[NYTr] The Battle for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela
 
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 05:24:09 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Venezuelanalysis - Dec 1, 2007
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2939

The Battle for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela

by Kiraz Janicke

As the struggle to deepen Venezuela's revolution through the framework
of the pending constitutional reforms intensifies, so too does the
battle to create the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
Over the past four months some 14,500 "socialist battalions" of the
PSUV have been discussing and debating the constitutional reforms and
have formed the grassroots battalions of the Commando Zamora, created
as a broad front to campaign for the reforms in the lead-up to the
referendum. This follows what Luis Bilbao describes as "the
extraordinary demand of Venezuelan society for social and political
unification,"[1] with a massive 5.7 million people registering their
intention to form part of this new party over a six-week period from
April to June this year.

The simultaneous campaign for constitutional reforms and the formation
of the PSUV means the two are intricately connected - the reforms as a
framework, and the PSUV as a tool, to drive the process forward. And it
is through this struggle for the constitutional reforms that the PSUV
will begin to pass over from a large mass of people loosely organized
with little experience, to a mass revolutionary party with
experience.[2]

The reforms, like the Bolivarian Constitution in 1999, represent the
correlation of class forces within a particular political conjuncture
of the Bolivarian Revolution. As Gabriel Gil writes, "the
constitutional reform, in general, enables an advance towards the
taking of power by the people," he continues, "The second bloc
[proposed by the National Assembly] although it has some thorns
encrusted there by the opportunism of deputies, contains in its general
configuration important tools for striking blows against the ruling
class."[3]

Despite their overall contradictory and transitional nature, key
aspects of the reforms are aimed squarely at the heart of the
capitalist system, specifically measures which although they don't
abolish private property altogether, provide a framework for further
inroads into the rights of capital and the "new geometry of power"
aimed at transforming the capitalist state through the construction of
organs of popular power, such as communes, workers councils, student
councils, and campesino councils.

However, as the defection of former Chavez ally, General Raul Isias
Baduel shows, the push to deepen the revolution is generating factures
between the left and right of Chavismo, while they have not yet been
openly articulated, these differences are also being reflected in the
PSUV itself.

This article aims to briefly outline the relationship of the PSUV to
the constitutional reforms and examine some of the positive and
negative experiences, challenges and contradictions facing the
construction of "the largest, most democratic and revolutionary
political party in the history of Venezuela."[4]

Chavez's conception of the party

When Chavez first announced the formation of the PSUV in December 2006
he clearly conceived of it as an anti-bureaucratic measure, as a tool
to broaden the leadership, overwhelmingly centered on Chavez himself,
and push forward with the revolution. "A new party needs new faces," he
said.

"How would it look in history if tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we
create a supposed party, a front, and as a result...the same faces
appear as always? We would have a simply coming together of what
already exists...It shouldn't be like this, that would be fooling the
people!"[5]

He went on to describe how the new party should be built from the
bottom up. "In this new party the bases will elect the leaders. This
will allow for the emergence of real leaders," and how the party should
agitate and build revolutionary consciousness.

George Ciccariello-Maher also argues that the composition of the
technical committee charged with formulating the basic structure of the
new party and the national promoters commission of the PSUV appointed
by Chavez in March this year, to a large extent by-passed the
traditional party bureaucracies of the Chavista alliance, reflecting a
"commitment to attack party bureaucracy."[6]

Participation and experience so far

Since July, the socialist battalions of the PSUV, predominantly
organized on a geographical basis, but also in workplaces,[7] have been
meeting every weekend, to discuss and debate issues of political
program and structure, the proposed constitutional reforms, and how to
organize the 5.7 million who originally signed up as aspiring members
of the new party. Over the first week of October, the battalions
directly elected recallable spokespeople and heads of commissions,
which have then gone on to form socialist circumscriptions, grouping
those elected form every seven to twelve battalions, these in turn have
elected the delegates to the founding congress.[8]

While official participation figures of the PSUV national promoters
commission claim that 25% or 1.4 million of the original 5.7 million
are participating regularly in the PSUV battalions, it appears that in
reality the level of active participation is much closer 15% or
approximately 900,000.[9]

This gap between the massive numbers who registered their intention to
join the new party and the level of active participation reflects on
one hand, the lack of an historical experience and political culture of
mass organization of the left in Venezuela and on the other hand the
reality that not all these people will become militants in the new
party, and signed up simply as a show of support for Chavez.

As Chavez has argued, "It is natural that this is so...We were sure
that when we commenced the second stage of the process all these people
that registered were not going to participate, for logical reasons -
there are people that work on Saturdays, others that have family
commitments and others that don't have the sufficient level of
commitment to be a militant."[10]

In many instances the discussion within the battalions has been very
elemental and the level of political consciousness is extremely
heterogeneous. However, to expect anything else in a project the size
of the PSUV would be utopian. For many it is their first experience of
political militancy and many have simply joined up because "it is
Chavez's party." The positive side of this is that many new faces are
being drawn into political activity. However, the challenge in this
situation is to take into account all the different political levels
and create an inclusive pedagogy to collectively raise the level of
political understanding.

In this context, Chavez argued that the constitutional reform is the
"the fuel for the political and ideological debate in the battalions
[of the PSUV]."[11]

Gonzalo Gomez, a PSUV promoter in Catia and delegate to the founding
congress agrees, "The discussion of the constitutional reform in the
PSUV battalions is the perfect way to talk about socialism concretely,
because it deals with all the issues."[12] However, he clarified, the
reforms, in and of themselves, won't mean that socialism has arrived,
but rather they are transitional measures, that the people have to
implement, and putting them into practice will deepen the struggle for
socialism.

For Gomez, a long time Trotskyist, it doesn't matter that Chavez has
said the PSUV is not going to be a "Marxist-Leninist" party, what
matters, he argues, is the content. "We discuss Marxism every week" he
added.

Many old faces remain   

However, despite Chavez's intentions to build a party with "new faces"
from below, many of the old faces remain and a key contradiction the
new party faces is the struggle between the radical grass roots and
what many on the Venezuelan left refer to as, the "endogenous
rightwing" of Chavismo (based on a nexus between the state bureaucracy
and sections of capital).

As JosC) Miguel Casado points out, "This is the objective reality that
reflects the true contradictions of the complex political universe that
is the Bolivarian Revolution, it is the live expression of the class
struggle, a phenomenon that the PSUV will not escape, nor any other
social or political space."[13]

These pressures have already been reflected in the extremely uneven
experience of constructing the PSUV so far. Some socialist
circumscriptions, like in Barrio 23 de Enero, for example, build on
strong pre-existing political organizations, hence debate is much more
politicized, whereas others, such as socialist circumscription 16 in
Catia, are comprised predominantly of activists from social
organizations and Chavez supporters with little previous political
experience, and yet others, such as Propatria, are characterized by
strong divisions between the grass roots Chavez supporters and local
municipal functionaries.

Carlos Luis Rivero wrote in August of "the insistence of some
individuals or organized groups linked in some instances to government
or a bleader with aspirations' to bkidnap' the debate in the
battalions, to decide aspects that have not been debated in the
battalions and to promote the practice of key decisions outside of the
popular will."[14]

These tensions also surfaced with the elections of spokespeople for the
socialist battalions in September as various reports emerged that
certain governorships in Miranda, AnzoC!tegui, and Falcon sent people
along to stack meetings and influence the vote, including reports of
physical assaults against PSUV promoters in AnzoC!tegui,[15] as well as
reports from a source in the governorship of Merida of attempts by
people aligned with Diosdado Cabello, (governor of Miranda and former
Vice-President) to influence the vote in that state. However on the
positive side, in many cases these actions were roundly rejected with
emerging grassroots leaderships winning the elections.

However, the most controversial incident during the formation of the
PSUV is the "Ameliach affair."

In contrast to the MVR, which was controlled by factional power blocs,
Chavez has repeatedly argued for the need for the new party to
democratically elect all representatives, spokespeople, and candidates
and so on from the bases. Additionally, Chavez has argued that the new
party should not be an electoral machine, but rather prioritize ongoing
organization of the grass roots.

So when parliamentary deputy and former MVR party boss Francisco
Ameliach, on the right of Chavismo, argued on August 24, "We should
revive the MVR; the PSUV is going very slowly, we have many elections
in the coming year," Chavez responded that Ameliach's conduct was
detrimental to the formation of the PSUV and called him to a meeting of
a newly established provisional discipline committee headed by Disodado
Cabello, another former MVR party boss with influence in the military.
Ameliach, (of the same political faction as Cabello) subsequently
apologized for his "political error" and resigned or was suspended from
his position as coordinator of the pro-Chavez bSocialist Bloc' in
parliament.

However, the incident is more complex than it appears at first glance.
In June, a public debate errupted between Chavez and retired General
Alberto MC<ller Rojas over the question of the politicization of the
Armed Forces. In an interview in Ultimas Noticias on June 30 Rojas
argued that Chavez that had a contradictory discourse, on one hand
speaking of the professionalisation of the Armed Forces, while on the
other speaking of peoples defense and a popular war of resistance; two
"absolutely incompatible concepts." MC<ller Rojas also criticized the
conservative discourse of outgoing Defense Minister Raul Baduel.
Ameliach at that time came out against MC<ller Rojas, and along with
Baduel argued in favour of the professionalisation of the military.

Chavez's initial announcement of his constitutional reforms on August
15 included a proposal for the creation of a Popular Bolivarian Militia
and a restructuring of the National Guard, which reportedly generated
discontent within the National Guard. Ameliach was called to a meeting
of the discipline the day after Chavez had held a meeting with the
Military High Command to discuss this and at the same time Chavez
withdrew his proposal to restructure the National Guard, and changed
his proposal from a Popular Bolvarian Militia, to a National Bolivarian
Militia. The September 1 edition of El Nacional reported that Ameliach
had been meeting with sectors of the National Guard and had failed to
report on either the meetings or incidents of anti-Chavez material
circulating in barracks. Ameliach was also removed from his position as
head the National Assembly Commission for Defense, suggesting the
incident was broader than just simply a question of dissenting views
within the PSUV.

The whole affair generated a lot of criticism, particularly, the
implications for dissent within the PSUV, despite Chavez's calls for
"irreverence in discussion and loyalty in action," in the internal life
of the party. Also questioned was the right of Chavez, "in a party of
equals" to establish the provisional discipline committee, and in
particular, the political basis for such a committee in a party yet to
determine its political program, structure and statutes.

As MC<ller Rojas argued, the incident should have been dealt with
politically rather than organizationally. "This breaks the idea of
equality among party members and establishes a precedent ... [The]
understanding of discipline comes from within the individual, through
an educational process, and is not imposed by force, because then it is
no longer discipline, but training, it is alienation."[16]

The incident also placed Cabello, reportedly one of the wealthiest
businessmen in Venezuela, in a very powerful position within the PSUV
and exposed the spill-over of some of the factional issues from the
MVR. Specifically, it exposed a more conservative tendency aligned with
Cabello, and a more left tendency called the Alternative Current,
headed by parliamentary deputies Luis Tascon and Iris Valera, who
sharply criticized the process.

More recently, Tascon, who also criticized the Cabello's response to
the defection of Baduel, saying that it was necessary to tackle the
issue politically rather than just attack Baduel personally, said he
has been expelled from the PSUV. However, Roberto Hernandez also on the
discipline committee denies that Tascon has been expelled and says he
is "excluding himself". Cabello confirmed that Tascon had been called
to a meeting with the discipline committee, but that he had not turned
up. He also denied that the discipline committee had expelled Tascon.

There are certainly pressures that act to obstruct the open
articulation of differences within the PSUV. Central to this is the
fact that politics in Venezuela is viewed largely through the dichotomy
of Chavistas vs. anti-Chavistas, hence the overwhelming emphasis on
unity. There are also bureaucratic elements that exploit Chavez's
popularity and immense political authority to consciously impede full
democratic debate.

Chavez himself has often compounded these problems by declaring that
all those who don't join the PSUV are "counter-revolutionary," as well
as saying that the PSUV will be the party of government, meaning that
bureaucrats and opportunists of all stripes have jumped on board. And
although he has called on "all currents of the Venezuelan left" to
become part of the PSUV, he has said they cannot maintain themselves as
separate organizations.

Similarly, the repeated assertions by officials on the PSUV promoters'
commission, such as Jorge Rodriguez and Lina Ron, that there are "no
currents and factions," and "only unity" behind Chavez, can only serve
to obscure underlying differences.

However, despite this there are in reality a myriad of radical left
groupings organizing within the PSUV. These include; the majority of
the most class-conscious workers from all the union currents that
organize in the National Union of Workers (UNT), including the majority
of C-CURA (whose rank and file workers agitated for and voted to go
into the PSUV, while a smaller section around Orlando Chirino stayed
out), the Revolutionary Front of Workers in Occupied and Co-managed
Factories (FRETECO), and the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front
(FNCEZ).

As well as a number of small parties, including the majority of the
former Party of Revolution and Socialism, who organize around the paper
Marea: clasista y socialista, the Liga Socialista, the Revolutionary
Marxist Current, and other groups such as the Tupermaros, radical
Bolivarian currents, liberation theologians, individual workers,
intellectuals, students, community, indigenous and social movement
activists, and numerous non-aligned Chavez supporters. Chavez has also
reiterated his call for the Venezuelan Communist Party and Homeland for
All to join the ranks of the PSUV.

The founding congress of the PSUV has been postponed several times as
the participants have found that the new party cannot simply be decreed
to conform to a time line but rather must be built organically from the
grass roots. In this sense the decision to postpone the founding
conference has allowed more time for the socialist battalions to take
shape, for the activists in the various communities to get to know each
other and have a deeper discussion not only over the constitutional
reforms, but also issues the political program, structure and statutes
of the PSUV, including the existence of the discipline committee, the
right to form factions and so on. This means that the founding
conference will reflect this deeper political discussion and will
ultimately be more useful than if it had conformed to the original
timeline and been held in August.

Extraordinary potential of the PSUV

However, as Luis Bilbao points out, "To find within all these
difficulties and trip-ups in the last few months in the organizational
aspect of the PSUV a negative force is to not comprehend a
contradictory totality."

"The process of construction of the party has to be understood in the
context of what we are leaving behind us, and what we are leaving
behind is the counter revolution, manifested in the most diverse
manner, including manifested in an ultra revolutionary language," he
continues.

Bilbao points to the extraordinary potential of the PSUV, "The
possibility of carrying out the battle [for socialism] in a scenario of
5.7 million people who want to construct a revolutionary party is," he
says, "something that changes the political face of the planet, not
just Venezuela and Latin America."

Despite all the challenges, the most important aspect of the
development of the PSUV is that the emerging grassroots leaderships
continue to rise. The formation of the PSUV, which builds on the
experience of the mass mobilisations against the military coup in 2002,
the struggle to defeat the oil industry lockout, and more recently the
massive push to organise the population through communal councils, has
provided more political space for the grass roots than ever before in
the Bolivarian process.

"Irrefutable proof" of this Ricardo Abud argues, "was the defeat
conferred [to the bureaucracy] in the elections of delegates and
spokespeople, where the majority overwhelmingly decided in favor of
change - those who want to roll back this process before the founding
congress are a minority in the circumscriptions. The people will not
allow it!"[17] What the struggle for the constitutional reform and the
construction of the PSUV has revealed most clearly is that the battle
lines are drawn between the  endogenous rightwing and the revolutionary
grassroots of Chavismo. Chavez has designated 2008 as the year of the
"revolution within the revolution"- it remains to be seen if the PSUV
can truly become "a political instrument that puts itself at the
service ...of the people and the revolution, at the service of
socialism."[18]

End Notes

[1] Interview with Luis Bilbao, by Federico Fuentes, Sept 2007.

[2] Gabriel Gil, plenosocial

[3] as above

[4] Chavez, Dec 15, 2006

[5] as above

[6] Against Party Bureaucracy: Venezuela's PSUV and Socialism from
Below By George Ciccariello-Maher - MRZine Thursday, 29 March 2007

[7] PSUV battalions exist in Inveval, a valve manufacturing plant under
worker's control, the CVG Industrial Complex in Cuidad Guyana, the
Nucleus of Endogenous Development (a network of cooperatives) in Los
Cortejos and the recently nationalised CANTV among others.

[8] There are five elected commissions in each battalion; political and
ideological, communications and media, logistics and organisation,
social work and national territorial defence.

[9] Open letter from the 53 battalions in Barrio 23 del Enero, 10/08/07
http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a39128.html

[10] Chavez, speech to the National Assembly of socialist battalions,
Poliedro, Caracas,  24/08/07

[11] as above.

[12] Gonzalo Gomez is also editor of the paper Marea Clasista y
Socialista. All quotes from Gomez unless cited otherwise are from
regular discussions and observations of his PSUV battalion in Nueva
Caracas since July.

[13] "PSUV: Socialismo vs. Reformismo La uniC3n de los revolucionarios
es impostergable" 09/10/07 - 
http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a42287.html

[14] Luis Rivera, Carlos "En Pleno Dessarollo." August 17 2007 
http://www.socialistas.org.ve/

[15] "ComisiC3n del Psuv-AnzoC!tegui denuncia actos violentos contra sus
miembros" ABN 03/10/07

[16] "MC<ller rechazC3 creaciC3n de comitC) disciplinario", El Universal,
31/08/07.

[17] "ExpulsiC3n, autoexclusiC3n? Luis TascC3n y los que vienen." Ricardo
Abud 14/11/07 - 
http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a44691.html

[18] Chavez, Hugo, "El discurso de la unidad." December 15, 2006

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