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On Sunday, 30 July, Hugo Chavez, former army colonel, leader of a failed coup in 1992, and President of Venezuela since February 1999, was re-elected in what Richard Gott described in a letter to the Guardian (2 August) as "a stunning victory that surprised the pollsters". Actually, the opinion polls the previous week gave him a lead of 20 percent over his main challenger, Francisco Arias. More than 80 percent of those who voted for Chavez were said to be living below the official poverty line.
In 1996, unemployment in Venezuela stood at 17 percent, inflation rose during the year by approximately 100 percent, and per capita oil income, on which the country relied, and still relies, for more than 80 percent of its foreign exchange, declined by three-quarters between 1980 and 1995. Nevertheless, Venezuela was, and is, the world's third largest oil-producing country, and has the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere.
In July last year, Chavez's "leftist" coalition won an overwhelming majority of seats in the 131-seat assembly, despite a sharp economic downturn and the loss of at least 600, 000 jobs since Chavez took office in February. He blamed the corruption and poverty of the workers on previous administrations, and promised to create a "true democracy", free of corruption and poverty for the masses, despite appointing many of his former fellow army plotters to top posts in the state. Such was Chavez's "Peaceful Revolution"!
Then, in December, after torrential rain for more than a week, Venezuela suffered devastating floods which caused landslides, inundated the capital, Caracas, swept away roads and shanty towns, and cascaded down the steep valleys to the Caribbean coast, and into the sea. Large tracts of Vargas state, the worst affected, were flooded. In the words of a Guardian headline (24 December 1999), "Venezuela pays the price for ecological carelessness", caused we should add by the quest for profit at all costs by the Venezuelan, and multi-national capitalist class.
In January this year, in the wake of the floods and the destruction of thousands of homes, it has been reported by the newspaper, El Nacional and a number of human rights groups, that at least 60 people (the government's figure) had been killed by the military between 17 and 30 December, allegedly to stop looting. Chavez insisted that "nothing can be considered proof" of the military's involvement in the murders; but El Nacional said that President Chavez had "expelled three soldiers from the National Guard on charges that they had participated, not in the executions, but in looting".
Meanwhile, since January 1999, the Venezuelan economy has declined by seven percent, foreign investors have withdrawn more than £5bn, and unemployment is still more than 600,000 more than it was when Hugo Chavez became President in February. The "acute economy slump" continues; and the voters, over 80 percent of whom are employed or unemployed workers, have given Chavez another six years of power. And capitalism in Venezuela, as elsewhere, staggers on.
PETER E NEWELL
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Trotskyists in the European Parliament
Not many people know this but there are Trotskyist members sitting in the European Parliament. For the 1999 elections two Trotskyists groups in France—Lutte Ouvrière and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire—presented a joint list and managed to get more than 5 percent of the national vote, so entitling them to 5 seats. It is this example that has inspired the main Trotskyist groups in Britain, led by the SWP and Militant, to get together as the so-called "Socialist Alliance" in the hope of repeating this performance.
But supposing they did get elected to Parliament what would they do? The French Trotskyist MEPs can provide a clue. In order to get full parliamentary facilities they have had to join a parliamentary "group". The one they have chosen to associate themselves with is the "European United Left/Nordic Green Left" made up of "Communist" and various other left-of-Labour MEPs. Too much should not be read into this as it is essentially an arrangement to get access to meeting rooms, interpreters and funds. The French Trotskyist MEPs use some of their share of the money to produce a "bulletin des députés" (members' bulletin) in which they publish their speeches and details of their other activities.
Lenin was not an anti-parliamentarist (he wasn't wrong about everything) but was in favour of Bolsheviks getting elected to Parliament and using it as a tribune from which to get their message across to workers in the country at large. As good Leninists, this is what the French Trotskyist MEPs try to do. There is nothing wrong with this as such. It is what Socialist MPs and MEPs would try to do too, only the message would be different—very different.
Whereas Socialist MPs would emphasise that capitalism can't be reformed to work in the interest of wage and salary workers who should therefore get together to bring it to an end and replace it by a system based on common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit, the Trotskyist MEPs merely repeat the slogans demanding reforms that they shout on demonstrations and publicise in their papers.
Thus the front page headline in the May 2000 issue of their Bulletin des Députés reads: "IT'S THE BOSSES' PROFITS THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN TO CREATE JOBS". Their speeches seem to indicate that they actually believe that unemployment could be ended by doing this. Here's Chantal Canquil (of LO):
"It is not that it's impossible to immediately end unemployment but that would require a voluntarist policy which would not hesitate to draw on the profits of the financial and industrial groups and on the personal wealth of the big shareholders."
And Arlette Laguiller herself, LO's perennial candidate for President of France, called for a mass movement
"to force big capital to take from its profits the wherewithal to create non-precarious jobs, paid at a decent wage".
Alain Krivine, of the LCR, who has often been Laguiller's rival in French presidential elections, even outlined a detailed programme as to how capitalism and capitalists could create full employment and decent wages for everyone:
"A reduction in working time with the obligation to take on people and without introducing flexible working practices; wages to go up in line with productivity; a tax reform harmonising upwards taxes on income from capital; a Tobin tax aimed at discouraging financial speculation; and finally the implementation of a planned programme of energy saving."
Do they really believe this nonsense about keeping capitalism and being able to force, either by legislation or by strikes and demonstrations, the capitalists to use their profits to create jobs for everyone at a decent and ever-rising wage (anyone who knows how capitalism works will know that this would provoke a massive economic crisis)? Or is it just a populist slogan to attract gullible supporters who they believe they can then lead in an assault on capitalism (in fact to replace existing mixed private/state capitalism by full state capitalism)?
Either way they are condemned as anti-socialist. If they believe this is possible, then they stand exposed as reformists, and naive and unrealistic reformists at that. If they don't believe it, then they stand exposed as dishonest and cynical demagogues perpetuating reformist illusions just to win a popular following. Perhaps Krivine and the LCR believe it and LO don't. The LCR does offer more specific reforms than LO who confine themselves to vague general slogans. On the other hand, the LCR could be the more Machiavellian (or Leninist—the same thing) since it thinks the more practical you appear the better chance you have of attracting a bigger following.
Genuine Socialist MEPs of course would not advocate such reforms or encourage such reformist illusions. They would tell it like it is: that unemployment is inevitable under capitalism and will go up and down depending on which stage of its unavoidable business cycle capitalism happens to be in and that there's nothing that can be done to stop this; that there is no such thing as a decent wage since capitalism is based on the exploitation of wage labour with wages always being less than the value added in production and appropriated by the capitalists. Having said this, we would be less than honest if we didn't concede that occasionally the Trotskyist MEPs have used their speaking time to make the same criticism of capitalism as we would, even if from the perspective of establishing full state capitalism rather than real socialism.
But what about their voting record? This is a tricky one even for Socialists as this has been a subject of controversy within our own ranks. In the early days there were members who argued that Socialist MPs shouldn't take their seats and others who advocated that they should either vote against or abstain in all votes. But the majority position, which is still our current position, was that whereas Socialist MPs shouldn't propose anything (other than Socialism) they might under certain circumstances vote for something proposed by others i.e. a measure considered by the Party to be in the interest of the working class or the socialist movement). So we can't criticise the Trotskyist MEPs for sometimes abstaining, sometimes voting against and sometimes even voting for. For the record, they have generally voted against or abstained on economic issues and have only voted for general anti-racist declarations and pro-ecology measures.
Basically, the French Trotskyist MEPs either are or have behaved as leftwing reformists and so have done nothing to further the cause of Socialism. There is no reason to suppose that Trotskyist MPs in the British House of Commons would behave any differently.
ALB
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