A revolutionary humanism

Is it pertinent to pose the question: ‘what is Chavism?’, when, for a number of years, it has been practiced every day in Venezuela? The answer is: yes! Because even though Chavism has been indeed practiced daily for fifteen years, in the most natural way, there comes a moment when the praxis must necessarily pass into theory. And moving to theory – in political science – presupposes that, from a concrete experience, through analysis, we are able to deduce that objective equation that could make this practice universal. To extract it from the “here and now” and make this experience possible “anywhere at any time”. Without theory, any practice – especially in politics – ends up as folklore... before disappearing. In addition, we must note that if we do not study Chavism, it will be studied against us. What then is Chavism?

Chavism is the meeting point of several paths opened by the Liberators and the meeting point of various searches begun by many social visionaries that come together at central point: the thinking of Hugo Chávez.

As with all revolutions, the Bolivarian Revolution is an architecture where a diverse series of important forces unite and blend, resulting in a radically innovating political dynamic.

When Hugo Chávez came to power – in 1999 – he did not have a large political party; he came at the head of a very diverse popular movement that included members of the military, ex-guerrillas and a variety of leftists. Moreover, he won popular support with a discourse of re-foundation – the re-founding of Venezuela: that is the very basis of Chavism. Because in the hard nucleus of the Chavist philosophy we find the recuperation of the concept of a nation, and the restoration and the defense of national pride.

Chávez invented for Venezuela and Latin America something that we could call “liberation politics”, as we say that there exists “liberation theology”; with a preferential option for the people, the humble and the poor. With his exceptional capacity for political pedagogy, Chávez stimulated massive popular politicization and conceptualized a policy of liberation of the people, in which the people, armed with a political conscience, are the author of their own destiny.

With an unprecedented discernment and guided by a very sharp political sense, Chávez understood that the times allowed for exploring new paths that had never been trodden before. In addition, he was able to elaborate on this and transmit a new discourse of hope to the demoralized Venezuelan people.

In this sense, Chavism is a narrative that explains to Venezuelans who they are, what they might aspire to and what are their rights. It is a new explanation that provides an answer to old questions: What is Venezuelan society? What are their problems? Who are the victims? Who are responsible? What are the solutions? And this new account was narrated, day after day, speech after speech, with enormous communicational efficacy, by Hugo Chávez, who became a charismatic and intellectual reference point.

Thus, Chavism constitutes an innovative Latin American political pathway that has been freed and emancipated from the eternal European conceptual guardianship. A policy that, for the first time, is original, like a source or a spring, and not a mirror or copy of what has been done in other continents, in other cultures.

In this sense as well, Chavism is a revolutionary option. It is the most innovative and daring project that Venezuela has had since Bolivar. It is the only project of peace, development, justice and prosperity for the Venezuelan people since 1810.

What does it mean to be a Chavist? To be a Chavist is to be a Bolivarian, as a life option, because it means being anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and truly republican. It also means to be Zamorian and Robinsonian. That is, to come to grips with the political thought of the founders of the Republic. Because the “Tree of Three Roots” is a capital concept of Chavism. Something that Chávez defined as follows: “First is the Bolivarian root with the proposal that Simon Bolivar made of equality and freedom, with his geopolitical vision of the integration of Latin America; then the Zamorian root, for Ezequiel Zamora, the general of the sovereign people and of civic-military unity; and finally the Robinsonian root, for Simon Rodríguez, the teacher of Bolivar, the “Robinson”, the wise man of popular education, and again with freedom and equality”. Moreover, to these three roots, Chavez adds others: for example, Miranda and Sucre. And later others such as José Martí, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro...

But to be Chavist is also to be profoundly Christian. Commander Chávez left us true Christianity as part of our life, of our essence and our values. Summing up all of this, one can say: I am Chavist because I am pro-independence, because I am a democrat, a patriot, a Christian, a revolutionary, anti-oligarchic, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. All this is certain, all is truth, but none of these parts make sense if we do not recall who gave ideological and political coherence to the whole set of these concepts: Hugo Chávez is the author of this revolutionary synthesis.

Therefore, when we say “I am a Chavist”, we are giving absolute coherence to a whole project, a whole system of ideas, a whole political program that is the bible of the future for Venezuela, a future of prosperity, of peace, of social justice, of ethics. And above all, of socialism as a way of life.

To be a Chavist also means to assume one’s condition as a Bolivarian, as a Latin American and a revolutionary, which is the most worthy and elevated condition in the human scale. Being a Chavist means being a “21st century socialist”, that is, a Christian socialist, a humanist socialist and democratic socialist. It is to have one’s feet in Venezuela and project oneself as an authentic internationalist, to the universal.

To be a true Chavist is to be an integral Bolivarian, a radical, and to want the ideas of Simon Bolívar to live on in future centuries. And the only way to identify as a Chavist militant is to assume the revolutionary project that Commander Chávez left us.

Hugo Chávez was a pragmatic leader who was able to adapt the modalities of his action to historical circumstances, who never forgot the objectives to be met and who always maintained his principles untouchable. He was convinced that if Venezuela could achieve glorious feats in the past, becoming one of the principal nations of Latin America, it was because she was mobilized by a high ideal towards a common destiny. Inversely, Chávez knew that Venezuelans always have a tendency to fall back on their quarrels and internal divisions (political, social, intellectual), which – according to the Chavist vision – makes them constantly run the risk of falling and sliding on the toboggan of decadence.

Therefore, in order to give the best of herself and take on leadership of Latin American nations, Venezuela must be unified by a historical leader and a great project, and coordinated (in an efficacious balance of powers) by political, military, economic and social institutions, determined to avoid infighting.

One must insist that, at the heart of Chavism, there is a patriotic philosophy of humanism, inheritor of Christianity and liberation theology. Chavist humanism is, at the same time, an outcome of the greatness of Venezuela, because the message that Venezuela sends to the world is profoundly humanist. And it is a consequence of social policy whose first objective is to unite the nation.

Chavism has various dimensions: historical, philosophical, and political. From the ideological point of view, Chavism retrieves and synthesizes, as has been noted, the political action of Hugo Chávez and his political thought, that is, the doctrine that one can deduce from his speeches and writings.

As political action, Chavism is characterized by the following broad outlines:

– sovereignty and national independence; rejection of the domination of any imperialist super- power, and in particular the United States. Chávez said: “No-one can either understand or defend the Homeland, if he does not know that its principal enemy is (North) American imperialism”;

- rejection of any claimed economic and financial super-power (IMF, World Bank, WTO). Independence is defended, not only in the political arena, but also in economic, geopolitical, cultural, diplomatic and even military sectors.

- solid state institutions, such as those of the 5th Republic instituted by the Constitution of 1999;

- a strong executive and some degree of personalization of politics to oppose the impotence of party regimes;

- a strong and stable executive power that confers a primordial role to the president of the republic;

- a direct relation between the leader-president and the people that surpasses intermediary bodies, thanks to a “participative” notion of democracy, with frequent recourse to referendums and elections, and an interactive leader–people dialogue through specific use of the mass media;

- civic-military coordination whose mechanisms are made up of the President himself, who coordinates the best of the progressive civil movements and the patriotic intelligence of the military apparatus; the Armed Forces are intimately associated to the project of national development in the framework of civic-military unity;

- national independence and the greatness of Venezuela;

- the national union of all Venezuelans – beyond the traditional political or regional differences that in the past were the cause of division and decadence –, in a direct relation between the leader and the people, united by social policies of inclusion and social justice;

- priority of the political sphere over other considerations (economic, administrative, technical. bureaucratic, etc.);

- respect for the authority of the State;

- the profound will for social justice;

- intervention of the State in the economy;

- anti-colonialism and the right to self-determination of peoples;

- the reactivation of OPEC and a coordination of petroleum policies among producing and exporting countries;

- Latin American integration as a constant and imperative ideological horizon, established by Simon Bolívar himself; and the creation of concrete entities of  integration (ALBA, Unasur, Celac, Petrocaribe, TeleSUR);

- the conception of a multipolar world without hegemonies; which demands the destruction of the project of unipolar imperial hegemony to guarantee planetary peace and the “equilibrium of the universe”. It is necessary to instigate a multi-centric and pluri-polar universe. Chávez pointed this out as the fourth great historical objective of the “Plan for the Homeland”, his program for government for the period 2013-2019;

- South-South diplomacy with increased links to the communities of the South through the Non-Aligned Movement and horizontal alliances: South America/Africa (ASA) and South America/Arab countries (ASPA). Chávez also supported the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and proposed an alliance of Venezuela with this group to consolidate a multipolar world;

- national solidarity among citizens and territories; and Latin American solidarity;

- respect for nations, that are cultural entities sculpted by history and bastions of the peoples against imperialism;

- rejection of the doctrine of economic neoliberalism, and the preference for an economy oriented by the State in view of promoting development that is proactive and structuring (with ambitious public projects, nationalization of strategic sectors, food sovereignty, etc.);

- building a “State of the missions” to respond more directly to the diverse social demands of the people;

- moving towards cornering capitalism (the exploitation of one class by another) and the definition of a Bolivarian and humanist socialism, in democracy and in freedom, that in addition to granting workers advanced social protection, empowers them by giving them access both to the decisions of the enterprise as well as to its benefits.

One of the primordial objectives of Chavism is to reconcile Venezuelans with the Homeland, unite them and build a State with greater sovereignty, greater administrative efficacy, greater justice and greater equality.

Chavism unites men and women of all political origins around a great project of the “country as a power” and the proactive action of a leader. To reach the planned objectives, the method of Chavism is pragmatism and the rejection of ideological prescriptions. Its two principal axes: internal unity at the service of an ambitious patriotic and social project; and independence and the projection of “Venezuela as a power” in Latin America and the world.

Chavism is hence a system of thought, of will and of action. It begins with facts and circumstances; it does not act predetermined by a doctrine or an ideology. Proactive action versus fatalism; action versus passivity, versus abandonment and renouncement.

For Chávez, Venezuela comes first. His political action consists in creating conditions such that the homeland can give the best of itself. And this can be achieved only if the Venezuelan people is united around a project of social progress defined by a charismatic leader that drives it towards its great historical ideal.

Chavism is not only an original political doctrine but also the lived history and the thought of an exceptional man who has marked Venezuelan society in its most profound structures.

Chavist thought has its ideological bases in various roots that combine in order to form a new progressive Venezuelan ideology. This is characterized by a lack of dogmatisms, in order to distinguish it from the failed socialist experiments in Europe of the twentieth century. So, in order to distinguish it from what was rejected by the Polish working class in 1980, or what fell with the Berlin wall in 1989, or what imploded in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union, Chávez used to speak of a “socialism of the Twenty-first century”. That is, a socialism that has arisen in Latin America, that must adjust itself to our times, and therefore Chávez basically added: participative democracy, feminism and ecologist sentiment.

This “socialism of the 21^st century” is compatible with private property, although it encourages other socialist and solidary forms of property such as cooperatives and co-management. It is also compatible with patriotism and economic nationalism. Chávez did not hesitate to nationalize big companies in the hands of foreign capitalists in the strategic sectors, and he placed patriotic and competent Venezuelans in command of these de-privatized enterprises.

The “socialism of the 21st century” is also compatible with social Christianity. Chávez assumes the motto of the Sandinistas: “Christianity and revolution, there is no contradiction”, starting from the postulate that the true identity of Christianity is that which is given by liberation theology. Chávez thus affirmed that Jesus Christ was the first socialist of the modern era and that “the kingdom of God” has to be built here on Earth.

From all this, one deduces that Chavism has a natural vocation to exercise hegemony in Venezuela, due to its capacity to bear the moral and intellectual direction of society. Also, because it has allowed for the political recuperation of a democracy in which there is participation of the government, the armed forces and the people, united in the expansion of social rights and the fair redistribution of the wealth of the country.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

- Ignacio Ramonet is a Spanish journalist. President of the Board of Administration and editing director of Le Monde Diplomatique in Spanish.