[To get this blog up and running, let's flash back to the early nineties, when Hugo (who many deride as stupid, let's remember) was plotting a democratic revolution from his prison cell with considerable clarity and intellectual capacity.]
Things can’t have been all that bad for Hugo Chavez as he did time in Yare prison from 1992-94, awaiting a trial that never materialized. Of course, there were downers. His meticulous plot to forcefully take control of the state had fizzled rapidly upon execution, and an eye condition would develop during his confinement that left his sight permanently affected.
With his esteemed military career over, what would he do upon release? The prospect of a stab at the presidency must have occupied his mind persistently. Though the Venezuelan public had known him for a mere thirty seconds (as he called his troops to stand down on national TV), his courage and conviction had immediately made him a national hero in the eyes of the impoverished masses.
Having previously studied Political Science as an undergraduate, and with some two decades of association with radical and influential leftist figures, Chavez was incredibly conscious of the nature of the system he opposed. And even then –some fifteen years ago– he appeared to know precisely the framework of radical changes he planned to implement.
Here are some English translations of his prison writings from 1993, lifted from a giant and intense anti-capitalist tome which Chavez today counts as one of his favourites: Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition (1995, István Mészáros). The words come from his old rebel movement’s publication, “Pueblo, Sufragio y Democracia” (Ediciones MBR-200, 1993).
With the appearance of the populist parties the suffrage was converted into a tool for putting [the populace] to sleep, in order to enslave the Venezuelan people in the name of democracy. For decades the populist parties based their discourse on innumerable paternalistic promises devised to melt away popular consciousness. The alienating political lies painted the ‘promised land’ to be reached via a rose garden. The only thing the Venezuelans had to do was to go to the electoral urns, and hope that everything would be solved with minimal popular effort. … Thus the act of the vote was transformed into the beginning and the end of democracy. (pp. 5-6)
Chavez attacked the conventional political opinion that treated crises (such as the nationwide riots and looting of 1989) as blips waiting to be remedied by the election on the horizon. He also noted that in many areas of Venezuela, as much as 90 per cent of the population demonstrates its “rebellion against the absurdity of the vote though electoral abstention.”
Every minute hundreds of children are born in Venezuela whose health is endangered for lack of food and medicine, while billions are stolen from the national wealth, and in the end what remains of the country is bled dry. There is no reason why one should give any credence to a political class which demonstrates towards society that it has no will at all to institute change. (p. 9)
The sovereign people must transform itself into the object and the subject of power. This option is not negotiable for revolutionaries. (p. 11)
Federal state electoral power will become the political-juridical component through which the citizens will be depositories of popular sovereignty, and whose exercise will thereafter really remain in the hands of the people. Electoral power will be extended over the entire socio-political system of the nation, establishing the channels for a veritable polycentric distribution of power, displacing power from the center towards the periphery, increasing the effective power of decision-making and the autonomy of the particular communities and municipalities. The Electoral Assemblies of each municipality and state will elect Electoral Councils, which will possess a permanent character and will function in absolute independence from the political parties. They will be able to establish and direct the most diverse mechanisms of Direct Democracy: popular assemblies, referenda, plebiscites, popular initiatives, vetoes, revocation, etc. … Thus the concept of participatory democracy will be changed into a form in which democracy based on popular sovereignty constitutes itself as the protagonist of power. It is precisely at such borders that we must draw the limits of advance of Bolivarian democracy. Then we shall be very near to the territory of utopia. (pp. 8-11)
The “polycentric distribution of power” emerging in Venezuela today is based around the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which is designed to be the exclusive means by which the grassroots will be able to exercise and channel their power on upwards. It will presumably end up umbilically connected to the vast network of newly-formed communal councils, signifying that party politics outside of the PSUV will surely become irrelevant if the revolutionary process continues as planned.
Last December’s unapproved constitutional reforms included the much-flaunted “new geometry of power”. This would have given birth, over time, to a remapped political landscape based ostensibly on developmental needs and the geography of industry/agriculture, but no doubt intended to eventually replace the existing mayoral/gubernatorial structures of regional power. The appointees to oversee these new regions, if and when they are realized, will initially have general capacities to allocate spending, much as the communal councils do at present. However, the long term purpose of every component of the new geometry of power is nothing less than to serve the democratic will of all the layers beneath it.
A critical step en route to this “territory of utopia” will undoubtedly be the gubernatorial elections this November (a quadrennial event). Chavez is calling for compromise and unity behind all of the revolutionary candidates, all of which will be democratically decided by the regional bases of the PSUV. And any that launch their candidacy before the given time will be excluded from the vote. Each candidate will have to commit publicly to the fundamentals of the PSUV’s manifesto, but the sheer democratic nature of the process will be in marked contrast to the factors behind which contenders align with the opposition.
