Nationalizations in Venezuela

[url=http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=322]Venezuela: Nationalizations Aim to Make Industry Serve Peoples’ Needs[/url]

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On August 27, Venezuelan President Hugo Chбvez announced the end of negotiations with former owner Ternium over the nationalization of the Sidor steel factory, stating that the government would “take over all the companies that it has here,” and that Ternium “can leave.”

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During the August 27 broadcast, Chбvez stood alongside business owners from the cement industry, with whom the government has also been negotiating since the April 3 announcement that it plans to nationalize the three largest cement companies, which control 90% of the sector.

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Together with the announcements made earlier this year to take control of more than 30% of milk production and food distribution, and last year’s decision to take majority control of the oilfields in the Orinoco Belt, these moves are part of a second wave of nationalizations, focused on industries related to production.

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Almost none of the recent nationalizations are the direct result of workers’ struggle in favour of such measures, although in many cases labour disputes were factors. This was the case with fuel distribution, where unions have been warning that the bosses were trying to manufacture shortages and provoke strikes to undermine the government.

In contrast to most of the earlier nationalizations involving small factories, only in Sidor can it be said that the demand for nationalization came from the workers. Even then, the demand was raised only in the last period of the struggle after persistent campaigning by a small nucleus of Sidor workers.

Yet, the future of the nationalized companies depends on the political and organizational capacity of the working class in running these industries, and the working class currently finds itself in a state of dispersion and fragmentation.

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