My friend Steve Edinger wrote this. He is not afraid to take stands which may be unpopular among the Left. You may disagree with him, but please recognize that this supporter of anti-imperialist movements in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela is making his critique in the spirit of solidarity and "compañerismo."

Report in Favor of Presidential

Term Limits: Summary

By: Steven T. Edinger


May, 2008 – Summary prepared in January, 2009


Los Angeles, California



The debate over Venezuela’s nationwide referendum of December, 2007, surely extended all across the American continent. Here in Los Angeles, California, I had the chance to participate in that debate; and I got to know the opinions of various Latin American and U.S. leftists who live here. [Yes, my point-of-view was the same then as it is now – opposition to the unlimited reelection of presidents.] -- What people told me came as quite a surprise: that my point-of-view represented “bourgeois democracy,” that I must be an uncover police officer or FBI agent, and the most spectacular of all: that favoring “elections and all that” was the same as favoring capitalism!

For more than sixty years, the United States government has promoted the idea that socialism (or as they call it, communism) is about dictatorial government, while capitalism represents nothing less than political and economic pluralism. It is very common to hear among the U.S. public: “Who are you with?, -- democracy or communism.” -- The reality is the exact opposite, or at least it should be. But it appears that nowadays, many socialists have begun to believe the same – that “elections and all that” correspond to capitalism, where you “choose a candidate as if you were choosing a product at the supermarket.”

Chile, 1973

On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende died inside the National Palace in Santiago, Chile. For many years, I’d thought that the events of that day meant only a great tragedy, and a great defeat for those of us who believed in democratic socialism. It was only a short time ago, listening to a recent CD recording about Chile, that something occurred to me. [Clarification: I’m not sure that I heard exactly right each of the words that I include here.] “They’ve asked me to resign,” says Salvador Allende in the recording, (made from a radio broadcast). “I won’t do it. At the cost of my life. So that the lesson in history will be clear.”

A tragedy? Yes. Salvador Allende and 3,000 Chilean people paid with their lives. But a defeat? -- I’m not so sure anymore about that. If it was a defeat, it was the kind of defeat that led to victory – giving new inspiration to guerillas who would win in Vietnam, Mozambique, and especially in Nicaragua, -- and to movements that would eventually win elections in several countries. While other democratic leaders had agreed to climb an airplane into exile upon being overthrown by the CIA, Salvador Allende remained in the National Palace holding up a gun; for the military to take away the presidency from Salvador Allende they had to bomb their own country’s Presidential Palace, before the radio stations, TV stations and newspapers of the entire world. So that the lesson in history would be clear.

What was Salvador Allende’s lesson? -- There are probably several, but I think that the main lesson is as follows. – In Chile, we the Socialists and Communists of the Popular Unity coalition, followed all the rules of democracy and we won the presidency of our country. Those who favor capitalism bombed our National Palace to remove us from office, to kill us and bring in a dictatorship. So democracy should belong to us, to the Left. Democracy does not belong to capitalism.

The Debate over the Reelection of Presidents in Venezuela Today

The theme of my discussion is not, “things are going to go badly for you in Venezuela if you approve unlimited reelection.” It’s very likely that in spite of approving this measure, things will keep going well for Venezuela. The problem with unlimited reelection is what it implies for socialists in every country on the American continent – what it implies for the model of socialism that we are proposing for the 21st Century. Salvador Allende’s clear message in history will no longer be so clear!

What is happening today in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and elsewhere is not only the Latin American Revolution, but the American Revolution. [Let’s call what happened in the Thirteen Colonies in 1776 by a different, more-accurate name: the United States War of Independence.] If today’s efforts in Latin America can succeed, this revolution will surely take hold one day in the United States and Canada as well. Looking back, we first see the Indians of the American Continent, fighting back against the Spaniards and the English. We see slave rebellions. We see wars of independence in the 1700s and 1800s. But the social revolution in the Americas – the revolt toward bringing social justice to each country – I think this began in Mexico in 1910. It began in Mexico, with the call, SUFRAGIO EFECTIVO, NO REELECCION – Effective Suffrage, No Reelection. The early supporters of Francisco Madero sounded this call; they were the Maderistas. Soon we had the original Zapatistas: Land and Liberty! Later, Augusto César Sandino in Nicaragua: Free Country! Years later, the Sandinista National Liberation Front: Free Country or Death! The Popular Unity coalition in Chile: The copper is Chilean! The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, in El Salvador: Revolution or Death! There have been many more such calls, and great sacrifices. But it cannot be that the revolution which began by sounding SUFRAGIO EFECTIVO, NO REELECCION is now the same one that will now bring about the very opposite – the unlimited reelection of presidents.

Our main question. Why is an amendment for unlimited reelection undemocratic?

To start with, it’s the same constitutional amendment that the Mexican Congress approved in 1884, at the request of the famous dictator, Porfirio Diaz. I’ll give you a quote here from historian Michael J. Gonzalez, from a book he wrote about the Mexican Revolution:

Diaz’ allies in congress approved a constitutional amendment that allowed a president to succeed himself, opening the way for 26 more years of dictatorship.

The following observation comes to mind. Porfirio Diaz was a president who opened his country’s doors to United States companies, and protected the hacienda owners as they stepped on the peasants. Hugo Chavez is a president who does just the opposite!

That’s right. But the kind of democracy that we demand from our adversaries, we must demand from our own side too! In Mexico, 1910, we had the slogan: Sufragio efectivo, no reelección – Effective suffrage, no reelection!

Effective suffrage. This slogan from 1910 is worth thinking about; it explains a lot of why multiple reelection is undemocratic. Somebody who remains many years as president of a country, has the potential to develop a network of favors – personal favors, government jobs, fear toward challenging the eternal leader. True, these things can also happen where the presidents come and go; but a leadership change can at least shake things up. It’s very possible that in Venezuela, these kinds of things won’t happen with Hugo Chavez as president; but they may happen with someone who arrives in the future. In general, when there aren’t any limits on a president’s stay-in-office, that leader can develop all kinds of barriers and reprisals so that nobody else can win a presidential election. That’s what Porfirio Diaz was doing when the Mexican Revolution broke out.


Fortunately in December, 2007, the Venezuelan public voted against the unlimited reelection proposal. But now in 2009, that proposal is back. If the voters approve it, what will happen? -- At first glance, nothing will happen. You won’t notice a change. Venezuela will continue on with the same government as today, working on the same projects as today, really good projects. But, by definition, the country’s form of government will have changed forever. Regardless of whether Hugo Chavez decides to run for President again in 2012 or not, Venezuela will no longer have a 100% democratic system of government.


You could call Venezuela’s government the trailblazer among the new and revived socialist governments in the Americas; what happens there in some ways defines the model that socialism will follow in the 21st Century. And adopting unlimited reelection means adopting a less-democratic form of government – the “Zimbabwe electoral model.”

Recent History of Zimbabwe, and the Zimbabwe electoral model

Zimbabwe is not the only African country that holds open elections without presidential term limits. There are various non-socialist governments in Africa with leaders who stay in for life; I’m not sure how many of these leaders were elected. There are also socialist governments in Africa that began with the Soviet form of government, and then switched over to, what I call here, “the Zimbabwe model,” of open elections without presidential term limits. But Zimbabwe probably represents the first socialist-led country that has adopted this form of government, not only in Africa but in the whole world. That’s why I think Zimbabwe deserves much consideration in our debate.

There are many books on the history of Zimbabwe, and that’s where I got the information that I present to you here. Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnne McGregor and Terence Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the “Dark Forests” of Matabeleland. David Blair, Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe. Charles H. Cutter, Africa 2003. Andrew Meldrum, Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe. Nathan Shamayurira, Crisis in Rhodesia.

There are major differences between Africa and Latin America with respect to the history of European colonization. Latin America’s independent governments emerged during the 1800s; the European colonial administration of Africa continued through most of the twentieth century. – From the first days of the Soviet Union in 1917, the Soviet government had always denounced Western European colonialism and imperialism. With the rise of African revolutionary movements in the mid-1900s, it was the Soviet government that first offered moral and material support. Beginning in the 1960s, China also offered support, but Chinese support often worked to divide the African movements. – The African revolutionaries came in with the project of building their own, African version of socialism; but they were also willing to take the Soviet or Chinese models into account. So it was that upon reaching independence in the 1960s or 70s, the socialist governments of Tanzania, Angola and Mozambique adopted the Soviet form of government, the one-party state.

Zimbabwe arrived at a different form of government, because Zimbabwe attained independence later than the other three countries mentioned, under quite different circumstances. Zimbabwe had a bigger European population than most African countries; in this case 5% of the population. When Great Britain still administered Zimbabwe, Whites, mostly of English background, tried to form their own independent country where they would continue to rule. The country was called Rhodesia at that time. The British government, under the Labor Party, refused to recognize White-ruled Rhodesia as an independent country. But despite lacking British or international recognition, President Ian Smith insisted on staying in as leader of an independent Rhodesia; Black Africans could vote on only 24% of the seats in parliament. This attempt at blocking Black Africans from running their own country, led to a war during the 1970s – between the African revolutionary movements and the Rhodesian government. 30,000 people died in this war. The Rhodesian army was involved in massacres and poisonings.

In 1979, negotiations began between the African movements and Ian Smith’s Rhodesian government; Great Britain coordinated the negotiations. In 1980, the negotiators arrived at the following agreement. The country, now recognized as independent, would be called Zimbabwe, not Rhodesia. Multi-party elections would take place, with equal voting rights for the entire population. Regardless of the election results, no one could establish a one-party state (as in Tanzania, Mozambique or Angola), until ten years had passed.

And so Zimbabwe began in 1980 with the British parliamentary form-of-government. The party that won the 1980 elections was the ZANU (PF) movement, with their leader Robert Gabriel Mugabe. ZANU, a movement supported by the Chinese government, means Zimbabwe African National Union. The letters PF – Patriotic Front: this was the name of a shaky military alliance between ZANU and the other movement, ZAPU. [The Soviet Union supported ZAPU – the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union.] In the 1980 elections, ZANU (PF) came out with 57 representatives in parliament, ZAPU with 20, and a party supported by the Whites with 3 representatives. Robert Gabriel Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

Clarification about Zimbabwe’s ruling party. In the 1980 elections, they used the name ZANU (PF), with parentheses. Nowadays they’re called ZANU-PF, with a dash. [I’m not sure of exactly when they made this change.]

Robert Gabriel Mugabe, winner of the 1980 Zimbabwe elections. He had, and still has, a socialist vision for his country. Unfortunately, his vision of a socialist transformation was that one man should decide and direct everything – himself. Mugabe would have preferred the Soviet-style one-party-state, which he claimed would “fit better with the African tradition” and “promote greater unity for the people.” -- The 1980 agreement prohibited bringing in this form of government until at least ten years had passed. [Mugabe would propose official one-party rule to parliament in 1991, but he could not get the proposal approved.] And so, Robert Mugabe was not able to simply bar the other parties and candidates from future elections in Zimbabwe. -- Mugabe had to settle for unlimited reelection, in combination with other measures, to make it impossible for other parties and candidates to someday defeat him in future elections.

Many positive things have happened in Zimbabwe during Robert Mugabe’s 28 years in office. Thousands of new schools have opened since 1980; education levels have improved. Widespread agrarian reform has taken place; agricultural assistance to small farmers has been successful. Zimbabwe’s armed forces have taken part in defending two Left governments when they were under attack: Mozambique in the 1980s, Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 through 2004. – But the Zimbabwe electoral model has not been positive, and has harmed both the population and the country.

Robert Mugabe’s measures to establish one-man rule in Zimbabwe. * Almost immediately after his 1980 election victory, he began a campaign of harassment against the second-biggest Left force in the country, ZAPU. “They must be shot down,” said government minister Enos Nkala. “They are like a cobra in the house,” said Robert Mugabe; “the only way to deal with a cobra is to destroy its head.” And so, Mugabe established a special army brigade to hunt down ZAPU supporters – sometimes forcing people to shout slogans, sometimes cutting off people's food supply or penning them up in camps, sometimes killing people. The campaign had already killed 10,000 people, when at last in 1987, ZAPU’s leader agreed to dissolve the movement and join ZANU.

* In December, 1987, parliament approved an important constitutional change, to remove the post of Prime Minister and adopt a presidential system. Presidential elections would take place every six years; there would be no limit on the reelection of presidents. And so on December 31, 1987, Robert Gabriel Mugabe stopped being Prime Minister, and was inaugurated as President of Zimbabwe. * A network of personal favors developed between the President and the other party leaders and members. Yes, one man directs everything. But over the years, his supporters begin to notice that they can make their leader’s life impossible if he doesn't hand over more favors when asked. And the favors cost money! One ZANU representative in parliament, Margaret Dongo, complained that the other representatives of her party were acting like “Mugabe’s wives.” [The party dropped their support for her shortly after the comment.]

How do the president’s personal favors work? How do they affect the country? Sometimes the favors are related to government contracts with supporters’ companies. Sometimes we’re talking about government jobs for ruling party members, in vehicle license offices or passport offices – with big opportunities for getting bribes out of people. When a major land reform took place, beginning in the year 2000, more than 300 expropriated farms went not to the peasants or farm hands, but to “members of the presidential cabinet, army officials, and high functionaries in the party,” to keep for themselves! In Zimbabwe, the most exemplary case of personal favors involved a war veterans organization – a very important branch of President Mugabe's support base.

In 1997, the revolutionary war veterans organization was out demonstrating against President Mugabe. The veterans had already received a good-sized monetary compensation package in 1980 and 1981, after the war's end; but now they were showing up at ZANU party meetings, at Mugabe's meetings with foreign visitors, and other unexpected locations to demand a new compensation package – immediate money, in addition to a monthly pension-for-life. Though the war had ended in 1980, the number of veterans had gone way up: there were more or less 30,000 veterans in 1980, and now there were around 50,000 in 1997. Where had all the extra veterans come from?! The new payments would hand out the equivalent of 4,500 U.S. dollars in immediate money, plus the pension worth 173 U.S. dollars per month – more than the entire monthly wages of a factory worker in Zimbabwe. President Mugabe had a degree in Economics; he knew that the country could not afford these kinds of payments. -- He tried to negotiate with veterans' leader, Chenjerai Hunzvi and his supporters; but they insisted on the entire package. Upon approval of the veterans payments in November, 1997, the national Zimbabwe Dollar (ZD) devalued right away, losing almost half its value. Worst of all, a lot of the money never got to the people who really were veterans of the revolutionary war. David Blair explains this aspect in his book, Degrees in Violence.

Inevitably, fake war veterans with the right political connections took the opportunity to claim their share of the bonanza. Much of the money was invested in a company established by [the leader of the veterans organization, Chenjerai] Hunzvi and his cronies called Zexcom (Zimbabwe Ex-Combatants Foundation). Few investors in Zexcom ever received a dividend – except, of course, friends of Hunzvi.

A fund was established to compensate those who had been disabled or maimed in the war. It was shamelessly looted by senior figures in ZANU-PF, who claimed non-existent injuries and then awarded themselves compensation. Hunzvi maintained that he was 117% disabled and compensated himself with 400,000 Zimbabwe Dollars. [Value before the devaluation: 34,000 U.S. dollars.]


Zimbabwe today is approaching complete disintegration. The unemployment rate is at 81%. The value of the national currency, the ZD, is approaching zero; the annual inflation rate has surpassed 50,000 percent! Water delivery systems are breaking down, and a serious cholera outbreak is underway.


Zimbabwe began in 1980 with two strong Left political parties and no major Right parties. Today it is a country with only one Left party, growing weaker by the day. There is also a new pro-business party, steadily gaining ground – the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), backed by European governments and the United States government. -- To hold back the MDC, Mugabe is now resorting again to bloody methods, (though not at the same level as in the 1980s). The war veterans organization is often in charge of these methods. One of the recent techniques has been this one. After any election, the president's supporters check the results at each polling place. In the polling places where the opposition has shown some gains, Mugabe's veterans and other supporters will harangue the local people into mandatory meetings, to find out from them who it was that voted for the opposition. Once they've written out a list, they take to burning houses, beating people with clubs, and also killing some of them.


In 2008, a reporter from the Los Angeles Times interviewed the “now-retired Army Major and ex-ruling party member” Kudzai Mbudzi:


As ZANU-PF, we used violence to win elections. … I was part of the formation. We instilled fear.

If you burn one opposition supporter’s house, all the rest will change. … If you beat up several people, all of the rest will change. If two or three of them disappear, never to be traced, the rest will change.

(Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2008, reporter Robyn Dixon)

When there is a national convention of the ZANU-PF party, Robert Mugabe always receives the nomination to be the presidential candidate, even though he is now more than 83 years old!

The same article continues, (from 2008):

Mugabe … [was] insisting that he was the only one who could win elections. … He ran unopposed for [his party’s] nomination at a party congress in December (2007).

This is some of Zimbabwe’s history. Some parts to this story don’t have parallels in Latin America; some parts probably do have parallels. The important lesson is that Zimbabwe’s system of government does not make for a very good model to follow.







Topics from the Debate in Venezuela

We'll continue with various arguments that I heard from people. I will try to answer these arguments, one-by-one.





You people in the United States should worry about what your government is doing, not Venezuela's government.

Response.

The movement against United States government intervention is also a solidarity movement. People want to act in solidarity with something good, with what we know in our heart to be good.

The U.S. anti-intervention movement does need to do better; that’s for sure. We have had some success lately at restraining or at least counteracting U.S. government electoral intervention, but we are getting just about nowhere at stopping U.S. military intervention. But with regard to the U.S. anti-intervention movement, the removal of presidential term limits in Venezuela is one of the worst things that could happen. If approved, this measure will cast a sour, heaping bucketful of confusion on every movement in the Americas.


Nobody’s perfect; and when we watch events unfold in a faraway country, we don’t need to expect perfection. For my part, I’m used to any movement having its faults, and that during some kind of emergency any Left government may need to take temporary measures outside the usual rules of democracy. But changing a country’s constitution to wipe out presidential term limits, is something very different. This is a permanent measure, very hard to revoke. It steers us toward a dead end – toward a less democratic future. It gives us an undemocratic goal.





The Venezuelan people are really happy with their president! What if they really want him to be President for a really long time?

Response.

I myself am very enthusiastic about the job the Hugo Chavez is doing as president. He has all of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 to keep doing that job! During the year 2012 there will be a new presidential campaign. The PSUV – United Socialist Party of Venezuela, can hold a convention, where they can decide on their new candidate for the Fall campaign. That new candidate can then go up against the opposition forces for the December, 2012 election. Problem solved!

Any leader who becomes exceeding popular needs to step back a little; try to encourage people to look among themselves and have confidence in themselves! That’s kind of what the Beatles did when they stopped putting on live concerts, started recording alongside a symphony orchestra, or playing music on a downtown rooftop. So even if Hugo Chavez’ fans would like him to become president-for-life, he needs to step back and say, “No thank you, amigos!” “Thank you for the love and support, but the time will come when you will have to look among yourselves and find your next leader for this revolution.”






Venezuela is looking to establish a new form of democracy – more participatory than the U.S. form of democracy.


Response.


Go for it! It's always good to look for greater participation, to go further than just voting every few years. But!, there is no reason why the new forms of participation in Venezuela's democracy require removing presidential term limits. The two can do well together, participatory and electoral democracy.


Russia, beginning in 1917, was the “model country” for many socialists during the 20th Century. The leaders of Russia's revolutionary government presented “proletarian democracy” -- which they too claimed to be more participatory – as a justification for abandoning electoral democracy.

The mass of the population will rise up to take an independent part ... in the everyday administration of the state. Under socialism, all will govern in turn and soon become accustomed to no one governing. [Lenin wrote this in his book, State and Revolution, cited by Marcel Liebman, in Leninism Under Lenin, p. 192.]

Tapping into the great anarchist and anti-authoritarian sentiments that prevailed in Russia at that time – the sentiment that nobody would govern – Lenin and the Bolsheviks set up a system of government without general elections for the national leadership. Many revolutionaries accepted this idea, because they wished to be more democratic than bourgeois democracy or bourgeois parlamentarianism. -- With the fiction that nobody would govern, Russia ended up with just the opposite: a system where non-elected leaders decided everything. [Though they may have been elected by Communist Party congresses, (sometimes in very undemocratic elections!), the national leaders of the Soviet Union never had to face a national vote from the general population.] This is the kind of mistake that we should not repeat in the 21st Century.


Anarchism has much to contribute to socialism. U.S. Socialist Party founder Eugene Debs once said that every socialist should also be an anarchist. Listening honestly to anarchists' criticisms should mean: try to avoid excessive authority, look to where decisions will come from the participants more than from the leadership, focus on allowing the good more than on banning the bad, look for cooperative rather than state solutions. Where I don't agree with anarchists is on what may be their #1 theme: they don't believe there should be countries, nor a national leadership for countries. A very good way to build a non-authoritarian society is having a socialist government that continues with nationwide general elections and with limits to the leaders' powers – including presidential term limits.






Cuba today has the same form of government that the Bolsheviks set up in Russia. Aren’t we going to support Cuba?


Response.

We need to support Cuba, with the same form of government that they already have. What we don't need to do is apply the Cuban form of government as a model for other socialist countries – something that even Fidel Castro probably would not recommend.

We can and should support already-existing socialist governments which, for various reasons, are less-than 100% democratic. In Cuba's case, they have good reasons for having their form of government, (with leaders who are not chosen in open elections, and who may remain in office for many years). [Once established, it's not easy to make a transition away from that form of government.] But the road ahead for socialism has got to lead us toward democracy. Where a new socialist government comes on the scene, in any country, socialists around the world need to guide that government in a 100% democratic direction. Where a new socialist government leads a country in an

anti-democratic direction, this would be disastrous in every way, (especially in Venezuela – the “#1” of the new socialist governments). That event would send a really bad message to the world – the Ronald Reagan message which tried to show us a worldwide conflict between socialist dictatorship and capitalist democracy. That was not the real conflict of the so-called Cold War Era, and it's not the real conflict today either!

In Cuba's case, we are talking about a country where things have gone well. The news that Cubans on average have almost the same life-span as people in the United States – this tells a lot. The economy: there are still major shortages of some basic necessities, but with Venezuela’s help the shortages are lessening. The political system. Perhaps we can say that they have a 50% level-of-democracy. They don't have open elections. They don't have presidential term limits. They do have a controlled press, and they do maintain major prohibitions on oppositional groups and activities. There is a lot of public participation in national decision-making. – Cuba has had good reasons for staying with this form of government, reasons which don't apply in Venezuela nor in any other country on the American continent.

The present Cuban government began during a time when no other

anti-imperialist government had survived anywhere in Latin America. Later as a socialist country, Cuba held firm during the 1990s, when socialism may have been on the brink of worldwide extinction. These were fragile moments, where there was less room to experiment with democracy. -- Thanks in part to Cuba's efforts during those years, we find ourselves today in a less-fragile moment. Today in the countries with new or revived socialist governments, there is enough room to show the world the form of government that will accompany socialism in the 21st Century. [In my opinion, it should be a 100% democratic form of government.]

Despite having established a non-elected government, the Communist Party leadership has not brought Cuba in an anti-democratic direction. The rebellions of the 26th of July Movement took place under the dictatorial Fulgencio Batista government. The new Cuban government that began in 1959 and continues today, has not established a 100% democratic form of socialism; but they have established something much more democratic than the previous government. -- In contrast, were an elected socialist government to abandon the norms of electoral democracy, it would imply a giant

anti-democratic measure in that country.

One might ask me: If I agree that Cuba has done well, why not try the same thing in other countries? – Here's my answer. Cuba has come up with many ideas and strategies that are worth trying in other countries. For example: Cuba's way of using state controls over imported products, their tactics for avoiding foreign borrowing, their strategies for channeling foreign remittances toward the benefit of the whole country. (These three themes are closely related – and these strategies are easier to implement on an island than in a country with long borders.) These ideas and many more, are worth considering outside of Cuba. But in no way does a country need the Soviet form of government to implement these ideas. On the contrary: in a country with a 100% democratic form of government, people will have greater motivation to respect some state controls over economic activity – knowing that the government implementing those controls came about by an open public vote.







Venezuela is under the constant threat of an imperialist attack. Under these circumstances, we don't have the luxury of changing the national leadership every six or twelve years. Hugo Chavez is the leader whom we trust for standing up to imperialism.

Response.

A constitutional amendment to remove presidential term limits is a giant step away from democracy. With regards to imperialism, this amendment will make it easier for an attack to succeed. Yes, you heard it right: just when Latin America is at last breaking free from United States imperial control, Venezuela would be giving the U.S. government interventionists the very thing they need – an undemocratic bogeyman to point at! Right now, all that the White House can come up with is a “democratic bogeyman”!; no wonder they're not getting anywhere!

I am not kidding at all: one of the favorite U.S. intervention tactics against socialist opponents has been to purposely scare people, trick people, or provoke people into some kind of violent atrocity, or at least some kind of an undemocratic act. William Blum was able to uncover a U.S. government memo from the 1984 Nicaraguan election campaign, for example. The memo stated, “What we need is Arturo Cruz in jail.” [Arturo Cruz was the conservative opposition candidate, and the U.S. authorities were hoping to somehow trick or scare the Sandinistas into jailing Cruz. It didn’t work! Cruz never went to jail; in fact today his son is serving as an ambassador for the new Sandinista government!] -- Returning to the present, I repeat that switching Venezuela over to a less-democratic form of government will represent not only a giant mistake for Chavez, but also a grand-slam home run for imperialism.

Now, let’s say that Venezuela decides to keep presidential term limits in place. Prior to the 2012 elections, Hugo Chavez will still be there as President. After January, 2013, there will be a new president. The now Ex-President Chavez will still be in Venezuela to participate in the defense of the country.







England, France, Germany, Italy – the constitutions of these countries don't say anything about limiting the reelection of the national leadership. Nobody complains of a lack-of-democracy in these countries. So, why complain about what Venezuela is doing?

[Jesus Rivas was the writer who mentioned these four countries in a recent editorial on this theme. You can read his two commentaries, and my response, at uprisingradio.org, in the section, “Empire Notes on Venezuela's Referendum Defeat.”]

Response.

Europe has had less time with an elected national leadership than the United States. [Although European countries had various kinds of parliaments, the #1 leader during the 19th Century was still the king or queen – without any limits as to how many years. It was by convention that the United States first established that no president would remain for more than two terms, (or in some special cases, 2 ½ ). It was the first president, George Washington, who began this convention, precisely because he didn't think it healthy for a country to rely too much on one person's decisions for too long. -- During the first 150 years of United States history, no president broke this convention that George Washington had begun; and there wasn't any constitutional amendment about it either. But in 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did run for a third term. Soon, now that somebody had broken the convention, (and the Second World War had ended), the United States Congress acted to put these limits into law: they passed the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on February 25, 1951. -- If there were a country where nobody drank alcoholic drinks, it would be by convention that nobody drove a car while drunk. But once somebody has done some drunk driving, that's when the country might consider passing a law against it. With respect to the four Western European countries mentioned: Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy. These countries appear to have their leadership term limits by convention – an understanding that no president, prime minister, or chancellor will remain in office for too long.

I seriously doubt that any of those countries went from a constitution with term limits, and then approved an amendment to remove those limits!


I decided to look over the 20th century leadership record for these four countries mentioned: Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy. [In Germany's case, I'm talking about West Germany for the years between 1945 and 1989; I don't think that Rivas is referring to East Germany, which had the Soviet form of government.] Looking over the record, I found one leader who stayed in for 14 years: Francois Mitterrand of France served two 7-year terms. For remaining in office more than fourteen consecutive years, I found only one national leader: Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, of Italy! (One of the main founders of 20th Century fascism, he stayed in for 20 years.) Do we want our movement to be in the company of Mussolini!!??

From now on, socialist countries should aim to have the most democratic political systems in the world – more democratic than Western Europe if need be – and formal presidential term limits are an essential part of that.







We can't risk our revolution. [Experiments in 100% democracy are too risky.]

Response.


Democracy involves taking risks. If you don’t hold elections at all, you’ll have zero risk of losing an election. If you need to pick a new candidate at the end of two presidential terms, I suppose that could increase the risk of losing an election. A change of leaders, even from the same party, also involves a risk that government policies might change. Well, there’s no such thing as a risk-free revolution! That’s what revolutions are all about – taking risks and wading out into an unknown future.

Consider a revolution as a garden, cultivated by the revolutionaries. These revolutionaries can try for a risk-free garden – throwing on every kind of insecticide and fungicide to keep out every kind of invader, (adopting a less-than-100% democratic forms of government). They might get giant, wonderful harvests from this garden

– at first. But this garden will lose its natural resistance to insects and disease. (This revolutionary government will lose its capacity to win in open elections without cheating.) If there are no presidential term limits, the leaders will get old while still in office. Young people in that country will want those leaders out, if for no other reason than their age. And so at the moment the revolutionaries stop digging the chemicals into the garden, (at the moment they try to open the country to a 100% democratic political process), the efforts of so many years can go to naught. The crops will fail; the revolutionary government will fall or lose the elections – and worst of all, having left behind a memory of so many years of monolithic, risk-free rule, their chances of winning another election in the future will be very slim.

An organic garden is a lot harder to get started. At first, all kinds of bugs and plagues will attack. Until you have worked the soil for a long time with all kinds of compost, your pumpkins may be few and far between. But this garden will grow stronger each year that it survives. – This can happen with a revolution that places its complete trust in the people.

There are several such gardens now, several revolutionary governments in the Americas. There is no guarantee that the socialist parties in these countries are going to win all their elections, all the time. But so long as they continue to seek out what is good and what is right, they will have good chances of success overall. The fight between socialism and capitalism is not only between “us” and “them.” It’s also between the “good” and “bad” in all people, between sharing and greed. Of course we want our side to win, but that’s not all. We need to show ourselves and our opponents that in every aspect, socialism can be better than capitalism. I submit to you that a movement where the people act on their own, seeking several leaders and raising new leaders, is far better than one-man rule. It’s also more about sharing.







Looking at World History With Regards to Term Limits

Long-Governing Pro-Capitalist Leaders

With pro-capitalist governments, the leaders who remained in power for many years are some of the most-disgraced. For example. Spain: Francisco Franco. Nicaragua: Anastasio Somoza Garcia and Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Haiti: Francois Duvalier and Jean Claude Duvalier. Indonesia: General Suharto. Paraguay: Alfredo Stroessner. Dominican Republic: Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Congo/Zaire: Mobutu Sese Seko. [I don’t think I need to go into what these men did!]

In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the only president who exceeded the two-term convention: he was elected four times. As we saw on page 12, it was shortly after Roosevelt had died that Congress put presidential term limits into law. Many people in the U.S. consider Franklin Roosevelt as the country’s most-progressive president, for having passed pro-union labor laws, having established banking regulations and the Social Security system, or having made an important contribution to the military campaigns against Adolf Hitler. Rather, Franklin Roosevelt was also a typical leader from the imperial chapter of the United States: reforms within the country’s borders, combined with the worst kind of intervention in the Third World. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the same president who took charge of the intervention in Nicaragua, when, in 1934, the National Guard killed Augusto Cesar Sandino. Roosevelt’s government played a key role in building the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. Roosevelt’s comments regarding Anastasio Somoza Garcia: “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”

Long-Governing Socialist Leaders

Our focus here is on socialism and on socialist governments. Our debate is this one: is it a good idea for socialist countries and governments to enforce limits on the number of years that a certain single leader can govern?

Article 230 of the present Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, states as follows.

The presidential term is six years. The President of the Republic may be reelected, immediately and once only, to an additional term.

This means that a president, if reelected that one time, will reach his or her limit after twelve years.


Who are the socialist leaders in history who exceeded twelve consecutive years in office? In the Soviet Union: Joseph V. Stalin (26 years), Leonid Brezhnev (18 years). In Mongolia: Yumjaagiyn Tsendenbal (31 years). In Yugoslavia: Josip Broz Tito (35 years). In Albania: Enver Hoxha (40 years). In China: Mao Tse Teng (27 years). In Bulgaria: Todor Zhivkov (27 years). In Romania: Gheorghe Gheorghin (16 years), Nicolae Ceausescu (22 years). In Cuba: Fidel Castro Ruz (46 years). In Angola: Eduardo dos Santos (29 years). There are various other socialist governments that also had long-governing leaders: Zimbabwe (which we’ve already looked at), North Korea, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Libya among them. – Looking over this list, we notice some long-governing socialist leaders who brought good results, some with mixed results, some with bad results, and two with horrific results. Those two are Joseph V. Stalin and Mao Tse Teng.


Yes, socialism still lives today. Socialism lives, and is getting a second chance here in the Americas. But every socialist should keep in mind what we must never repeat. Joseph V. Stalin and Mao Tse Teng wiped out the hopes of millions of socialists all over the world. They did things which will always be hard to face, for any socialist who looks to know our history.


The worst accomplishments of Joseph Stalin.

* He led the transformation of the USSR from a poor and dependent country into an independent industrial country; but he did this in an unacceptable way – he caused several million peasants to starve to death. (The worst starvation took place in the year 1933.) Stalin did this under a flag that showed a worker’s hammer with a peasant’s sickle! [A more-realistic flag for Stalin would have shown a hammer smashing a sickle into a thousand pieces.]

* The great majority of the peasants survived, but they lost much of the spirit, music, and tradition of rural life. The “standard of living” improved, but many people now lived in a way that lacked of creativity.

* Stalin brought a climate that blocked people from free thinking: if you said the wrong thing you could die for it. (And even people who tried to agree with everything could not be so sure!)

* During the years 1937 and ’38, Stalin’s rule led to the execution of perhaps 500,000 people, many of whom had once been his companions in the original Bolshevik movement. Events such as these left the population of the USSR with a deep sadness, and also confusion, the effects of which people are still feeling today.


The worst accomplishments of Mao Tse Teng were very similar to those of Stalin, only that Mao was more effective at hiding what he did. Much of the information that I present here, only recently surfaced during the 21st Century, more than two decades after Mao had died.

* He led China’s transformation from a poor and dependent country to a prosperous and independent country; but he achieved this in a dictatorial manner – beginning in the year 1949 with the public executions of 700,000 people. (Yes you read that number right!) And so, Mao’s main method was to strike fear into the entire population, so that they might follow his every command. More executions continued during the 1950s. But following the Soviet Union’s revelation of Stalin’s crimes, Mao adopted more sophisticated means of killing people: for example, jail somebody and reduce his food supply enough for him to die fast.

* Between the years 1958 and 1962, Mao caused several million peasants to starve to death. This happened as consequence of a rapid industrialization campaign; and this campaign was related to Mao’s dreams for waging a war of global conquest! To be able to try and take on the whole world, Mao first was going to need a giant industrial capacity, which would include arms production capacity. Mao was in a hurry to prepare for this possible war, before he might become too old for such a feat. Amidst this haste, Mao compelled peasants to work too many hours on too many projects. At the same time, he requisitioned too much food from the farming regions – largely to sell or exchange the food for industrial equipment. These famines in China, killed many more people than the famines in the USSR under Stalin! Fortunately, another Chinese leader forced the cancellation of the rapid industrialization campaign, after four years. That other leader was Liu Shao Chi – who would later pay with his life. [Never heard of these events??!! Neither had I! The Chinese government first hid the fact that people had died in the famines of 1958-62. Two decades later, the Chinese government began to confirm that millions had starved, -- but they placed the blame on lower officials who’d sent in faulty crop estimates. Finally in 2005, a book came out (in the world outside of China) which explained these events in great detail and with extensive documentation. This book is by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story.]

* Beginning around 1963, Mao divided the socialist movement at a worldwide scale. He accused the post-Stalin Soviet leadership of “revisionism,” and helped to provoke several wars between competing socialist movements or countries. He went on to ally China, the world’s most populous socialist country, with the Richard Nixon administration in the United States.

* Mao left behind a confused and fearful nation. After he died, there was not very much interest in continuing on the socialist path. The governments that came after Mao – governments that would dismantle the agricultural collectives and invite back the world’s biggest private companies – are a consequence of the Mao era.

What if term limits had been in force under all the socialist governments of the 20th Century? Even continuing under the Soviet form of government, (without direct elections of the national leadership), what if they’d at least had a limit as to how many years a country’s leader could serve? Yes. Josip Broz Tito, Fidel Castro, Eduardo dos Santos, and the others I mentioned – all would have had to pass on their countries’ leadership to new people. We can’t be exactly sure how things would have turned out in each situation. But these limits would have served as a protection against dictatorial leaders such as Stalin or Mao.


Probably in Stalin’s case, term limits alone without any other democratic protection, would not have built a big enough barrier to stop the worst of his crimes. Neither Russia nor the world were ready for Stalin. Surely Stalin would have made up some excuse for evading his term limits.

But what if after Stalin’s death, at the moment when the next leader revealed Stalin’s crimes to the world, the USSR had adopted or reaffirmed leadership term limits? Nikita Khruschev and the other leaders who followed him, denounced the “cult of personality.” -- One of the strongest tools for blocking a cult of personality is just this: putting limits that bar a leader from remaining in power for too long. [If someone is building up a “cult of personality,” gaining unlimited power over the people around him, this ends when he or she has to hand over the government to a new leader.] If Khruschev in 1956 had established these limits, and if he’d announced that the Soviet Union would no longer continue its assistance toward any country lacking term limits, now the picture changes for Mao and for China. Stuck with a fixed date where his leadership was due to expire, it’s very likely that Mao would have behaved differently. Mao’s worst deeds happened largely because he always anticipated remaining in office for the rest of his life. That’s where the great hurry came from, the great hurry that killed so many people of starvation. Mao wanted to everything to happen while he himself was in charge, instead of looking at his chapter as part of a greater historical process. Trying to quickly industrialize the country to prepare for a possible world war where he’ll be the superhero, -- this kind of scheme is out of the picture once he knows that he’ll soon be handing over the government to the next leader. Not to mention, Mao might have had to worry about the trial that could await, after completing his term! With regard to the divisions that Mao provoked, not very many of the other Chinese leaders shared his antagonism toward the Soviet Union, something which was much related to his excess personal ambition. Many things could have been different. We are talking about the lives of millions of people.

Leaders like Francisco Franco or Jean Claude Duvalier present a problem for people who support capitalism. But for supporters of socialism, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Teng are our problem. [All of them present a problem for somebody who wants to eliminate the limits on reelection!]

For the socialists of today. What do we say when somebody asks us about Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot? [Abimael Guzmán had the good fortune of landing himself behind bars instead of becoming Peru’s president and getting himself on to this list!] Should we close our eyes, cover our ears, and say, “I didn’t see a thing!”? [This is the answer Mao would have liked; -- he once said in a meeting, “We need the policy, Keep people stupid.”] Should we say that the millions dead in the USSR in the 1930s, were the fault of one single bad man who happened to get into office? Should we say that the millions dead in China between 1958 and 1962, were caused by another bad man who happened to get into office? Should we say that Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 was just another mistake of some kind? -- Or will we take a deep breath, and answer something like this. Recognize that at a worldwide level, we socialists have had our failures in the past – structures that eased the path for despots and egomaniacs to climb to power and to remain in power. But we can say that we’re learning from these failures. We can say that the socialist governments which survived the 20th Century are slowly, little-by-little, developing more democratic ways to govern. We can say that the new and revived socialist governments that are arriving in the world, are going with a 100% democratic form-of-government – with general elections that are open to all political parties, with free speech and a free press, and with structural limits that block any single leader from accumulating too much power – (be that person a good leader or a bad leader). One of these structural limits, possibly the most import one, is the limit on the reelection of presidents.