The Chávez government is moving full speed ahead with the nationalization of key economic sectors in Venezuela. The state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA announced on May 10 that it had obtained almost 93 percent of Electricidad de Caracas —the largest power company in the country—at a cost of $836.9 million. Telecommunications Minister Jesse Chacón had announced the day before that the state had purchased 86.2 percent of the telecommunications giant Compañia Anónima Nacional Teléfonos de Venezuela.
The announcements come on the heels of the government takeover of the Orinoco belt oil fields on May 1, International Workers’ Day. Thousands of workers in red converged at the multi-billion dollar facilities, which sit atop potentially the world’s largest oil reserves. These reserves were formerly controlled by U.S. companies Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Britain’s British Petroleum, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total.
On May 4, Chávez warned that the banks too may be subject to nationalization should they continue to favor “export-oriented investment”—a bourgeois euphemism for imperialist plunder—over domestic industrial development. The nationalization of the banks, which wield enormous power over all aspects of the economy, would constitute a tremendous step in the march towards socialism.
Backed by the Venezuelan masses, the Chávez government is fighting to wrestle control of the country’s economy from the hands of foreign corporations and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie. As part of this overall project, Venezuela has withdrawn from both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both U.S.-controlled institutions of finance capital. This bold move—which amounts to a declaration of economic independence—is a major blow to the profiteers both inside and outside Venezuela, and lays the groundwork for the country’s further development towards socialism—a system which plans its economy around the needs of the people.
Improvements in health care have been perhaps the most palpable gains of the revolution for working class Venezuelans. Most recently, Health Minister Erick Rodríguez announced that the government has invested nearly $2.8 billion to technologically update the country’s hospitals—the most invested by any Venezuelan government in history.
The Chávez government is calling for a single, centralized health care system where private capital would have at most a marginal role. “Health services, like education, should be free,” Rodríguez asserted. This stands in stark contrast to the neoliberal governments of the 1980s and 1990s, which decentralized the health care system, and left it in ruins for the majority of Venezuelan.
Venezuelan government officials have announced plans for price caps on private hospital services. Although this may provide some immediate relief, capital will naturally seek to sabotage any effort to help people at the expense of profits, or it will simply flee to more profitable endeavors. Centralization is imperative if the needs of people are to be met in the long run.
This dynamic revealed itself when the Venezuelan capitalist class, retaliating to government price controls on food, engineered a shortage of food products. In response, Chavez announced he would nationalize as many segments of the food production process as necessary to guarantee affordable food for Venezuelans. Chávez has declared the same willingness to nationalize private health clinics that break price controls. “If we have to expropriate them, we will,” he warned.
This sharpening confrontation between the revolutionary forces on one side and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and their imperialist backers on the other has thrown into sharp relief the need for a united, socialist party. Earlier this year, Chávez disbanded his electoral coalition and created the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), inviting all pro-government forces to join. Some forces—in particular the Communist Party of Venezuela, Podemos and Patria Para Todos—have hesitated to dissolve their organizations, but many of their leaders and members have announced that they will join the PSUV.
More importantly, the PSUV is mobilizing the masses. A six-week membership drive is under way, and Promotion Commission President Jorge Rodríguez announced that 600,000 people joined during the first two weekends alone—200,000 more than predicted. Following the drive, members will elect delegates for a party congress, which will develop a political program to be approved by a party-wide referendum.
The new party signals the growing maturity of the revolutionary process. Transition from individual leadership to party leadership is a must if the revolution is to develop. The emerging evidence of U.S.-backed assassination plots against Chávez serves as a powerful reminder of the need for a party to guarantee continuity to the struggle for socialism, against U.S. imperialism and the Venezuelan oligarchy.
