By LUIZ MARQUES*
Contested by the corporate media, the elections in Venezuela have a historical basis that concerns geopolitics and ideology: the largest oil reserves in the world are concentrated there and an innovative form of government is unfolding
Politically, the guiding principle of democracy is citizenship, which implies the right of each human being to be treated by others as equal with regard to the formation of collective choices and the obligation of rulers to be responsible to all members of society. By this democratic and republican criterion, to date no democracy or Republic has met all the requirements. Women continue to have lower political representation than their demographic density.
American democracy does not consider votes to have equal weight. In voting between delegates from the majority parties in the Confederation, whoever wins the battle wins all the votes corresponding to the confederate unit. In 2016, candidate Hillary Clinton had more votes among voters during the campaign than Donald Trump and, even so, gained fewer delegates. The old gear was assembled by the “founders of the nation” and guarantees a certain control of the process. For C. Wright Mills, the “power elite” in the USA is made up of the political-industrial-military complex. This hidden power, in fact, is never scrutinized whatever the modality of choice.
The concept of “liberal democracy” serves as a paradigm for Western countries, which for the author of The clash of civilizations, Samuel Huntington, does not include Latin America. It means that only two forms of government have recognition and legitimacy in the West: presidentialism and parliamentarism. The variations between the two reflect the institutional nuances housed under the same conceptual construct. If there is no single performative model of governance, however, there is a solid paradigm based on political representation. In it, there is no place for management councils with deliberative responsibilities regarding the Union’s guidelines and investments.
The difficulty arises when we are asked to make a value judgment about political regimes that do not fit the paradigmatic rule, or because they do not have several competitive parties (the USA has two); or by having different ways of configuring collective choices, as happens in China, Cuba and Venezuela. The theoretical simplification that confines democracy to the liberal framework, with guaranteed periodicity in the electoral calendar, freedom of party organization and expression attentive to respect for the “rules of the game” (Norberto Bobbio) and “procedural norms” (Alain Touraine). The social dimension of the regime does not come into question.
In regions hegemonized by the free market, the tendency is to consider “dictatorship” the lack of pluralism expressed in the spectrum of parties, as well as state interference in the dynamics of politics, economy and culture. Modern democracy has shelved the Athenian democracy of the 5th century BC, based on direct participation in assemblies in public squares (now yes), model who made his last appearance in the French Revolution under the baton of the Jacobins. The westernization of democracy expresses a political character; promotes the detachment of politics from other spheres.
Politicism minimizes the importance of popular participation in the conduct of State business and, by extension, the act of voting itself. Mandatory voting is restricted in Asia, to Singapore and Thailand; in Africa, to Congo, Gabon and Egypt; in Oceania, to Australia, Nauru and Samoa; in North America, to Mexico; in Central America, to Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica; in South America, to Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay and Uruguay. Apolitical individualism induces the idea that participation is unnecessary. The institutions would resolve themselves without your voice.
From this perspective, citizen participation would be nothing more than a myth. After all, the system works with a mere 30% of voter intervention, dispensing with other mechanisms for building public opinion. On the contrary, excessive participation endangers democracy by adding commitments to the list of political activity and intensifying the class struggle. Vision in contradiction with that of the socialists, for whom popular sovereignty presupposes mobilization to contain the extreme right.
Former president of the International Political Science Association and professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Science Po), Jean Leca, identified the intellectual origin of his colleagues by the volume of citations of the terms “representation” and “participation”. In one case, they were North Americans or Europeans; in another, Latin Americans. For these, an alternative governance pattern to the conventional ones has a positive and desirable sign. Without pressure, things don't happen in the global South.
It is desirable to introduce and institutionalize a councilist participationism, whose famous illustration for hosting the edition that inaugurates the World Social Forum (FSM, 2001) is the Participatory Budget, from Porto Alegre. An experiment capable of combining representative and participatory democracies, at least in a period of relative balance of forces. However, unlike what was theorized by the Austrian Marxist Max Adler – in the “Red Vienna” of the 1920s – with Soviets dissociated from a revolutionary situation, in the midst of the meteoric flight of neoliberal hegemony.
In Latin America, historically, the State has turned its back on the needs of the overwhelming majority of the population. In a survey carried out in the first decade of the century, which is ongoing, on whether the State supported the rich or the poor more, only in one South American country did more than 50% of those interviewed stated that the State's preference tended towards the poor: Venezuela , then governed by President Hugo Chávez. President Lula 1.0's Brazil did not cross the dividing line.
Among us, what stands out in the national imagination is the fear of the ruling classes, condensed in the pejorative notion of the “masses”, whose mobilization is seen as manipulated given the inability of the subordinated to form an autonomous consciousness, due to the low level of schooling. It is enough to remember that the right to vote was extended to the illiterate recently in 1985, by an amendment to the 1967 Constitution. The anathemas thrown against the candidacy of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva were those of “cachaceiro” (due to aporophobia) and “illiterate” (due to elitism), in the absence of a university degree. As in Caetano Veloso's verse: “Narciso finds ugly what he doesn't see in the mirror”.
For Paulo Nogueira Batista Júnior, “Venezuela faces the Empire and the crisis is a consequence of sanctions”. Today's embargoes include the theft of gold bar reserves deposited in the Bank of England's underground vaults, valued at US$2 billion. The United Kingdom does not allow access to the Venezuelan government. The matter is in the hands of British Justice.
The siege of the nation sister It begins with the nationalization of the national oil company, which internally infuriated the “bag bourgeoisie” without an industrialization project to form an inclusive internal market. Externally, it confronted the sector's overseas interests, which went to complain in Washington.
“The people and workers will demonstrate how we will now be more efficient in the administration of our (oil) industry and the services related to it”, spoke Hugo Chávez at Lake Maracaibo, one of the country's main oil hubs, on May 9, 2009; On that date, eight thousand new civil servants were incorporated. The money saved with the nationalization of 60 companies linked to oil production as service providers, 300 vessels and 39 terminals used for transport was borne by the “communal councils”. Organizations for popular participation not foreseen in the orthodox political conception. In Rousseu's sense, participation-process-decision rejects the social division of labor to restore the space of equals.
Contested by the corporate media, the presidential elections in Venezuela have a historical basis that concerns geopolitics and ideology: the largest oil reserves in the world are concentrated there and an innovative form of government is unfolding. There is life outside liberal democracy. The fundamental thing is to comply with the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of third parties and the right to establish popular sovereignty in their self-determination.
The rest is demagoguery from those who believe they are sheriffs, playing tricks on imperialist logic and common sense manufactured by undeniable interests. Brazil, Colombia and Mexico demand Voting Minutes, but they must be aware that the violent and undemocratic opposition will not accept them, as in the thirty times they lost since 1999.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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