Here’s an article from April about the commission established for this purpose: https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-installs-commission-to-evaluate-state-assets-mulls-possible-sell-offs/
The acting president announced that Venezuelan state assets would be divided into four categories: strategic ones to remain under state control, “strategic alliances” where the state retains ownership but management is turned over to the private sector in concession-type deals, “non-strategic” assets to be fully privatized; and assets to be liquidated or reincorporated elsewhere.
tl;dr there are a bunch of factories for things like steel and cement which have become derelict due to sanctions that they are open to privatizing but so far every contract announced for oil, gas, or mineral extraction has been a lease from the national companies, not a privatization.
The article in the OP is intentionally muddying the waters of what is actually happening. It leads with a quote from Delcy “I have instructed that non-essential assets held by the state be assessed to determine which can be offered to the private sector or returned to their former owners. This process is already well advanced,” Rodriguez said in a televised address."
I emphasized the important part, non-essential assets.
The article goes on to say “In her speech, Rodriguez said 44 energy contracts are being negotiated under the state’s oil law approved in January. The government has stated that 61 oil agreements have been signed, without providing details. “Similarly, important negotiations are under way in the mining sector, specifically regarding gold, aluminum, and iron,” she added.”
They are trying to make it seem like she is saying that the energy contracts and mining negotiations are a part of the assets being privatized, but that isn’t what she said in the speech or what any evidence has supported. Again, every contract that has been announced has been a lease, not a privatization. The are cherry picking quotes from her to make it seem like the headline is about oil, gas, and minerals, but it is really about old factories and refining facilities which are barely in use.
Thank you! I was already grinding my teeth to dust
I’m still a Delcy skeptic, but yeah, this sounds like a policy in-line with modern Chinese-style Socialism.
On the surface yes, but the crucial difference is that Venezuela does not have a DoP. Which makes this strategy inherently more risky.
It is very possible that if the Chavista movement and the communes are not strong enough this all goes off the rails.
The next elections are going to be an exceptionally dangerous moment for Venezuela. That is what i am most worried about, not Delcy.
At this point, the nature of the current PSUV leadership is frankly secondary compared to the example which Venezuela serves. Whether Venezuela under the PSUV is subverted and eroded Gorbachev-era CPSU-style, or whether it’s Venezuela’s own Special Period will eventually be determined through time. While I say that, Venezuela under the PSUV is not a DotP and they will not have anything close to the latitude afforded to the USSR during its NEP, China during the early Reform and Opening Up and Cuba during Special Period.
For the present, it’s very clear that the Trump government’s objective was to turn this into a “Venezuela model.” They tried to do it to Iran, with catastrophic humiliation thus far. Unable to learn a lesson, they will undoubtedly want to use it against Cuba as well.
Whether Rodriguez is a comprador or biding her time, it can be stated that the current PSUV leadership is clearly compelled to play along with Trump’s narrative about Venezuela. That narrative is that: if you cooperate once we decapitate your current leadership, we will allow you and your party to remain in power, call off our government-in-exile ghouls, give you some form of economic relief so long as you slowly devolve your system as a trade-off.
For countries without the capacity or capability to resist like Iran has, it may seem an odious yet tempting deal and quite an evolution of US foreign policy. The US’ demand towards its adversaries in the original Cold War and in its unipolar moment has always been one of unconditional surrender. All the socialist states destroyed in the 1989-92 counter-revolutions were replaced wholesale. Yugoslavia tried to compromise, but the US refused and launched the Yugoslav Wars. Then, Libya tried to compromise, but the US refused and sent Libya into an unending civil war.
While it is Cuba’s great misfortune is that it is right across from the United States, likewise, the US’ great misfortune is that it is right across from Cuba. That’s to say that the US is psychologically wedded to the idea that it is bounded by two oceans and that the American homeland is untouchable and safe from any possible blowback. This is the great American national neurosis and Cuba challenges that more than the USSR, China, Russia or Iran ever can. In all of contemporary American history, there are only two real instances where the sacred American homeland was attacked: Pearl Harbor and 9/11. No US president wants the history books to say that they allowed the third to occur under their watch.
That, above all else, I believe is the reason why Cuba has been left alone even after the fall of the USSR, in spite of the US invading numerous other countries far away in the meantime and its official military posture today being that it could still take on China at the latter’s doorstep. Even if the entire US military goes into Cuba, one missile lobbed against Miami would create that third attack on the American homeland.
Therefore, while the US bluster is that it could re-do the Bay of Pigs, its only politically viable option is to attempt to trigger a relatively bloodless counter-revolution. The Venezuela model is thereby designed to be a rebuttal against Cuba’s “Patria o Muerte” by attempting to create the impression that the US will not force it to be an either/or but that “Patria” can still exist, so long as it is placed second. Therefore, for leftist observers, it would be important to bear in mind that the continued persistence of the PSUV leadership in Venezuela today speaks not only to their own possible maneuvering, but also dialectically the American desire to play to that end such that it can create a “Venezuela model.” Until the eventual time where the truth will out, this is what really makes the situation in Venezuela rather opaque.
I really rooted that the demsocs just this once will win, as a treat. But no, Fidel and Che forver vindicated, no exception.
Why do you keep posting misinformation about Venezuela. This is a pattern with you and I want to know why.
Delcyzueala ain’t it.
So basically, you’re ignoring the facts to push a specific narrative because you have a personal vendetta against Delcy?
She didn’t press the DOTP button despite the revolution having not done so itself during the time of Chavez… It’s so jover… Weird how all the faults and flaws of the incomplete revolution is now pushed onto Delcy solely, and as if the country was already inherent ML. There’s zero need for a fanfic ‘betrayal’ narrative.
You know what’s weirder? Miami gusanos and Latino Fascists are saying that the US didn’t change anything haha. They are even flooding the social networks with this narrative that is contradictory to what Saymaz is suggesting.
Always feels great to have the opposite opinion of Miami Gusanos’.
In the fascist camps, you have two people: The ones that think that US didn’t change anything in Venezuela and the others that believe in every pompous lie that Trump and the White House prints.
The narrative that you have pushed so far with every post regarding Venezuela follows the latter. What I find funny is that not even gusanos believe in Trump.
Comprador in action…
Maduro should have just built a drone production facility out of fucking sticks and stones to combat the ambush… it’s so jover.
Maduro should have purged.
Still would have happened lol; it just would’ve not been Delcy. Even considering it is too much, he just would not have done it… Like he didn’t in our actual time. They’re not exactly known, as a movement and party, to be the most Marxist-Leninist. Chavez literally never took the step forward towards a DOTP, I even remember hearing that he fucking “disavowed” it or whatever, that’s where the “21ist Century Socialism” phrase comes from. I do not understand why your specific targeting (I guess) is on Delcy only rather than on Chavez-to-Maduro too. Or that somehow the revolution was betrayed rather than incomplete. You and many others were all for it but now it’s somehow different? Something to be disavowed now?
“We have to re-invent socialism. It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition.” -Hugo Chávez during his closing speech at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. January 31, 2005. “We have to build the Bolivarian socialism within the framework of the Bolivarian Constitution. […] We do not envisage the abolition of private property, neither the big nor the little one. […] Socialism has to be built by us, the sectors of the middle class, professionals, technicians, they are needed to build a productive socialism. We need the middle class, the professionals, the technicians, the entrepreneurs, the farmers, the youth, to join into a broad debate. Socialism of the 21st century is democracy, we are not talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat. No.” -As quoted in “Chávez propone constituir un ministerio para el seguimiento de obras y políticas” (6 October 2012), Correo del Orinoco
Yeah. He would have purged for a DOTP. And Delcy totally is not in line with the Chavez line.
Chavez literally never took the step forward towards a DOTP, I even remember hearing that he fucking “disavowed” it or whatever, that’s where the “21ist Century Socialism” phrase comes from.
There is a plan to reach DOTP. To delve into it further, I shared this post a year ago that goes through this. That’s why the communes are very important for that.
Are we still coping about Venezuela? All I see is more and more evidence that they have been completely defeated.
Time will tell.
They will prevail
Calling it coping implies people are in denial about the realities of what’s occurring and are reaching for whatever they can to cling to hope that it’s not happening the way it is actually happening.
That’s not what is occurring here. When Assad fell and Jolani took over, were MLs going, “Jolani is just playing the long game to liberate Syria”? No. The reason for ongoing back and forth about Venezuela is precisely because the situation isn’t simple. It can’t fairly be called straightforward coup/comrador and it also can’t fairly be called straightforward resistance against imperialism. It is murkier than that and so it requires analysis beyond “our person good, their person bad; our movement losing, their movement winning.” Depth of analysis has always been important for Marxists to conduct and we need to practice it the best we can. If anything, I’d argue situations with this degree of complexity and controversy are going to become more common as unipolarity dies. Already, some struggle with the idea of China as anti-imperialist yet not global military liberator and doing trade with imperial states. Binary thinking with marxist-leninist characteristics is not itself scientific socialism. We have to work through the complexity or we will be reduced to coping in the form of labeling something as good/bad and calling it a day, which is not a flattering trait to share with liberals. I don’t say this to be sanctimonious at all. I know well the urge to label something and move on. But labeling and moving on is for spectators, not for people who are trying to change the world.
