This evening, I could not help but chuckle when I saw on Twitter that the IMT had published yet another article about Venezuela, scratching their heads as to how it was that the socialist ruling party lost in Hugo Chavez’s home state of Barinas. Their conclusion? Not enough socialism. How predictable.
When I was in the organisation, a central part of our ‘line’ was our loud and unashamed support for the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela. I have a confession to make – when I was 13 years old, I briefly thought I was a socialist, and idolised Hugo Chavez. I remember his death in March 2013. That morning, on my way to school, I saw it on the news and recall being saddened, but not surprised. His illness had been a matter of public record, and the Venezuelan authorities had been deliberately mendacious on the subject – after all, Yankee imperialism could easily take advantage of any obvious power vacuum. I still recall the fawning Al-Jazeera programs I would watch about his government (at a time when I was really interested in Middle East and Latin American politics) and his defiance of the United States.
Until just before I joined the IMT, I thought I had left these early teenage delusions behind for good. The IMT rekindled them. I allowed myself to be convinced that Venezuela’s economic travails since 2013 were not the fault of socialism, but of not enough socialism. It was capitalist sabotage that was to blame for the economy’s failure. After all, three-quarters of the economy was still in private hands! (The popular source everyone likes to use for this is an out-of-date Fox News article from years ago, which is obviously not an accurate reflection of what things are like now.) We argued that Chavez and Maduro had failed to take the revolution far enough, and that the only solution to the crisis was for the government to heed the friendly advice of their comrades in the IMT and expropriate the rest of the private sector and put it in the hands of the working-class. We also brought up the usual criticisms of ‘bureaucracy’ and corruption within the party and state apparatus, and called for genuine workers’ democracy. We simultaneously called for the crushing of all of the ‘bourgeois’ opposition, who we regarded as ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Of course, the government did not need any help from us on this – Chavez and Maduro had been undermining the opposition for many years by imprisoning political opponents, shutting down opposition media, rigging elections and suppressing any critical voices within the government, the party and the population at large. We saw no contradiction between (a) paying lip-service to ‘proletarian democracy’ and (b) supporting the outlawing and arrest of anyone who disagreed with or criticised the Eternal Comandante, Hugo Chavez, and the Great Successor, Nicolas Maduro. Our biggest criticism of Maduro was his ‘betrayal’ of the revolution by making concessions to the capitalist class. For this reason, we officially refused to support him, but in practice did side with the government over the ‘right-wing’, US-backed opposition – something which can be seen in all the editorialising that the IMT has done for the past several years on events that beleaguered country.
The terrible truth is that in twenty years of ‘revolution’, the IMT has gained next to no influence and even saw a good chunk of its section there split from the mothership some years ago. Despite Alan Woods’ personal friendship with Hugo Chavez, and the almost uncritical praise for Chavez and his regime from Woods and his cronies, the IMT is not taken seriously by anyone in the Venezuelan government, nor does it have a mass base among the population at large. Despite the grandiose predictions of the egotistical Woods and his henchmen, the Venezuelan workers have not rallied to the IMT to provide them with the ‘revolutionary leadership’ that the Chavistas have failed to provide.
Woods’ ego is closely tied up with the IMT’s line on Venezuela. His personal connection with Chavez, whom he met on more than one occasion (even being driven around the country in Chavez’s personal motorcade) flattered Woods into thinking that Chavez, if not a real Marxist, was edging closer towards the IMT’s position. Other Trotskyist sects dismissed Chavez as a ‘bourgeois populist’ and ‘Bonapartist’, and mocked the IMT for fawning over him. Woods indignantly argued against this ‘sectarian’ position, arguing that the best way to help the Bolivarian Revolution was for Marxists to give their ‘critical support’ to the progressive developments taking place in that country. For Woods, this would seem to include brown-nosing Chavez and suppressing any criticism of him even within his own ranks – which is why the Iranian section was expelled in 2010, after serious disputes over Chavez’s attitude towards the regime in Iran, among other issues. For the sake of continuing to have the ear of the Dear Leader, Hugo Chavez, he was willing to throw away the prospect of influence in a country far more important than Venezuela.
Clearly, the other Trotskyist sects were right to be sceptical of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. It has managed to bring the country to ruin and disgrace the name of socialism worldwide, if socialism needed any further disgracing. All but the most intransigent far-left lunatics are seeking to disassociate themselves from the carnage, even people like John McDonnell, who heaped praise on it as socialism in action, and Noam Chomsky, who now denies ever calling it socialist at all! At one point, every Tom, Dick and Harry in the global far-left was rallying to Chavez and making pilgrimages to Caracas, much like the deluded Fabians in the 1930s made pilgrimages to the USSR and proclaimed that they had found a new civilisation. Now, they are all silent. They are too ashamed to admit their association with yet another socialist failure, and one that has brought about misery and tyranny for millions of blameless people, whose mistake was to put their trust in a demagogue and charlatan like Chavez after so many years of political corruption and neglect from the elites who governed the country prior to 1999.
Of course, we were under no illusions that Chavez was a genuine Marxist. We knew that he was a ‘confused’ man without a coherent set of ideas, but we saluted him as an earnest and sincere socialist seeking to improve the well-being of his people. We consistently argued that the revolution needed to go further to be successful. Of course, the truth is that if Chavez had listened to us and nationalised the economy wholesale, Venezuela would have been plunged into poverty and misery surpassing what it is currently experiencing now. There was also a degree of hypocrisy as to this criticism we kept making of Chavez’s government. After all, the Bolsheviks took years to take any serious action over building socialism. It took eleven years and a civil war, with a temporary restoration of capitalist activity in between, before Stalin took the momentous decision to impose forced collectivisation, which, as historians have established, is the only realistic way that the Bolsheviks’ socialist ambitions could have been realised. Venezuela, a much smaller country with far fewer resources, was not exactly in a better position. For one thing, the USSR had such a big population that it could afford millions of deaths as a result of Stalin’s murderous theft of the peasantry to feed the new, burgeoning working-class and pay for new machinery for the new collective farms. If Venezuela had suffered anything like the Holodomor, I fail to see how the socialist government could have possibly survived. Besides, Stalin had also benefited from the fact that he was running a police state that had wiped out all its most serious domestic enemies during and shortly after the civil war. Chavez came to power in an established liberal democracy that he had to subvert from within before he could enjoy the sort of power Stalin had enjoyed over Russia. He did not accomplish this, but Maduro finished the job. The idea that the schemas and dogmas of Russian Communism can be imposed on a 21st-century Latin American bourgeois republic is complete nonsense. None other than Chavez denounced those who approached socialism in such a dogmatic manner, and renounced the heritage of Marxism-Leninism associated with the USSR. The central dilemma of Trotskyism is this inappropriate imposition of dogmas borrowed from the Russian revolutionary experience onto very different contexts. One of these days, they may grow out of it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Chavez, like any good politician, knew how to charm. He certainly charmed Woods, and gave him the false impression that the IMT’s opinions were important to him. No sooner had he finished his meetings with Woods than he went back to his own ideas, ignoring the IMT’s meaningless criticisms and seeking to build socialism with Venezuelan characteristics. I agree that Chavez was not a pure Marxist, but that does not mean that Marxism did not contribute to the sorry state of Venezuela today, or that it isn’t ‘real socialism’ (whatever this is supposed to mean). Both Chavez and Maduro have been reading their Marx, and applied it to the work of turning Venezuela socialist. Firstly, in true Marxist fashion, Chavez and his successor set about undermining capitalist power through nationalisation and expropriation of private enterprise, as Marxism counsels. Of course, he could not push through the full-blown Marxist programme of the abolition of capitalism and landlordism, because the means to do it did not exist in Venezuela. (As mentioned before, even the Bolsheviks took a while to get round to it.)
The obsessive attempt by our organisation to pigeonhole the government as ‘reformist’ because it wasn’t committing political and economic suicide by choosing to adopt a Bolshevik path or even a Castroite path, is simply silly and ignores political realities. The idea that Chavez was seeking to do no more than what the social-democrats of Scandinavia have done is obviously nonsensical. Even if that was his intention early on in his rule (and there is good reason to believe that he was lying to pacify an anxious Venezuelan ruling elite), he became more and more radical as the years went by and as opposition to him weakened, and made it his stated intention to end capitalism in Venezuela. This is a man who had come to power saying he wanted Third Way social democracy, and had cited Clinton and Blair as his models. Let us also remember that as late as 2018, the United States was still the single largest destination for Venezuelan oil exports, despite the frosty relations between the two countries. If the Venezuelan government of Chavez and Maduro had simply seized all American assets from the outset, it is hard to see how it could have financed its generous social programs given the importance of oil exports to the economy, and the likelihood that America would respond to any such sweeping actions by cutting off all these imports. Despite leftist propaganda about America being hungry for Venezuela’s oil, America’s dependence on other countries for its oil needs has been decreasing over time. Why accelerate this trend? Venezuela had nothing to gain by it.
Secondly, Chavez and Maduro, in true Marxist fashion, believed that the state is a tool of class power, and that the ‘bourgeois state’ must be transferred into a workers’ state – something Chavez affirmed publicly on many occasions. From the moment he took office, Chavez set about undermining Venezuela’s fragile liberal democracy, politicising the military and indoctrinating it with socialist propaganda, stacking the courts with loyal, pro-government judges and undermining the official military and security forces and local government authorities, which Chavez rightly distrusted, by arming pro-government militias in the form of the Bolivarian Circles. The ‘bourgeois state’, if not smashed completely, has been severely weakened. Venezuela has two tiers of state – an ‘official’, regular state, and an irregular state that is loyal to the ruling party rather than the constitution. This loyalty is partly ideological, partly because the government has successfully bribed the upper echelons of the military and party members with plum positions and control over the economy. One reason why neither Chavez nor Maduro would follow Woods’ mad advice to ‘go further’ and seize complete control over the economy is that doing this would have pushed those high-ranking members of the armed forces, whose loyalty is largely based on the government turning a blind eye to their corruption and enrichment, over to the opposition. These wealthy drug traffickers and swindlers could care less about socialism or workers’ democracy. What they care most about is power and money. Building ‘genuine socialism’ and handing over the economy to workers’ control would not be in the interests of such people. Going too far would just provoke a coup against the government, like what happened in 2002 when Chavez’s bullying and authoritarian ways led a few officers who remained committed to liberal democracy to oust him. The Venezuelan armed forces was traditionally an anti-communist body. It is not simply a matter of abolishing the armed forces and creating a new one. Even the Bolsheviks had to rely on ex-Tsarist generals, despite all of Lenin’s nonsensical assertions in State and Revolution about how a ‘workers’ state’ would have to replace the regular armed forces. I don’t think untrained Venezuelan proletarian and peasant guerrillas would have stood much chance against a professional army in a civil war scenario, do you? What is funny is that Trotsky would constantly attack critics of the USSR for being ‘idealist’ and ignoring the specific context within which the USSR had been birthed that brought about its degeneration, yet the IMT is just as guilty of this when looking at Venezuela and lecturing the Chavistas on their failure to go far enough in building socialism.
As for the claim that ‘imperialist and capitalist sabotage’ is to blame for the failure of the socialist project in that beleaguered country, this is laughable on its face. Venezuela’s government is to blame for its own failures. It built an unsustainable economic model based on the assumption that the oil money would never run out, and it could therefore spend as much money as it wanted, whenever it wanted, for whatever purposes it wanted. As mentioned before, during this whole period, America was its no. 1 customer. It made no effort to invest in long-term economic growth, so once the oil money ran out, Venezuela had wasted a whole decade of potential economic gains. The obsessive printing of money (much like in Stalinist Russia) has created a worthless currency. All of the dollars in the country are controlled by the government and most of it is given to favoured companies and individuals connected to the regime, ostensibly for the purposes of importing much-needed commodities into the country. Much of this money has in practice been swindled. The regime rails against capitalist saboteurs, yet turns a blind eye to the capitalist saboteurs in its own ranks, preferring to target businesses associated with the opposition, like Empresas Polar, who are blamed for shortages caused by the government’s own mismanagement of the economy, which includes tying up the private sector in gargantuan amounts of regulation. Of the over 500 state-owned companies in the country, most lose money. This is where most of the corruption in question lies, not with the private sector, or non-socialised part of the economy. If the argument is that Venezuela cannot be a real example of socialism because some of the economy is still privately-owned, just point out that the dysfunctional part is precisely the part that is socialised, and that the only effect of wholesale nationalisation would be to spread the dysfunction to the rest of the economy. (And in any case, socialism does not necessarily equate to 100% state ownership of the economy – even Stalin had a use for some capitalist activity within the economy, provided it didn’t become too dominant, and this was true of other Soviet leaders.) Recently, the government decided to privatise 13 food companies that were nationalised a decade ago due to mismanagement under state control. Despite the socialist rhetoric, reality is slowly prevailing over dogma.
From critical support to uncritical support
It is bizarre that in spite of the manifest failures of the Bolivarian Revolution, and its destruction of millions of working-class lives within Venezuela, the IMT continues to stand by its support for this project. This is a movement that even some Marxists saw was going nowhere. The likes of Peter Taaffe and others who dismissed Chavez as just a showy populist with no real ground in Marxist ideology were not entirely correct, as I have shown, but they were not entirely wrong either. They were right to see that this project rested on the charisma of one individual, that it was dangerously dependent on oil money and that it had simply shifted power from one elite to another. In place of the old bourgeoisie, a new Boliburgeoisie had come to replace it, much like the NEPmen of interwar Russia replaced the capitalists of old, or the oligarchs of post-Soviet Russia, Cuba and China replaced the communist bureaucrats. Yet the IMT believes in the Trotskyist myth of the ‘missed opportunity’. ‘If only there had been the correct leadership!’ they say. ‘If only the revolution had been taken to its logical conclusion.’ When I was a member of the organisation, we were assured in article after article that the workers were crying out for more radical measures, and were becoming ‘demoralised’ not because of the failure of socialism, but because of the government not being socialist enough. It was a nice way of explaining away every defeat the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) suffered at the polls, including most recently in Chavez’s home state of Barinas. They also never explain how it is that, if the appetite for radical ideas among the masses is so strong, their section in the country is so small and lacking in influence. The usual excuse is that the masses have been hoodwinked by the PSUV bureaucracy and the evil reformists around Chavez and Maduro. Yet why is the response of the masses apathy rather than rallying behind the IMT? This is not explained.
Yes, technically our support was ‘critical support’ – support with strings attached. When the Venezuelan government did something we thought was very wrong, we would criticise it in our articles, but couch it in the friendliest terms possible. Of course, the line between critical support and uncritical support was in fact very thin. We loyally and uncritically repeated the Venezuelan regime’s line on certain issues, for example, falsely claiming that elections in Venezuela were ‘free and fair’ and that the opposition were ‘fascist’, ‘far-right’ and ‘stooges of American imperialism’, among other claims. The IMT came out against Maduro’s decision to call a Constituent Assembly, not because it was against the constitution, but because it was seen as being a distraction from the real, socio-economic questions at stake – i.e. the need to nationalise the private sector and impose a planned economy. Jorge Martín, the IMT’s spokesperson on Spanish and Latin American affairs, who writes the bulk of the organisation’s ‘analysis’ on the situation in Venezuela, has even had the gall to say in his articles that allowing the opposition to come to power would be worse than Maduro’s regime, because, to quote a 2017 article of his:
they will apply a policy of brutal austerity attacks against the working people, as well as a savage persecution against the militants and activists of the revolution and their organizations, and will suppress democratic freedoms.
What a sick and evil passage. We are talking about a country where millions of workers and peasants are already suffering de facto austerity in the form of shortages of goods, inflation and even unemployment. Moreover, far from enjoying ‘democratic freedoms’, elections are rigged, violence is rampant, the people are intimidated by pro-government gangs and militias, innocents are killed everyday, all opposition media has been shut down and leading opposition figures have been killed or imprisoned or chased out of the country. What could be worse than what the people of Venezuela are now going through? I can’t think of anything worse. This logic is not dissimilar from Trotsky’s ridiculous belief that Stalinism, for all its horrors, was better than allowing the restoration of capitalism or any kind of liberal democracy to take root in the USSR. Note how in the article I quoted from, he only refers to violence by the opposition, not by the government. What a hypocrite! He also makes no mention of the fact that to call the Constituent Assembly, Maduro was legally required (by the constitution his own mentor, Chavez, wrote) to call a referendum asking if such an assembly was wanted. This assembly would usurp all of the functions of the then opposition-controlled legislature, and would sit for as long as was necessary to come up with a new constitution. This blatant power-grab was accompanied by the decision in 2017 by the government-packed Supreme Court to declare the entire National Assembly in contempt because four of its lawmakers had supposedly been elected fraudulently. As the issue was never brought to trial, the opposition swore in three of these lawmakers despite the complaint of their fraudulent election, and this was the excuse used to declare the whole opposition-held legislature in contempt. The Supreme Court awarded itself the powers stripped from the opposition, and in practice handed them to Maduro.
The IMT made no mention of the fact that millions of Venezuelans, in an unofficial referendum, voted against a new Constituent Assembly. Nor did it make any mention of the blatant fraud used in order to secure a government victory in this fraudulent election for said assembly. Smartmatic, the company responsible for Venezuela’s voting machines, noted a discrepancy between the government-controlled Electoral Council’s official tally, and the actual turnout. It is highly unlikely that more than four million people voted – less than the 7.5 million that voted in the unofficial referendum against a new constituent assembly. Smartmatic had not questioned previous election tallies.
The IMT, despite disagreeing with Maduro’s decision to convene a Constituent Assembly, did not bother to question its constitutionality, and, in an August 2017 article, Martín ridiculed the opposition for boycotting the fraudulent election. Martín also blatantly repeated government propaganda from the Venezuelan state broadcaster, Telesur, about high turnout:
…millions of Venezuelans came out to vote. At the Poliedro stadium in Caracas tens of thousands waited many hours to vote. The stadium had been turned into a massive polling station to allow people who live in right-wing dominated areas in the East of Caracas to vote, as it was not safe for them to do so in their usual polling stations. The people of Palo Gordo in Táchira, were threatened by armed opposition supporters. Nevertheless they came out to vote, crossing rivers and mountains to reach their polling station . Opposition violence was particularly severe in areas of Táchira, Mérida, Barquisimeto, as well as in the East of Caracas.
He also adopted a softer tone to the Constituent Assembly now that it had been called:
The Constituent Assembly would only make sense if it was to be used in order to take decisive action to solve the current crisis, which has its roots in the deep economic recession. Only with a clear revolutionary programme is it possible to go forward. Left wing Constituent Assembly members should propose the following measures:
Among which include this very ‘democratic’ measure:
The arrest of those responsible for the counter-revolutionary violence, opposition politicians and their financiers in the capitalist class to be tried by revolutionary tribunals
In other words, anyone who dares to criticise the corrupt government of Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro’s next power grab was to break the constitution by calling an illegal election, authorised by his puppet Constituent Assembly. According to the constitution, the National Electoral Council is responsible for organising such elections, and the National Assembly has a role in choosing who sits on this body. However, as aforementioned, Maduro had gotten a sham court to immobilise the opposition-controlled legislature so that he could have an electoral council that would do his bidding. He wanted to take advantage of the momentum he felt he had gained since the spectacularly rigged Constituent Assembly election, with the opposition divided and indecisive. Opposition website Caracas Chronicles goes into detail about the lengths Maduro went to rigging the vote, including some suspicious voter registration tallies registered by the Electoral Council. The manipulation of people’s hunger to control their votes is another sick and evil aspect of this satanic regime. Every Venezuelan citizen has an ID card that they must present to have access to the subsidised food parcels (CLAP parcels) the government distributes to pro-government neighbourhoods. The government has given the impression that it knows how people vote. It is unclear if this is true or not, but it is a tactic of intimidation used to threaten people – no votes, no food. Moreover, every now and then, a member of the colectivos or state security forces will gun someone down just to show whose boss. A 2018 report says that 4,667 people were killed at the hands of the country’s security forces in 2016. Between 2015 and 2017, there were over 8000 extrajudicial executions by the security forces. A 2020 Amnesty International report said that between January and September, 2000 people were killed in security operations. This is a rate of around more than two and a half thousand people a year. More people have died in the last few years at the hands of this regime (largely black and brown working-class Venezuelans) than in the entire seventeen years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship over Chile. In other words, Maduro is more than twice as murderous as Pinochet. It seems black lives don’t matter to Marxists if you are Venezuelan.
How did the IMT react to the rigged presidential election? Again, with ‘criticism’ of Maduro, but even harsher criticism of the ‘imperialists’ trying to topple him. Again, no reference was made to the dictatorial and cheating methods used by this evil regime. The emphasis is on the mendacity of the imperialists and the loyalty of the Venezuelan workers to the cause of socialism, which is being betrayed by a hapless Maduro and his concessions to the capitalist class. Martín published an article marking Maduro’s ‘victory’. The legitimacy of this ‘election’ was not questioned, merely Maduro’s un-socialist policies and ‘appeasement’ of the capitalists. In the organisation, we were under the utterly false impression that Maduro had ‘won’ fair and square, when in fact the whole affair was a blatant swindle.
In stepped Juan Guaidó, the Speaker of the National Assembly, who proclaimed himself President in January 2019. The constitution provides for a scenario in which the president is incapacitated or dead. In this case, the presidency was vacant as its previous occupant’s sham election was not recognised in domestic or international law. We mocked Guaidó’s proclamation, noting that Maduro was alive and well, and denouncing the events in Venezuela as a ‘coup’. Besides, we argued, even if it was true that Maduro was incapacitated, it was his Vice-President who should replace him, surely? Just one problem. This was only true if the President became incapacitated after his inauguration, not before. Since Maduro’s term was over and there was no one to be inaugurated, that meant that the President of the National Assembly was in fact the next in line:
When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic.
Either Martín and the other IMT leaders had not read the Venezuelan constitution, and were just speaking from ignorance, or mindlessly repeating propaganda from Telesur and Russia Today, or they actually thought that no one would bother to read the constitution for themselves and we would all be hoodwinked into going along with their bullshit explanations for why Maduro’s power-grabbing was constitutional. Believe it or not, my former comrades teamed up with a bunch of tankies to actually protest outside the Venezuelan embassy in defence of the corrupt and unconstitutional government against the ‘fascist coup’:
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what ‘critical support’ for a murderous socialist dictatorship looks like. Yes, make criticisms here and there, but when push comes to shove, defend it at all costs from ‘imperialism’, even when it violates its own constitution to keep itself in power, and kills and imprisons any dissidents! To think that we all just believed the narrative being pushed by the organisation’s leadership, with no critical thought whatsoever, mindlessly defending Nicolas Maduro and his shambolic despotism in alliance with Stalinist vermin. It goes to show what little difference there is between Trots and tankies.
Three years on, the ‘coup’ has failed and Maduro is still in power, ruling over a poverty-stricken country, ruined by years of socialism. It is a shame he was not ousted. The country might now be on its way to recovery. Instead the nightmare lingers on. Hezbollah and Russian operatives are now active in the country, which is now a base for anti-Western terrorists, Iranian and Russian imperialists and drug traffickers. Venezuelans must still scavenge bins for food. Despite all our bullshit about how socialism was necessary to save the environment, the socialist regime of Venezuela is busily destroying it.
For all our quibbling as to whether or not Venezuela represented ‘real’ socialism, the fact remains that Marxism was implemented in that country, to a greater or lesser degree. It could not be done in its ‘pure’ form because it is impossible. Even the Bolsheviks weren’t able to, though they came closer than anywhere else on the planet – and we know of the disasters that ensued. Within the specific conditions of Venezuela, Chavez then Maduro tried to build some sort of socialism. However moderate Chavez started out, he decided by the end of his life that he wanted to rid Venezuela of capitalism. He was not sure how to do it, though – no more certain than the Bolsheviks were on how to get rid of the NEP during the 1920s. Maduro does not have the bravery or the ruthlessness of a Stalin. He will not carry out a forced collectivisation of the country’s resources. Stalin was an ideologue willing to risk his country’s fortunes and his own power to remake the USSR into a socialist country, no matter how many millions died. Maduro is not an ideologue. He is a rather lazy, cowardly, pathetic man, who just wants to hold onto power. He is content to spout socialist rhetoric whilst gradually reintroducing capitalism (albeit in a controlled manner, for the benefit of his cronies) and using the power of the state to smash all of his enemies. He will even invite the world’s criminals from around the world to join in the party whilst his people starve. Venezuela may not be ‘real’ socialism, but it isn’t ‘real’ capitalism either. It’s a degenerated bourgeois state that is quasi-Marxist in character. But even halfway Marxism has proven deadly. Imagine if Venezuela had a Stalin who was willing to go all the way. How many might now be dead?
The Bolivarian Revolution was always doomed. Chavez could have remained on the path of moderation. (And despite our claims in the IMT, not all of his early actions were in fact ‘moderate’). He chose instead to destroy Venezuelan democracy by undermining all of its institutions in the name of workers’ power, to sabotage its economy by tying it up in price controls and other idiotic regulations, to destroy its oil industry by stuffing it with unqualified apparatchiks, to ally himself to terrorists and criminals and Islamist regimes, and to preach his own, heterodox, Latin American brand of Marxism as the solution to Venezuela’s problems, and a model for the whole world. We see where it has ended up – in the grotesque spectacle of a nation blessed with the world’s largest oil reserves, stunning natural beauty, immense natural resources and a once-prosperous economy becoming an inflation-ridden, disease-infested basketcase that exports refugees to other lands, and is synonymous with the failure of socialist policies. Maduro and his cronies have done more to destroy the Venezuelan working-class than the most ruthless, right-wing, American-backed dictator could have hoped to do.
Hello Aaron it sounds like you had a very bad experience in the Trotskyist group. I myself am a socialist I have read many of your articles and understand your deep criticisms. I see alot of hypocrisy on the left. However I would like to make some important points.
Firstly the wealth of a country for implementing socialism is very important. In all of the countries we have seen it implemented they simply werent developed enough. In the majority of cases life improved under socialism for them in COMPARISON to before. I am not saying that life as a British person is worse then living in the Soviet Union. But what I am saying is that life for the average person in the USSR did improve compare to the Tsar backwater. It was plagued with shortages, bureacracy etc but it also did good. Given context it was against the might and power of the USA and other capitalist nations. After WW2 they gave a huge marshall aid program to recover the many European nations after the war. t experienced a civil war where it became even poorer. So here we had an extremely underdevloped country after just being invaded. It had to put resources into its army and in industrialisng.
You mentioned you looked into libertarian socialism. I disagree when you say that Socialism is authoritarian. There are examples were it expanded democracy Catalonia and the Paris Commune while not lasting long do give a glimpse into a more democratic society. I recommend you read Hommage to Catalonia by Orwell. I think its a great example of the type of society that socialism could be. The workers took an active role in planning these economies in a decentralised manner meaning in local towns. There is no need for a big bureacracy. I dont want to be making up excuses but the reason it happened was one leninism is its own doctrine but more importantly these societies had to be authoritarian to defend themselves from foreign threats. After all Catalonia was crushed by the fascists. Peter Kropotkin is a socialist philosopher who is opposed to Marx maybe check him out.
As you mentioned most of your frustrations seem to be on the “Trotsky cult”. I will point out in all aspects of political and philosophical discourse there will always have at least some of those flaws. I am not here to defend Corbyns antisemitism remarks. But lets be honest I cant think of a side of the political spectrum without its share of horrible remarks. What Im trying to get at is those problems are not inherent to leftism but any political ideology. I may have a different experience then you but I find that there is plenty of disagreement on the left. Market socialists,syndacilists Lenninists, Trotskyists, Anarchists social democrats all have constant infighting and bickering at each other.
Responding to this article you made the best case against the arguments that socialists make on Venezuela. My perspective is that Chavez was indeed someone who believed in socialism. As you mentioned he used the oil to fund social programs. It wouldve equally bankrupted the country if he used the oil on the millitary or other non socialist program and not diversifying the economy. The social programs did work during the boom. But as I mentioned when the bust came there was no money for lack of a better word to socialise. Venezuela though does have a private sector heavily regulated. But if it was socialist that would mean that the workers would plan out production or all the businesses would be co operatives. This isnt the case just a bunch of government mismanagement to win votes. Corruption also plays a role in any economys performace. What venezuela is experiencing is dutch disease. It happened twice in the 20th century. One of them was in the 80s and the country was in a very similar catastrophic situation.
Also sanctions do make a difference. If they didnt why does America do it In fact there is a document you can search up right now of how the CIA intentionally tried to destabilise Cuba quote f the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.
I cant see why not with the wealth and development we have how socialism wouldnt work alot better. Firstly technology has vastly vastly improved. Paul Cockshott is a computer scientist who wrote how AI can accurately plan. Sure there wouldnt be a perfect allocation of resources but is that really the case now! If the workers were in control of every nation on the planet where would be the motivation to invade one another or set up a bureacracy. We can see some examples sucess of social programs. Now these arent socialist but they do show what a society can do for the public good at a certain stage of development. Austria has an excellent public housing scheme. With their wealth the Scandanavian countries use their wealth for high quality public service. The difference is if these were socialist in a decentralised manner then there would be far less bureacracy. The whole point of socialism is to elect local representatives who are accountable at all times.
Your arguments against dialectical materialism and utopia are also excellent crafted. We need a more intellectual debate on socialism rather then the whole government bad rhetoric of usa. There are holes in your argument though. As a worker myself before I read Marx I experiened alienation in the job I just couldnt pin point it. The reason workers need the intellectuals is because quite simply they feel that they have an unfair stake they just dont know a solution at the top of their head. If you asked them they would say that they want higher wages, better conditions etc.. It is diametrically opposed to what owners want if they were to squeeze more profit. Also its hard for a worker to want a socialst revolution if the ideas arent expressed properly in society which Im sure you can agree with. The superstructure or media they consume, films, books etc certainly influence them. Their anger gets directed at elites, politicians, immigrants, or cultural issues. Since these are the issues which are highlighted in our culture and society.
In our developed countries what also helped prevent revolution is far more government involvement in the economy. In the Uk there are workers rights, public healthcare, minimum wage laws, and social welfare. If social welfare was scrapped and the NHS was privatised then demand for change would undoubtedly skyrocket since wages would decrease drastically. Even as a socialist there are certainly some cheating the welfare system. Or even if they arent they will be more vociferous in looking for work. Wages will go down as supply for labour goes up. Also we pay cheap labour in the global south to help keep wages high in our wealthy countries. If a revolution happened in those countries and if most of the public sector was privatised there most certainly would be at least a higher chance of a revolution.
Going back to Marx and utopia. You made a decent critique. However marx was not a utopian. Utopia means that everything is perfect. Marx never said that socialism or communism would be perfect. There will still be car crashes, abusive parents, addiction, sick murderers etc. Socialism doesnt get rid of natrual disasters either. Nor does it even guarantee the protection of the environment. Its not utopian.
To conclude I understand where your coming from and I hope this message doesnt anger you. Being in a cult is dangerous and I have learnt some things from your articles. In fact I would love if you could respond to my critiques I put above. I am willing to learn and change my ideology. You have highlighted to me the importance of not becoming a blind follower of everything.
Peace
‘Firstly the wealth of a country for implementing socialism is very important. In all of the countries we have seen it implemented they simply werent developed enough. In the majority of cases life improved under socialism for them in COMPARISON to before. I am not saying that life as a British person is worse then living in the Soviet Union. But what I am saying is that life for the average person in the USSR did improve compare to the Tsar backwater. It was plagued with shortages, bureacracy etc but it also did good. Given context it was against the might and power of the USA and other capitalist nations. After WW2 they gave a huge marshall aid program to recover the many European nations after the war. t experienced a civil war where it became even poorer. So here we had an extremely underdevloped country after just being invaded. It had to put resources into its army and in industrialisng.’
I am no longer convinced by the argument that the USSR’s miseries are entirely down to unfortunate ‘objective conditions’. The fact is, Marxism has failed in every possible set of objective conditions it has been attempted, from eastern Europe, to China, to Cuba. Czechoslovakia, a relatively developed country when it was taken over by communists, still endured years of stagnation and misery as a result of Marxist rule. Even if a Marxist regime is given favourable starting conditions, it will still fail, because Marxism is inherently totalitarian and because planned economies do not work.
Yes, the average Soviet citizen was probably better off than they were under the Tsar. But that is precisely what we would expect of any normal country. If Tsarism had never been overthrown, and WWI had never happened, and the Russian economy had continued its course of economic development, the same outcome will have been achieved. It did not require forced collectivisation, famine, civil war and totalitarian dictatorship to achieve this outcome. The USSR should have done better given the resources it had – a sixth of the earth’s surface, the world’s biggest population, vast amounts of natural resources etc, yet it did worse than bloody Japan. (And bear in mind that all of the official Soviet statistics are fabricated, meaning the relative performance of the USSR vis-a-vis other countries is even worse than it might appear at first glance.) How is this a cause for celebration? The story of the USSR is of immense waste – waste of human life (including productive farmers and talented intellectuals), waste of animal life, waste of produce, waste of manufactured goods, waste of everything. The planned economy proved more wasteful than capitalism could hope to be in its wildest dreams. The biggest obstacle to the USSR succeeding was Marxism itself. The Marxist doctrine of anti-capitalism prevented the state from allowing the forces of free market capitalism to create the wealth that was necessary. Its hostility to the entire bourgeois world guaranteed its diplomatic and economic isolation, at least in the decades before it became a superpower. Here is a good paper by historian Mark Harrison, showing that the Soviet economy probably didn’t even recover from WWII:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/pp2011postprint.pdf
‘You mentioned you looked into libertarian socialism. I disagree when you say that Socialism is authoritarian. There are examples were it expanded democracy Catalonia and the Paris Commune while not lasting long do give a glimpse into a more democratic society. I recommend you read Hommage to Catalonia by Orwell. I think its a great example of the type of society that socialism could be. The workers took an active role in planning these economies in a decentralised manner meaning in local towns. There is no need for a big bureacracy. I dont want to be making up excuses but the reason it happened was one leninism is its own doctrine but more importantly these societies had to be authoritarian to defend themselves from foreign threats. After all Catalonia was crushed by the fascists. Peter Kropotkin is a socialist philosopher who is opposed to Marx maybe check him out.’
Libertarian socialism has an even poorer record of success than Leninist socialism, even if it has killed less people. Bureaucracy is inherent to the planned economy, because the rigid inflexibility of a plan is not something that can be reconciled with democratic and popular participation. The chaos that results will inevitably result in a bureaucracy reappearing. I still need to read more about the Spanish Civil War (I have read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and I got a very different impression of things from you).
‘As you mentioned most of your frustrations seem to be on the “Trotsky cult”. I will point out in all aspects of political and philosophical discourse there will always have at least some of those flaws. I am not here to defend Corbyns antisemitism remarks. But lets be honest I cant think of a side of the political spectrum without its share of horrible remarks. What Im trying to get at is those problems are not inherent to leftism but any political ideology. I may have a different experience then you but I find that there is plenty of disagreement on the left. Market socialists,syndacilists Lenninists, Trotskyists, Anarchists social democrats all have constant infighting and bickering at each other.’
Of course, but my experience was with Trotskyism, which is why I write about it. Moreover, it is one thing to have political disagreements, another thing to use cultish measures to shut out all dissent and create an organisation of mindless drones and conformists, which is what the IMT and other Trot groups are.
‘Responding to this article you made the best case against the arguments that socialists make on Venezuela. My perspective is that Chavez was indeed someone who believed in socialism. As you mentioned he used the oil to fund social programs. It wouldve equally bankrupted the country if he used the oil on the millitary or other non socialist program and not diversifying the economy. The social programs did work during the boom. But as I mentioned when the bust came there was no money for lack of a better word to socialise. Venezuela though does have a private sector heavily regulated. But if it was socialist that would mean that the workers would plan out production or all the businesses would be co operatives. This isnt the case just a bunch of government mismanagement to win votes. Corruption also plays a role in any economys performance. What venezuela is experiencing is dutch disease. It happened twice in the 20th century. One of them was in the 80s and the country was in a very similar catastrophic situation.’
I don’t think Venezuela will ever manage pure socialism, especially not when the workers are too half-starved and disease-ridden to possibly manage the economy, and all the educated experts that could have helped run any such economy have fled the country. The only way out is for Venezuela to give up on socialism and restore capitalism.
‘Also sanctions do make a difference. If they didnt why does America do it In fact there is a document you can search up right now of how the CIA intentionally tried to destabilise Cuba quote f the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.’
Ah, but shouldn’t Marxist regimes expect this? Do they expect that they are owed trade and friendly relations with the West? You reap what you sow. This is another reason why Marxism will never work. Any Marxist regime will inevitably be cut off from the global economy and suffer as a result. That is Marxism for you.
‘I cant see why not with the wealth and development we have how socialism wouldnt work alot better. Firstly technology has vastly vastly improved. Paul Cockshott is a computer scientist who wrote how AI can accurately plan. Sure there wouldnt be a perfect allocation of resources but is that really the case now! If the workers were in control of every nation on the planet where would be the motivation to invade one another or set up a bureacracy. We can see some examples sucess of social programs. Now these arent socialist but they do show what a society can do for the public good at a certain stage of development. Austria has an excellent public housing scheme. With their wealth the Scandanavian countries use their wealth for high quality public service. The difference is if these were socialist in a decentralised manner then there would be far less bureacracy. The whole point of socialism is to elect local representatives who are accountable at all times.’
I have heard of Cockshott. I am still sceptical that socialism is any more workable now than it was in the 1920s. I don’t think that the most sophisticated AI could run the economy better than the decisions of millions of human beings in the marketplace. Humans aren’t robots or computers, and their needs can’t be anticipated in that straightforward way. That is why planning does not work. You need market signals to have an accurate idea of what commodities are wanted at any point in time. A planned economy doesn’t have that, so you are forced to rely on guesswork, or on staid algorithms which don’t capture the complexity of human needs and desires.
‘Your arguments against dialectical materialism and utopia are also excellent crafted. We need a more intellectual debate on socialism rather then the whole government bad rhetoric of usa. There are holes in your argument though. As a worker myself before I read Marx I experiened alienation in the job I just couldnt pin point it. The reason workers need the intellectuals is because quite simply they feel that they have an unfair stake they just dont know a solution at the top of their head. If you asked them they would say that they want higher wages, better conditions etc.. It is diametrically opposed to what owners want if they were to squeeze more profit. Also its hard for a worker to want a socialst revolution if the ideas arent expressed properly in society which Im sure you can agree with. The superstructure or media they consume, films, books etc certainly influence them. Their anger gets directed at elites, politicians, immigrants, or cultural issues. Since these are the issues which are highlighted in our culture and society.’
One could of course make the argument that the mass of workers will always be too unsophisticated to run society, and that society will always be in the hands of an educated elite, instead of the ludicrously utopian notion that society can be run by one and all.
‘In our developed countries what also helped prevent revolution is far more government involvement in the economy. In the Uk there are workers rights, public healthcare, minimum wage laws, and social welfare. If social welfare was scrapped and the NHS was privatised then demand for change would undoubtedly skyrocket since wages would decrease drastically. Even as a socialist there are certainly some cheating the welfare system. Or even if they arent they will be more vociferous in looking for work. Wages will go down as supply for labour goes up. Also we pay cheap labour in the global south to help keep wages high in our wealthy countries. If a revolution happened in those countries and if most of the public sector was privatised there most certainly would be at least a higher chance of a revolution.’
If a revolution happened in the Third World, those countries would impoverish themselves with their hare-brained attempts to build socialism. The resulting global economic collapse would be so catastrophic that socialism would not be possible. Authoritarian right-wing regimes are far more likely to emerge from this than socialist ones. Rationing will be imposed. Hatred against immigrants and foreigners will be ramped up. Wars will break out worldwide.
‘Going back to Marx and utopia. You made a decent critique. However marx was not a utopian. Utopia means that everything is perfect. Marx never said that socialism or communism would be perfect. There will still be car crashes, abusive parents, addiction, sick murderers etc. Socialism doesnt get rid of natrual disasters either. Nor does it even guarantee the protection of the environment. Its not utopian.’
Fair point. But Marxists act as if socialism will fix everything, which of course, it won’t. Some things are too inherent in human nature to be removed, no matter how much social engineering you employ.
‘To conclude I understand where your coming from and I hope this message doesnt anger you. Being in a cult is dangerous and I have learnt some things from your articles. In fact I would love if you could respond to my critiques I put above. I am willing to learn and change my ideology. You have highlighted to me the importance of not becoming a blind follower of everything.’
I appreciate your points and I hope that you continue to broaden your mind and remain free of cultism!
Thank you for responding. I never really understood the difference between Trotskyism and leninism I havent actually looked into it yet. I decided to read a long Marx recently. Im on the German Ideology so far anyway I cant pick much holes with it. I have watched videos explaining some of Marxs theories and read books by todays people explaining his theories and short books by Engels and Marx so I think I have a decent understanding of his works.
You point out about the Soviet Economy and that we cant blame objective condtions. From researching the Soviet Union there are people who say that it was impressive for what it could achieve while others say that it wasnt at all. I definitely need to look into both sides in more detail and see what I will judge. My impression so far it certainly wasnt as good as leninists say it was but it certainly wasnt as bad either. From looking into Lenin and Stalins policies Lenin appeared to know what he was doing better. I agree that Capitalism is fantastic at creating wealth but just awful at distributing it unless there is state intervention. Lenin shouldve let the Nep enrich Russia especially with its worker co operative sector. The argument some make for Stalin is after the invasion he was ruthless enough to industrialise and use questionable and awful methods to do. Likewise he was the one that made it more authoritarian as to industrialise quickly he implemented the Gosplan which made it more bureacratic it was supposed to give it back after the war.
Now based on reading accounts from people who lived or their parents lived in the soviet union say in the 50s and 60s the consesnsus seems to be like the folllowing. But keep in mind for it seems to be radically different depending on whom obviously They appreciated the job security, low unemployment and low crime rates, the good social safety net as well as a quality education system. They were well fed after ww2. What they disliked was the breadlines, propaganda, censorship, not being allowed to leave the country, lack of western consumer goods and boredom. The dullnesss and kinda misery of it all seemed to be from the latter. Whethter this is a failure of socialism or not currently Im saying no. I think that if the country didnt try to compete with the West by pouring huge numbers of resources into weaponry and heavy industry and not enough on light industry. It was very stupid of it to ban religion as well as ban people from wearing jeans. Surely if all that money on the millitary and corruption as well as trade with other countries the lives of its citizens would improve more.
For the failures of socialism so far I dont know if we can blame Marx the person. I mean if we are going to blame Marx for that should we blame Adam Smith for the crisis under capitalsm. The way our current system of Capitalism was set up by violence, struggle, revolution and slaughter. Though I dont think it was as bad as some of the socialist countries. But I wouldnt blame Adam Smith for the Great Depression or 2008 crisis. I would argue that those were the fault of capitalism but I wouldnt blame Adam Smith or any free market economist for those crisis. The Iraq war happened under capitalist governments. Is it inegral to capitalism some argue yes some argue no. But clearly war wasnt the intention of Adam Smith and Ricardo. So I wouldnt say that was a failure of Adam Smith but rather the policies of George Bush and the elite who were looking for oil. It is legitimate to blame Marx for the ECP for example. That is a critique of Marxian economy. Just to be clear what I mean is when assesing the failure of socialist nations of the past I think it is reasonable to say well that is a failure on the socialist leader or the outside influences which exacerbated that failure.
Your point about society being run by the workers is interesting. Like I think with todays technology we can plan much better. Yes not as efficently as the market. But from an environmental point of view the market is producing huge amount of food waste, plastic waste and pointless junk. I held this opinion before I knew what socialism was actually. There is no direct communication in the market and planned obsolesence. We need to keep buying, buying, buying. When new cars are destroyed old cars are destroyed. I think there are plenty of people given the option would gladly take some of those free old cars for free rather then a whole new one even if its not profitable. Thats a far better use of resources. A local plan even done by politicians doesnt necessarily have to be bureacratic. Since it will have a huge amount of worker input. If we dont like how our politicians are doing things they are instantly recallable. Unlike in democracies in the UK where theyre given 5 years or so to do what they want. Making them instantly recallable will certainly improve the performance. Sure with the book sector I dont know what books people like and dont like. But isnt it far less for authors to make say for example three books for each library in a town. We all now there are people who love to read for instance. If there are people who really like a specific book the librarian could ask the author to produce more. Im just pulling shite out of my ass at this point but I think with the better technology I think the plan could be less wasteful not more wasteful. Surely if the planner wasnt making good food itd be in everyones interest for good food to be made and theyd be put under pressure to do so. I dunno!
About Cuba and Churchill. Cuba was a somewhat wealthy country before. However that means little since all of the wealth was in the towns and cities. The revolution was mainly a rural uprising with the poor in the rural areas being incredibly poor and illiterate. The revolution certainly helped them alot with the literacy campaign and the implementation of rural hospitals. There was a huge amount of capital flight from the country. It might be naieve or utopian to think that the wealth would stay for a strong socialist country. Cuba though wasnt exactly a country marx envisioned revolution after all it was quite agrarian as well. But with the concern of everybody people do have acess to hospitals, schools and great job security. Prostitution is gone from the island. Are there problems YES. It is a poor country at the moment. Sanctions have hit it quite hard. Its too totalitarian for my liking. The quality of the public services are better in Ireland Id say apart from healthcare. But if we compare life for the working class cubans before the revolution its a night and day differene. As well as compare it to other countries of a similar income level it holds up quite well.
Churchill again has a mixed legacy. Im an Irish person so I may be biased against him. Its also why Im not a traditionalist because the church ran this country with an iron grip but thats a topic for another day. He had disdain for us as an Irish race and sent in the Black and Tans who left a very bad taste in peoples mouths. Irish people directly suffered under the empire. He definitely held romanticised views of the empire. The reason Im not a big fan was his disrespect for Ireland. He threatened to invade us if we didnt join in the war. We wouldve been bombed to shreds if we joined. He definitely held racist views but as you point out to be fair many people around him were also quite racist. We should give him more credit for his gains for the working class. He was a one nation Tory and not a Thatcherite.
Sorry for my long reply again. I hate having toxic discussions with people on tik tok or whatever. Its very important to avoid the echo chamber. The left and the right are toxic towards each other and argue in bad faith.
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