Steve Ellner

The Contrasting Variants of the Populism of Hugo Chávez and Alberto Fujimori

During the 1990s Perus Alberto Fujimori and Argentinas Carlos Menem were the two main political successes of Latin American populism. Both completed two successive presidential terms, a unique accomplishment in the continent, and overcame the political instability that previously beset their nations. Scholars who analysed these and other contemporary regimes concluded that Latin American populism was flexible and resilient enough to adapt to a radically different environment from that of the 1930s and 1940s, when it had emerged as a major force. Some political scientists labelled as ‘neopopulism’ the newer variant of populism in the context of globalisation and widespread acceptance of neoliberal policies. These scholars stressed two salient features of neopopulism that contrasted with ‘classical populism’ of the 1930s and 1940s: its social base consisting of members of the informal economy, as opposed to the organised working class; and its implementation of neoliberal policies, as against the model of import substitution and state interventionism.

The Distinguishing Features of Latin America’s New Left in Power The Chávez, Morales, and Correa Governments

The governments of Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), and Rafael Correa (Ecuador) share strategies, policies, and discourses that contrast with those of the center-leftists in power in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay as well as the social democratic, socialist, and classical populist experiences of the past. All three governments have triumphed at the polls with large majorities, rely on the ongoing mobilization of their followers, and embrace radical democracy based on a strong executive branch and direct popular participation in decision making as opposed to corporatist mechanisms. The three governments have been characterized by steady radicalization, their movements consist of multiclass alliances, and their economic policies have diversified commercial and technological relations. They have also established close ties with neighboring center-left governments and have promoted unity arrangements in the continent to resolve political disputes that exclude the United States. Their movements have fashioned a new narrative of nationhood that links radical goals and nationalist sentiment with traditions of political and social struggle.

Hugo Chávez's First Decade in Office Breakthroughs and Shortcomings

A balance sheet of the 10 years of Chavismo in power refutes both the opposition’s demonization of it and the rosy depiction of it in the official media. Viewed objectively, the Venezuelan experience coincides with the historical tendency for socialist nations to score high on the social front and show weakness with regard to the stimulation of production of consumer goods. While the Chávez government has incorporated massive numbers of the formerly marginalized into the decision-making process, diversified technological and commercial ties, and asserted greater national control in the economic sphere, it has failed to substantially boost production in spite of a windfall in oil revenue and has moved very slowly toward institutionalization. Judged by liberal standards, Venezuelan democracy is deficient on a number of counts, but in terms of the standards associated with radical democracy (emphasizing majority rule and the participation of the popular sectors of the population) it fares much better.

Venezuela's Social-Based Democratic Model: Innovations and Limitations

Under the Chavez government, the incorporation and participation of popular sectors, which is the essence of ‘social-based democracy’, has been quantitatively and qualitatively different from socialist government and welfare-state strategies of the past. Venezuelas social-based democracy focuses on education, job skills, ideology, transformation of values and empowerment, achievements which Chavista leaders consider to be imperatives for socialist development. However, Chavista social programmes have been undermined by institutional weakness, are sometimes not cost-effective, and are politicised. Conflicting views among the Chavistas on the role of the state hinge on the issue of whether initiatives from above in favour of social-based democracy represent a viable strategy for far-reaching change. The Venezuelan governments changing priorities after 2007 have detracted from the primacy of social programmes.

A New Model With Rough Edges: Venezuela’s Community Councils

T he main country road that passes by las Cuadras, a poor rural area in the zone of El Valle, in the Venezuelan state of Mérida, sports a new roofed waiting area and sidewalk. Julio Cerrada, a spokesman for the Las Cuadras community council, shows me these and other recent projects, including a decorative arch at the neighborhood’s entrance and a large metal garbage container. Then Cerrada takes me to the end of the mountain road, where the community council of La Culata has constructed a pathway consisting of two paved tracks extending about 300 yards uphill, which allows potato and carrot farmers to transport their produce by vehicle and also opens the area to tourism. A small cooperative, called Paseos a Caballo de La Culata, takes tourists on horseback up the pathway, whose entrance is now marked by a large plaque celebrating the figure of Simón Bolívar. Cerrada tells me the cooperative is requesting state financing to construct a tourist station at the pathway’s upper end. Twenty-four community councils in El Valle have received government financing for a diversity of such undertakings. Nationwide, Venezuela’s some 20,000 local councils, legally established in 2006, are tackling development projects considered priorities by their respective communities. Most of the completed works in El Valle were carried out by the voluntary labor of community members, while materials and tools were purchased with state funds. About half of the able-bodied members of Las Cuadras participated in that community’s joint efforts, Cerrada tells me, and tools, including a wheelbarrow, shovels, pickaxes, and machetes, are now being lent to families. “There is a greater sense of trust and cooperation in communities of several hundred families than you get when larger numbers of people are involved,” he says. The Law of Community Councils, enacted in April 2006, offers neighborhoods funding once they organize democratically and submit feasible projects to state agencies. Each council represents between 200 and 400 families who approve of priority projects in neighborhood assemblies. By planning, administering, and financing public works and housing construction in their barrios, the community councils represent not only the government’s most recent success in jump-starting popular participation, but also a radical break with the past, when these activities were undertaken by the city, state, or national government. 11 A New Model With Rough Edges: Venezuela’s Community Councils

Social and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change in Venezuela

The political movement led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is subject to internal contradictions that play themselves out on various fronts. Members of three major social groups—the organized working class, the middle sectors, and the traditionally unincorporated sectors—identify with different lines of thinking and defend different interests. Chavismo’s internal political currents correspond to distinct leftist traditions. One adheres to the Marxist view of the organized working class as the main vanguard, another focuses on economic objectives, and a third stresses revolutionary values. Three important areas of struggle in the recent past have impacted these internal currents: expropriations, factional strife in the Chavista labor movement, and the community councils. The expropriations, far from obeying preconceived ideological notions corresponding to one of the three currents, were a response to the challenges posed by the private sector linked to the opposition. The gradual and peaceful path to socialism faces two challenges without easy solutions: one is an enemy whose tactics force the government to respond in ways that sometimes intensify conflict and the other is cleavages among members of the movement who have greater capacity for mobilization than in the past. El movimiento político encabezado por el presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez se sujeta a contradicciones internas que se ponen en juego en varios frentes. Miembros de tres grupos sociales importantes—la clase obrera organizada, los sectores medios, y los sectores tradicionalmente desincorporados—se identifican con distintas lineas de pensamiento y defienden intereses distintos. Las corrientes políticas internas del chavismo corresponden a distintas tradiciones izquierdistas. Una se adhiere a la perspectiva marxista que ve la clase obrera como la vanguardia principal, otra se enfoca en objetivos económicos, y una tercera enfatiza los valores revolucionarios. Tres áreas importantes de lucha en el pasado reciente tuvieron impacto en estas corrientes internas: las expropiaciones, los conflictos entre facciones del movimiento laboral chavista, y los consejos comunales. Las expropiaciones, lejos de seguir una ideología preconcebida correspondiente a una de las tres corrientes, fueron una respuesta a los desafíos presentados por el sector privado ligado a la oposición. El camino gradual y pacífico hacia el socialismo encara dos retos sin solución fácil: uno es un enemigo que usa tácticas las cuales obligan al gobierno a responder de tal manera que a veces se intensifica el conflicto, y el otro es las divisiones entre miembros del movimiento quienes ahora gozan de mayor capacidad de movilización que en el pasado.

Obstacles to the Consolidation of the Venezuelan Neighbourhood Movement: National and Local Cleavages

The tenuous organisational structure of the Venezuelan neighbourhood movement explains its failure to live up to the lofty expectations which social movements created in Latin America in the 1980s. To understand why structural looseness prevails, it is necessary to examine social cleavages as well as the disparity between the theoretical model which underpins much discourse and legislation, on the one hand, and the daily practice of neighbourhood associations, on the other. An additional area of enquiry is the division in the national leadership between an apolitical current and one that views electoral politics as a natural avenue for the movement to pursue. Scholars, even those who have recently emphasized the importance of links between social movements and political structures, overlook the importance of organisational unity at the national level.

Venezuela: Defying Globalization’s Logic

20 THE CONTINUED ABILITY OF PRESIDENT HUGO Chávez to carry out significant reforms in the face of U.S. hostility and an aggressive U.S.-supported domestic opposition has important implications for progressive Latin American struggles. Chávez’s success places in doubt the view that in today’s world of global capitalism it is no longer possible for Latin American and Caribbean countries to effectively resist the “freemarket” neoliberal order. The ongoing market-based conditionality of all economic assistance (including debt forgiveness) from the United States and U.S.-dominated international financial institutions may reinforce the view that “there is no alternative” to free-market policies, as Margaret Thatcher famously quipped. But the Chávez experience goes against Thatcher’s dictum, and it raises the interesting question of whether the Venezuelan road is applicable to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The rise to power in recent years of center-left governments in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay puts this question into sharp relief. From the outset, Chávez’s key aim has been to achieve—and hold on to—state power in order to propel radical change. To that end, he has built the nation’s largest political party, the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), which has governed since 1998 in alliance with smaller leftist parties. Before coming to power, he criticized Francisco Arias Cárdenas, his second-in-command in the abortive military coup he led in 1992, for running for a state governor’s office in 1995 rather by Steve Ellner Venezuela: Defying Globalization’s Logic

Introduction: New Perspectives on Politics and Society

Mass disturbances in opposition to government-imposed austerity measures in February 1989 (the Caracazo) and the democratic government’s ensuing brutal repression exposed serious fissures in the Venezuelan political system. Venezuela has long been promoted as a model democracy for Latin America, but it soon became obvious that below the surface Venezuelan society exhibited a deep social divide and that the political system had become unresponsive to the needs of most of the people. This disparity was only made worse by the popular perception that, as a world supplier of oil, the country had ample resources to redress poverty. Recurrent national scandals involving government corruption and the collapse of banking institutions and the complete impunity surrounding these cases further incensed most Venezuelans. As the country experienced an intensification of class polarization, the continued growth of the informal sector, and a growing wave of social protest, it increasingly resembled others throughout Latin America. The social tensions evident in society were reflected in popular culture, including various musical genres, such as llanero music, salsa, and gaitas (as Light Carruyo shows in this issue). Two unsuccessful military coups in 1992 also put in evidence the widespread discontent. Throughout the 1990s the traditional political class scurried to repair the system without fundamentally addressing the causes of the problem. Yet even under these circumstances, many political leaders at all levels assumed that no fundamental change had occurred in Venezuelan politics. This complacency explains why Venezuela’s largest party, the social-democratic Acción Democrática (Democratic Action–AD), nominated a lackluster oldtime politician (Luis Álfaro Ucero) as its presidential candidate in 1998 in spite of the formidable challenge posed by the candidacy of Hugo Chávez. The election in 1993 of the octogenarian Rafael Caldera, former leader of the Christian Democrats, at the head of a diverse coalition of traditional politicalMass disturbances in opposition to government-imposed austerity measures in February 1989 (the Caracazo) and the democratic governments ensuing brutal repression exposed serious fissures in the Venezuelan political system. Venezuela has long been promoted as a model democracy for Latin America, but it soon became obvious that below the surface Venezuelan society exhibited a deep social divide and that the political system had become unresponsive to the needs of most of the people. This disparity was only made worse by the popular perception that, as a world supplier of oil, the country had ample resources to redress poverty. Recurrent national scandals involving government corruption and the collapse of banking institutions and the complete impunity surrounding these cases further incensed most Venezuelans. As the country experienced an intensification of class polarization, the continued growth of the informal sector, and a growing wave of social protest, it increasingly resembled others throughout Latin America. The social tensions evident in society were reflected in popular culture, including various musical genres, such as llanero music, salsa, and gaitas (as Light Carruyo shows in this issue). Two unsuccessful military coups in 1992 also put in evidence the widespread discontent. Throughout the 1990s the traditional political class scurried to repair the system without fundamentally addressing the causes of the problem. Yet even under these circumstances, many political leaders at all levels assumed that no fundamental change had occurred in Venezuelan politics. This complacency explains why Venezuelas largest party, the social-democratic Acci6n Democritica (Democratic Action-AD), nominated a lackluster oldtime politician (Luis Alfaro Ucero) as its presidential candidate in 1998 in spite of the formidable challenge posed by the candidacy of Hugo Chavez. The election in 1993 of the octogenarian Rafael Caldera, former leader of the Christian Democrats, at the head of a diverse coalition of traditional political

Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization

debates, mostly because the topics with which they deal do not broach them, the implications of their anti-critique could be used to make a case for a dialectical approach to human economy-ecosystems interactions based on Marx’s materialist analysis of such interactions. As such, Foster and Burkett’s insights provide food for thought for debates over pluralism and proper methodologies for ecological economics. They equip the next generation of Marxist scholar-activists with the tools needed to enter these debates and carve out a space for Marxist analysis of capitalism’s unsustainable relation with nature – and for the praxis needed to usher in an alternative order founded on sustainable human development.