edited by), Half a Century of Struggle of the World Working Class (1900-1950) , Rome, 1950.
https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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Link: (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #41 - Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution - Giulio Angeli (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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