Start finding out about Venezuela
Liam Mac Uaid reviews two recent books on the Venezuelan revolution

Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution
Richard Gott
Verso 315pp
£9.99

The Venezuelan Revolution – A Marxist Perspective
Alan Woods
Well Red 176pp
£7.99

This is a timely updating of the author’s In the Shadow of the Liberator which was originally published in 2000. The literature in English on Venezuela is pretty scant and that on Venezuela’s current revolutionary process is scanter still.

That might explain why Blair’s Minister for Europe Denis Mac Shane called Chávez “a ranting populist demagogue” when it looked like a military coup organised by Venezuela’s old rulers had succeeded. But for New Labour populist demagoguery is providing free health care and literacy for the poor and rejecting neo-liberalism. For the growing number of socialists who are starting to follow events in Venezuela the revolution there is probably the most encouraging event in the last quarter century. Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution is the perfect primer for an audience unfamiliar with the country and its history.

Gott served as the Guardian’s Latin American correspondent and displays an intimate knowledge of the continent’s politics. He also writes from a standpoint which is firmly supportive of Chávez and his regime locating him in the tradition of Simón Bolívar and other left leaning Latin American military leaders such as General Omar Torríjos of Panama.

The ideal companion to Gott’s book is Alan Woods’ The Venezuelan Revolution – A Marxist Perspective (Well Red £7.99). Woods’ book does just what it says on the cover, giving a Marxist account of Chávez’s regime and explaining how it needs to continue the revolution and break from capitalism if it is not to suffer the fate of other Latin American revolutions. But while there is no stylistic cliché of Marxist writing that Woods shrinks from Gott’s writing is less dry. His journalist prose makes the unfamiliar history and politics clear even to those coming to the subject for the first time.

Gott’s political standpoint it seems to be that of an enthusiastic supporter of revolutions in the developing world with a tinge of old school Stalinist guerrillaism. He repeats without comment Chávez’s description of Mao Tse-Tung as a “great strategist, statesman and revolutionary” and is reluctant to critically analyse the development of the revolution, its over reliance on the old state apparatus and its lack of strategic clarity. Woods’ book is much superior in this regard. He explains that only by being honest about the revolution’s strengths and weaknesses can we properly defend it. He is an active Trotskyist and a founding member of Hands Off Venezuela. The sense of political engagement that he brings to the subject compensate for his uninspiring prose.

Solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution is going to be a major issue for socialists in 2006. It’s always preferable to be informed about the revolutions you are supporting and these two short books are important contributions to the creation of this solidarity in Britain.