The ruling classes in Venezuela continue to fight for the supremacy of Capital. Within this article can be seen the state monitoring the land distribution. Marx, in Capital, constantly points to the contradiction between the landed capital and the industrial capital.
There is much potential for revolution within the actions of the armed peasantry as they seek to redistribute their land, but the contradiction is that right now they are indemnified to the state apparatus and are acting particular to the needs of capital to attack and reorganize the large landed estates.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/world/americas/17venezuela.html?em&ex=1179633600&en=abde375d9c31b689&ei=5087%0A]Clash of Hope and Fear as Venezuela Seizes Land[/url] By SIMON ROMERO
Published: May 17, 2007 Adam B. Ellick contributed reporting.
URACHICHE, Venezuela — The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.
This quote appeares to be the peasants acting in an insurrectionary manner, until we see the essence of this quote further on in the article:
Mr. Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.
With the state monitoring the seizure and containing within its own particular sphere of development, the peasants/workers (the term for these workers can be debated, and maybe I'm incorrect in calling them a peasantry) are acting on Capital's behalf and therefore valorizing both the state and capital as a consequence.
This is agrarian terrorism encouraged by the state,” said Fhandor Quiroga, a landowner
Marx always said that when the capitalists argue among themselves over power, they always expose the truth of each other. I'm butchering the quote, but it can be found in the Grundrisse.
Before the land reform started in 2002, an estimated 5 percent of the population owned 80 percent of the country’s private land. The government says it has now taken over about 3.4 million acres and resettled more than 15,000 families.
It is government control, and not working class control acting autonomously that is claiming this land. The ruling elite are not worried, though of course, the potential for insurrection is inherrent to this contradiction, the government clearly seems confident in their containment of dissent.
With financing from state banks, the cooperative plants crops like manioc, corn and beans, which officials in Caracas say are better suited to soils here than sugar cane. By burning the cane during land seizures, the squatters prepare the land for other crops and give owners less incentive to fight for control. The state and federal government holds Bella Vista as an example of the ideological fervor Mr. Chávez is trying to instill in the countryside.
This financing and ideological fervor further enslaves the working class to the state apparatus by intensifying the social relationship of capital, thereby valorizing it. Again, the level of class consciousness in Venezuela seems to be at an incredible low, as the state is subsuming the whole of the working class to their nationalism and is therefore blurring class lines.
“Before Chávez, the government would have been happy to let us starve,” said Ms. Colmenares, holding her 6-month-old daughter, Luzelis. “We’ll never let what we have now be taken from us.”
An interesting comment that illustrates this contradiction well, as the worker depended upon the government for the land, but then uses the universal pronoun "we". Is she saying we in reference to the government, or we in reference to those recently given land. I think it's more the latter than the former, which is indicitave of Marx's saying that the seeds of revolution are sown with the needs of capital. Chavez may be breaking the back of the big landowners and weening themselves off of imported foods (read US agriculture), but the opposite may be happening, as can be seen here:
The uncertainties and disruptions of the land seizures have led to lower investment by some farmers. Production of some foods has been relatively flat, adding to shortages of items like sugar, economists say.
This is also a very interesting quote:
“The double talk from the highest levels is absurd,” Mr. Machado said. “By enhancing the state’s power, the reforms we’re witnessing now are a mechanism to perpetuate poverty in the countryside.”
This supports Marx's theory of how capital impoverishes the countryside as it breaks up the landed estates.
Throw in some bullshit about "the road to socialilsm":
In an interview at the governor’s palace, where the halls are decorated with images of Che Guevara and Mr. Chávez, Governor Giménez said some friction should be expected on “the road to socialism.”
and
“They need to understand we’re committed to the construction of a socialist fatherland.”
all wrapped up in the ideology of nationalism. The concept of "socialism" here is NOT lower order communism where the proletariat struggle to seize control of their own minds, negate the social relationship of capitalism, the direct confrontation of alienation, through the direct appropriation of the means of production in order to set up a cashless society predicated on the maxim "from each according to ability to each according to need. This "socialism" is pure revisionist bullshit that sees the nationalizing of anything and the strengthening of a state, read the capitalist social relationships, and therefore nothing more than capitalism in an intense form. This "socialism" can also be seen as fascistic, as the state is aligning all elements within itself and attempting to discipline the ruling class in the interests of capital.
according to him, this is based on (his total misunderstanding of) marx. here´s an interview with him
Can comment on articles and discussions
all that you say is perfectly true - it's state-capitalism, with a hefty dollop of authoritarianism - but I doubt if those workers could do it on their own (there or anywhere in South America) as of now, the elites are too damn strong.
Plus, redistribution does seem real