The enabling law passed by Venezuela’s National Assembly on Jan. 31 gives President Hugo Chávez the power to pass laws by decree for the next 18 months.
The political opposition—strongly tied to Venezuela’s ruling class as well as foreign capital—claims that the new law
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Law-decrees are confined to 11 areas of legislation, ranging from popular participation to energy resources, and cannot overstep constitutional boundaries. Furthermore, the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution—approved by Venezuelan voters despite opposition from those who call Chávez a “dictator”—empowers the people of Venezuela to roll back legislation through popular referendum, which can be initiated with signatures from as few as five percent of registered voters in the case of law-decrees.
Interestingly enough, the Bolivarian Constitution empowered some of these same opposition voices to unsuccessfully challenge Chávez’s “dictatorship” by the means of a popular referendum in 2004. Such authoritarian horrors would never take place in a bastion of democracy such as the United States, where representatives of the capitalist class are assured to rule unencumbered by “dictatorial” mechanisms of popular accountability such as recall referendums.
Despite all their bold statements of opposition to the enabling law on the flimsy grounds of “authoritarianism,” the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and their imperialist backers could care less about the specifics of how new legislation comes into being. Their only concern is whose interests will be upheld by any new legislation—a question they intentionally avoid because it shines a spotlight on the class content of the present struggle.
Nationalization
Chávez has stated that the new enabling law will serve to speed up development toward socialism.
When Chávez was given similar power by the 2001 enabling law, he passed 49 different laws benefiting the Venezuelan working-class, including the Land Law for implementing much needed agrarian reform. The enactments sparked the outrage of the Venezuelan ruling class, which perceived them as a desecration of their inalienable right to limitless profits.
The announced goal of socialism is a welcome development, since the Bolivarian revolution cannot truly meet people’s needs without a complete break with the capitalist system—a socialist revolution.
The new enabling law will contribute to progressive development by facilitating the greater nationalization of key areas of the economy through compensated expropriations.
Although no compensation is needed to appease those who exploit workers, the presence and power of foreign capital in Venezuela is substantial. The government’s compensation actions were based on its assessment of the correlation of forces.
As part of the nationalization plan, the government agreed to buy a 28.5 percent share of Compañía Anónima Nacional de Teléfonos de Venezuela (CANTV) from Verizon Communications, Inc., on Feb. 12. Verizon is being compensated at $17.85 a share—11 percent higher than the closing share price on the New York Stock Exchange that same day. (Bloomberg, Feb. 13)
While a bourgeois government may use nationalization to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie at times, that is not the case in the context of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution.
A serious nationalization plan as part of Venezuela’s revolutionary development poses a challenge—although still within the framework of capitalism—to the capitalists’ freedom to exploit the working class. As far as the capitalists are concerned, you cannot put a price tag on that.
Oil value
Energy is perhaps the most important strategic area targeted by the government’s nationalization plan.
The Venezuelan government announced on Feb. 13 that it would buy the assets of American power company CMS for $106 million, after signing a $750-million deal last week to acquire the holdings of U.S.-based global power generation firm AES Corporation. (Reuters, Feb. 14)
But it is the takeover of four oil projects worth $30 billion in the Orinoco Belt that has put U.S. oil giants on alert. Chávez has announced that Venezuela ‘s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) will become the majority stakeholder in the four projects, with a minimum stake of 60 percent. The Venezuelan government has announced that the takeovers will be completed by May 1, when workers around the world celebrate Labor Day.
The value of the region is beyond question.
Venezuela is in the process of certifying oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt that could total around 236 billion barrels. If the reserves are certified, Venezuela will have the largest proven oil reserves in the world, surpassing even Saudi Arabia.
Currently, oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Statoil and Total have stakes in the Orinoco Belt. (MarketWatch, Jan. 29)
The struggle for control of Venezuela’s oil wealth has been one of the central features of Bolivarian revolution, pitting Chávez and his supporters against national and foreign investors.
Many of the social gains of the past few years were made possible by using an increased share of the country’s oil wealth to fund people’s needs. The expanded nationalization of the country’s energy resources has the potential to fuel even greater social advances.
“Social justice, for revolutionaries, cannot wait. … We are promising justice for today and not for the future,” summed up the second vice-president of the national assembly, Roberto Hernandez, during the National Assembly discussion on the enabling law. “The laws that Hugo Chávez will decree are laws destined to satisfy the immense majority of Venezuelans.”
