The media assault on radical social democracy in Latin America has roots in Britain, suggests Enrico Tortolano
In recent years, Latin America has witnessed a wave of socialist and social democratic electoral successes. Since Hugo Chávez’ 1998 landslide victory in Venezuela, one country after another has turned left. Roughly 400 million of Latin America’s 520 million citizens live under a government that broadly supports what Chávez calls “socialism for the 21st century” – the creation of a new, more equitable global economy. Nevertheless, many outside the region find it hard to understand developments in Latin America.
This is partly because the mass media and Western politicians are relentless in their misrepresentation of the new leaders and their policies. Chávez, in particular, is the frequent target of political and personal abuse. For instance, former Europe minister Denis MacShane has contributed to this hysteria by referring to Chávez as a “ranting populist demagogue”.
In July 2009, the Economist published an article about the political situation in Bolivia entitled “The Permanent Campaign”. This claimed that “Venezuelan troops helped quell a rebellion centred on the airport at Santa Cruz in the east in 2007”. However, the Venezuelan military have never participated in any kind of operation against Bolivian civilians. Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua are also regular victims of this sort of low-intensity political warfare. As the philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky has noted: “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the US media”. Unfortunately, the same could now be said about much of media in Britain.
At different periods in its history, the British Labour Party has also been the victim of smear campaigns. The demonising of Chávez has a parallel with similarly vicious media attacks on Labour socialists in the past – in particular, Aneurin Bevan and Tony Benn. These were politicians who were seen as posing a serious threat to the vested interests of the political and corporate elite.
At a time when many question the future of the Labour Party, it should not be forgotten that, after the collapse of the 1929-31 Labour Government, the party was revitalised and became a vessel for radical social reform. In 1932, RH Tawney argued that: “The key points of strategic positions of the economy shall be removed from the sphere of private interests and held by public bodies”. By 1945, this was Labour Government policy, with the party committed to nationalising coal, electricity, gas, civil aviation, cable and wireless, the railways and most road haulage, as well as introducing a national health service with free prescriptions. These same ideas now resonate throughout Latin America.
The first three years of that Labour Government constitute perhaps the greatest period of revolutionary reform this country has ever experienced. The policies Labour developed and implemented were the products of the economic and social conditions of the time, including a world war, and cannot be attributed to just one person. However, through his personal charisma, unbending principles and leading role in the creation of the NHS, Nye Bevan became the iconic figurehead of the socialist left. Unsurprisingly, Conservatives and timorous liberals (in all parties) loathed him. When he was Secretary of State for Health, Bevan was caricatured and attacked in a right-wing media frenzy in much the same way that those on the Latin American left are vilified now.
In the 1970s, The Sun labelled Tony Benn as “The most dangerous man in Britain”. Like Chávez today, Bevan and Benn were subject to widespread and unrelenting campaigns of misinformation and lies designed to undermine them personally and discredit the popular radical reforming policies they championed.
When genuine radical reforms are on the agenda, the power elite resorts to the dark arts of subversion. This was apparent in the media reaction to Labour’s radical programme of change in the mid 1970s. The party’s manifesto aspired to bring about “a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families”. This far-sighted goal helped to secure Labour victories at the two general elections of 1974.
Michael Foot then became Secretary of State for Employment and immediately repealed the previous Conservative Government’s anti-trade union laws. Tony Benn was made Secretary of State for Industry. To Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s annoyance, Benn actually tried to implement the party’s industrial programme, in the belief that Labour in office should do what it promised in opposition. Benn even pushed Labour’s old statist philosophy into genuinely original and radical directions. He explained: “The first and central problem of nationalisation must now be seen as the extent to which we can develop real industrial democracy within those industries.”
Benn wanted to do more implement Labour’s programme with its overt commitment to public ownership, a powerful national enterprise board and industry-wide planning agreements. To the horror of the establishment, not excluding trade union bureaucrats and the old Labour right, he announced his intention to nationalise
key industries and turn them over to their workforces.
His support for the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in and the Meriden and Kirkby Engineering Workers co-operatives was bold and innovative. He even channelled Department of Industry funding to Lucas Aerospace shop stewards with the aim of converting the production of arms for profit into the production of socially-useful items, such as wheelchairs.
As with the vitriol heaped on Bevan and Benn, Hugo Chávez is regularly savaged by the corporate media for his attacks on wealth and privilege. They are financed and supported by powerful right-wing organisations in the United States, such as Reporters Without Borders and the National Endowment for Democracy. Despite this, millions of poor and marginalised Venezuelans see hope in Chávez and are encouraged by his programmes offering free dental care, access to education, social housing and cheap food – human rights issues completely ignored by previous governments.
The “crime” of the leaders of the new Latin American left is to try to fulfil their moderate promise of tackling economic and social injustice. Bevan and Benn were found guilty of the same offence in Britain.
Since Chávez came to power, the poor of Venezuela’s barrios have seen their incomes soar by 130 per cent. The country’s Millennium Development Goals for poverty reduction are years ahead of schedule, unlike the more affluent countries of western Europe. Despite the aggressive and anti-democratic attacks from the bastions of privilege, as Tariq Ali put it in 2006, Chávez and his allies are merely trying “to slowly and cautiously implement social democratic reforms reminiscent of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the polices of the 1945 Labour Government”.
In Britain in the 1940s and 1970s, the main targets of the forces of reaction were Bevan and Benn. In Britain there is now no serious political threat from the left, but there is a real fear about the popularity of the successful socialist economic model that is lifting millions out of poverty in Latin America. Like Bevan and Benn in their era, Chávez, Morales and others offer hope to millions who were previously disenfranchised.
The politics of hope is infectious and this has always terrified the rich and powerful. So Chávez can take comfort from the virulence of the attacks on him. It means that his enemies are afraid of him and his ideas.
