Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Sanitarios Maracay: What about the “socialist enterprises”?

The project of the new constitution includes several articles that speak of “social objectives of production”, of the right of State to interfere in the economy and to expropriate sectors considered as “strategic” and the creation of “socialist enterprises”.


 


This part of the text is bound to increase the enthusiasm of those who support the Chavez administration and regard it as a step forwards in the “march to socialism”. And yet, if we compare it with reality, we shall see that this enthusiasm is not justified at all.


 


In the first place, Chavez himself has stated that in the “XXI Century Socialism” there will be room for any productive enterprise, whether national or foreign. That sounds very much like capitalism with some state additive. What did become evident in these years of administration, where national and foreign bourgeoisie keeps on doing very good business in car industry, oil, banks, etc, while there is no change in the harsh living conditions of the toiling masses.


 


But if there is a thing that can prove the character of the “deceitful socialist propaganda” of these articles it certainly is the case of the Sanitarios Maracay, an important company founded 47 years ago in the city of Maracay, capital of the State of Aragua. Tired of having to put up with permanent ill-treatment from the owner, Alvaro Pocaterra – a man closely linked to the old politicians of Accion Democratica and promoter of the 2002 coup – the 800 workers have lately put up several struggles demanding payment of their salaries and fulfilment of previsions of the collective agreement.


 


In view of that, the owner carried out an old trick meant to defeat workers: in 2006 he retired from the company and announced its closure. Workers occupied the factory and decided to take over the company and maintained the production. Ever since then, they keep on demanding that the owner should comply with what Chavez himself had said years before: factory closed by the owners, factory opened by the government”). That is why they demanded that the government should expropriate it and make it state-owned so that it can keep on producing under its workers’ control.


Far from fulfilling his promise, however, anticipating the alleged “socialist” spirit of the new constitution, the government did everything in its power to break up the struggle of these workers and to return the factory to the former owners.


 


Representatives of the Labour Ministry told them, “the best thing you can do it to accept the sale of the factory and collect indemnifications”. At the same time, as Orlando Chirino exposed in the above-mentioned interview, the government needs sanitary fittings for the 18 000 living quarters of the Programa Petrocasa. But they opted to order them in other companies, many of them property of 2002 coup-making owners instead of buying them form Sanitarios Maracay, in spite of the fact that they produce very good quality at low prices.


 


As if all this were not enough, workers also suffered repression from the government. On the 24th April, tired of waiting for an answer, they decided to march to Caracas. Their buses were intercepted by the police of governor of Aragua, Didalco Bolivar and battalions of the National Guard. This fact spawned a fighting regional strike last may summoned in solidarity with the workers and demanding resignation from the governor.


That is why we should not make any mistakes about that. The Chavez administration and the interests of the “Bolivarian bourgeoisie” may lead to turning such enterprises as CANTV and Electricidad Caracas buying off their shares.


 


What they will never do is to encourage a generalised process of expropriation of national bourgeoisie and of imperialist properties in the country nor will they develop workers’ control in the stat-owned companies.


 


Something that has been clearly proved is the way these state-owned companies function, such as PSVSA or CANTV under the control of the “Bolivarian bourgeoisie” without any possibility of workers’ control. Even more unlikely is the supposition that the Chavez administration will in any way encourage a general mobilisation of the working class and the toiling masses to drive this process on.


 


That is why, when a genuine example of workers’ control and mobilisation appears, such as was the case of Sanitarios Maracay, instead of supporting it and show it off as an example to follow, the Chavez administration attacks it and represses it.


 


His speeches and the bill for the new constitution may be fraught with references to socialism. But once you clear all this rhetoric, his real policies have nothing to do with needs and interests of the workers and a lot to do with bourgeois such as Alvaro Pocaterra.

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