The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism For Venezuela

Good article but lengthy.

For example, during the Chavez presidency the number of cooperatives in Venezuela has increased from about 800 in 1998 to over 100,000 in 2005 – an over 100-fold increase in seven years. Over 1.5 million Venezuelans are thus now involved in cooperatives, which represents about 10% of the country’s adult population.<3> The government has been actively supporting the creation of cooperatives in all sectors, mostly via credit, preferential purchasing from cooperatives, and training programs.

With regard to co-management, the government has been experimenting with several state-owned enterprises in this regard, such as the electricity company CADAFE and the aluminum production plant Alcasa. Depending on how these experiments go, the government is considering turning over more state-owned enterprises to co-management. These businesses will not be turned over to complete worker control, however, because, according to the government, they are too important for Venezuela to be governed only by the people that work there. That is, they have an impact for the entire society and thus, according to the principle of subsidiarity, the society, through its representatives in the state, should also have a say in how the enterprise is run.

Another strategy for changing the ownership and control over the means of production has been the expropriation of idle factories. Currently at least four production plants, which produce paper, valves, and agricultural products, have been expropriated and turned over to worker control. Working together with the national union federation UNT, the government is evaluating 700 other idle production facilities that could also be expropriated and turned over to former workers of these plants.


http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1776

I hope that Bush (or whoever takes over from him) will work with Venezuela and not try any of their usual crap.