[Marxism] Raby - Latin America's Pink Tide

["Fred Fuentes" <fred.fuentes@xxxxxxxxx>]

very interesting article, definitely worth reading (and i would suggest
getting her book too)

http://redpepper.blogs.com/venezuela/2007/01/latin_americas_.html

Latin America's Pink Tide

[Diana Raby, author of *Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and
Socialism 
Today*,<http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745324357&main=>argues
that with left-wing victories in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia,
Ecuador and Nicaragua, social and economic recovery in Cuba and popular
advances elsewhere in the region, journalists are talking about "Latin
America's pink tide" and the region itself has become the forum for
passionate debates on "Socialism of the 21st Century". To purchase *Democracy
and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism
Today<http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745324357&main=>
* click 
here<http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745324357&main=>.
To read the book's first chapter click
here.<http://redpepper.blogs.com/venezuela/2006/10/the_disinherite.html#more>--Ed]

*Latin America's Pink Tide*

*Diana Raby - Red Pepper Venezuela Blog*

*January 31, 2007*

Socialism! For most of us it is still the ideal, but with the collapse of
the Soviet bloc, the defects of China and other neo-Stalinist regimes, and
the sell-out of the Labour Party, it seems more distant than ever. If there
is to be a new model, a real alternative to globalised capitalism, what will
it look like and how do we get there?

*The Left in Power*

Until recently such musings were confined to Trotskyists, anarchists,
anti-globalisation activists and Red Pepper contributors who were easily
dismissed by the mainstream (and, let's face it, by most working people) as
irrelevant. But with left-wing victories in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay,
Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, social and economic recovery in Cuba and
popular advances elsewhere in the region, journalists are talking about
"Latin America's pink tide" and the region itself has become the forum for
passionate debates on "Socialism of the 21st Century".

The phrase was first coined by Hugo Chavez at an international meeting of
intellectuals in Caracas in December 2004, and since then it has been taken
up by popular movements across the region and is increasingly discussed by
intellectuals and by public officials in those countries which have
left-inclined governments.

Many commentators dismiss the declarations of Chávez in Venezuela, Lula in
Brazil and Evo Morales in Bolivia as mere rhetoric, and point to the absence
of real socialist measures and the continuing predominance of international
capital in these countries to prove their point. But recent developments
provide evidence to question this scepticism.

Venezuela has not only in effect re-nationalised its oil company (PDVSA), it
has established exchange controls, initiated major state-run infrastructure
projects in railways, ports and telecommunications, introduced workers'
co-management in some of the nationalised industries and promoted thousands
of cooperatives and worker-controlled enterprises. Private capital still
predominates in wholesale and retail commerce and many other industrial and
agricultural sectors and a US-style consumer society continues to flourish
in upper- and middle-class areas; but different forms of social enterprise
now account for well over half of Venezuelan GDP and a smaller but growing
percentage of employment. With Chávez' dramatic announcement in January of
his intention to nationalise the electricity, water and telecommunications
industries and to end Central Bank autonomy, Venezuelan socialism seems to
be advancing fast.

In Bolivia Evo Morales has been in office for less than a year but has
already nationalised the all-important oil and gas industry and (like
Venezuela) proclaimed an agrarian reform. In Brazil progress has been much
more limited since Lula's government, under heavy international pressure,
adopted orthodox financial policies. But a few key social programmes such as
the bolsa família subsidy for the poorest sectors have sustained hope and
made possible Lula's recent massive re-election victory, and there is now
talk of a new and more radical direction for his second term.

Similar policies directed at social justice and economic sovereignty have
also been implemented, at least to some extent, in Argentina and Uruguay,
and are now being coordinated at regional level through the ALBA (Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas) promoted by Venezuela and supported by Cuba
and the Mercosur (South American Common Market) countries. ALBA is not
explicitly socialist but its emphasis on endogenous (self-sufficient)
development, equitable exchange and social solidarity represents a major
challenge to neo-liberalism and to the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the
Americas (ALCA in Spanish). It provides a protective umbrella under which
socialist initiatives at least have a chance to develop.

*Theory and Practice*

Is there a coherent ideology, a theoretical foundation for these
initiatives? No-one has formulated a comprehensive doctrine, but in any case
most Latin American activists and leaders are clear that the last thing they
want is a dogmatic formula, a model to be imposed like the fossilised
"Marxism-Leninism" which plagued the international Communist movement for so
long. This does not mean, however, that they are devoid of creative ideas.

In Cuba - which, without being a model to copy, remains an inspiration for
its defence of socialism and resistance and its assistance in health and
education programmes - the leadership has insisted that socialism will not
be abandoned but maintained and perfected, despite Fidel's illness and US
speculation about "transition". The recent 19th Congress of the Cuban
trade-union federation (the CTC) declared that "in Cuba, the only transition
will be toward more revolution, social justice and socialism".
Significantly, a leading Cuban official recently affirmed that Cuba would
not adopt the Chinese model of rampant capitalist enterprise within a
state-supervised system, but would continue to limit the private sector to
small-scale "self-employment" and joint ventures between multinationals and
the state.

But Cuba has not yet formulated any new approaches for "21st-Century
Socialism". It is in Venezuela and elsewhere that, in Mao's phrase, "a
thousand schools of thought contend". Roland Denis, a former guerrilla
leader who was briefly a minister under Chávez, declared that the goal of
Venezuelan popular movements is "to construct a new democracy, a new order,
a new hope" in which the people would control natural resources, water,
industry, education and social services, and everything "would be
articulated by the collective assembly, the assembly of all, through
councils, delegates subject to recall and spokespersons subject to the power
[of the assembly]"; and he insists that "It is necessary to go beyond the
existing Bolivarian Constitution".

Following Chávez' dramatic re-election victory in December (63%, with
reduced abstention and an expanded electoral register) there is increasing
talk of the need to revise the Constitution to reflect the goal of
socialism. Chávez himself has spoken of the need for a single party (not a
one-party state, but a single party of the Left or the chavistas), and has
insisted that this new party must not be cobbled together by existing
politicians but must be built by the people from the bottom up.

*Social Production Enterprises*

Perhaps the most coherent vision of a new socialist alternative was
formulated by another former guerrilla leader who has also held various
positions under Chávez, Carlos Lanz. For a time Lanz was in charge of the
"Vuelvan Caras"Mission, described by many observers as the "employment
mission". But the real aim of this programme goes far beyond generating
employment; it is intended to support alternative development projects of
all kinds, "to change the socio-economic, politico-cultural model" on the
basis of education and employment, de-bureaucratisation of the state and
democratic planning.

The goal, says Lanz, is to create "a new productive structure" in which the
profit motive is replaced by "the satisfaction of collective needs", but
within a transitional, mixed economy combining state, mixed and private
property and collective self-managed property; this requires social control
and regulation, including price and exchange controls.

For Lanz this new strategy will necessitate a "strategic alliance between
State enterprises, the associative economy, the non-monopolistic sector of
national capital, and small and medium enterprises in both the countryside
and the city", and in socio-political terms "the construction of a Social
Revolutionary Bloc".

That this is not just rhetoric has been demonstrated by the government's
actions in the last eighteen months. As the government expropriated a number
of abandoned factories and turned them over to the workers, it also
accelerated the agrarian reform and the creation of cooperatives of all
kinds. In July 2005, as Chávez inaugurated the "United Agro-Industrial Cacao
Cooperative" in the poor eastern state of Sucre, he declared it to be an
example of a new productive structure, the Empresas de Producción Social,
(EPSs or Social Production Enterprises), "which are at the centre of an
economic turning-point towards the socialism of the 21st century".

Chávez went on to explain that the EPSs are not meant to be just cooperative
production units but should be completely integrated into local society,
providing social services and responding to community needs and not just
those of the actual cooperative workers. Thus the Cacao Cooperative already
had a canteen which provided meals for local children, and financed an "Into
the Neighbourhoods" medical clinic for the local community. The workers'
productive functions should be integrated into community life, said Chávez,
and he suggested creating a common labour fund, communal services and
distribution networks, and a micro-bank financed by enterprise profits.

"Let no-one think that we are improvising", concluded Chávez, "We have had a
strategic plan for some time past and we are developing, promoting and
consolidating it".

*Community Self-Government*

In Venezuela the institutional expression of popular participation and
protagonism (decision-making) is often very confusing: whenever one type of
organisation fails, Chávez and his advisors try something else, and indeed
the people themselves create new structures which are later accepted and
made official. First there were the Bolivarian Circles, then the Local
Public Planning Councils, and now the Community Councils. This in addition
to a variety of bodies with more specific functions: the Units of Electoral
Battle (which then turned into Units of Endogenous Development), the
Community Water Boards, the Electricity Committees and the Urban Land
Committees, which continue to function alongside the more global
institutions of communal self-government.

The Venezuelans have also begun to adopt the Brazilian PT's model of the
Participatory Budget and have tried to extend its principles of popular
decision-making to other aspects of local government. This is reflected in
the Community Councils which set local priorities and implement the Missions
at local level; they represent small neighbourhoods of about 1,000 - 2,000
inhabitants, making direct participatory democracy a reality.

On a recent visit to Caracas I attended a Community Council meeting in
Antímano, a vast hillside barrio on the outskirts of the city. "Here we run
our own affairs", said Eluz. "We want nothing to do with the professional
politicians". Her partner Francisco added that this was the basis for the
new socialism, as the people at grass-roots level take control of all
aspects of social and economic life.

In Bolivia too, grass-roots social movements are taking control of
everything from land to water distribution and local commerce, at the same
time that Evo Morales' government nationalises oil and gas and invites Cuban
and Venezuelan assistance to promote free health care and education
programmes. Also at the Mercosur summit last July, when Venezuela's full
membership of the bloc was confirmed and Cuba for the first time expressed a
desire to join, it was agreed to seek coordination of social programmes and
economic equalisation between the members, so that Mercosur will no longer
be just a customs union but will promote real regional integration.

Rafael Correa's victory in Ecuador promises to consolidate the new trend. He
immediately rejected the idea of a free-trade agreement with the US, visited
Venezuela to talk with Chávez and suggested that Ecuador may follow the
Venezuelan initiative of withdrawing from the Andean Pact and joining the
Mercosur. He has also promised to convene a Constituent Assembly.

It is still too early to judge the results, but these initiatives which seek
to coordinate an anti-neoliberal strategy regionally, combined with efforts
in Venezuela and Bolivia to undermine capitalism from above and below
simultaneously, may yet prove more effective than either the old
bureaucratic and top-down methods of imposing socialism or the anarchist
reliance on grass-roots autonomy and spontaneity alone. "21st-Century
Socialism" may really be on the agenda in Uncle Sam's backyard!
*Diana Raby's book, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism
Today (Pluto Press) is out now. To purchase the book click
here.<http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745324357&main=>
**To read the book's first chapter click
here.<http://redpepper.blogs.com/venezuela/2006/10/the_disinherite.html#more>
*
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