The electoral defeat suffered by the Bolivarian forces in Venezuela’s mid-term elections in early December is a major setback for the process that began in 1998 under Hugo Chavez. 

The result will no doubt have implications beyond the borders of Venezuela. The right wing Mesa de Unidad Democratica (Democratic Unity Roundtable, MUD) alliance, which now controls the National Assembly, is attempting to change Venezuela’s foreign policy and, more profoundly, undermine the combativity and sense of possibility of the anti-neoliberal movements that have shaken the continent over the last decade and a half.

Those who have been part of the numerous attacks on the Bolivarian process now hold governmental power. It is clear that the new Assembly will move relatively quickly to reverse the gains of the revolutionary process.

The challenge for the Bolivarian process now is to reorganise and retake the political initiative. President Nicolas Maduro’s call for a return to the streets is essential, and well overdue. Maduro has called for a period of reflection and debate, though it is unclear what exactly this will mean.

The results

Z.C Dutka reported for Venezuelanalysis.com on 8 December:

“The opposition holds a super majority of 112 seats, including three indigenous seats, of the 167-seat legislative body.

“The country’s opposition alliance Democratic Unity Roundtable now holds 109 seats while the United Socialist Party (PSUV) has 55. The three elected indigenous representatives, while officially independent, campaigned from the opposition platform and will likely support the MUD inside the Assembly.

“With a full two-thirds majority, the opposition will have the power to block new spending for social programs, grant amnesty to select prisoners, approve or revoke enabling laws, and remove magistrates of the Supreme Court. A two-thirds majority may also remove ministers and the vice president, revoke or modify organic laws, and convoke a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the Constitution.”

The president can veto National Assembly laws, but without its support has very limited power. The electoral results have delivered the radical right opposition legislative and administrative power for the first time since 1998.

Explaining the defeat

Some on the left have restricted their assessment of the defeat to the intense economic, political and media war that has been waged against the revolution. 

It is true that a major weakness of the revolutionary process has been its inability to take control of the economy, the majority of which has remained under the control of the capitalist class. This has allowed the right wing opposition to set the agenda. 

The capitalists have brought the revolutionary process to its knees through a prolonged economic war against the working class. The creation of economic instability has made life difficult, forcing the majority of Venezuelans to queue for hours for basic food items and daily essentials. The accumulated toll of this counter-revolutionary process peaked with the collapse of oil prices, which severely reduced government revenues.

However, the problem of building a revolutionary leadership post-Chavez has also been a key factor. The elections demonstrate the limitations of the revolution’s continuing reliance on bourgeois forms of democracy – its privileging of representative over participatory forms. 

The people of Venezuela have participated in some 17 elections since 1998. But parliament has remained a place for negotiating with the ruling class, rather than an organ of popular power. Though many social and economic changes have allowed the working class and social movement organisations into the political arena, the formal electoral system has not done anything to extend popular power. It is still firmly within the scope of the old political system.

Many of the political participation measures that have been introduced lie outside the formal structures of the local, municipal and national electoral systems. Real democracy in Venezuela has been in the communes, communal councils, workers’ councils and numerous other organs of popular participation.

Maduro argued on 10 Dec, at a gathering outside of the Miraflores Palace (the presidential building), “We will get out of this quagmire where the economic war and our own errors have landed us – where bureaucracy and corruption have enveloped the revolutionary policies’’.

The death of Hugo Chavez from cancer in 2013 was a severe political blow for the revolutionary forces. Though Maduro attempted to continue his legacy, there has been a political vacuum within the leadership. It not only has failed to counter the right wing political arguments, it has been conciliatory by calling for “national unity” on numerous occasions. 

There is also a longer term weakness. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela was founded in 2007 and has some 6 million members. It was meant to unite and represent all the revolutionary forces in Venezuela. However, since its founding it has been dominated by conservative and bureaucratic layers. 

The PSUV has been a broad electoral front rather than a political vanguard. It has not been the organisational form of the organised working class and its allies but rather has often been at odds with popular and working class institutions.

A new confrontation

Alternative political institutions that more closely represent the working class have been created in the form of communal councils, workers’ councils and numerous other political bodies. These bodies will now have to combat a more hostile National Assembly which will bring the process into an intense political confrontation in the coming months.

The possibility of defending the revolution will depend on the combativity of the most conscious sectors and the willingness and ability of the leadership to lean on this vanguard and open up a new period of struggle.