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Production, Cultural Revolution and Social Movement

by Edmundo Aray
translation Cuba - Network in Defense of Humanity

The Venezuelan poet and filmmaker Edmundo Aray wrote this reflection in May of 2015.

Since then they have circulated to many friends although essentially have remained unpublished. We offer it to our readers as part of a committed and responsible debate that has taken place among the Venezuelan revolutionaries for the past few years.

From a culture of profit to a culture of work we say once again. What to do to evade declarations? For a long time, it seems, we live under the aegis of Venezuelan profit capitalism that could be said as a peculiar capitalism of State.

We have advanced in the diversification of the economy but it is urgent to deal with the agrarian revolution and modernization of agriculture to the levels that demand a jump in production that allows covering a higher level not only for the demands of the sectors of industrial production but the growing demand of consumption of the

population. This requires a larger investment in the public sector and a necessary boost of the private sectors committed to the growth of the country.

Now (2015 and a few years before) the national demand is higher than the national offer and, even more, our capacity of offer through massive imports has characterized our economy since the early years of exploitation of oil to date but with alarming character these days.

A revolution of social characteristics, in the conditions of modern day Venezuela does not escape a historical constant, that is creating a growing demand for industrial production through agrarian revolution. A historical phenomenon, of development of capitalism.

Why this process begun by Hugo Chávez in the present continues to resist this matter? Why continue the continuous “painful dependency on imports”?

The greatest challenge in this new period, ours, is the agricultural issue, the agrarian revolution, food sovereignty that if not assumed fully “will bring us frequent and very serious problems since it is none other that a question of sovereignty and not only economic”. I point to the Agricultural Pact of the European Union that expresses emphatically that agriculture is not a problem of prices, but a problem of security.

How to deal with a substantial change though development of the infrastructure?

We have large tracts of fertile lands, water, and a “production of fertilizers, both chemical and organic. As well as potential to expand as necessary”.

We have, certainly, the means to solve the problems of complete mechanization of the land in its totality, a condition of design and execution of an adequate plan to our typographic and climate particularities – explains Alí Rodríguez Araque.

We have energy and much of it. Why an adequate distribution has not been achieved both in electricity and in gas? Why, also have we not developed other sources of energy such as the photovoltaic, eolic and

of biomass?

We have considered the requirements for agricultural development. But there are others such as: 1) science and technology applied to boost food production; 2) application of knowledge of the basic components to satisfy the food for the population.

In the full process of the Revolution that worried Lenin of the evident symptoms of reproduction of bureaucracy. He admitted that the old state apparatus had not been destroyed and bureaucracy far from reducing increased, reaching even the party. He wrote: There are bureaucrats not only in our institutions of the Soviets but also in the party. Centralization of the state direction hyperbolizes and bureaucracy is established as a new class that took over state and political power.

Efficiency is perceived through the relationship of wealth-productivity-welfare. It is important to prevent the State from assuming the conduction of socially unmanageable productive forces particularly in the small and medium size production. Prevent inefficiency to be associated to or affect the sector of state production.

Our excellent theoreticians have explained that in the past decades a profit economy, investment and production are conditions by the stimulus of sustained consumption in the distribution of profit. The enormous effort to pay the social debt inherited has become noticeable supports to the process of raising the level of life of a large majority as well as extending education and knowledge to our population that should result in a better and higher quality of labor force capable of assuming the challenges of production. In this sense, how much have we done with the organization and education for production? Quite a lot, certainly but not what the process demands.

The effort made has not managed to overcome the paradoxes of Venezuelan economy: a) An income that surpasses by a few times the national economy; b) A capacity of purchase that far surpasses the

production capacity of the country. Therefore the need to go to instruments such as MERCAL and PDVAL to satisfy the capacity of purchase. It is a policy of subsidy and protection that inevitably sparks growth of a parasitic demand since it is from incomes that have not been obtained by a participation in the productive process; a policy that contributes to the rise of an unfertile population but, at the same time, should move us on the road of increasing food production through an agrarian revolution, but also a revolution of industrial production as well as in the scientific and technological universe. Three revolutions that have been important in the development of capitalism and, equally in a process such as ours that requires a process of accumulation amplified through capital and labor force.

III

And if we are talking of revolutions, then we must talk of Cultural Revolution. We have advanced in setting the bases for it to be produced. Of course, the call of the Ministry of Popular Power for the Summit is guided in this sense when we call to invent more daring forms of intervening in reality, read an escalation of physical, symbolic and spiritual violence that world capital applies against the peoples; against ours for its intent to included millions of Venezuelans in social plans for literacy campaigns, education in all levels, food, housing, sports and health. A willingness to achieve an aware and real protagonism of our people in the revolutionary process that encourages our lives.

We are, in spite of the inconsequences, an example for many peoples of the world. We have been so since 1810 and – much before – and will not stop begin it. Neither the empire nor its national agents, the servile, racist, oligarchy incapable of thinking with their own minds to the point of going to the invader government of seven nations in the period of President Obama, such an attraction to the values of the empire conformed by the national treasure, read oil profit; nor the empire or its agents, I repeat, can forgive the extraordinary

effort of social inclusion and the protagonist role of the dispossessed generated by a process begun by Comandante Chávez. They feel they have lost their political power, their privileges and excesses of that power. Our history of permanent confrontation between the owners and the dispossessed. A history they want to erase through infamy, terrorism, disdain, sustaining a shameless war against our social existence.

Capitalist society tries to impose chaos, disrupt the truth, disrupt values; all that is amoral converted into ethics, an ethics of the market, of merchandise. Through the media they enter our unconscious minds to take over our existence, corrupt it to such an extent as to convert it into dishonesty as a normal behavior in daily life. It is not possible to construct a new society with old values; with values of capital society. The enemy well knows that lesson.

Let us listen to the warnings o Fidel: The shortages, the errors of deviation of ideo-educational policy and circulated-propagandist policies lead to identify as positive ethical conducts and policies that are part of individualism, discrimination, egotism, foreign, copy, double moral.

What to do? Battle with the truth. With each blow counterblow with the truth. Assume a full ethics of work, cooperation, and of solidarity.

Act every day of our lives aware of the correctness and weaknesses of the process in the exercise to create a new model of human relations, the supreme goal of a social revolution when it is authentic.

Does Bolivar rest calmly in his tomb? Does Hugo Chávez rest calmly in his tomb knowing that he, in the time of his death, had barely contributed despite his colossal patriotic effort to begin a road of national liberation and socialism?

We are all Bolivar, we are all Hugo Chávez. What to do, how to achieve this condition, this purpose for better men and women of Venezuela, that we are the immense majority?

Right now Hugo is a symbol of the utopia of universal redemption of an. Words of a poet.

Throughout our history Latin American and Caribbean though has stimulated love for justice, truth, beauty and commitment to fight for full sovereignty, power of the people. Words of an anthropologist.

There is no revolution without a cultural ethics and without cultural and moral paradigms, There is no revolution without an ideology of deep humanist contents based in the conscience of a people.

Let us call once again, for the imagination, the poets, the prophets the creative powers of a people and the example of our heroes in the large battle against the genocides of humanity.

Finally, allow me to quote Rosa Luxemburg: the masses must learn how to use power using power. There is no other way”.

That, comrades, is the sacred duty of social mobilization.

May, 2015

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