Caracas "Huge opportunities, very great dangers!" That's how one of President Chavez closest advisers summed up tne
facing Currenl siluallon Venezuela's Bolivarian revoluO.
Haiman Troudi was addressing a seminar organISCO by Fourth International in Caracas in August, to discuss the challenge of socialism in the 21st century, both in Venezuela and in the rest of the region.
The brought together revolutionaries from a dozen Latin American and European countries. along with a variety of currents and motions dom cross cae spectrum of the revolutionary left in Venezuela.
It was held in the Miranda International Centre, a government-sponsored thinktank, where Haiman, who was Chavez's chief of staff in 2005, now directs a research programme on 21st Century Socialism.
In spite of their differing experiences, approaches, and analyses, just about all the Venezuelan participants came out with assessments of the present challenge that were similar to Haiman's.
Trade union leader and editor of Marea Socialista, Stalin Perez, pointed to grave problems in the newly nationalised telecoms and electricity sectors, as well as the state oil company, where workers are not being given a voice, much less control. or where collective agreements have not been renewed.
But he also emphasised the immense possibilities for building a new socialist vanguard in the emerging PSUV united socialist party.
Carlos Lanz of Proyecto Nuestro America, who neadea up tne most ambinous experiment so far in workers' control, at the ALCASA aluminium plant, analysed the danger of "Bolivarian entropy", dispersion of energy that could lead to a "restorationist counter-revolution".
Roland Denis and Ricardo Navarro, from other
LWU wings of the divided Proyecto Nuestro America, also argued that the contradictions within the original Bolivarian project, including within the 1999 Constitution, were now coming to a head.
Simon Uzcategul. of the Ezequiel Zamora National Peasant Front, described the emergence of an unusual kind of dual power, which must now either go to the left or to the right.
Margarita Aguinaga, from Socialist Refoundation (Ecuadorean section of the rourth International made an eloquent case for giving any new project or socialismn a militantly feminist face.
And she pointed to a different kind of _ contradicton facing the revolutionary processes both in her own country and in Venezuela: that between the pre-eminent role played by women at the grass rools or tnese struggles -for example within the indigenous movement Ecuador or the neighbourhood mobilisations in Venezuela - and their far more marginalised presence within the political leaderships.
This was a theme felt keenly by ine rourth internatonal participants present, not least because of the 14 attending Irom nine Laun American countries. nine were women. and many of these came from a vounger generation drawn into political activity around feminist struggles.
It was not difficult to find living examples of the positive possibilities in this moment of the Bolivarian revolution that many of the Venezuelan participants referred to. A visit to the western town of Carora gave a taste of how much further the socalled "explosion of popular power" through Community Councils could go.
1 hese Councils - which Chavez calls the fifth and most important motor of the transition to socialism - are local bodies of popular power The constitutional reform now being discussed in Venezuela should give greater powers to the Communal Councils, including a stipulation that they should receive at least 5% of the budget of all local governments bringing together 200 or more families. They have been springing up in thousands of communities across the country since unavez re-electon last December.
In most cases the scope of Lner discussions extent of their powers are still limited to very immediate ana very local decisions. I ney agree what their community's most pressing needs are, draw up projects to address lnese. then oversee their execution.
projects are usually financed by central government grants of around 10-15 thousand dollars each. As such, the community councils
necessarily encroach very much on the powers of une exisung local stale
The constitutional reform now being discussed Venezuela should give greater powers to these Communal Councils, including a stipulation that at least 5 per cent of the budget of all local governments should be handed over to the community councils.
But the local government in Carora has already gone much further, handing over control of 100 per cent of its investment budget to the organs of popular power through a participatory budget.
Carora is so far a bit of an exception - one of the few local administrations Venezuela that is clearlv committed to the building of a new kind of'communal' state, to replace the old bourgeois one that still prevails. But it is not entirely alone.
A visit to the industrial town of La Victoria, where the mayor is a highly combative young woman, snowed how all of the local government's social service departments, and their budgets, are being transferred out of the town hall and put under the control of a regional network of Communal Councils.
But just a half an hour down the road in Maracay, it was also easy enough to see the kind of dangers Haiman El Stalin Perez (left) emphasised the immense possibilities for building a new socialist vanguard in the emerging PSUV united socialist party. Troudi and the others were referring nine months of occupation, the exemplary experience workers control LOe Sanitarios de Maracay bathroom factory had just been overturned somelling looking like a coup d'etat.
Starved of raw materials, cut oft trom their natural customers and saddled with bank debts, some of the workers had begun to lose confidence.
The Ministry of Labour offered a deal including the payment or oulstanding bene fits in exchange for an end to the occupation and the handing back of the factory to the absentee OWLICIS then helped to mount a lightning assembly with the whitecollar administrative staff who had never supported the occupauon• lo unrow oul unc factory committee that had been leading it.
This was lust the MOSI recent and dramatic example of what has appeared to be at best indifference and at worst outright sabotage by parts of une bolvarlan government In the face of the most radical experiences of co-management or workers' control that have emerged.
A month earlier some of the workers at Sanitarios had visited Carora for a joint celebration of the anniversary COT Aporrea, the alternative news web site that has become the virtual home of the left in the Bolivarian revolution.
In his contribution to the Caracas seminar, Gonzalo Gomez, founder of Aporrea and also one of the editors of Marea Clasista y Socialista, pointed to this as precisely the kind of combination of struggles where the biggest opportunities lie for moving the process forward.
But it is clear that some within the Bolivarian leadership, including, disgracefully, the Minister of Labour, selfstyled trotskyist Jose Ramon Rivera, do not want this to happen.
Several of the Venezuelan participants in our meeting pointed to the delicate balance that needs to be struck by international supporters of the Bolivarian revolution.
They must at one and the same time detend and energetically support the existing achievements and the new struggles unacıway. with their extraordinary potential; but they must also speak out even more cleany moan It 1s
possible for Venezuelan revolutionaries to do, against the abuses and dangers that threaten the revolution from within.