Note: You need to read Rafael Osío Cabrices and Raúl Stolk’s piece on the state of Venezuela today, posted at Caracas Chronicles. This is what twenty years of wreck and ruin by a “socialist” elite operating with impunity hath wrought. Do we need more lessons on why a dysfunctional, inefficient, hypocritical, half- and weak-hearted liberal government embedded in liberal institutions is still better than ALL the alternatives? Including, and especially, populism, fascism and socialism?
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I enjoyed my conversation with Simon and Alejandro from the Venezuelan Workers Solidarity (VWS), even if I was critical of both them and DSA IC in my article. I found their article, responding to mine and published under the name of their organization, interesting and thought-provoking, and I’m grateful to Caracas Chronicles for giving them space to respond. After reading their reflections, here are my final thoughts on the matter—and I’ll refer to the author as VWS throughout the following rejoinder.
The “heart of the matter” of my article, according to VWS, is that the “aim of Ross’s efforts is to deny the legitimacy of the leftist opposition as a sector that, by its own right, occupies a space among the workers and popular struggle against the chavista government.” With just a little more patient research the writer(s) would have found that my friend Arturo Albarrán and I dedicated an entire film (In the Shadow of the Revolution, co-produced by Caracas Chronicles and PM Press) to validating the left opposition to the Bolivarian government. I won’t detail my work to make known the work of Latin American social movements but I know the writers certainly had access to a PDF of the book of interviews (Until the Rulers Obey) my wife Marcy Rein and I edited, so they certainly must have known that the struggle of ordinary middle-, working- and lower-class people has been at the center of my concerns for all of my adult life.
VWS continues with further distortions of my actual socio-political beliefs and practices by claiming I believe “that fascism, Marxist socialism, and anarchism are essentially the same.” Here again they miss the subtlety of my arguments when they link to my article here where I do, in fact, argue that fascism and various, but not all, socialisms such as Leninism(s), National Socialism and others have common roots, and segments of Antifa, like Rose City Antifa, worked in a similar vein of politics. However, VWS ignored what I think is a glowing report on an anarchist occupation I wrote about in Bari, Italy where I distinguished between authentic anarchists doing valuable social work, and those sectors of Antifa employing fascist tactics of violence to obstruct free speech—just think of that: “anarchists” who don’t believe in free speech… I’ve also done films about Spanish anarchists, like this one about the Can Masdeu occupation in Barcelona, and anarchists I deeply respect at AK Press published my memoir and distribute my poetry. My relations with anarchists go way back so I consider it a slanderous claim that I lump anarchists into a category with fascists.
Neither Simon nor Alejandro could clarify for me their position regarding “socialism” and the VWS website offered only the slightest, but certainly the most significant, of clues. In their Statement of Principles they reject all imperial interventionism and go on to add their rejection of “smaller sub-imperial players like Iran and Turkey.” How is it they neglect to mention in this latter context the elephant in the room of sub-imperial players: Cuba, which some, like Rory Carroll and many, many others, believe has essentially run the country through the proxies of Chávez and Maduro for more than two decades. The refusal to name Cuba in this context, especially by those claiming to be in solidarity with ordinary Venezuelans, is at the very least alarming and disingenuous.
This brings us, inevitably, to the problem of defining “socialism.” The old definition of socialism has long ago been abandoned—Remember “Real Socialism”? Ah, those were the days, when a socialist was a socialist, and words had definitions. Even Bernie Sanders seems to think these days that socialism has nothing to do with…socialism. When no one can define the term, isn’t it entirely appropriate that anyone should be able to use it as they like to define themselves and their projects? Anyone, that is, including the Bolivarians? And is not the very refusal of the VWS to grant that the Bolivarians might be as much “socialists” as they are—and as China, and for that matter, Vietnam and Bernie Sanders all are—an indication that VWS is falling into that cliquish sectarianism that has characterized some sectors of the “Left” for most of its life as a political faith—certainly as far back as the dissolution of the First International? And if this were the case, wouldn’t this make VWS a socialist opposition to socialism along the lines of Trotsky, the butcher of Kronstadt, who insisted that Stalin’s regime was “state capitalist” and not real socialism? And don’t these grapes taste just a bit sour?
I’m not Venezuelan, so I can’t speak for Venezuelans, but of those Venezuelan friends of mine, all now in the opposition, most of them former Chavistas, I can’t think of a single one who considers himself still a “socialist” of any variety. And I strongly suspect that’s an indicator of the sentiment within Venezuela. After all, the only parts of the world where socialism, in any form, is still popular is where it has not yet existed. The former socialist countries who managed to get out from under the command economy and the regimes of red terror seem to have very little nostalgia for the socialist past.
There’s a reason for that. The Cubans jokingly compare the capitalist life in the jungle where you’re free, but susceptible to being eaten at any moment, whereas socialism is like a zoo where everyone is safe, behind bars. Most people have chosen the risky freedom of “bourgeois” capitalist liberal societies, and theorizing a left in this context is a bit more difficult and complex than simply and dogmatically applying a Marxist doctrine. I’ve taken a stab at it, both in a book and in articles like this one, but so much more theoretical, practical and reflective work is needed. Unfortunately, tired prescriptions that never worked are a constant distraction, chief among them being discussions of “socialism” that no one seems to be able to define, and vague prescriptions for the building thereof.
I think where we need to start is in building autonomous, grassroots social movements, independent unions, and strengthening civil society as a whole. But it should be noted that none of these sectors have had any possibility of autonomy, freedom of thought, speech or any other form of expression or public area of activity under “Real Socialism.” As Charles Tilly has pointed out, social movements were born with liberalism and rose in the context of political democracy. They have never, I repeat, never, had the room to grow or thrive in the context either of fascism or socialism. Look, for instance, at the history of the official persecution of the damas de blanco of Cuba and all other attempts to form social movements, indeed, to even hold a concert not sponsored by the Cuban government under the Communist Party. And that’s why I consider liberalism to be the best among all bad options we have before us. Because a liberal democratic system at least allows for the criticism needed to make any experiment better.
As Marcy Rein and I noted in our book, even under moderately left governments social movements in Latin America face attempts by the official parties to co-opt them, use them for their own ends and manage them in one way or another. And of course illiberal attitudes also thrive under right wing governments, which is why I propose a counter-argument to the traditional left-right one. In my view, the question of whether Chavism is socialist or not is utterly irrelevant. As I wrote, “The question isn’t which side is “Right” and which is “Left,” but in Venezuela where the Bolivarian elite has declared war on the Venezuelan people, which side to take?”
To bring Chavism to an end will require the united efforts of all sectors of society, right and left. I can’t say what that would look like in Venezuela, but as a North American, I could refer to the example of the anti-Trump coalition that brought our right-wing version of Chavism to an end. It was composed of people across the political spectrum, from honest right-wing Republicans to the “Berner” left wing of the Democratic party that was willing to be realistic and vote for a candidate of the center. Together this coalition guaranteed that our populist regime would only last four years in the US. I sincerely hope that coalition will hold together long enough to build a truly liberal society that might address the concerns of the whole political spectrum of the country. Otherwise, somewhere down the road we might very well once again bear a striking resemblance to Venezuela.