Venezuela: The US blockade and the election — a response to Edgardo Lander

Edgardo Lander describes the Venezuelan government headed by Nicolas Maduro as neoliberal and authoritarian. While briefly mentioning US sanctions as a contributing factor to Venezuela's problems, he devotes most of the article to denouncing the Maduro government. This means that he gives a one-sided picture.

Lander says:

For the last decade, Venezuela has been suffering a deep political, economic and humanitarian crisis. Today, the country’s gross domestic product is about a quarter of what it was ten years ago. Public services — water, electricity, and telecommunications — are deficient and provided in extremely precarious conditions. Education and public health services have collapsed. The humanitarian crisis is evident, among other things, in high levels of child malnutrition and the emigration of almost eight million people, a quarter of the population, mostly young people who see no future in this country.

Lander sees two causes of the crisis:

This profound crisis has two fundamental determinants. On the one hand, inefficiency, corruption and military control of a large part of the economy, together with the large-scale expansion of a criminal economy linked to drug trafficking and extractive activities. On the other hand, the severe economic sanctions imposed by the US government in violation of international law. The sanctions have constituted a virtual blockade that has affected the entire national economy, particularly the oil industry, which has been the country’s primary source of income for over a century. These sanctions do not significantly impact the ruling elite, but they have caused tremendous damage to the population, mainly among the most vulnerable sectors. It is difficult to determine the relative weight of these two factors separately in explaining the current crisis.

But in the rest of the article Lander largely ignores the US-led blockade. For example, he says:

In the oil industry, many facilities are very old and already obsolete, with leaks everywhere as a result of poor management and lack of investment. Precisely these days, Venezuela is suffering from an oil spill that has affected more than 200 square kilometers of the Caribbean coast. The government does nothing about the spill, despite the fact that the photographs published on social networks show a huge black stain. There is no concern for nature. It is seen exclusively as a source of income.

The fact that facilities in the oil industry are “old” and “obsolete” reflects the success of the blockade. The government can not get spare parts for equipment made in the US or its allies. Many skilled workers have also left the country due to the hardships created by the blockade, which adds to the difficulty of repairing defective equipment.

Lander claims that Maduro lost the recent presidential election. He says the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) were false. The fact that the CNE has not published a detailed breakdown of results by polling station is suspicious, but it does not prove the nationwide results are false. It might be because some local results are embarrassing for Maduro, for example, if there was a severe loss of support in some traditional Chavista areas.

But if Lander is correct and most people voted for the extreme right-wing opposition, this would be largely the result of the US blockade. The purpose of the blockade was to create extreme hardship for the Venezuelan people. The US then offered them a choice: if they voted for Maduro, the blockade would continue; if they voted for the right-wing opposition, the blockade would be lifted. If Lander is correct about the voting figures, it would indicate this blackmail worked: people voted for Edmundo Gonzalez as the only way to end the blockade.

Lander says:

The current confrontation in Venezuela today is not between left and right. In the run-up to the election campaign, an extraordinary process of collective intelligence took place. An astonishing consensus was built. There was a widespread acknowledgment of the importance of this election, recognizing that what was at stake was not the program presented by the different candidates, but the shared objective of defeating Maduro to recover democracy and the 1999 Constitution. To this end, no matter how many candidates there were, it was necessary to vote for the candidate who, according to the polls and the mobilisations during the election campaign, had the best chance of defeating Maduro. This turned out to be a total unknown, a candidate nominated by the coalition of right-wing parties: Edmundo González Urrutia.

Lander assumes the election of Gonzalez will restore democracy. But given that the most prominent leader of the opposition, Maria Corina Machado, participated in the 2002 coup and subsequent coup attempts, I see no reason to assume that a victory for her chosen candidate would lead to the restoration of democracy. It is more likely to result in a right-wing dictatorship.

Lander says:

In this context, the most we could aspire to in the short term is a kind of transitional government, which would surely give continuity to the current neoliberal economic policies, but with the recovery of basic democratic rights.

I think it is more likely there would be a deepening of neoliberalism, accompanied by violent repression of the remnants of the Chavista movement. Lander admits that a significant section of the population still supports Maduro:

The Chavista movement is alive and still constitutes an essential part of Venezuelan society. Maduro won around 30 per cent of the vote, which means several million people.

These are the people who would be violently repressed by an extreme-right government. During the protests and riots in the days after the election, two women activists of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) were murdered. This was a foretaste of what would happen if the extreme right came to power.

Lander says:

Maduro’s government is a right-wing government. Its economic policies are neoliberal. The living conditions of the working class have deteriorated extremely. The monthly minimum wage is barely three dollars. To survive, the population depends on monetary bonuses and some food packages that the government hands out at its discretion, which operates as an efficient mechanism of social control.

Workers’ wages fell to near zero as a result of hyper-inflation, which was largely a result of the blockade. In attempting to circumvent the blockade, the government made concessions to the capitalist class, including keeping wages low. Many of Maduro's policies that are often called neoliberal are motivated by the desire to circumvent the blockade. The US government tries to prevent companies all around the world from having any dealings with Venezuelan government bodies (unless an exemption is granted, which is only done on terms that are very unfavourable to Venezuela).

The Venezuelan government tries to circumvent the sanctions by using private companies as intermediaries. Of course, intermediaries expect a profit. Thus the sanctions enrich a section of the capitalist class. In addition, the secrecy surrounding the government's attempts to circumvent the blockade creates increased opportunities for corruption. Thus the blockade is partially responsible for the rise of corruption.

Although the Maduro government has adopted policies that can be described as neoliberal, it still continues with some policies that depart from neoliberal orthodoxy. It continues the house-building program begun by former president Hugo Chavez. It provides cheap basic services and free public transport. It encourages and assists communes. These policies would probably be abandoned under a right-wing government.

There are many reasons to criticise Maduro. The manoeuvre to deprive the Communist Party of its electoral registration is an example. The failure to publish detailed election results is another.

The government is becoming increasingly repressive; this is not surprising in a society under siege, but it should still be criticised.

Lander says:

Part of the international left contributes to legitimising this government instead of what we should expect from the left: solidarity with the people who fight against an anti-democratic regime.

He makes no mention of the need for the international left to campaign against the US blockade on Venezuela. This is an essential task for socialists in the United States and its allies such as Australia.

The US government will use the claimed falsification of election results as a pretext for continuing and intensifying its economic war against Venezuela. The left must oppose this. We must expose and denounce the ways in which the US has contributed to the economic and social crisis affecting the Venezuelan people. At the same time, we should also criticise the repressive and undemocratic actions of the Maduro government.