Venezuela's Path

by Michael Albert
November 06, 2005

Going to Venezuela? There are beautiful waterfalls and mountains.
There is rich surf, sand, and sun. But nowadays the biggest attraction
is revolution.

This October I spent a week in Caracas. That's not much information to
work with but for what it's worth, here's what I found and felt.

Toward a New Political System

My first and arguably most personally surprising encounter with the
Bolivarian Revolution was at the Ministry for Popular Participation,
which was created in accord, I was told, with Chavez's desire "that
the people should take power."

I asked the officials we interviewed, "What does that mean, that the
people should take power?" After noting thousands of years of "empires
obstructing people from participating in politics," all culminating in
"the North American empire," the official said the "U.S. has had 200
years of representative government, but in your system people turn
over control to others." Instead, in Venezuela, "we humbly are
proposing a system where people hold power in a participatory and
protagonist democracy. We want a new kind of democracy to attain a new
kind of society."

On the wall was a diagram of their aims. It had lots of little
circles, then other larger ones in another layer, and so on. The idea,
they said, "was to establish numerous local grassroots assemblies or
councils of citizens where people could directly express themselves."
These local councils would be the foundational components of "a new
system of participatory democracy."

The bottom layer of the vision focuses on communities with "common
habits and customs," the officials said. "We define them as comprising
200 to 400 families, or 1000 to 2000 people each." One could of course
imagine sub units within each local unit, as well, but that wasn't
immediately on their agenda, nor was it in their diagram. The local
units would in turn send "elected spokespersons" to units another
layer up. Units in this second layer would "encompass a broader
geographic region," and then from there, "spokespeople would be
elected to another layer, and so on," creating a network covering
"parishes, municipalities, states, and the whole society."

The participation officials, explaining their diagram and their goal,
said the smallest units were meant to become "the decision-making core
of the new Venezuelan polity." Chavez and this ministry hoped to have,
they said, "3,000 local assemblies in place by the new year." Their
goal was to have "enough in place, throughout the country, in 4 or 5
years, to account for 26 million Venezuelans."

They didn't want "a dictatorship of the proletariat or of any other
kind," they said. Strikingly, they also said they didn't want "what
Che died for, though they wanted to learn from that." They wanted to
build something new, from the bottom.

I asked, "What happens if the local assemblies want some new policy,
and the ministers, legislature, or Chavez don't want it?" "No matter,"
they said, "the assemblies, once they are in place and operating,
rule."

But, I said, "you don't want an assembly of 100 families making a
decision for the whole country, surely." "Correct," came the answer,
"the local assemblies can only make final decisions bearing just on
their own area."

"Suppose one assembly decides it wants some change bearing on crime
that has to do with federal courts or police or whatever, extending
beyond that community?" I asked. "What happens? When does the law or
policy change?"

"On every level there should be a response" came the reply. "On the
lowest level assemblies would do whatever they can within their
community. But crime goes beyond a community, and requires going to
the next higher levels where the issues would have to be confronted,
too. On the municipal level they might change ordinances, etc., to
also respond. And it could go higher, then."

Okay, I asked, "Suppose one local assembly wants a younger voting age.
They bring it to the next higher level and members there are excited
about it too. Does it go up to a legislature and does the legislature
have any choice?"

I was told the local unit would - through its spokespeople - send the
proposal to the next layer of the popular democratic structures. "Had
they decided something bearing only on their local neighborhood, which
is all that is happening now, such as the age required for local
votes, it would simply be enacted, under their supervision, for them,
without having to be discussed more widely." But if their desire
stretched wider, as a general new voting law for national elections
would, "their proposal would go up, as far as is relevant. Then the
proposal would go back to the base of all assemblies for all to
consider."

These Bolivarians, entrusted by Chavez's administration with building
a new, parallel polity, didn't want any more representative decision
making than absolutely necessary. They wanted the proposal from one
assembly to go up not so that it could be decided by representatives,
but so that it could be discussed by spokespeople and then be brought
back to other local assemblies by their spokespeople, eventually to
all of them, to be decided at large. "If support came," I was told,
"then the goal is that it would yield a new voting age, whether Chavez
or mayors or the legislature or anyone else wanted the change or not."

I said surely there must be many elected or just appointed mayors,
governors, or bureaucrats who would obstruct this vision, not wanting
their power reduced or that of the populace increased. Yes, I was
told, "many bureaucrats have held positions for twenty or thirty years
and about sixty percent of them are putting breaks on the proposal."

"Even among ministers in the Chavez administration," I asked, "do some
resent that they would go from having power to just obeying the
public? Cuba's poder popular began with many of the ideals you
express," I noted, "but never got to the point where the national
power was participatory. Do you believe that the Chavez government
will help the assembly system reach its full development, or that
after awhile the assembly system will have to push against the
government to get full power?"

The answer was "only the organized population can decide. We are on a
path to invent a new democracy. We have gone forward from what we had
before. There are no guarantees, but we are trying to go further."
There was no need, however, the officials said, to remove or otherwise
forcefully conflict with the old structures.

Rather, the new system would be built alongside what now exists and
would prove its worth over time, in parallel. Many in the old would
come around, others wouldn't. But either way, in time the old forms
would be replaced by the impressive reality of the new forms' success,
not by fiat or by force.

"How will Chavez's initiative encourage people to create these local
assemblies?" I wondered. The whole assembly structure was a project in
development, the officials said, and there were diverse ideas about
how to make it happen. Here was the most striking and instructive one
I heard. "We Bolivarians have a program for citizens in barrios to
gain ownership of their current dwellings. They need only petition to
do so, but they have to do that in groups of 200 families or more for
the petition to be accepted." In that case, the dwellers get their
homes and the community of families hopefully becomes a grassroots
assembly.

I asked, "Do you find that the government has to prod the people to
participate?" The officials replied, "The people are taking
initiative, but it is very important that the government supports
them." People taking power involves "a new way of thinking and a new
culture," the officials said. "The president and we are working hard
to make participatory democracy happen, but we all have limitations in
our heads to overcome, as well as old structures." This was a
recurring theme. In Venezuela, while there have been coups and thus
struggle against capital and also external imperialism, at the moment
the struggle seems to be more against the imprint of the past on even
poor people's habits and beliefs.

"How many people," I asked, "already support this program?" "The full
picture of assemblies is very new, just about to be announced," they
said, "but the general goal of people's power maybe about a quarter
understand and strongly support, with more soon." They emphasized they
didn't want a system "that gives power to another person." They didn't
"want representative democracy." The people elect, in the Venezuelan
model, "spokespeople, not representatives." What will be proposed in
one unit will get to the other units by going up via elected
spokespeople, and then back down to the base, through other
spokespeople, for further discussion and decision. What will be
decided at lowest levels will be binding. "The country has 335
municipalities," they noted. About 255 are with the president."

Discussions about police and courts are also proceeding, I was told,
but I didn't get to talk with people working on that dimension of
change and apparently it was, as yet, not nearly as far along. These
officials told me that the "socialism we are trying to construct
incorporates understanding the history of past efforts in Russia,
Cuba, etc., but it is not about state run enterprises or a
dictatorship. We have to create our own model to reduce the work week,
to defend nature, and to create social justice for both the collective
and the individual. If it continues, capitalism will put an end to the
planet. We have to find a way for everybody to have a better standard
of living but also preserve the planet. A virtuous individual thinks
about the community. That is what we are looking for."

Additional Examples

Regarding health, though I didn't get to talk to any government
officials directly involved with the program, or to any doctors
dispensing medicine, it was clear that again the government hadn't
simply taken over the old structures and as yet had no inclination to
do so. Instead, in cooperation with Cuba, which sent 20,000 doctors,
the government had set up new clinics all over the country, dispensing
health care locally in barrios, bringing to the poor their first local
health care. We were told these clinics serve people's needs, operate
pretty democratically, and have doctors who earn typical workers pay
and often less. The people love the clinics and the Chavista health
officials, I would bet, look for the old structures to bend and break
under the competitive pressure of the new ones, but without having
been directly coerced.

We visited barrios, which were gigantic stretches of hillside covered
with small shack-like homes, and we saw intermittently the newly
constructed small but clean medical clinics the Cuban doctors worked
from. Compared to nothing, which was the correct comparison, it was a
huge improvement and helps explain Chavez's support from the barrio
communities. We also heard about a plan for eye care, even offering
free eye operations of diverse kinds, 500,000 operations over ten
years, to poor U.S. citizens. The Venezuelans would provide the
transportation. The Cubans would do the surgery. Having eye problems
myself, I listened closely, smiling at the thought.

The same general pattern was true of a project aimed at raising
literacy throughout Venezuela. With the same logic and methodology,
this project also proceeded by not fighting with the old, but instead
existing alongside it. In under two years, Chavez reports and
apparently UNESCO verifies, Venezuela has eliminated illiteracy.

Indeed, this same pattern is being employed, we saw, even for higher
education. The government didn't take over the national universities,
private or public. Instead, after the oil industry strike failed
during the last coup attempt, when almost a third of the industry's
managers and other technical workers were fired for having
participated in trying to bring down the government, many of the prior
oil administration buildings were no longer needed. Obviously the
bureaucratic waste and fraud had been enormous. A group of these
liberated buildings were transformed into the new Bolivarian
University.

Workers councils ruled the new university. The government minister of
education became its Rector. In time, he overrode the council,
determining instead that there would be only meetings of smaller
groups, and that he would only interact with representatives from
those. This characteristic pattern of a central planner interacting
with a workplace and demanding a chain of command in it and in that
way interfering with direct self management was disturbing. The
Bolivarian revolution is juggling many tendencies with roots in many
aspects of social life. But the pedagogy of the new university is, I
learned by interviewing a professor there, very innovative,
emphasizing serving diverse communities by students having to do
projects at the grassroots, having to relate their studies to social
conditions and needs, and having grading being a shared task for
students, faculty, and community residents.

In an interview with Justin Podur the then University Rector put it
this way, "We will prove that you can have quality and equity in
education. We will form holistic professionals who are citizens. They
will learn ethics, social responsibility, respect for a Latin American
and Caribbean identity, solidarity, respect. The professional produced
by this institution will work for the transformation of society. She
will be a critical thinker who can stimulate others and generate
questions. Our curriculum is based on 'axes' of education. Any plan or
program of study - say an engineering or teaching professional
program - is your 'professional axis'. But you also have a cultural
axis, a political axis, ethical axis, aesthetics axis, a
social-community interaction axis where you work directly with sectors
of society outside of the university from the start."

Bolivarian University has about 7,000 students, we were told, and
about 700 staff of whom 250 are non-faculty but only 120 are full-time
professors. Some faculty resist the new pedagogy as too flexible. Some
see it as too community oriented. In meetings there are radicals and
reactionaries. Some faculty resist the trend toward providing classes
for non-teaching staff. Some resist having steadily more equitable pay
relations among all employees. Some resist the drive to bring the
school's resources out into the country, setting up missions beyond
Caracas, promoting higher education while reaching out educationally
to Venezuela's rural areas for the first time.

Looked at in the large, Bolivarian University competes with the rest
of the system of higher education by offering an evolving, but already
dramatically different experience. The minister heading Bolivarian
University might not be optimal in terms of workers self management,
but we were told he does talk frequently and forcefully about proving
that the new approaches are better and replacing the old ways via
having people see the benefits of change. The students at Bolivarian
University, not surprisingly, are mostly poor, which is the opposite
of the old system. Ties between the school and local co-ops, which are
in turn constructed with uniform wages and council self management,
are continually extended, building a kind of parallel world to what
has gone before.

Considering still another key domain of social life, media, the
emerging pattern continued. A look at the daily newspapers showed that
of the first 25 articles, reading from the first page forward, fully
20 were broad attacks on or highly critical of Chavez. The rest were
on entirely other topics. And this was typical, day after day, I was
told. The papers are privately held corporations, not surprisingly
hostile toward Chavez's inclinations. Chavez doesn't restrict them,
however, much less nationalize or otherwise take them over. The same
situation holds for key TV stations. Regarding the TV stations,
however, and I bet something like this will also happen with print
before too long, the government has a strategy.

VIVE TV is a new station created, like Bolivarian University, by the
Chavez government. We visited and enjoyed touring its facilities. The
widest salary difference, from the head of the company to people who
cleaned up, was three to one, but the new payment policy, being
steadily if slowly enforced, was to attain equal hourly pay for all by
periodically raising wages of those at the bottom until they reached
parity.

VIVE has roughly 300 employees. Their equipment wasn't like CBS, but
it was certainly excellent and far reaching in its potential. The new
VIVE website presents their shows, archived, for the world to see. The
station's governing body is, of course, a worker's assembly. Workers
at VIVE lacking skills are encouraged to take courses, including in
film production and other topics, given right on the premises, and
those facilities are also used to teach citizens from Caracas and more
widely how to film in their own locales.

Indeed, the station's mandate was to provide a voice for the people.
Its shows, we were told, routinely present citizens speaking their
mind, including voices from well outside Caracas, which was a first
for Venezuela. To that end, VIVE undertakes lots of community
training, distributing cameras to local citizens as well, so people
around the country can send in footage and even finished edited
material, for national display.

In some respects VIVE is like a local community cable station in the
U.S., except that it is national and the élan is far, far higher, and
the desire to incorporate the seeds of the future in the present
structure is far, far more explicit and radical, with the employees
seeing themselves as presenting to the country and the world a new
kind of media that, they hope, will be a model picked up elsewhere as
well.

VIVE takes no ads, "to avoid being controlled." There is actually, on
the shows, much criticism of the government, since the shows convey
grass-roots opinions. But this criticism, unlike that on mainstream
private stations, is honest and heartfelt, not manufactured. Rather
than trying to create dissension, it is constructive.

Along with VIVE and a national public station directly under
government control, there is also a new federal law which imposes on
private stations that 25% of their shows must be produced by
independent producers, not by the stations themselves. This is a kind
of service requirement, but, interestingly, it is VIVE who trains many
of these contracting producers. Here again is evidence of a kind of
multi-pronged, legal, almost stealth-like incursion on old ways, both
within the new institutions which are creating new approaches even
against recalcitrant attitudes and habits, and also via the new
institutions challenging the old ones, by a contrast effect or by
outright competition, and injecting ideas into them through the
independent producers as well. Venezuela has also embarked on a
continental station, to broadcast news and the voices of the poor
throughout Latin America, but we didn't have a chance to visit so as
to comment on that.

Regarding the economy, Venezuela starts out with huge advantages
compared to other third world countries. The oil industry is
nationalized and is the centerpiece of the society's economy. Moreover
the oil industry provides a gigantic flow of revenues, unlike what any
other dissident country has ever enjoyed while trying to chart a new
path for itself. Likewise, oil not only provokes great U.S. interest,
it also provides considerable defense against U.S. intervention.

We were told by an oil industry official, however, that there are
still many transnational firms who contract for various aspects of oil
business in Venezuela. The government's reaction, he said, was not to
challenge them, much less expropriate them, but to form new co-ops
doing the same functions, intended to out compete the transnationals.
These new co-ops are worker self managed. They usually are seeking
equal wages and even in the least egalitarian ones the ratio is at
most three to one. In addition, a minimum social wage is guaranteed.
An idea slowly being implemented is to federate the coops,
facilitating their interacting and exchanging via social rather than
market norms. The vision, it seemed to me, is that in time contracts
will go almost exclusively to the co-ops so that the transnationals
will simply leave, of their own accord, no confrontation needed.

I asked if officials thought using competing on the market as the
strategy to drive out transnationals risked entrenching market
mentalities, but the question wasn't really understood. Similarly, my
asking whether officials were worried that utilizing as a key strategy
market competition would impose on self management old style aims and
means, greatly reducing its latitude for change and perhaps even
causing it to give way to new hierarchies, also didn't resonate. There
is immense opposition to capitalism and its private ownership. There
is major opposition to large disparities in income. There is
considerable opposition to gaps in job types yielding passivity versus
domination. But only a few people seem to be hostile to markets per
se.

One of the few who seem to reject markets, however, is Chavez himself.
How else can we explain his approach to international economics which
not only predictably rejects the IMF, WTO, World Bank, and
particularly the FTAA, but is beginning to hammer out an alternative
based on mutual aid and, in effect, violating market exchange rates to
instead undertake transactions in light of true and full social costs
and benefits, and with a commitment to sharing gains from exchanges
not just equally, but more advantageously for the poorer participants.
This certainly seems to be the logic of the wide array of agreements
into which Venezuela is entering with not only Cuba but many
neighboring countries, as well as specific occupied factories
throughout Latin America, for example providing oil at amazingly low
rates and beneficial terms, often in exchange for goods, not payments.
This is quite like Cuba's historic sending of aid and items to poorer
countries at cut rates, but the scale is
tremendously increased, and where Cuba primarily offered people, as
in doctors, Venezuela is doing this with resources and economic
products, more directly subverting specifically market logic.

Returning to my exchange with the oil official, when I asked about
CITGO - the oil industry owned by Venezuela operating in the U.S. -
moving toward having a workers council to self manage it, moving
toward equal wages, and changing its division of labor, not only on
behalf of those working at CITGO but as a demonstration inside the
U.S. for other U.S. workers of the potential of self management and
equity, the official was very excited, even wanting to immediately
call others to talk about this idea. Later discussion of the related
possibility of Venezuela making inroads, via CITGO or otherwise, into
media and information dispersal in the U.S., instead of information
incursions always occurring only in the reverse direction, caused
still more excitement.

We were told by the oil ministry officials and also by trade unionists
and others how in Venezuela, like in Argentina, there was a movement,
just getting up to speed, to "recuperate" failing or failed
workplaces. The difference was that while in Argentina this occurs
against the inclinations of government, in Venezuela the government
welcomes and even propels it. Indeed, the government has now assembled
a list of 700 such plants and is urging workers to occupy and operate
them on their own. Another difference, however, is that in Venezuela
the method of decision-making adopted for the recuperated plants is
called co-management and involves both a workers council and
government representatives. The upside of this is that the government
is often to the left of the local workforce in the affected workplace
helping educate and prod it. The downside is that the centralizing
inclination of the government and the participatory inclination of
real self management are in opposition. We saw
both these tendencies in the Bolivarian University, with the
government minister pushing radical pedagogy on sometimes contrary
faculty, but also reducing the influence of the workers council. In
fact, however, it seemed for the moment, in any case, the government
was so over stretched that if there are widespread recuperations,
government involvement will be slight and workers will in practice be
left to self manage.

Beyond a factory recuperation movement in Venezuela the government
also creates new co-ops from scratch. These are also co-managed, at
least in theory, and also tend to seek equitable remuneration, etc.
These co-ops have often been small and local, everything from little
dress shops to small construction projects, but plans exist for
creating new firms to produce computers, mine resources, run an
airline, etc.

As I understood what I heard, the co-ops are expected to out-compete
old capitalist firms - a very reasonable expectation given that the
co-ops have lower overhead (due to reduced management pay rates,
reduced numbers of managers, and altered job roles), and that co-op
workers have an inclination to produce more consistently and
energetically under the new social relations. The danger of the co-op
strategy, however, is that operating via market norms and methods and
specifically trying to out-compete old firms in market-defined
contests may entrench in them a managerial bureaucracy and a
competitive rather than social orientation, leading more toward what
is called market socialism, which in my view is a system that still
has a ruling managerial or coordinator class and that operates in
light of competitive prices and surplus-seeking, instead of the
approach pushing them toward what the most radical Venezuelans clearly
desire, which is a classless, participatory, and self managing
economy, in which people are socially motivated and are well off and
efficient, operating in light of full social implications seeking both
personal and collective well being.

In capitalist firms, still dominant in economic sectors other than
oil, there is a change in mood as well. Workers identify more with the
state and feel it is an ally, providing by its initiatives, in the
words of a trade union leader, "a more promising moment for change."
This has led to workers in capitalist firms "challenging old union
norms and methods" and feeling uncomfortable being "stuck in old
relations while others are building new co-ops." This trade union
leader estimated that "80% of Venezuela's workers firmly support
Chavez." She also said this is why the better unions are thinking
about pushing for self management even against capitalist owners. She
said "while at first occupying failing firms was just self defense"
seeking to protect "jobs and union freedoms," more recently more
radical unions are seeking "more consistent strategies to win
co-management or self management."

She told us that "five or six years ago the typical Venezuelan worker
would not exhibit any class consciousness, but now the Bolivarian
revolution was awakening class consciousness not only in workers, but
in all people." I asked what would happen if "workers in a successful
capitalist firm, knowing friends in coops or recuperated firms who
enjoyed controlling their conditions and having equitable incomes,
struck against their owners and petitioned the government to take over
the firm and make it self managed." She talked about how arrangements
would likely be made providing the private owners "credits and
investments if they would undertake co-management with the workers." I
wondered why businesspeople "would make such a stupid deal when it was
clearly just a first step toward their disappearing. Why would they do
it, even with short term benefits?" I also asked again about "workers
wanting to take over a really successful firm, not giving the owners
anything, but just taking over?
Why weren't workers all over Venezuela seeking that? And what would
happen if they did?"

The trade union leader replied that "of course the businesspeople are
not stupid, but they believe we are." She talked about unions
spreading "the revolutionary virus into the workers" and I asked
again, how come it didn't spread quickly, all on its own? She blamed
"old union leaders, afraid of taking new steps." But she also said
that "just two years ago no one would have believed a worker managed
factory was possible but now there are over 20, with over 700 under
study for occupation to get them back to work." She pointed out the
need to do all this "along with raising consciousness of people." She
said, "going too fast, without people wanting it, wouldn't work." And
she noted that the businesspeople are "still trying to manipulate and
buy off the workers, and especially the leaders."

I also asked this trade union leader, who was explicitly responsible
for international relations, about links with movements and unions in
the U.S. She reported Venezuelan Chavista unions having links to the
"AFL-CIO in California, some grass-roots unions, and the antiwar
movement," but not with the national AFL-CIO because they are still
giving money to those imposing old bureaucracy and fomenting coups."

I asked her what proportion of the paid workforce was female and she
replied, "about 50%." I asked about women's salaries compared to men's
and she said there was no difference for the same jobs, but "women
didn't get as good jobs as men." I asked if things were better in the
occupied factories, and she said "As far as I can tell things are
somewhat better, yes, but not ideal." She said "The double duty of
women is the biggest obstacle to their deeper involvement in union
work." I asked if the Bolivarian movement was trying to address this
and she said "The new constitution says domestic work has to be
acknowledged as work for social security purposes," but I asked about
men and women doing it more equally and she said that that "was
progressing very very slowly. At the grassroots level lots of women
participate, despite double or even triple work, but our men are very
macho, and regrettably many women spoil them by doing all household
work." She said her situation was unusual
because she got lots of help at home.

Overview

>> From my trip it seemed to me that.

(1) The Bolivarian movement, and in particular President Hugo Chavez,
is pushing the population leftward. Even more, the Bolivarian
movement, and particularly President Hugo Chavez, is seeking to
replace old capitalist forms with new forms that they call
anti-capitalist, participatory, socialist, and Bolivarian, among other
labels. They are not directly and forcefully challenging and taking
over or removing old structures. They are operating legally in the
interstices of society to nurture new forms into existence and to then
show by contrast and via socially acceptable competition that
Venezuela's old forms are inferior, expecting that in time the new
forms will legally win out over the old. But as to what these new
forms are, there is far more clarity concerning political norms and
structures than economic ones. One would like to see a national
exploration, debate, and consciousness-raising campaign aimed at
clarifying and advocating the ultimate goals of the revolution, and at
making knowledge of its goals and continuous critique and enrichment
of them a national possession, not a possession only of some leaders.

(2) The Bolivarians' unusual transitional approach has as its vanguard
aspect that the Bolivarian leadership is ideologically and
programmatically far ahead of its populace and trying to get that
populace to move further and faster than it is alone inclined to. It
has as its anarchist aspect, however, that the movement is being
nourished, even if by a national president, mostly from the bottom up.
It seeks to exist in parallel and to become prevalent without violence
and even without confrontation. It seeks to embody the seeds of the
future in the present to avoid generating a new domination. It is
trying to win adherents by evidence, not force.

(3) The centrality of a single leader, at least that it is Hugo
Chavez, seems to be a highly unexpected benefit. Chavez, so far, has
not just been congenial and inspiring, audacious and courageous,
willing to step outside every box and implement program after program,
experimenting and learning, but has also shown remarkable restraint in
utilizing the accoutrements of central power and has even been a key
source of anti-authoritarian influence. At the same time, it is also
true that the centrality of a single leader, Hugo Chavez, though
perhaps unavoidable, is also a debit. The leader could turn bad, or
could disappear, and at this point either turn of events would be
calamitous. A related problem is the lack of a serious opposition on
the left. Revolution benefits from disagreement, debate, and
diversity, but those attributes have trouble arising amidst a siege
mentality. One wonders who will succeed Chavez, and how the people
will succeed the leaders, unless there is massive
popular education in leadership and the revolution's aims.

(4) Finally, the idea of out-competing the old system with a new one
created in parallel is very cleverly beneficial in that it avoids
undue premature conflict that might bring down holy hell on the
Bolivarian project even as it also draws on strengths and sidesteps
weaknesses. But the idea of out-competing the old system with a new
one created in parallel is also at least in one respect detrimental
because it risks ingraining competitive qualities and methods and
buttressing bureaucratic and classist structures, and because it may
ignore some recalcitrant features from the past that need early
dramatic attention lest they later drag down the whole project.

My overall impression was that the Bolivarian revolution is still
vague. It doesn't have clearly enunciated feminist politics,
anti-racist politics, or even anti-capitalist politics, though in all
three cases the inclinations are incredibly humane and radical and are
moving rapidly forward toward enunciating full aims and proposing
immediate program in that light. Chavez appears to be a remarkable
detonator of insights, himself moving leftward at a great pace. The
Bolivarian revolution is most ideologically clear, which is ironic and
a powerful testimony on his behalf, given Chavez's military
background, regarding political democracy and political participation
where it seems to be already committed to a well conceived, compelling
and innovative institutional vision that outstrips what any other
revolutionary project since the Spanish anarchists has held forth.

The future is not certain. The Bolivarian revolution could still stall
in social democracy. Co-management and not self management could lead
that way. It could still stumble or even rush into typical old style
"socialist" channels. Its market strategies and lack of clarity about
class divisions based on divisions of labor, not property, push that
way. There is always a danger of authoritarianism when a government is
prodding a populace, of course. But the Bolivarian revolution could
also, however, provide a remarkable model, both of a better world and
of a very original way to arrive at that better world. Which of these
results, or of others, happens, is largely going to be up to Chavez,
the Bolivarian movements, and the Venezuelan people, though mass
external support, not least to restrain U.S. aggressive inclinations
before they can corrupt or destroy the experiment, are also profoundly
needed.

I left Venezuela inspired and very hopeful. Venezuela looks to me like
Uncle Sam's worst nightmare. I was humbled by Bolivarian ingenuity and
steadfastness and by my own continued citizenship in the world's most
rogue and brutal nation, against which I and other radicals have had
such limited organizing success. Hopefully my country can follow
Venezuela's lead rather than crushing its aspirations. Hopefully,
citizens in the U.S. can make that happen. Officials won't, of course.