“The art of war, according to Sun Tzu, is based on deception. The Devil’s best strategy is to pretend he does not exist. The best way to win a war is to pretend there is none. Private media companies, most of them spokespersons in the payroll of corporations, have undertaken a campaign to hide the war we all endure. In order to expose their alibis, we use the data compiled by Pasqualina Curcio in “The Visible Hand of the Market. The Economic War on Venezuela “
— Nicolas Maduro Moros, Radio Show No 3, La Hora de la Salsa.
Last Friday the Supreme Court of Venezuela, a branch of the government friendly to President Nicolas Maduro of oil rich Venezuela, took over legislative powers from Venzuela’s National Assembly. Technically within the power of the Venezuelan government, it may violate the constitution. The constitution was written by the people of Venezuela when the Bolivarian government first came to power, a testimony to its desire to have a “democratic" revolution. In the past, the Venezuelan elections have been declared free and fair by international observers (including Jimmy Carter) in spite of three attempted military coups orchestrated by right wing opposition and supported by the United States as part of its policy of regime change.
Many countries and organizations around the world have been highly critical of this move. The United States, the UN, and the New York Times have all criticized it as a “threat to democracy.” Many publications have gone so far as to say it brings the country closer to one man rule, while others call it a coup. Venezuela’s chief prosecutor, an ally of Maduro but not a member of his party, has said the decision by the Supreme Court to take over legislative powers from the National Assembly violates the law. According to Ms. Ortega, “The measure constitutes a rupture of the constitutional order. It's my obligation to express my great concern to the country." She did so live, on TV on the government station (a good sign for democracy) but was cut short. (Oh well, she is still in her job to our knowledge)
How Did All Happen?
After the death of the popular President Hugo Chavez, the plunge in oil prices when Saudi Arabia flooded the global market with oil caused immense hardship to the Venezuelan economy. Many critics have attributed this oil dump to a politically motivated act supported by the United States and the Obama administration to weaken both Venezuela and oil rich countries outside the Saudi/US alliance.
In the larger geopolitical and economic picture, Maduro’s opponents have been supported financially and politically by the United States and a right-center neoliberal block. Since Chavez and the Bolivarian revolutionary government first took power, this block, led by Obama, has exercised an aggressive policy of “regime change” against Venezuela and other Latin American countries that support the Venezuelan government. While the United States has presented this as an attempt to maintain democracy in Latin America, it has been clearly seen by much of the world as an effort to regain economic control over Venezuela’s oil production; the largest in the western hemisphere and among the largest oil producers in the world. The US and private businesses and media also conducted a "shock" campaign to further distort the actual difficulties in the economy by withholding the distribution of goods from government stores, reporting long lines at the stores due to insufficient production of essential goods and food, then dump the goods on the black market, greatly increasing inflation. While the media encouraged fear and desperation, the total GDP increased 43% from 1999 to 2015 and the agricultural component of the GDP was inexplicably 14% higher than in 2004 (Curcio, The Visible Hand of the Market).
Under these conditions, Maduro (Chavez’s successor) was only able to win the Presidential election in 2013 by a slim margin. At this time, Maduro’s still ruling party, added justices to the Supreme Court of Venezuela to give the court a super majority. This gave the Court the increased power necessary to dissolve the National Assembly, the elected legislature of Venezuela, which has been dominated by Maduro’s opponents since the 2015 midterm election.
On Thursday, March 30th, the court exercised this power saying that the legislature was in contempt for failing to investigate allegations of irregularities in the last elections which gave Maduro’s opponents the majority in the National Assembly. (BBC News)
Why Should the Political Shenanigans in this Latin American Country be of Interest to Citizens of the United States and those Countries Who Rely on the United States’ Power for Protection?
1) The comparison to the shenanigans in the United States is abundantly clear, although it should be pointed out that the “coup” in the United States is being conducted by the billionaire class — fronted by a Reality TV Star and real estate mogul and the Republican Party — while the “coup” in Venezuela is being supported by the party that made a people’s revolution with grassroots support.
2) It begs the question of what is the essence of democracy. The will of the grassroots movements in the streets? The rule of law? Individual liberties? The will of the collective people?
3) Is there really such a thing as democracy (people power) or do the raw relations of power by whatever means — wealth, military might, cyber warfare (our newest addition) -- rule?
A Quick Look at the Rule of Law in The United States.
The concept of democracy has primarily been based on the “rule of law" in the United States. The rule of law is no panacea by itself since laws have frequently been used to enshrine slavery, corporate power (Citizens United), and discrimination against oppressed minorities (racial minorities, immigrants, women, LGBTQ, wage workers, religious minorities, etc). Law can, however, help prevent usurpation of power caused by a lack of transparency and by providing a contract as to what the government and the people agree to, once the demonstrations in the streets have disappeared when the crisis is over. It goes without saying that the rule of law has been manipulated by the powerful — usually the wealthy, but also by dominant religious, racial or gender groups (currently rich white Christian Men) in every country and internationally in all political systems. A few examples in the United States:
1) Our new President’s election was never audited and validated and is based on an archaic electoral system which negates the popular vote.
2) The election was further challenged by the possibility of cyber warfare interference in our elections, possibly by a foreign government, which has been covered up by the new administration.
3) The election has always been rigged to some degree by the enormous wealth the rich pour into electing their candidate, especially since the advent of television advertising, the dominance of private media, and the passage of Citizens United and “dark” money.
4) The first two facts resulted in the organizing of the Women’s Marches (the largest marches in our history) to protest this unaccountable result and raised the question of the illegitimacy of his election.
5) Once in office, he has signed an unprecedented number of “Executive Orders” which through precedent have greatly expanded the power of the executive branch in recent years in relation to the legislative and judicial branches (checks and balances). This fact has been challenged by our courts in the case of the Muslim Ban (which was reinforced by a massive outpouring of our citizens) to reaffirm the concept of religious freedom in the First Amendment. I believe it was our citizens belief in “democracy" and the natural outpouring of people around the country and in the streets that has so far prevented the current administration from aggressively continuing to pursue its Muslim ban and I am very proud of our grassroots involvement in both this case.
6) The unwillingness of the Government (the House of Representatives, Senate, and the Executive branch and Judiciary) to do their jobs in upholding the will of the people. The Republican party has usurped control of all three branches of the government through numerous distortions of law at both state and national level (through dismantling fair voting rights through the Supreme Court decision invalidating parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and passing Citizens United, giving wealthy corporations the same voting rights as people; through gerrymandering at the state level so that numerous districts in the house are not able to elect other than Republicans).
Most importantly, the Constitution did not envision the concept of political parties. The strength of the Democratic and Republican parties have become the determining factor in lawmaking, instead of the duties laid out in the Constitution. This has enabled them to pursue the goals of their parties instead of the constitutional goals. This resulted in the last Congress obstructing legislation and refusing to even give a hearing to Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court to ensure that they would be able to get their own nominee appointed once they controlled the Presidency. They are currently trying to get a nominee appointed and approved who will uphold Citizens United and the goals of the wealthy class.
Which country is undemocratic?
A Point of Personal Disclosure.
I am very conflicted in that I have always supported the socialist goals of the Russian Revolution under the Soviet Union but have never felt that it had a democratic culture or process. I also recognize the hypocrisy of US “democracy” in light of the rapacious capitalist system of competition with “winners” and “losers” and ever increasing inequality as well as its imperialist agenda (by both major parties) abroad.
Frankly I have always wanted a way to find both — for a long time, when I had to choose, I chose "economic" democracy. By ensuring the society provided basic human needs (food, shelter, healthcare, education, transportation, etc.) I believed the people would be in a better position to fight for their political democratic rights. As George Bernard Shaw noted (more or less) you can’t develop moral values on an empty stomach.
However, I have frequently felt the lack of a democratic tradition in some socialist countries and groups I have visited or groups I was involved in. Full disclosure, I am a second generation communist whose family left Germany in 1929-30 due to the Fascist coup and then left Russia at the end of 193l — again because of the start of political repression. I still have respect for modern Russia’s right to protect its borders and pursue its own goals as much as any other state — as a critic of mine on facebook noted — Russia is not surrounding the US with hundreds of military bases. Russia has not instigated colonial and neoliberal wars as the West has. Russia is defending it sovereignty from NATO that dispenses 13 times more military budgets and a global financial network that can affect the economic and political policies of any nation on the planet.
The US Policy of Regime Change
The question becomes how to fight for “democracy" without playing into the US capitalist and imperialist agenda. The Monroe Doctrine by which the United States notoriously “ruled" the countries of Latin America for a hundred years through economic and military might, allowed the removal of governments at will that they did not like (today called "regime change"). This policy has been dusted off by the Obama administration who objected to Venezuela's efforts to shake off the neoliberal yoke of the US, actively organizing progressive states by developing Bolivarian regional pacts with other progressive Latin American countries (ALBA, MERCOSUR, the Caribbean Basin Initiative).
In the name of spreading “democracy" the Obama administration has conducted an aggressive policy of regime change. The first to feel the burn was President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras ousted in a 2000 “constitutional coup” (he was flown out of the country) which may have been personally approved by then Secretary of State Clinton but was certainly not objected to. Larry Davis, the Clintons’ personal friend, was, lobbying for the new military led Junta before the ink was even dry on the takeover.
Similar activities resulted in regime changes or reactionary votes in other progressive countries that supported the Bolivarians in Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia. Most recently there was the “soft” coup in which President Dilma Rouseff, President of Brazil and a Maduro supporter, was ousted for corruption (of which she was cleared) by her even more corrupt second in command who was afraid she would expose his corruption. The US remained silent. (Global Ressearch.ca)
The Paradigm of Democracy as Practiced in Western Countries
A little necessary history: In the early middle ages the most influential economic system in Europe was the Feudal System which provided land and military protection for the people by an Aristocratic class in exchange for the peoples’ labor in a system of enclosed Manors. The Manors were fairly totalitarian as the Aristocrats pretty much controlled every aspect of the peoples daily lives (the people were not allowed to leave the Manor). The Manors were part of the Patriarchal political system under the auspices of the Catholic Church. Under this system, land was held in common and the concept of extensive private property had not developed.
This system was challenged when a commercial merchant and capitalist class supported by increased economic trade and industrial manufacturing, developed along with capitalist private property and ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Under this new system, people were kicked off the Manors through the enclosure movement which turned the commons into private property, so that people were forced to migrate to the burgeoning towns and cities where they no longer could produce their own food and goods but had to hire out as wage labor to the capitalist class. While they no longer had the forced “protection" of the Manor, they were suddenly “free" as individuals to sell their labor, find their own way by obtaining a piece of land or business or starve. The bourgeois capitalist class then developed physical spaces that were not based on heredity, but the accumulation of individual wealth as private property, resulting in the Nation State as a political system.
Marx saw this new system of privately held means of production, distribution, and exchange as progressive in its early stages (compared to earlier modes of production) as it promoted economic development, the further development of the monetary system, and the ability for society to accumulate new economic wealth. He also noted that this wealth was developed by exploiting the great majority of the people who had to come hat in hand begging to be hired to get access to the resources (land, tools, etc) necessary to survive, as well as the continuing exploitation through the expansion of international trade caused by the increase in more and more capitalist goods (imperialism).
This period, shifting the focus from collective survival to the individual, became known as the Enlightenment and the ideologies developed during this period reflected this transition and varied from country to country according to the political and economic realities in each country. During this period, we first learn of the concepts of Democracy (Participation of All Citizens in governing - Jacques Rousseau), Inalienable Rights (Individual Freedoms including the freedom to own private property - John Locke), and separation of powers and the rule of law (Montague).
When the colonies in North America broke away from their own imperialist masters in Britain, they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights which included both the concepts of democracy (equal opportunity of all individuals in society,) and the protection of individual liberties (including that of private property). Over the course of our history, because these political ideals are so intertwined with the economic system of capitalism, the emphasis increasingly developed through common law was on individual liberties and the right to be free to make a million of die of starvation — in other words the right to equal opportunity instead of the right for all people to have certain basic human right to food, clothing, healthcare etc.
Angela Davis in her newest book (Freedom is a Constant Struggle) suggests a path forward for Americans. She does not negate participating in elections as a way to educate, and she acknowledges that putting forth leaders from excluded communities such as a black or female president has some positive value, but she does stress that we must fight capitalist individualism. We cannot put forward individual heroes, but must stress the importance of the collective whole, represented by well organized mass movements. It is the collective mass movements, of all the excluded (whether economically, culturally, or politically) that are the heart of democracy. It is only then that we can have full equal participation of electorate and the fulfillment of human needs.
She makes one other point that is critical. When a people cannot get their demands met through nonviolence or peaceful legal means, every group has the right to defend its existence through whatever means are necessary. She cites how South African Apartheid was ended through both a peaceful international solidarity movement and an armed wing of the ANC.
The Paradigm of Democracy as practiced in Socialist and Socialist Leaning Countries.
Socialism in general became more popular in the 1800s, though strands of this ideology have existed for a long time. There are both anarchist versions which include cooperatives economic forms where people own property equally and in common, traditional Marxist-Leninist versions where the State owns all the property, and Democratic Socialist versions where many of the services that meet people’s social needs (education, healthcare, childcare, transportation, etc. are publicly held.
I know that all of the academics on this are sharpening their teeth to discuss how inaccurate this Cliff Notes version of the debate is, but hopefully will not take the whole comments time to do this as this extremely brief and inaccurate summary is for folks who have not previously studied this stuff, which includes probably most of the world. The only real point I want to make is that what all of these philosophies have in common is that they all believe in some form of actual equality which guarantees all people the human right to the basic needs to food, housing, healthcare, education, etc. In other words, it is in philosophy and practice more concerned with the collective good of the society instead of the rights of the individual.
In many socialist or socialist leaning countries (we don’t have an anarchist country since anarchists don't believe in the Nation State) the wealth of the country is held collectively, to one degree or another by the Public Sector or State and is supposed to be distributed equally to the community. To avoid corruption of this principle, the idea was to give the power to a group of people that would represent the exploited workers internationally (The Communist Vanguard Party) through the concept of democratic centralism. Unfortunately, there were frequently no procedures to stop this group from imposing its own will instead of that of the people. In a world that was already dominated by capitalist competition and the ever increasing inequality due to the uneven distribution of private property and wealth, this often corrupted these states as well, distorting the hoped for collective equality it sought. (source: a look at history)
Russian History and Its Impact Today
Russia has long had a stereotype as a non-democratic country which continued from its rule by the Soviet Union (particularly under Stalin) and is still viewed as a foil for the United States project of American Exceptionalism. The US takes its imperialist project of regime change abroad under the guise of spreading democracy. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall and renewed relations under Glasnost, the United States used its puppet, Yeltsin, to pillage the Russia economy impoverishing the people. The new government was taken over by mostly Russian Communist bureaucrats and Russian organized crime to become the new capitalist oligarchy. Putin was one of these new oligarchs. He was, however, a nationalist who took pride in his country and wanted to recreate Russia into a new empire. As a consequence, he did try to improve the Russian economy, and continued most of what was left of the social services from the Soviet government. At this time he is still a popular President as he was able to regain some stability for the new capitalist Russian federation. Although Putin is the undisputed leader of Russia and rules with a pretty authoritarian hand, there are still several parties in the Russian election with representatives in the State Duma: United Russia (Putin’s party) describes itself as centrist and conservative and valuing Russia’s unique identity; the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the biggest and most popular left-wing party in Russia and has the second largest number of representatives, has mostly rural and older supporters and still uses traditional Soviet rhetoric to condemn capitalism though it also focuses on Russian patriotism; the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is the third largest party, right wing and openly pro-Western.
While Russia is not the old Communist boogieman promoted during the Cold War, it now has very pro-business interests. It does support the anti-imperialist countries vulnerable in the third world, but at this point I personally cannot tell whether it does so to support anti-imperialist ideals, its oil interests, or some new concept of a new Russian Empire that could in time develop its own more imperialist interests.
Final impression: When I watch billionaire Trump and billionaire Putin and billionaire Exxon oil mogul Tillerson (our new Secretary of State) I don’t see heads of State but leaders unaligned with any group except multinational corporations. I keep thinking of that old movie Network where this guy keeps running around saying “I’m mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.” At the end of the movie he finds out the world is not being run by any government, but rather a conglomerate of media companies. Anyone up for calling a house party and renting an old copy of Network as the “Resistance" action for today?