Venezuela

What can be learnt from Venezuela, currently witnessing a deadly struggle to topple its president, Nicolás Maduro? Over 100 have been killed, and the upheaval has added to the hardship in a country that has seen its economy shrink by one third since 2013.

The media and the political establishment in Britain have derived a simple lesson: misery is the only possible outcome if you elect a government promising, as Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez did, “socialism in the 21st century”. In other words, this is what will happen if you elect Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.

On the afternoon of Friday 11 September, in Caracas, word spreads that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has returned from an 11-day tour of the Middle East.
Soon large numbers of red caps and T-shirts appear in central Caracas and a powerful current of people heads towards the presidential palace, where thousands would wait several hours to hear their leader.

In part, that is the result of an international campaign for the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt, the French-born presidential candidate, who has now been a Farc hostage for a number of years. But the real reason for the new focus on the Farc is more sinister and more far reaching.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer.

So runs the second verse of the socialist anthem the Internationale. It is rarely sung in Britain. But the message is very important.

The once tense relationship seems now to be blossoming with the unprecedented courting of Chavez as a mediator for the Colombian armed conflict, and now the energy cooperation between the two countries is far from the Bolivarian principles of grassroots revolution.

It is Saturday afternoon in La Candelaria, a working class district of Venezuela's capital Caracas. A huge awning covers the main square (it's the rainy season) to shelter the 200 or so people sitting in groups of 12 at round tables. They are all wearing the red T-shirt of the Bolivarian revolution, and they are spending this Saturday, and many to come, discussing reforms to the constitution proposed by the president Hugo Chavez. In December these 120 or so amendments will be put to referendum.

It is only a matter of days until the presidential elections, and Venezuelan society is in a state of suspended animation with all other political battles on hold. The ruptures within President Hugo Chavez's camp have been bandaged up for now. The energies of those who are against Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" have been channelled into the campaign of Chavez's opponent, Manuel Rosales. Rosales, who supported the defeated coup against Chavez in 2002, is the only opposition candidate with significant popular support.

Hugo Chavez is the most prominent symbol of a far-reaching revolutionary process in Venezuela, which has provided inspiration for those fighting corporate globalisation and imperialism across Latin America and around the globe. A hero to millions, he is a thorn in the side of George Bush.

Michael Lebowitz, a leading Marxist writer currently living in the capital, Caracas, has just published a new book entitled Build It Now, which examines the potential for this process to lead to the creation of a new "socialism for the 21st century". He answered questions from SR.

Nene Guijano
Social worker in the barrios

'I am a former guerrilla who fought in the Nicaraguan mountains in the 1960s. Today I work in the barrios to defend the Venezuelan revolution.

Contrary to what the right wing opponents of Chavez are saying, there is no totalitarianism here. Chavez has even allowed those who tried to violently overthrow his government to go free.

Invepal is a paper factory about 100 miles outside Caracas. Workers there have taken over the factory and forced the state to finance its day to day development. It is currently in co-management, whereby the workers own 49 percent of the company and the state 51 percent. Not content with this, the workers have declared that they want to reach 100 percent worker ownership. I spoke to two Invepal workers - Alexis Pereira, who is an electrician, and Alexis Polanco, who works in the chemical sector of the factory: