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<h1 id="reader-title">Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution: From
Chávez to Maduro</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By Steve Ellner -
October 5, 2017<br>
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<p>The Venezuelan experience of nearly two decades of
radicalization, extreme social and political
polarization, and right-wing insurgence offers
valuable lessons for the left. The country’s current
crisis should be an occasion for constructive debate
around the struggles, successes, and failures of the
Bolivarian Revolution. By pinpointing strategic
errors–especially in the context of unrelenting
hostility by powerful forces on the right–Chavismo’s
supporters and sympathizers can offer a corrective to
the sweeping condemnations of the government of
Nicolás Maduro now coming from both right and left.</p>
<p>This article thus has two aims: to shed light on the
major lessons of the years of Chavista rule, and to
put some of the government’s more questionable actions
in their proper historical and political context. The
common perception of the Chavista leadership as
incompetent administrators who disdain democracy
ignores the complexity of achieving socialism through
democratic means, a process whose dangers and demands
have shaped the government’s decisions, for better and
worse. Only by reckoning with that complexity can we
understand both Venezuela’s current situation and its
turbulent recent history.</p>
<h2>Taking Sides</h2>
<p>In recent months, as the nation’s political conflict
has intensified, increasing numbers of both Venezuelan
leftists, such as the group Marea Socialista, which
withdrew from the governing United Socialist Party
(PSUV), and foreign observers have broken with the
Chavista camp. Many now defend a “plague on both your
houses” attitude toward both the Maduro government and
the right-wing opposition.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en1"
id="fn1" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> Whatever the
merit of some of their objections, by censuring the
government and opposition in equal terms, the
ex-Chavistas obscure the vital fact that the latter is
the aggressor, while the former has been relentlessly
attacked, compelling it to take emergency measures,
with damaging long-term effects.</p>
<p>This phenomenon is of course not new: Chavista
governments have been under near-continuous assault
from the time Hugo Chávez first took office in 1999.
Few elected governments in recent history have faced
such sharp confrontation and polarization over such a
prolonged period, or met with such a multitude of
powerful and hostile forces. The adversaries include
Venezuela’s major corporations and business groups,
the U.S. government and the Organization of American
States (OAS), the Catholic Church hierarchy,
university authorities, and the news media, in
addition to the traditional political establishment
and labor unions. A brief list of hostile actions
includes an attempted coup in 2002, promoted by
business interests and backed by the United States; a
two-month national lockout in 2002–03; waves of
paramilitary urban violence from 2002 to the present;
and the refusal of the opposition and its allies to
recognize official electoral results, even those
certified by international observers.</p>
<p>The belligerence has only become more pronounced
under Maduro, who lacks Chávez’s charisma, and whose
government has been buffeted by ongoing crises of
debt, inflation, and low oil prices. On the day of
Maduro’s election in April 2013, losing candidate
Henrique Capriles called on his followers to express
their wrath (<em>arrechera</em>), resulting in the
killing of ten Chavistas, including a policeman. The
paramilitary political violence known in Venezuela as
the <em>guarimba</em> dates to 2003, but has escalated
under Maduro: the three-month street protests in 2014
included armed private brigades, whose tactics have
since become still more militarized.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Washington’s aggression against the
governments of Chávez and Maduro demonstrates that in
terms of foreign policy, little distinguishes
Republicans and Democrats. The Bush administration
wholeheartedly supported the coup and general strike
in 2002–03. Obama inspired great expectations early in
his presidency with his warm encounter with Chávez,
who handed him a copy of Eduardo Galeano’s <em>Open
Veins of Latin America</em>, but ended up twice
issuing an executive order characterizing Venezuela as
an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national
security. And under President Trump, who has spoken
casually of employing a “military option” against
Maduro, newly appointed CIA director Mike Pompeo
admitted to having worked with the governments of
Mexico and Colombia to promote regime change in
Venezuela.</p>
<p>Although the scale and duration of these threats make
Venezuela unique among contemporary constitutional
democracies, their lessons are universal. The same
challenges facing Venezuelan leftists in power lie in
store for any democratic government committed to
socialism, especially one that goes as far as Chávez
did. In this sense, the Venezuelan experience, with
all its disappointments and achievements, is more
instructive for leftists in liberal-democratic nations
than twentieth-century revolutions in Russia, China,
and Cuba.</p>
<p>Most important, the Venezuelan experience has
demonstrated the need for socialists who reach power
by electoral means to walk a tactical tightrope. On
one side, in the name of pragmatism and in the face of
ruthless adversaries, Chavista governments have found
it necessary to make concessions: tactical alliances
with business leaders—whose support has often proved
self-serving—and populist policies, including generous
social spending, some of which have fostered
corruption and squandered vital resources. On the
other side, Chavista governments have mobilized large
numbers of their rank-and-file supporters and allied
social movements by demonstrating commitment to
radical change and socialist ideals. As I will argue,
the revolution has too often tilted in the former
direction, at the expense of the latter.</p>
<p>This is not to suggest that Chavista governments have
been motivated by sheer opportunism or short-term
considerations. The key point is rather that in
conditions as unfavorable as those now prevailing in
Venezuela, the left’s options are severely limited.
Under better circumstances, such as have existed at
various junctures under both Chávez and Maduro, the
government must act aggressively to deepen the process
of change and achieve other objectives. As I discuss
below, timing is essential.</p>
<p>The key issues currently being debated within the
Chavista movement boil down not to differences over
long-term goals, but how to ensure the viability of
specific policies. Any analysis that focuses only on
the end results of the revolutionary process, such as
socialist democracy, while ignoring the constraints
imposed by social and political realities, can only
mislead. The disillusionment of many former Chávez
sympathizers both in Venezuela and abroad likely stems
in part from this privileging of grand goals over
immediate challenges. Too much of the Bolivarian
Revolution’s energy depended on the vision and
charisma of Chávez himself, who unfortunately failed
to prepare his followers for the difficulties,
sacrifices, and thorny contradictions that the process
of radical change entails. The following issues, then,
will be analyzed from the perspectives of viability,
feasibility, and timing.</p>
<h2>Realism and the Bourgeoisie</h2>
<p>Chávez and the Chavista movement were always
characterized by a mix of realism and idealism.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en2"
id="fn2" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> Chávez
declared that Venezuelan socialism was based on the
principle of “to each according to their needs.” Not
even Soviet leaders went that far: like Marx, they
defined socialism as “to each according to their
contribution.” But Chávez was first and foremost a
realist and strategist, traits derived from his
military background. Just days after a two-month
business-promoted lockout aimed at toppling his
government in 2002–03, Chávez announced he would
exclude the <em>golpistas</em> (putchists) from the
system of “preferential dollars” (dollars sold at
lower exchange rates to pay for imports). In
subsequent years, Chávez followed a tacit and at times
explicit policy of giving preferential treatment to
those businesspeople who had defied the traditional
bourgeoisie by refusing to participate in the
two-month shutdown. In doing so, he weakened the
traditional bourgeoisie that had played the leading
role in ongoing efforts to undermine the government.</p>
<p>The government’s distinction between the hostile
traditional bourgeoisie and a “friendly” emerging one
has remained largely unchanged under Maduro. The
former, grouped in Fedecámaras, the Venezuelan chamber
of commerce, has grown savvier politically,
maintaining a distance from the parties of the
opposition and even negotiating with the Maduro
government at a time when the opposition refused to do
so, all to avoid the appearance of partisan struggle.
Nevertheless, Fedecámaras has been anything but
impartial. Not only did it join the opposition to
denounce and boycott the government’s election to
select delegates to a Constituent Assembly this past
July; it also indirectly supported opposition-called
general strikes during the preceding weeks. As a show
of solidarity with the opposition, member companies of
Fedecámaras excused their employees from work during
the “strike.”</p>
<p>The Chavista leadership’s reasoning for favoring
“friendly” businesspeople over those represented by
Fedecámaras is compelling: why grant credit or
contracts for public works projects to those who will
use public money to finance destabilizing activity?
Nevertheless, the relationship between the government
and friendly businesses who are awarded contracts has
become too cozy. In 2009, after insiders began to
manipulate several financial institutions resulting in
a banking crisis, Chávez ordered the arrest of several
dozen of them. Ricardo Fernández Barrueco, the richest
pro-Chavista business executive, and Arné Chacón,
brother of Chávez’s right-hand man, and a veteran of
the abortive 1992 coup linked to Chávez, spent three
years in jail as a result.</p>
<p>But unethical behavior in Venezuela hardly came to a
halt. One of Chávez’s most trusted ministers, Jorge
Giordani, revealed in 2013 that $20 billion had been
sold the previous year at the preferential exchange
rate to finance bogus imports. Maduro failed to act on
the allegation, despite promises to the contrary. But
under his presidency, a Chavista governor, a mayor of
the city of Valencia, and a president of a major state
company were arrested on charges of corruption, and in
2017 several executives from the state oil company,
PDVSA, in eastern Venezuela faced a similar fate. In
early 2017 the ex-governor received an eighteen-year
jail sentence. These actions, however, have done
little to contain corruption, which has become routine
and highly visible.</p>
<h2>Relations with the Private Sector</h2>
<p>Two opposing camps on the left fault the Chavista
government for its ties to “friendly” businesspeople.
Those to the left of the Chavista leadership see these
relations as naïve or, worse yet, as tantamount to a
sellout. Argentine writer Luis Bilbao, a supporter of
both Chavista governments, has expressed skepticism
toward what Chávez called a “strategic alliance” with
the private sector, and his meetings with some of its
representatives who were, for the most part, outside
the Fedecámaras fold. Bilbao particularly criticized
the “stage-based” approach of the Venezuelan Communist
Party (PCV). According to Bilbao, the PCV sees the
government’s alliance with supposedly non-monopolistic
businesspeople as a necessary stage designed to
achieve a “truce” with the bourgeoisie prior to moving
ahead with socialist construction.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en3"
id="fn3" rel="footnote">3</a></sup></p>
<p>On the other flank are those leftists who favor
closer ties with the bourgeoisie. Víctor Alvarez, a
former Minister of Basic Industry and Mining, is among
the most prominent advocates of prioritizing national
private production by limiting imports and downsizing
the state sector. Alvarez decried Maduro’s removal in
2016 of Miguel Pérez Abad as Industry and Commerce
Minister, the only businessman in the cabinet,
claiming that Pérez Abad irritated Chavista
“dogmatists” by calling for the privatization of
expropriated firms that incur heavy losses.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en4"
id="fn4" rel="footnote">4</a></sup></p>
<p>Both sides overstate their case. It seems fair to say
that ties with the private sector are necessary, but
that their deleterious long-term effects must be
anticipated and at some point countered. On the one
hand, few of the capitalists who have cooperated with
the Chavista governments fit the old
Comintern-promoted bill of a “progressive
bourgeoisie,” which was said to support the nation’s
economic independence and even to oppose imperialism.
The government’s alliance with members of the private
sector should not be considered strategic—defined as a
long-term coordination based on mutual confidence—but
rather tactical, with the goal of securing enough
political and economic stability to sustain the
process of change. Chavista activists have often
warned that at the earliest sign of the possibility of
regime change, pro-government businesspeople would be
the first to abandon ship, and recent events have
proved them right. Pork industry magnate Alberto
Cudemus, for instance, one of Chávez’s most trusted
allies, whom Chávez supported in his bid to head
Fedecámaras, has become a harsh critic of Maduro. The
president has responded in kind.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it is clear that objective
conditions have not allowed for mass expropriations or
all-out confrontation with capitalists. If capitalism
in Chavista Venezuela will remain a reality for some
time, the government has two options: ignore
distinctions among the capitalists and treat them as
one and the same, or take advantage of fissures within
the business class. Given Fedecámaras’s sudden
switch—from decades as a supposedly apolitical body to
a staunch enemy of Chávez, even before his 1998
election—the government would be foolish not to
cultivate relations with those businesspeople who
reject the organization’s hostile line.</p>
<p>In addition to ex-minister Pérez Abad, now president
of a major state bank, Oscar Schemel can be considered
a reliable business ally. Schemel, the owner of a
prominent public polling firm whose surveys are
frequently cited by Chavistas, was elected as a
business-sector delegate to the National Constituent
Assembly (ANC) in the elections held on July 30, 2017.
To mitigate the country’s economic crisis, Schemel has
urged the government to sell off highly subsidized
state companies. The proposal (also supported by
veteran leftist Eleazar Díaz Rangel, the Chavista
editor of a major newspaper, <em>Ultimas Noticias</em>)
touches a raw nerve among Chavista stalwarts, who see
it as a betrayal of Chávez’s legacy. In a speech at
the ANC on August 9, 2017, Schemel called for
recognition of the importance of the market and the
lifting of price controls. The latter proposal,
however, would be untenable for the popular classes,
whose purchasing power has declined precipitously in
recent years. Nevertheless, Schemel is right to point
out that given the fundamentally capitalist structure
of the Venezuelan economy, the government cannot
ignore the reality of the market.</p>
<p>Close relations with “friendly” businesspeople may be
a necessary part of a democratic and peaceful
socialist strategy, but their damaging effects, most
visibly corruption and cronyism, must be expected and
combated. If the Venezuelan experience is any
indication, such scourges are inevitable: for example,
efforts to enforce transparent bidding procedures for
public works contracts, meant to safeguard against
overpriced projects, have often been sidetracked.
Chavistas argue privately that the traditional
bourgeoisie, while no ally of the government, wins the
lion’s share of such contracts by virtue of its
greater capital and experience compared to those of
“emerging,” “friendly” businesspeople. Evidently for
that reason, the government granted lucrative
contracts to the Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht,
with close ties to Lula da Silva’s Workers Party, for
megaprojects such as bridge and rail construction,
while pointing out that smaller “emerging” Venezuelan
businesses were unequipped for such large
undertakings. The infamous scandal that has since
enveloped Odebrecht and other firms, as well as the
Workers Party, implicates leading political figures
throughout the continent, including Venezuelan
politicians of many political stripes. All of this
underscores the urgent need for effective popular and
institutional controls, as I discuss below.</p>
<h2>Party and State</h2>
<p>In early 2007, Chávez created the PSUV, which soon
signed up 7 million members throughout the nation. As
a mass-based party committed to bottom-up
participation and building links to social movements,
the PSUV held great promise as the foundation for
Venezuela’s new political model of participatory
democracy, embodied in the constitution of 1999. The
PSUV was designed to allow revolutionaries to navigate
the old state, which was penetrated by forces of
reaction, and at the same time to build a new state
through gradual, non-violent means.</p>
<p>Throughout his presidency, Chávez lashed out at
bureaucrats, including those in his own party, who
held back popular participation and efficient
execution of policies and programs. Toward the end of
his life, he told his inner circle that the scourge of
bureaucratism had to be aggressively confronted:
“Prepare yourselves. I am directing this initiative at
my own ranks, my own government.” To Maduro, he
demanded “a hundred inspection teams or more if
necessary. If I have to remove someone, bring them to
trial, or order a probe, then that’s what I’ll do.”<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en5"
id="fn5" rel="footnote">5</a></sup></p>
<p>Chávez himself, however, shared responsibility for
the bureaucratic morass. Given the inability of the
existing state to establish effective checks and
balances, the PSUV was in an ideal position to
independently monitor and combat inefficiency,
obstruction, and corruption. But from the outset,
Chávez in effect made the party an appendage of the
state, with most of its leaders at all levels also
serving in the government. Now, ten years later, the
party’s president, vice president and twenty-two
national committee members are nearly all ministers,
governors, legislators, and others connected to the
state.</p>
<p>While long on rhetoric about “participatory
democracy,” the PSUV leadership nevertheless
discourages criticism from the rank and file. As in
past party primaries, the campaign for the National
Constituent Assembly elections on July 30, 2017, saw
the PSUV leadership use its influence and resources to
favor certain candidates and trusted supporters.
Critical Chavista candidates should have been given
greater opportunities, such as increased airtime on
the TV channel Venezolana de Televisión and other
state media outlets, or public forums open to all
candidates.</p>
<p>One such reliable but critical candidate, elected to
the ANC, was Julio Escalona, an iconic guerrilla of
the 1960s, who raised the key issue of corruption and
called for the seizure of all assets obtained by
illicit means. Escalona also warned against PSUV
control of the ANC: “The government will be well
represented in the ANC and that is logical.… But the
government and the parties have a tendency to control
everything. For the sake of the people and including
the government and the PSUV, the ANC should not be
dominated by a sectarian current.”<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en6"
id="fn6" rel="footnote">6</a></sup></p>
<p>Providing opportunities and opening space for
Chavista activists and grassroots leaders who are
committed but not beholden to the party machine would
be an intelligent strategy, both to restore some of
the popular energy of the Chávez years and to counter
the right’s recent offensive. Such an approach would
stop short of a “revolution in the revolution,”
involving a thorough shake-up of the bureaucracy—an
unfeasible approach in the current moment of acute
political confrontation. In this sense, the
reinvigoration of Chavismo through relaxed controls on
bottom-up participation represents the same
tightrope-walking strategy, based on a realistic
assessment of objective conditions and of the relative
strength of hostile forces, that has informed the
movement from the beginning.</p>
<h2>Democracy and Government</h2>
<p>Chavista rhetoric envisions a new type of democracy,
based on direct popular participation in
decision-making, that supersedes old models of
representative government. Chavista leaders invoked
this model to encourage participation in the ANC
elections. In a May Day speech, Maduro justified his
decision to convene the ANC as an effort to strengthen
and deepen the participatory provisions of the
constitution of 1999. As proof of the feasibility of
these “new forms of direct democracy,” Maduro pointed
to such initiatives as the system of community
distribution of basic food items (known as the Local
Distribution and Production Committees, or CLAPs) and
the communes, which organize and direct economic
activity within cities and neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Although the CLAPs and communes suggest the great
potential of direct participation, both are in an
incipient stage. Similarly, the system of “social
controllership,” another example of direct
participation, has not come to full fruition. Under
this arrangement, the community, through the communal
councils first created in 2006, monitors public works
projects to ensure that public money is properly
allocated and spent. Social controllership, and the
communal councils in general, have encouraged the
participation of large numbers of formerly
marginalized Venezuelans and engendered a sense of
empowerment, but their performance at the national
level has been uneven.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en7"
id="fn7" rel="footnote">7</a></sup></p>
<p>Given this reality, the system of institutional
checks and balances conventionally associated with
liberal or constitutional democracy cannot be readily
discarded. Accountability is particularly important
because Venezuela’s political system has always been
skewed in favor of executive power, and even more so
under the Chavistas. In addition, with the loosening
of rules for bidding on public contracts, discussed
above, other types of institutional checks and
guarantees need to be developed. In one example of a
failed effort to tighten controls, legislation in 2009
allowed the National Controllership to review the
finances of the communal councils, but the provision
has been a dead letter.</p>
<p>As long as direct democracy remains a work in
progress, old institutional controls should be
retained and, where necessary, modified, but not
abandoned. The central challenge remains “to walk a
fine line between grassroots movements and state
institutions,” which, in the words of George
Ciccariello-Maher, Chávez was uniquely able to do.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en8"
id="fn8" rel="footnote">8</a></sup> Inside the
PSUV itself, direct democracy is not just a guiding
vision but an immediate imperative. Even improved
institutional controls within the state would not
guarantee transparency and accountability. The effort
to combat corruption requires that the governing party
become internally democratic, participatory, and
semi-autonomous in its relations with the government.</p>
<h2>Loyalty and Sectarianism</h2>
<p>The experience of the general strike of 2002–03
taught the Chavista leadership the importance of
loyalty, but the incident may have been a case of
“overlearning.” After the strike, Chávez fired 17,000
technical and professional oil company employees who
had paralyzed production in the industry to spur
regime change. Their replacements, most of whom lacked
their predecessors’ expertise, succeeded in restarting
production. To many of the president’s supporters, the
episode suggested that skill was dispensable, but
loyalty, which became a Chavista catchword, was not.
Chávez’s and Maduro’s frequent rotation of cabinet
ministers, who often lacked any background in the
ministries they were appointed to serve, appeared to
affirm this disregard for technical ability.</p>
<p>The overemphasis on loyalty has also fomented
sectarianism and intolerance, and political fealty can
serve as a cover for corruption. A favorite slogan of
both Chávez and Maduro, “Unity, Unity and More Unity,”
is often used to exhort followers to close ranks and
set aside internal criticism to focus on facing down a
ruthless enemy. This call for unity above all else
appears especially relevant after the recent defection
of several leading Chavistas from the PSUV. One such
figure is Giordani, who since Chávez’s death has been
sharply critical of Maduro’s government. But a
distinction should be drawn between leftist
adversaries of the government, such as Giordani and
the group Marea Socialista, and leftists who give it
critical support, such as former commerce minister
Eduardo Samán. The latter, who was removed from office
by Chávez and later again by Maduro, has made clear
that revolutionaries cannot always air their
criticisms publicly, and that party discipline must
take precedence. However, the PSUV’s failure to
recognize Samán’s leadership prompted him to leave the
party in June to join an allied group, Patria Para
Todos, and then run as a candidate for the ANC. At the
same time, Samán chided Giordani for his excessive
condemnations of the party, adding: “I also have my
criticisms but I am not going public. At this moment
we have to prioritize unity because the whole
[revolutionary] process is on the line.” Samán’s exit
from the PSUV confirms that Maduro, much more than
Chávez, has been overly hostile to critics on the
left, both within and beyond the movement. One
Chavista activist I interviewed faulted Maduro for
being at times “sectarian,” and pointed to Mao’s “On
the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the
People” as a guide for resolving the movement’s
internal differences.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en9"
id="fn9" rel="footnote">9</a></sup></p>
<h2>Social Justice and Productivity</h2>
<p>There were sound political reasons for Chávez to
prioritize social programs over economic objectives
during his first years in office. Had he not, the
country’s poor and working-class populations might not
have rallied so actively to his cause during the two
attempts to topple his government in 2002. Not
surprisingly, the government’s flagship social
programs date back to the aftermath of the 2002–03
general strike. In his later years, Chávez gave
greater weight to policies to promote economic
development, as has Maduro, who responded to the
economic downturn in 2014 by prioritizing efforts to
transform the nation’s rentier, oil-based economy. If
Venezuela is typical of what can be expected when
leftist governments in the global South take power by
electoral means, the sequence will be first the
prioritization of social objectives in response to
political perils, and then a shift to a strategy
designed to face economic challenges. Thus
consolidation of power and stability is the initial
task, requiring an emphasis on social provision in
order to buttress the left’s mass base of support.</p>
<p>But in certain respects, Chávez went overboard in his
focus on social goals at the expense of economic ones
in the early years of his presidency. His
constitutional reform proposal of 2007, for example,
included a reduction of the legal work week from
forty-four to thirty-six hours. Such a drastic cut
threatened to stunt Venezuela’s economic growth, as it
would that of any industrializing country. Likewise,
at the level of discourse, Chávez’s liberal use of
slogans such as “the sea of happiness” and “humanistic
socialism” failed to prepare Venezuelans for the toil
and struggle that lay ahead, particularly when
international oil prices declined. Indeed, the
overriding need to overcome the nation’s dependence on
oil may not have been an immediate priority in
Chávez’s early years, but from the outset the
challenge had to be faced, albeit not privileged.
There is a lesson to be learned: stages whereby
certain objectives are prioritized over others have to
be defined for each period, but at the same time,
future stages need to be anticipated, both at the
level of policy and discourse.</p>
<p>A particularly thorny problem of strategy and timing
arises from the drive for social justice and equality.
Both are guiding ideals of the Chavista movement, and
account for much of the support it enjoys among the
country’s non-privileged and marginalized populations,
such as members of the informal economy. In itself,
this “humanistic” aspect of socialism is not a point
of contention within the Chavista movement. Internal
debate, however, has centered on the need for
collective discipline and sacrifice, and on the poor
administrative and economic performance of the state
sector. Within any socialist government, tension
sometimes arises between efforts to achieve equality
and social justice on the one hand, and efficiency,
productivity, and labor discipline on the other, even
as the two sets of goals are reconcilable and in some
ways interrelated.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en10"
id="fn10" rel="footnote">10</a></sup></p>
<p>A case in point is the practice of outsourcing, which
Chávez decried. His opposition to outsourcing in part
prompted him to nationalize the foreign-owned steel
company SIDOR in 2008, and to expropriate contractor
companies in the oil industry, and eventually to
outlaw the practice altogether in the Organic Labor
Law of 2012. The issue in Venezuela, however, is not
always cut and dried. On the one hand, the
incorporation of tens of thousands of outsourced
workers by state companies is an inspiration for labor
movements around the world. On the other, some workers
who have raised the banners of social justice
associated with Chávez and demanded to be added to the
payroll of the state oil company, PDVSA, are not
permanently employed in the oil industry. Since 1998,
PDVSA’s workforce has more than tripled, from 40,000
to over 150,000.</p>
<p>The tension between social justice and socialist
efficiency plays out on other fronts. One issue is the
widespread practice of granting free or excessively
low-priced goods and services to poor and
working-class communities. The case for the policy is
compelling, namely that the government has a
responsibility to pay what Chavistas call the “social
debt” owed to the most exploited sectors. Yet such
artificially low prices on goods produced by state
companies undermine their ability to achieve
self-sufficiency, and are partly responsible for the
chronic scarcity of many products and the emergence of
an exploitative black market. This dilemma partly
explains why companies that Chávez expropriated after
2007 to achieve “food sovereignty” have been unable to
fill the gap left by politically motivated
disinvestment by the private sector in recent years.</p>
<h2>When to Act</h2>
<p>If the aggression and intransigence of Venezuela’s
opposition has limited the government’s options and
forced it to make concessions, then those moments when
the Chavistas have the upper hand represent special
opportunities for progress and reform. In such
situations, four objectives—all of which come at a
price, but only in the short run—stand out as
achievable: economic transformation; combating
corruption and inefficient bureaucracies; internal
democratization; and the weakening of adversaries.
Chávez took advantage of the favorable juncture after
his triumph in the 2006 presidential elections, when
he won 63 percent of the vote, the largest in modern
Venezuelan history. Not only did he nationalize
strategic industries, but he created the PSUV and
delivered a heavy blow to his adversaries on the
right.</p>
<p>In contrast, Maduro missed a valuable opportunity in
mid-2014, when the Chavistas were in an ideal position
after defeating the opposition’s three-month <em>guarimba</em> protests
and winning municipal elections by an impressive
margin. At the time, Maduro vowed to undertake a
“revolutionary shakeup” of his cabinet, prompting
expectations that fresh faces would be brought in and
new policies initiated. The announcement of these
changes, however, was postponed several times, and
when, on September 2, the appointments were finally
made official, they amounted to merely a
musical-chairs reshuffling of cabinet ministers.
Concurrently, oil prices began to plunge, and a golden
opportunity was lost.</p>
<p>The convening of the ANC may provide another
favorable juncture for the Chavistas. At the time of
this writing, in August 2017, the opposition has been
worn down after three months of <em>guarimba</em> protests
even more violent than those of 2014. In addition,
opposition leaders are divided over whether to
participate in upcoming gubernatorial and municipal
elections. Finally, given their sheer number, the 550
delegates to the ANC may be less subject to party
control than are National Assembly deputies.
Consequently, they may be more inclined to speak out
against corruption and bureaucracy and in favor of
initiatives to revive the economy.</p>
<h2>Summing Up</h2>
<p>The failure of the numerous attempts to topple the
Maduro government is due largely to the support the
Chavistas still enjoy among the country’s popular
sectors and the armed forces. The campaigns of
violence in 2014 and 2017 have been predicated on the
assumption that disruptions in wealthy municipalities
run by opposition mayors would spread to the barrios,
or trigger a military coup. Neither has happened. With
a few exceptions, the working classes and the poor
have refrained from joining the <em>guarimba</em>,
despite considerable discontent at the country’s
economic crisis and the long tradition of barrio
political resistance.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en11"
id="fn11" rel="footnote">11</a></sup></p>
<p>In formulating a strategy toward the armed forces,
Chávez assimilated the century-long experience of
earlier Latin American progressive governments, whose
lack of an organized following in the military left
them without a counterweight to right-wing officers.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en12"
id="fn12" rel="footnote">12</a></sup> Recognizing
this reality, Chávez promoted “Bolivarian” officers,
who identified with the movement, to commanding
positions, with the result that the military now
defines itself as anti-imperialist, socialist, and
Chavista.</p>
<p>Maduro has played hardball in the face of the latest
campaign to unseat his government. Not only has he
jailed opposition leaders for inciting violence, but
he has mobilized his own supporters to counter
opposition-led street protests. In doing so, Maduro
breaks with a tradition of sorts among Latin American
progressive governments, which historically have put
up little resistance to right-wing insurgencies:
notable examples include Rómulo Gallegos in Venezuela
in 1948, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Juan
Domingo Perón in Argentina in 1955, João Goulart in
Brazil in 1964, and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973.</p>
<p>Maduro’s perseverance is inherited from Chávez, who
realized long before his election as president that
state power is of central importance in the struggle
for socialism, and its achievement must take
precedence over other considerations. Maduro is thus
at odds with those on the left and beyond who argue
that the Chavistas should be willing to relinquish
power now that the government’s popularity is well
under 50 percent.</p>
<p>But gaining and keeping power is not enough to make a
revolution. According to the Chavista strategy, an old
state and a new one will, in the words of Marta
Harnecker, an unofficial advisor to Chávez, “coexist
for a long time.” This approach contrasts with Lenin’s
classic “dual power” strategy, in which the old state
is considered enemy territory. Nevertheless, Harnecker
recognizes that while it is legitimate for leftists to
work within the old state, it has a corrupting
influence. The only solution is for the “organized
movement…[to] exert pressure on the inherited state.”<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en13"
id="fn13" rel="footnote">13</a></sup> Greek
Marxist Nicos Poulantzas, who theorized along similar
lines, pointed to autonomous social movements as the
essential element exerting that pressure.<sup><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#en14"
id="fn14" rel="footnote">14</a></sup></p>
<p>In Venezuela, however, social movements—for
indigenous rights, gender equality, environmental
justice, and more—have traditionally been weak. This
distinguishes it from a country like Bolivia, where
the governing Movement toward Socialism party of Evo
Morales emerged from such movements. In the absence of
strong and independent grassroots groups, the key
element in the Venezuelan process is thus the party.
To combat bureaucracy, corruption, and inefficiency,
the PSUV must become more independent of the state and
more internally democratic.</p>
<p>Two fundamental challenges face the governing party
in this drive for greater autonomy and internal
participation by a committed and well-informed
membership. First, if left unchecked, the government’s
relationship with sectors of the bourgeoisie will
solidify and continue to undermine the leadership’s
socialist commitments. Second, if it is necessary to
walk a tactical tightrope when the left finds itself
on the defensive, the specifics of that strategy
require input from those closest to the mood of the
people. Decision-making cannot be the exclusive
preserve of the party’s national leadership, still
less of the president’s inner circle. A truly
democratic party is essential in Venezuela not only as
a matter of principle, but because the very survival
of the country’s revolutionary process depends on it.</p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<ol>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn1">↩</a>Jacobin andNACLA:
Report on the Americas have each published articles
both for and against the “plague on both your
houses” position. For a representative “for”
argument, see Gabriel Heitland, “<a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/venezuela-crisis-maduro-opposition-violence-elections-economy"
rel="noopener" target="_blank">Why Is Venezuela
Spiraling out of Control?</a>”Jacobin, May 14,
2017. Marea Socialista worked as a faction within
the PSUV from the party’s founding in 2007. In 2014,
after taking an increasingly critical stance toward
the government, MS announced its intention to become
a separate political party.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn2">↩</a>Ignacio
Ramonet, “One Hundred Hours with Chávez,” in Hugo
Chávez with Ramonet,My First Life(London: Verso,
2016), xxxiv.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn3">↩</a>Luis
Bilbao,Venezuela en Revolución: Renacimiento del
Socialismo (Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual,
2008), 182, 195–96.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn4">↩</a>Víctor
Alvarez, “Cambio en el gabinete,”El Mundo, August 5,
2016.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn5">↩</a>“Chávez:
Tengo moral para exigirle a mi equipo eficiencia,”
YouTube, November 5, 2012. In his last famous
speech, Chávez also scolded those in charge of
implementing policy for failing to promote direct
democracy through the establishment of communes.
Chávez,Golpe de Timón (Caracas: Edición Correo del
Orinoco, 2012), 17–21. See also John Bellamy Foster,
“<a
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-066-11-2015-04_1"
rel="noopener" target="_blank">Chávez and the
Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in
Venezuela</a>,”Monthly Review 66, no. 11 (April
2015): 1–17.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn6">↩</a>Julio
Escalona, “<a
href="https://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a249218.html"
rel="noopener" target="_blank">¿Una Asamblea
Nacional Constituyente para la Simple Negación,
para la Venganza?</a>” Aporrea, July 14, 2017, <a
href="https://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a249218.html" rel="noopener"
target="_blank">http://aporrea.org</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn7">↩</a>For
a brief discussion of the uneven performance of the
communal councils and communes, see Steve Ellner, “<a
href="https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/social-programs-venezuela-under-chavista-governments"
rel="noopener" target="_blank">Social Programs in
Venezuela under the Chavista Governments</a>,”
Next System Project, August 7, 2017, <a
href="https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/social-programs-venezuela-under-chavista-governments"
rel="noopener" target="_blank">http://thenextsystem.org</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn8">↩</a>George
Ciccariello-Maher,Building the Commune: Radical
Democracy in Venezuela (London: Verso, 2016), 77.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn9">↩</a>Felipe
Rangel, interview with the author, Puerto La Cruz,
July 11, 2017.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn10">↩</a>Jorge
Arreaza, interview with the author, Barcelona,
Venezuela, July 14, 2017.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn11">↩</a>For
a vivid history and analysis of protests in
Caracas’s famed 23 de Enero barrio in recent
decades, see Alejandro Velasco,Barrio Rising: Urban
Popular Politics and the Making of Modern
Venezuela (Berkeley, CA: university of California
Press, 2015).</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn12">↩</a>Before
1998, it was a notorious fact that most high-ranking
officers were sympathizers of one of the two
establishment parties, Democratic Action and Copei.
Not even the moderately leftist Movement toward
Socialism (MAS) was allowed any influence within the
military.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn13">↩</a>Marta
Harnecker, “<a
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.14452/MR-062-03-2010-07_2"
rel="noopener" target="_blank">Latin America and
Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid
Mistakes</a>,”Monthly Review 62, no. 3
(July–August 2010): 42.</li>
<li><a
href="https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/#fn14">↩</a>For
a discussion of the application of Poulantzas’s
thinking to the Chavista experience, see Steve
Ellner, “Implications of Marxist State Theories and
How They Play Out in Venezuela,”Historical
Materialism 25, no. 2 (2017): 29–62.</li>
</ol>
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