Rentier Consciousness

By Antonio Aponte

Translation by Owen Richards

In Venezuela, an oil rent nation, the revolution has many very unique characteristics.  Here, exploitation acquires a quality more of plunder than the appropriation of others' labour.  That is to say, the bourgeoisie, the privileged class, arises and sustains itself by thriving on rent, more than it does by sucking workers' blood.  So the dispute is more about rent than liberation from the exploitation of work.

Nevertheless, the capitalist system leaves its mark of alienation on society.  We are an alienated society, or more to the point, a society deformed by alienation.  Che [Guevara] described our countries like this:

 "A dwarf with an enormous head and a bloated chest is undeveloped. Insofar as his weak legs and his short arms don't match the rest of his anatomy, he's the product of an abnormality that has distorted his development."

It is true economically as well as spiritually.

It explains our deformations: crumbling neighbourhoods with DirecTV antenors; or beggars with mobile phones; workers that seek dividends in bankrupt companies.  We're able to give our lives to save a president, but not to suffer half an hour without electricity. And what's enough to abandon any cause…  abundant dollars and abundant consumption.

Our people, difficult to organise and difficult to tame, knows as much about baseball as the traitorous smell of a political opportunist.  It can elect an angel, and likewise support the devil.  It can liberate a continent and yet expel its Liberator.  A society fit for heroism, as in April [2002], and also for the foolish egoism that puts a stop to the revolutionary enterprise.

Thus, perfect conditions for revolution exist in this country.  It's social disorder, it's irreverence, has impeded dominion from fully establishing itself, from creating the climate of obedience and self submission of the developed countries.  Here the system of domination has always been imperfect.

These special conditions require special political study, a high level of creativity, but also a high level of learning from universal experience, which is the only way to combat the natural tendency to theoretical and practical improvisation, tentativeness, unconscious experimentation and a waste of physical and mental energy.

A strong bond with the leader and a strong vanguard are indispensible. A vanguard, like disciples, who by their example and activity struggle against the selfish behaviour of oil capitalism and provide the spiritual sense of social integration and the economic reforms that the revolution undertakes.

The exemple of social integration, of Consciousness of Social Duty, is essential.  To impress upon the rent-minded  masses the need to integrate into society.  And this is only possible with a socialism that firmly and convincingly shows us a new vision of an integrated society, where the fate of one depends upon the fate of all.