Venezuela: The "war on the landed estates" is not a war, nor is it directed against the landed estates

(Note: The following article is being translated into English.The Spanish original can be found at http://www.ft.org.ar/notasft.asp?id=4462)

Autor: Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria
Fecha: 20/4/2005
Fuente: JIR - Venezuela

Three months have already passed since Chavez announced at the top of his lungs the beginning of the "war against the latifundio" (the large estates), producing, as is logical, joy among the poor rural workers and the exploited in general, also producing, as is customary now, writings by the chavista left saluting the so-called "war" and by the centrists who claim to be Marxists, without making the least effort to unmask the enormous limits of this reform, or explaining that the peasants themselves need to be the ones who take the struggle against the latifundio in their hands.

Once more, no one wants to tell the truth about the matter. Therefore, we insist that, if, beyond the high-sounding phrases of Chavez and the government leaders, we stop for a moment to look at things calmly, we will see that it is not only these phrases which lack relation with reality, but that there are also other declarations and approaches, which express the real policy of the government better, and nevertheless are not stressed, neither by the bourgeois press, nor by the press of those who acll themselves socialists.

Let us start with what Chavez himself and the government functionaries said about the problem of the concentration of land. According to declarations by Chavez at the end of January, "In Venezuela 1% of the owners or supposed owners occupy 80% of the productive lands." (1) For his part, Eliecer Otaiza says thataccording to the assessments made by the technical commission assigned to the recovery of lands, only 5% of the population owns 90% of arable lands, and 95% owns the remaining 10%. (2) And Antonio Albarran, Minister of Agriculture and Land, and chairman of the National Agrarian Commission, says that "5% has 80% of the land, and 75% possesses 6% of these [lands]." (3)

Beyond the differences that can exist between different sets of figures, it is obvious that the problem of land concentration in our country is severe. This fact now lets us see how limited the solution advanced by the government is.

Let us see then what Minister Albarran says: "The one who shows that the lands are his and that they are productive has nothing to fear. If he proves ownership of the land, and that it is not productive, he will have to pay a fair tax." (4) Here there is no doubt that it is not a matter of putting an end to landed estates, but to the illegal landed estate. So the landed estates are not illegal in Venezuela, however much the Constitution and the government functionaries say they are. That is to say, if there is a latifundio (a large concentration of land in a few hands), but he has his papers in order," then "he has nothing to fear." That confirms what Jose Vicente Rangel had said about the matter.

But let us look further. The landed estate is acceptable if it is "legal," and if it is not producing, then a "fair tax" will be imposed on it, nothing more. That is to say, it is not even a reform limited to attacking the illegal and unproductive landed estate, leaving the "legal" and "productive" landed estate intact, rather, not even the unproductive latifundio will be touched, beyond a "just tax."

But a better examination of the reality of this so-called war is still lacking. The Bolivarian News Agency [ABN] reports that the government is drawing up a decree to exonerate idle land from taxes for the years 2002, 2003, and 2004, so they will only have to pay taxes on idle lands for the year 2005, if they do not use them productively this year. (5) Now it is not even a matter of imposing high or "fair" taxes on the unproductive landed estate.

And so that the "unproductive" ones do not have to pay that tax this year, the government is offering them credits, and they also have the choice of selling the land or giving it to INTI. But, according to Otaiza, the government is unlikely to seize private land in the first phase, "first, we do not have available resources today to buy land." (6) This is clear, because in addition to the fact that it has nothing to do with expropriating the latifundios, independently of whether or not they have “papers in order” or not, as it should, nor does it have to do with expropriating even the unproductive lands. It is concerned, rather, with buying the idle land, if the landowner does not agree to ask for a credit to make the land productive.

All this is consistent with what was disclosed by Chavez himself in the meeting at Fuerte Tiuna: “I have given instructions that they invite the estate owners. Invite them and sit down with them at one table. ‘Welcome, señores latifundistas, there is a proposal coming from the President, he wants to avoid conflicts, help him . . . you have 20,000 hectares and barely 50 head of cattle, you live in the capital and do not take care of [your estate] . . . We are going to negotiate. Do you want to? We have a term, we do not want conflict . . . You will have flexibility. Do you want to negotiate that way and avoid conflicts?’ ‘Yes!,’ ‘Then we are going to arrive at an agreement. How many hectares do you need?, keep them and the bienechuría, and give up the rest.” (7)

But one does not have to think very much about the matter to understand this action by the government. The government's objective is "to strengthen national agricultural production," to achieve "sovereignty in food" by developing food production "in the country." These are certainly legimitate objectives and a national need. But the issue is that the government is pursuing this objective independently of who is producing, that is to say, if the landowners are productive, the government leaves them in peace, then gives them credits to make their lands produce. It could not be clearer, as clear in this case, as in the case of the city factories, that the government wants the expropriation of the property of the cpaitalists or the landowners to be an exception and not the norm, since the central interest is not ending the exploitation to hwich the capitalists and landowners subject the toilers of city and countryside [nor ending] [el usufructo] the right to use someone else's labor, but developing "national production."

Seen this way, rather than a war it is a call to conciliation, rather than against the landed estate, it is only against the landed estate that is illegal and unproductive at the same time.

1 Últimas Noticias, 31-01-05.
2 VEA, 18-01-05.
3 Últimas Noticias, 16-01-05.
4 Ídem.
5 ABN, 14-03-05
6 El Universal, 14-01-05
7 Hugo Chávez, “El Nuevo Mapa Estratégico”, www.minci.gov.ve

The Utility Workers Rally in Boston, May 23

There were over a hundred utility workers, some families with small children, all fired up, rallying in front of the Nstar corporate headquarters in Prudential Center, in defense of their strike against Nstar. Teamsters Local 25 had one of its monster trucks parked in front of the Prudential on Boylston Street, with Springsteen's "Born in the USA" blaring so loud, they claimed it shook of the windows of Tom May's office. May is the corporate head of Nstar; he made $4 million last year and just a few days ago took health coverage away from the strikers and their families.

I stood with the strikers in the rain and cold for over an hour listening to speeches by the head of Utility Workers Union and the leader of the United Mineworkers Union, as well as a variety of local union leaders, followed by local political hacks. Sweeney even sent a message. The union leaders, both national and local, can turn on the militancy when they choose. They know the power that workers possess. After a lot of very militant rhetoric by the union leadership today, it will be interesting to see just how much of a sell-out they impose on the membership a few weeks from now.

The Sparts were there, and so was PL, which had it together enough to produce a union-printed flier that the strikers eagerly took. No one was buying Workers Vanguard. I managed to sell to one of the Sparts, which is a first, and also to a Belgian student who happened to be there. Then I gave out a few papers. We have to write a leaflet on the strike, so we have something to give the workers.

One of the Sparts told me that ISO had been responsible for organizing the anti-fascist demo on May 8, and he added that ISO had pushed, in a planning meeting, for not trying to stop the Nazis. So what happened, which was much less than a victory over the fascists, may have reflected conscious planning by the ISO, which is incredible. It is true that in the first confrontation, between the anti-fascists and a small number of the fascist vermin, the ISO was right up front, and they could have taken measures to discourage the fascists from ever returning to Boston, and they did not do anything like that.

Apparently there are several Nstar offices in Boston, one of Mass Ave., with picketers out in front. We have to get them a leaflet. The strike is a wide-open, very positive situation right now.

Got Housing?

Just last week, the Projo reported that the Rhode Island economy is "stagnant" and will continue to idle for months to come, perhaps through December. The paper said that companies are not hiring, and rising energy prices mean a reduced demand for goods, prompting factories and stores to operate shorter shifts.The elevated cost of energy reportedly has a double effect: it increases "the cost of production,which slows the economy, while raising the Consumer Price Index, which leads to inflation." (Lynn Arditi, "Index Predicts a Stagnant Rhode Island Economy, Providence Journal, May 17, 2005). This represents the third consecutive quarter of economic decline in the Ocean State.

Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to rise. For US workers living in the North East, the urban consumer price index (CPI) increased by exactly 7% from December 2003 to December 2004, and continued to rise by 4% during the first four months of 2005. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics data, available at http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm) The CPI represents the cost of acquiring food, housing, medical care, transportation, apparel, education, etc. The CPI for urban consumers reflects the situation of about 87% of the US population.

As every tenant knows, rents in Providence are rising rapidly, and this is true elsewhere in New England as well. Three New England states, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire are among the ten least affordable states for renters, with Massachusetts just behind California as the worst state for renters in the nation. It costs more to rent an apartment in the Boston metropolitan area (including southern New Hampshire) than in Westchester county, or Nassau county, in New York. (See the data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition at http://www.nlihc.org) Unbelievably high and rising housing costs in Boston are attracting speculators (aka landlords) to the Providence housing market, and Providence renters are the ones who get hurt in this situation.

Based on last year's figures (the latest available), a service sector employee making little more than $18,000 a year, could come up with only a little more than half the fair market rent for a two bedroom unit in Rhode Island for her family, while an SSI recipient who was willing to spend her entire monthly check of $621 on rent, would still be $100 short of the money required to keep a one-bedroom unit in this state at fair market price. "In Rhode Island, a worker earning the Minimum Wage ($6.75 per hour) must work 97 hours per week in order to afford a two-bedroom unit at the area's Fair Market rent. The Housing Wage in Rhode Island is $16.29. This is the amount a full time (40 hours per week) worker must earn per hour in order to afford a two-bedroom unit at the area's Fair Market rent" (from "Out of Reach," the NLIHC report on the plight of families who rent in the US).

In other words, many of us just do not have the money that it takes to live here. We work hard, and we still fall short. Since renters constitute 40% of the population of the Providence-Fall River-Warwick area, this is a serious problem for a lot of people, and one would have thought that politicians, of whom Providence has so many, would have taken some action to alleviate the plight of renters, but no! The only two politicians who even mentioned housing since the last election, a Democrat and a Green, endorsed "development," which means even higher rents, and called for Providence to emulate Boston, where a two-bedroom can cost $2,500 per month and a condo in a dangerous neighborhood like Cambridgeport fetches $299,000.

Politicians who do not care about the needs of working families must be replaced. The Democrats and the Greens ignore the problems of wage earners, so it is time for us to build our own party, a party of, by and for workers. Our workers party will fight for full employment and housing, for a massive program of public works to rebuild infrastructure in Rhode Island and provide quality housing for everyone. Join us!

Workers' Control versus "Co-Management"

To clarify, there are urgently important differences between real workers' control in an enterprise, which is an important transitional demand in the struggle against capitalism, and so-called "co-management" with the boss, which is a fraud against working people. I quote from a presentation I made earlier this month:

Now the Leninist tradition is that we are partisans of workers' control, and Lenin was uncompromising on the meaning of workers' control. It is not in any way related to co-management. I quote from Lenin's "Draft Regulations for Workers Control."

"Workers' control over the production, storage, purchase and sale of all products and raw materials shall be introduced in all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural and other enterprises . . . Workers' control shall be exercised by all the workers and office employees of an enterprise, either directly, if the enterprise is small enough to permit it, or through their elected representatives, who shall be elected immediately at general meetings. . . . The elected representatives shall be given access to all books and documents and to all warehouses and stocks of materials, instruments and products, without exception. . . . The decisions of the elected representatives of the workers and office employees are binding upon the owners of enterprises and may be annulled only by trade unions and their congresses."

So, according to Lenin, not the bourgeoisie, not government bureaucrats representing the bourgeoisie, and not bourgeois managers, but workers, should run all the enterprises of any size. This is very different from co-management, that permanent alliance between workers and bosses, being pushed by the chavistas, a stance totally foreign to Leninism, which demonstrates that chavismo is completely consistent with capitalist rule.

Now the difference between Leninist workers' control and class-collaborationist co-management, is the difference between the liberation of our class and its continued enslavement. chavismo pushes co-management because the chavistas cannot conceive of a society without bosses, and so they lead the masses to chant, "Without co-management there is no revolution," which is the opposite of the truth.

Political Diary, May 20, 2005

http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/kirchner_gb0603.html is an article from June 2003, which takes a critical attitude to Chavez and to Peronism, and calls for the formation of a workers party in Argentina. unfortunately, the article calls for pressuring the Kirchner government (instead of overthrowing it).

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http://socialistworker.org/2005-1/544/544_06_Venezuela.shtml is an article by Lee Sustar from the press of the ISO, which notices the development of political currents among the Venezuelan workers and peasants which arelocated significantly to the left of chavismo.

Some excerpts: ". . . the Venezuelan left is critical of the fact that some 21 percent of the government budget for 2005 is being used to repay foreign debt racked up by the corrupt governments of the past, rather than social programs.

"Meanwhile, the 'classista,' or class-struggle current of the UNT--led by former textile union leader Orlando Chirino and Marcela Máspero of the pharmaceutical workers’ union -- has put forward its own vision of socialism: nationalization and workers’ control. For example, a meeting of regional UNT leaders in thestate of Carabobo in March issued a final declaration that condemned efforts by management of the state electrical power company, CADAFE, to denounce UNT union leaders as 'counterrevolutionaries' for demanding greater workers’ input in the co-management scheme.

"The UNT -- which has been denounced by the AFL-CIO as an 'arm of the state'--isn’t shy about criticizing government policies, in particular, a currency devaluation that has cut purchasing power for workers and the poor. 'There are no reasons that justify this measure, which only favors big business and the bankers; the workers and the poor see that it has produced a wave of price increases in basic products,' said the declaration of a UNT meeting.

"UNT leaders also called for the independence of the unions from the employers, the government and political parties. Militants in the UNT have mounted a challenge to more moderate elements led by steelworkers’ union leader Ramón Machuca, whose union remains independent, but who wields influence in the new federation.

"In the all-important oil industry, leading union members recently launched the Workers’ Class-Struggle Option (OCT) to challenge what they called the 'new technocratic bureaucracy' in PDVSA and to build on the legacy of workers’ control during the oil strike. Aiming to unite workers in different unions, the OCT is trying to lead new fights--for example, to restore contract workers to the status of full-time employees with benefits. In its founding statement May 14, the group criticized union leaders for 'the most deficient contract negotiations in our history' and failing to attain major gains for the workers in view of the record oil industry gains.

"More generally, the socialist left is taking the opportunity to spell out its own vision of Venezuela’s revolutionary transformation. 'One cannot speak of socialism without proposing to break with the perverse logic of capitalism, without attacking individual property by radical means, without speaking ofdemocracy -- more precisely, the workers and the people deciding in their majority what is to be done' amember of the group Revolutionary Left Option (OIR) wrote in a recent pamphlet on workers’ control and co-management.

"Certainly the expectations of workers in the big state industries -- who haven’t seen real wage increasessince the 1980s -- are rising. And with high oil prices,exceptional natural resources and a developed manufacturing base and sizeable population, Venezuela has far greater scope for economic and social change than, for example, the Nicaraguan revolution, in which a small and shattered economy was battered by U.S.sanctions and a Washington-funded civil war."

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http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson05192005.html is an article by Michael Dickinson, from counterpunch, which reveals that the Labour government in Britain introduced a measure called "anti-social behaviour orders" in 1999.

An excerpt:"'Asbos' are 'Anti-Social Behaviour Orders' which the British government introduced in 1999. Basically, their purpose is to reduce crime and disorder. To target and tackle activities which disrupt the livesof individuals, families or communities.

"Anyone can apply for an asbo on anyone else. All you have to do to satisfy the civil court that they deserve one is to prove that the accused caused or was likely to cause 'harassment, alarm or distress', and if you succeed in doing that -- congratulations! -- you've scored an Asbo!

"Now your asboed victim has to refrain from doing what they were doing for at least 2 years. If however they don't refrain, then this time they are committing acriminal offence - and can face a penalty of up to five years in prison. Catch 22 revisited."

The "asbo's" amount to a form of banning of a troublesome individual and are now being used by the Labour government, and Blair's Labour government is now aspiring to use "asbo's" against opponents of the war in Iraq, as the article relates.

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I discovered an article by Galindez endorsing cogestion obrera. An excerpt follows:

Un articulo que muestra el apoyo de la CMR a la cogestion "obrera"

http://venezuela.elmilitante.org/index.asp?id=muestra&id_art=1905

Unas excertas: "La Cogestión Obrera es el desarrollo de un poder de decisión, pero a diferencia del Control Obrero, este es compartido con el patrón, sea este público o privado. Ambos se reúnen, discuten y toman las decisiones por consenso o por mayoría que la tiene el patrón. . . .

"Las diversas y diferenciadas experiencias de Control Obrero y Cogestión Obrera que hoy se aparecen en el país tienen que ver con la crisis del capitalismo y con las fortalezas y debilidades de la clase trabajadora y sus vanguardias.

"Ambas, vistas en la perspectiva de parte de una dinámica social en desarrollo y crecimiento, son positivas. El Control Obrero con mayor claridad que la cogestión, pero ninguna de las dos se puede ver como la solución al problema de la crisis del capitalismo en Venezuela. Tan solo son experiencias que nos deben llevar a profundizar más aún la revolución por los caminos del socialismo, previa instauración de un verdadero gobierno de los trabajadores. Ambas experiencias por si solas no son socialismo ni mucho menos.

"Ambas vivencias pueden educar a la clase para que se forme una conciencia que le de mayor confianza en sus fuerzas y capacidades y en la necesidad de derrotar no solo al imperialismo, sino al capitalismo mismo,instaurando repetimos un gobierno de los trabajadores en una Venezuela vía al socialismo. . . ."

Run away, run away: Spartacists in Boston, May 8

As a participant, I was interested to read the description of the May 8 anti-fascist demo in Boston in the latest issue of Workers Vanguard. At one point in the demonstration, we had to cross the street to confront the home-grown fascists and their police protective contingent. The Sparts, who initially had their own demonstration of about 6 people separate from at least 200 antifascists (i.e., the rest of us), declined to cross the street to go after the Arkansas Nazis. WV commented, " . . . there was no opportunity to stop the neo-Nazis in the street. Thus, we did not join in the false heroics of a small number of leftists who went directly up against riot police escorting the fascists down Congress Street."

What actually happened was that the main body of demonstrators crossed the street, not "a small numberof leftists," and, yes, we stood there yelling at the fascists and their police colleagues while the oh-so-left Sparts disappeared from view. Tendencies like the ISO and Workers World, for whom the Sparts have nothing but contempt, at least knew enough to cross the street to confront Nazis.

To stand there yelling at the cops and the fascist vermin was not "heroic," just something I felt we should do. Had the cops charged us, I would have tried to get out of the way, but nothing like that happened.

In print, the Sparts have always seemed to me to be principled and strong on theory, and I admired them for that, but, viewed close up, they turned out to be a tad chicken-hearted on May 8.