It is not clear that a majority of Chavez supporters are yet convinced of the need to radicalise the content of the revolutionary process in a clearly socialist direction. after the main opposition parties withdrew from the election alleging the vote would be rigged. Two weeks later, Chavez' close ally, Evo Morales, won his historic victory in Bolivia (see article on facing page). As STUART PIPER reports, a new phase is now opening in the Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution - one that is marked by both big opportunities, and difficult challenges. Everyone in Venezuela knows that the opposition's decision to quit was a cynical manoeuvie. Even their own polls indicated they were heading for a crushing defeat.
At best they might have held on to 30 or so of the 76 seats they held in the outgoing Assembly. It's quite possible they would have slumped to about 10.
This manoeuvre is likely to have limited impact inside Venezuela in the short term. The opposition parties are deeply discredited, even among their traditional supporters.
Abroad, the difficulties could be greater. The US aaministraton, which UN -doubtedly 'encouraged' the boycott, will use the complete absence of opposition representatives in parliament to try to ridicule the Venezuelan government's democratic cre. dentials.
For this reason it is important tor Venezuela's international supporters to repeat as
por la D loudly as possible the obvious arguments against this.
In seven years Chavez and his supporters have won increasingly impressive majorines In two presiaental elections, three parliamentary elections, several rounds of state, municipal and parish council elections, plus the crucial recall reterendum of 2004. International observers have always found these votes to be 'free and fair'.
In these last elections, the authorities actually gave way on the opposition's only substantial (though still tenuous) complaint - that the system for finger-print identification of voters could, theoretically, be cross checked with computerized voting records to identify who had voted for who - and that even after this system was abandoned the opposition still withdrew.
There is also the small fact that the revolutionary process has repeatedly been defended in the streets and in the workplaces by millions of working Democracia Partici Cristian people determined to prevent Il mom benne overtunned.
The WTO meeting Hong Kong, two weeks after the elections, was one more example why this defence of Venezuela has become SO important for all of us opposing neo-liberalism internationally.
When Brazil and India, at the head of the G20 of developing countries, gave in to pressure from the rich countries, Venezuela and Cuba were the only two delegations that refused to endorse a final ministerial declaration that Trade campaigners like Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South have called a recipe for de-industrialisation ana lne wnolesale privalization of services in the third
However, the elections also sounded a warning. At 25 per cent, turnout was low. Not dramatically so, given the circumstances and historical and regional patterns.
But Alan Woods of Hands
Democracia Secinl Off Venezuela, like many on the left inside Venezuela, is right to point out that this reflects a dangerous level of discontent among many Chavez supporters - with the main pro-Chavez parties and their failure to select candidates democratically, with bureaucracy and the failure to Implement many revorunonary policies, with corruption and the many public officials who proclaim loyalty to the process while lining their own pockets.
Put another way, you could say this reflects a deepening disaffection with the structures of representative democracy and indeed the capitalist state.
Alan Woods says the only answer is to demand that the 11CW National Assembly immediately nationalise the banks, the land and the many closed factories, to deprive the counter revolution of its economic power and social base and take revolution beyond the point of no return, while simultaneously calling for committees for the defence of the revolution to be set up locally and nationally to push in the same direction.
As marxists we no doubt share these objectives. But there seems to be a link missing.
Moving rapidly in this direction will subject the revolutionary process absolutely huge pressures, both externally and domestically.
These can only be withstood if such measures are stamped with the kind of legitimacy that only massive
radical, dIOl grass-lools democracy can confer.
One of the biggest weaknesses of the Venezuelan process. recognized bv manv of those involved, is the lack of both effective mass parties and strong, nationally-organised. social movements - the kinds of structures that could begin to provide this kind of democratic control over the direction une process way.
The examples of co-management, with many aspects of workers' control, like that in the aluminium industry, or the still incipient attempts to build effective participatory democracy in some commuthrough milies, communal and local public planning councils and participatory budgets, are probably the best starling polls.
There is no Chinese wall separating these two aspects of the process. But it is important to understand what comes first.
In many ways this is just to restate in contemporary terms the lessons of what revolutionary marxists have usually called permanent revolution -the idea that in 'semi-colonial' countries revolutionary struggles would generally develop on the terrain of a struggle for democracy, but would soon find that they had to begin to tackle questions of socialist transformation well.
It is not clear that a majority of Chavez supporters are yet convinced of the need to radicalise the content of the revolutionary process in a clearly socialist direction.
The very small vote for explicitly far-left candidates, like those of the PRS (Party of Revolution and Socialism), or the MBP (Movement of the Popular Bases), in spite of the central role members of these organisations play in the most militant expressions of the trade union and peasant movements respectively, suggests that they are not.
But there is plenty of evidence that many of them do want to take greater control of the process.
So helping them to develop radical forms of direct democracy, as the embryo of a new kind of state, may be the most important first step towards the kind of deepening of the process that Alan Woods is quite right to insist will be ucccosal y take the Venezuelan revolution beyond the point of no return.