Venezuela: Mimic US Capitalism? No Thanks!

Unemployment rate in Venezuela is significantly lower than in the US

By Gustavo Lopez

The Venezuelan employment rate in 2009 totaled 92.3 percent, which accounts for 12,065,593 employees, according with The National Institute of statistics. But strangely, the bourgeois US and Venezuelan media doesn’t seem to know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

In April 2009, the Venezuelan unemployment rate stood at 7.7 percent according to the National Statistics Institute. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the job situation in the US is not doing as well.

Non-farm payroll employment has continued to decline in the US, and the unemployment rate has risen from 8.5 to 8.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs in the US have been lost. In April, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Overall, private-sector employment fell by 611,000 jobs, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So, the unemployment rate in Venezuela is significantly lower—1.2 percentage points lower than the unemployment rate in the US. But many bourgeois economists, especially the VenEconomy crowd—a Caracas-based publication and consulting firm that analyzes the Venezuelan economy, and much of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie still believe that Venezuela should ape or mimic the policies of US capitalists—policies that produced a world capitalist crisis in the first place!

Again, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics, job losses were large and widespread across nearly all major private-sector industries. Over 611,000 jobs were lost, so this is a tragic situation for the hundreds of thousands of US workers who lost their jobs in April alone. But guess what the bourgeois US and Venezuelan media and economists say about the US economic situation?

"It’s a correction."

Yeah, that’s right, they call it a correction!

In other words, some bourgeois media and economists believe it was "correct" to put 600,000 workers out of work in April. And some of these media and economists are asking, "Why doesn’t Venezuela also correct itself and throw a lot people out of work—how can Venezuela be doing better?"

The answer to this question is that Venezuelan revolutionaries are deliberately economically and politically "incorrect."

Why, Venezuelan revolutionaries are so economically "incorrect" that they intend to reduce the unemployment rate in Venezuela to below 7.7 percent.

Gustavo Lopez is a Sacramento activist originally from Venezuela, and a supporter of BPM.

See more from Gustavo Lopez at  

www.programabolivariano.com.