Venezuela: A partial Report on my last Stay in the First Socialist Country of the 21st Century

General stuff:

In general, the atmosphere in Venezuela is
very highly politicized, meaning that in every conversation people
rapidly start talking and arguing about the ‘process’ and the most
recent ideas of “the lunatic” or (depending on the political position)
“my commander” or “my president” respectively. Everywhere there are
‘political’ graffiti, murals, posters, huge billboards for mayors,
governors and Chavez himself, etc. The political atmosphere is also
very polarized, i.e. you’re either 150 per cent pro Chavez or 150 per
cent against him. In public opinion, there is no grey area in the
political sphere between those two political positions. Ninety per cent
of all media can clearly be categorized as either ‘chavist’ or
‘escuálido’.

The given social composition of the city
districts also has a very strong influence. In Caracas, for example,
the rich and the middle class live in one part of the city, the East, –
they are those who ‘employ’ ‘maid servants’ – and the workers and the
poor in the West. Most of the first, say 80 per cent, are
‘anti-chavistas’ (‘escuálidos’), and in those areas hardly anyone dares
to publicly express sympathies for the president. Those living there
usually don’t know any one ‘chavista’ personally and are therefore
convinced that the election results (of his Dec. 3, 2006, re-election)
must have been forged.

In the poor districts, it’s the other way
round, so also there people suspect some kind of electoral fraud (which
is then seen as evidence for the continuity of dark machinations) by
the opposition. The core group of this opposition is formed by the
technical intelligentsia, professionals, small entrepreneurs and
business people. The core of Chavism consists of those 50 per cent of
the population active in the ‘informal sector’, and the rural
population. ‘Formal’ salaried workers and lower white collar workers in
their majority are ‘chavistas’, too, but not so overwhelmingly. Until
today, the government’s social measures (the ‘misiones’, ‘missions’)
have been directed towards the ‘marginalized’, not the ‘wage workers’.

There is strong participation by the military
in the administration, and partly also a strong presence on the
streets, but there they are instead usually deployed assisting some
‘missions’ or other populist activities (normally, they don’t act like
an enemy state force toward the population). The official political
language shows strong military influence: terms like ‘commands’,
‘brigades’, ‘defense’, ‘campaign’, ‘battles’, ‘enemies’ etc. are mixed
with Christian references.

Chavez governs in a strictly authoritarian
manner. It is HE who thinks, proposes, and decides without regards to
formalities (parliament, secretaries, governors are hardly integrated,
and often they hear about new political decisions from live
performances of the president in TV or radio, especially in his own
weekly Sunday night show on TV ”Allo Presidente”). Hardly anyone in the
government dares to comment on an issue before Chavez has spoken. The –
partly publicly proclaimed – guideline is: ”Commander, give your
orders! We will obey.” He arbitrarily uses financial means out of the
diverse sources of revenue without any of the persons accountable
opposing verbally, let alone practically. In the last weeks, after his
re-election, the authoritarian features have become much stronger.

Measures and projects are announced pompously,
without ensuring their continuity over time (ministers and other people
in charge are permanently reshuffled). This is also expressed in the
fact that necessary maintenance works on public infrastructure are
rarely tackled, so that newly built elements of infrastructure
deteriorate rapidly, at times before they ever get used. Often,
measures and projects are not followed through, or their success or
failure evaluated (they are forgotten and don’t get mentioned anymore).
There is a growing gap between promises and hopes on the one hand and
what happens in the reality of everyday life (some changes are for
real, but not at all to the extent hoped for). This leads to the
population being disappointed of the measures realized or rather not
realized by the administrations and local governments, and manifesting
their discontent on the streets (the number of protests is steadily
growing), at the same time concentrating their hopes on the person of
Chavez who always takes the initiative. So they protest against the
Chavist administration in the name of Chavez (”If my commander knew
about that!”, ”He is surrounded by the wrong, corrupt people”, ”We have
a secret agent inside the government: Chavez!”). And everyone is
looking to him. Also at the protests they demand the president’s
attention to make him intervene ”for real”. Nobody seems to think they
could use their own forces.

ALCASA (aluminum factory in Ciudad Guayana):

[Venezuela’s second biggest aluminum company
was founded in 1967 as a state enterprise. Today it is part of the
powerful holding ‘Corporación Venezolana de Guayana’, responsible for
the state’s heavy industries and its mining in the south-east. The
co-management was introduced in 2005 by Carlos Lanz, the new director.
In the 2005 movie ‘Five Factories’ about workers’ control in Venezuela,
ALCASA is the most prominent case of co-management described]

It is the biggest showcase for workers’
‘co-management’. Here, in order to “change the relations of
production”, the government made a former guerilla and radical leftist
“as a revolutionary” the executive manager of the company. Into his
ideological discourse, he mixes the Frankfurt School and even
Pannekoek, among other things. In ALCASA, there are around 3000
employees.

In fact, this factory would have to be closed
for health hazards immediately (as well as the privatized steel factory
SIDOR). After 20 years of work at the most, the workers are human
waste, their health is dangerously damaged because of the aluminum dust
that corrodes their lungs. Everyone knows it, but still… the workers
argue they have to feed their families and in that time span they must
earn sufficient money for the years after. This leads them to reject
the company executive’s proposal, based on radical left calculations,
to reduce the weekly working hours. They are afraid that the reduction
of working hours would mean the introduction of another shift and
thereby the loss of possibilities for overtime. From this, the
(political) management of the company draws the conclusion that the
workers are too ”egoistic” and ”fixated on the money”, thus a
political-ideological schooling becomes necessary. Furthermore this
confirmed that unions prevent class consciousness… as Pannekoek had
already stated!

[In fact, Pannekoek had argued that the
workers' revolution and the transition from capitalism to communism had
to be achieved not by the state, but by the workers themselves,
organized in workers' councils. He regarded these as a new form of
organization capable of overcoming the limitations of the old organs of
the labor movement, the trade unions and social democratic parties.
Translator’s note]

Partly, the original machinery from the
founding years of ALCASA (that was 40 years ago) is still used, the
most recent machines are 20 years old. So, the technology is rather out
of date, some single machines are completely defunct. The factory runs
at less than 60% of its capacity. owed to soaring aluminum prices, the
financial accounts are more or less balanced, otherwise the losses
would be huge. Nevertheless from a capitalist perspective it looks like
neither state nor factory executive aim at efficiency and economical
viability (see also below, Invepal). The production process runs like a
ritual, even without visible pressure. In private conversations, the
executive complains that the ministry’s bureaucracy holds back the
financial means and is thus blocking a technological innovation.

Inside the facility, there are also rooms
where the political-ideological courses are being held. For these, the
executive has hired staff (de facto former militants of the same
political group where the director had been a leader) and invites blue
and white collar workers to them. For one week, or eventually longer,
they are freed from working and get their wages paid on. In these
orientation courses, e.g. the difference between normative (bourgeois)
and strategic (revolutionary) planning is discussed, with quotations
from Marx, Gramsci, Adorno etc., without ever including the concrete
situation inside the factory itself.

The wages are scaled due to qualification and
seniority (and differ between blue and white collar workers). These
wages are in any case relatively high (with wages for starters at 500
Euros [$675] a month – around three times as high as the minimum
wages – in average they get around 1000 Euros [$1,350] a month).
Hardly anything is there to be felt of the originally announced
‘co-management’. In the beginning, in 2005, a factory management of
three delegates was elected, but after that only one workers’
representative for the board of directors was elected who visits the
workers every once in a while. Workers’ discussions at the Round Table
don’t take place anymore, and the assemblies seem to be busy with
issues like keeping the restrooms clean and the distribution of working
clothes. When asked what ‘co-management’ had improved for them, workers
don’t have any answer. They just ”like it”, the ”production had
increased” and they ”work like always”. When asked more precise
questions, some even said: ”Better I don’t say anything, I don’t want
to get into trouble!” Not one talked about a real participation in
strategic decisions as to the work process or the administration. On
the contrary, for some of them everything had deteriorated: the workers
in former service companies, results of a past outsourcing process,
around 2005 have organized themselves in cooperatives respectively, to
further secure their employment (cooperatives are privileged in getting
contracts). Now, these ‘cooperativists’ (with around 600 members) are
used in the immediate work process, i.e. exactly like the company staff
themselves, but unlike them they are excluded from ‘co-management’,
they are not allowed to use the company buses to and from work, nor the
canteen. At the end of the year, they don’t get the usual bonus (three
to four monthly wages), and in case of sickness they have no health
insurance. All this, because their work is not covered by the
collective labor agreements for salaried workers. As members of a
cooperative that has signed a supply contract with ALCASA, they just
receive a certain sum for a certain workload and nothing more. Here we
can see how cooperatives partly function as a factor advancing the
precaritisation of work. Sad also, that the cooperativists from
different cooperatives don’t communicate with each other or even try to
set up joint demands… everyone remains alone with his anger and
frustration. There is only an abstract solidarity of the core staff
with them: “The administration will take care to improve their
situation.” When one cooperativist complained about all that especially
bitter, one of the ‘politicians’ proposed to integrate him into an
orientation measure!

Invepal: Paper Factory

This factory had been closed by its private
owner. Former workers of it, in their struggle for the preservation of
their jobs, in 2005 had gotten the factory expropriated (against a
juicy compensation) and put back to work under conditions of
co-management. The nearly 400 workers had to organize themselves in a
cooperative and buy 49% of the shares (the state owns the remaining
51%). Thereby, the cooperative was indebted to a private bank. Invepal,
as the company, then directly hired the white collar workers necessary
for the administration as well as the workers needed for a subsidiary
(so they aren’t members of the cooperative.) Today (Nov. 2006), all in
all there are around 650 employees.

The machinery is the one originally installed
(1957!) and completely defunct or in a desolate state. The factory runs
at around 20% of its capacity. Further reasons for this are a rotten
internal power station as well as a fluctuating delivery of the raw
material imported from Argentine or Columbia. The yearly losses at the
time are said to be over two million Euros (2.7 million dollars), so
the factory can only be kept running because of the state pumping money
into it. Here again, an ‘oilrent’ and not a productivist logic shows up.

The side of the state (with its majority of
shares) is in absolute control (the executive being the secretary of
labor herself) of the administration and rarely passes on information
to the cooperative. Since the direction of the cooperative had
tolerated this state of affairs, in summer 2006 the members elected a
new and more radical leadership that finds itself in permanent
opposition to the company’s management, but this hasn’t led to any kind
of change in the situation. The amount of production demanded gets set
from above.

Every week the workers of the cooperative are
allowed to organize the work in every department without supervisors
and department managers interfering, and they are very content with the
atmosphere at their workplaces. The company’s administration doesn’t
intervene there. But when at the end of 2006 the bonuses were lower
(three months extra wages) than in 2005 (four months), the workers got
angry and even blocked the street traffic… but they don’t believe in
striking… a strike cannot in no way exert pressure if in the end the
company management hardly cares about production at all. On a legal
level, they cannot refer to a collective labor agreement, since they
are cooperative members and only allowed to work there as ‘co-owners’
of the plant. For them, there just isn’t any collective labor agreement.

Furthermore, they all have the same wages, but
not because they wanted that for reasons of solidarity! They themselves
perceive it as unjust. It is just a consequence - which they feel is
enforced upon them - of their membership in the cooperative. They now
hope for a more precise definition of their legal rights by means of
the formulation and passage of statutes of membership. When asked for
their opinion concerning co-management, they said: ”It is like always,
we still get exploited.”

By the way, since as a cooperative they
weren’t able to pay back the debts to the bank, the company took over
those payments. As a result, the workers, insofar as they’re members of
the cooperative, are now indebted with Invepal itself!

They had never heard of the movie ”Five
Factories, Workers’ Control in Venezuela” that had been shot in their
factory, amongst others. And although in leaflets they accused the
secretary of labor of organizing a ‘mision miseria’ (misery mission)
against them, they massively called for the re-election of the
president. And when the state-run TV team visited them before the
elections, they even decided not to give public interviews on the
situation in the factory to avoid eventually causing damage to Chavez’
electoral campaign.