open Democracy News Analysis - Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it, Julia Buxton - Comments

luisefe64 on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

luisefe64 — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 20:19:18 +0000

Dear Julia First at all, my apologies for my English Nobody can deny the advances of some social projects carryied out by Chavez goverment in the last years. However you seem to elude the fact that the concentration of power in a person is a serios thread to democracy. I agree that there is an oversimplification from the western media about the current situation of Venezuela but at the same time you have a very romantic and paternalistic perception about the “caudillos” that have had our region. Regards Luis Fernando Gómez

chapi66 on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

chapi66 — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 03:34:07 +0100

1. Chavez is communist. 2. He killed 300 Venezuelans in 1992 when he tried to kill democracy. 3. He is anti-democrat. He offends everyone contradicting him. He deniesTV licenses for channels opposing him. 4. Venezuela has empoverished since the 90's and Chavez has done nothing to fix it and overcome the crisis. 5. The few improvements that he has showed are due to oil prices rising since Bush invaded Irak, so Bush is the best thing that has happened to Chavez. 6. Corruption is now bigger than ever before. If former politicians were corrupt at least people could know how much they stole. Now there is no way to know it. If Chavez steals money there is no judge to process him. He holds all powers in Venezuela, like a dictator. 7. Although many Venezuelans support Chavez, it is due to his popular speach. He is giving them what they want: a demagogical governor, a dictator like in past times, as they like, giving them some money without working for it. Chavez represents Venezuelan most underdeveloped culture. 8. That is all I have to say about Chavez. Each one of the points above can be proved studying Venezuelan's history and visiting the country.

quidoculosavertis on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

quidoculosavertis — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:58:06 +0100

I for one, find it difficult to forget that the president, a former perennial Venezuelan army plotter and malcontent, went up in arms against the state in 1992 in a bloody coup d'�tat attempt, with the declared intent to murder the elected president, resulting in several hundred deaths including innocent bystanders and thereafter gave himself up when his life was guaranteed.

He became a household figure that day on national television after a brief speech appealing to his fellow conspirators to surrender.

Capping the string of failures that comprised his military career, this last desperate media exposition ironically converted a failed bloody coupster into a recognised personality of national stature and formed the foundation of his messianic political platform by successfully tapping into the grudge politics.

As a result, he spent about two years in with a clean jail cell, surrounded by books, friends and conjugal visits, a supreme privilege afforded to precious few in Venezuela's disastrous jail system.

Unapprehended co-conspirators gave Venezuela a repeat performance with the November 1992 coup d'�tat attempt, producing yet another round of suffering and death. To date these murders have remained uninvestigated and while Ch�vez remains in power it will continue to be so.

This callous, resentful man, with a long-stanging grudge against Venezuela can only act tyranically. Calling him a "ranting populist demagogue" is to treat him with kid gloves. More often than not, he acts like a bully. Authoritarianism is a euphemism to describe the way the Venezuelan government works. Others would liken it more to the way criminals gangs operate.

Time is running out on the romantic aspects of the Ch�vez r�gime that appeal to the notions of the na�ve and sooner than later the world will see him for what he really is.

Can we seriously expect him to act in a democratic manner? He himself has let it be clearly known that he answers to nobody and revels in rubbing this in the face of Venezuela. He has such disrespect for his 1999 constitution, presented to the world as the best possible constitution ever, that there are few articles that he or his minions have not despotically trampled upon.

Freedom of expression is being curtailed when Venezuela's most popular TV channel is closed downby the government on May 27th, the Supreme Court adding insult to injury by sentencing that RCTV's transmission infrastructure can be "borrowed" by other channels, as an act of chavista vengeance and a highly visible step towards your common or garden dictatorship.

The repercussions of having a large portion of politically unrepresented Venezuelans remain to be seen, especially when Ch�vez finally presents the constitutional reforms to allow him to remain in power legally for ever and whatever other laws written under his 18 month "enabling" umbrella.

Yes one can turn a blind eye, or buy the revolutionary rhetoric lock, stock and barrel, for reasons of solidarity or not, but the only thing Ch�vez's government has been successful in is the creation of even more misery. This situation is going nowhere but down for now.

quidoculosavertis on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

quidoculosavertis — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:56:12 +0100

One cannot rightly claim to be fully cognizant with Venezuelan current events and at the same time ignore the amply-attended daily nationwide peaceful student protests of late, unless one only gets their news exclusively from the Venezuelan government and sympathetic media, presently enforcing a news blackout on the subject. The student protests are aimed directly against government interference in detriment of freedom of expression, of which the closure of RCTV is but the latest of many unfortunate instances.

If it were the case that a media outlet were involved in illegal activities, these would have been brought to trial ages ago. All manner of accusations flow freely from the mouthes of the president and his sycophants and despite the iron-fisted control that the judiciary is subjected to by Ch�vez, no such charges have ever been brought against RCTV.

ggunders on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

ggunders — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 06:54:32 +0100

Those of us on this blog that are Venezuelan or know Venezuela know well that no one in Venezuela, with the exception of a few, is crying for RCTV. We all know what they did in April 2002.

Now, you can argue that President Chavez moved too slowly, that he did not take action to arrest the owners and managers of RCTV, Globovision, and Venevision back in April 2002. This was his BIG mistake. We all know that they are guilty. However, 5 years have passed and that is why the opposition can come out and say what it has to say. RCTV was not charged with a crime, let alone convicted. We all know that it should have been and I am sure that Marcel Granier probably is confused about why he was not put in jail.

So, no tears for RCTV but lots of tears for the Venezuelan government because they did not know what to do back in 2002. RCTV, Globovision, and Venesion should have been shut down then and all of the owners and managers should have been arrested and tried.

Mistakes are being made but the biggest mistake would be to think that we are going to go back to the days of AD and Copei. Won't happen. Sorry.

nurivia on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

nurivia — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 02:24:46 +0100

hello Phil,

It's only a remark on your comment. There's no way of controling communal councils through funding. If a council does all the steps explained on the law money goes to them automaticly, there's no possibility for the goverment to withdraw the funding based on the ideology of the council. Moreover, there's councils ruled by middle class people in the est of the city clearly "antichavistas".

quidoculosavertis on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

quidoculosavertis — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:48:04 +0100

Dr. Buxton,

If a fortnight ago there was a lot to complain about in Venezuela, today the situation is immeasurably worse.

It may be enlightening to observe closely the developments since Ch�vez's personal decision to close down the VHF channel 2, better known as Venezuela's oldest and most popular television station on May 27th, to better ascertain the true nature of this r�gime.

Starting early Monday morning, students from the country's main universities began gathering to discuss the abrupt and abusive manner used by the government to interfere with that most basic of human rights, freedom of expression.

Despite the fact that the day before, a large rally at the National Telecommunications Commission in Caracas had been violently overrun under false pretenses by Tupamaro and Carapaica infiltrated Metropolitan Police, they began to assemble in large numbers in public squares all over the country to protest non-violently requesting the restoration of freedom of expression and the channel 2 signal.

The government, initially surprised by the intensity of the students' reaction, who have had relatively little involvement in protests during the ever-lengthening span of Ch�vez's rule, has responded at every level with violence and extreme prejudice against the youngsters after Ch�vez went into a "cadena" openly threatening the kids with brutality and calling upon his supporters to ravage eastern Caracas.

Up to yesterday, around 2 hundred protesters and other unfortunates seized in the vicinity of the protests have been summarily detained by police and hauled off to their filthy, dilapidated stations, practically all of them incapable of handling anyone within reasonable parameters of human rights, for example: underage children being thrown into cells without sanitary facilities together with common criminals.

Today, it's relieving to see that most detainees, after having tolerated insufferable conditions for over 48 hours, have been freed, although many have been obliged to submit to a system of parole with frequent personal presentations at court.

What is really quite appalling though, is the re-emergence of armed gangs of red-shirted motorcycle thugs paid and organised by the government to wreak havoc at opposition rallies. This morning, they shot and killed a young student on her way to the Catholic university to give in her thesis.

This is not the concerned, humanist government you describe, by any means, which is why many people will never *get* the "revolution" you address.

quidoculosavertis on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

quidoculosavertis — Mon, 28 May 2007 19:03:17 +0100

There is a lot to complain about in Venezuela, but you have misunderstood the crux of the matter, which is about government restriction of freedom of expression. Also, do not underestimate the domino effect of shutting down RCTV upon what little is left of independent media in this country. This is bullying, plain and simple and soon it will become apparent that RCTV is not the only station in their crosshairs.

It never ceases to amaze me that such a massively corrupt government made up of very violent coupsters, murderers, thieves and outlaws has such a thin skin when common people voice their complaints.

One must not forget Ch�vez's declared intentions regarding his goal to murder twice elected president Carlos Andr�s P�rez in 1992.

In the US, which seems to have a reasonably working justice system, Ch�vez would have undoubtedly been sentenced at least to life imprisonment for the hundreds of deaths that were his direct responsibility during the February 4th coup attempt, together with many of his henchmen, after a tolerably fair trial.

ggunders on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

ggunders — Mon, 28 May 2007 06:17:19 +0100

You may be able to complain about a lot of things going in in Venezuela these days but you cannot bring our the violins for RCTV, media outlet that has openly called for the overthrow of the government and the assassination of the duly elected President of Venezuela. If they had done this in the U.S., the owners and managers would have been arrested and most likely sentenced to death.

Give us all a break...

CaracasChronicler on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

CaracasChronicler — Wed, 16 May 2007 07:33:47 +0100

Um. Well, after a due re-read, I'll just be straightforward with you: I've been arguing about Venezuela more or less daily for the last eight years and I have never, once, been put through an argumentative meat-grinder quite like the one you just produced. I found myself in the impossible, idiotic position of nodding in agreement most of the way through your post (your meaning got lost in a tangle of obscure words and over-complicated sentence structures here and there, but for the most part...)

I'm totally rattled. My first reaction is that if I had a smigdeon of common sense I'd just wave a white flag at this point. As you noted, though, common sense has never been my strong point: I still think your conclusion is wrong, even if I can't deny the overall force of your argument. The reasons are too complicated - and too imprecisely formulated in my own mind - to try to get into them here. But give them time: they'll come...

My second reaction was a burning curiosity about you. Who are you? Why haven't I read you before? I like to think I keep fairly close tabs on what's written about Venezuela in English. For literally years I've been combing the internet looking for a proper, stylish, intellectually coherent defense of chavismo. I'm sure I would've noticed yours if I'd run across it before. Or have you been hiding in plain sight all along?

Honestly, the comments' section following this silly little Buxtonian propaganda bit is the last place I expected to have an experience as unsettling as reading your post has been.

Please send me email: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

I want to have this one out with you, but not here, on my blog.

CaracasChronicler on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

CaracasChronicler — Wed, 16 May 2007 06:45:59 +0100

Ahmad,

I'll have to read your post again, two or three times, before I can quite digest it. It's pretty remarkable.

Ahmad Hamdani on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

Ahmad Hamdani — Wed, 16 May 2007 02:27:10 +0100

Caracas Chronicler�.

It would be nice if the checks balanced, if there existed a place where the contractual sovereignty you fantasize happened all at once and for always, a million simultaneous picnics, a gigantic immanence of sensibilities and literacies convoked, ratified, and procedurally baptized there at the constitutional origin of all things, liberalisms �peace that passeth all understanding�. It�s a story good for campfires and Sunday mornings, this yarn spun about the freedom of freedom, its absolute, categorical distinctness from coercion, history, violence, exclusion, inheritance, etc. That your definition is properly pre-sociological, with not even a trace of a sense for the presence on the planet of a dominant cultural or political economy (you seem to find capitalism as a concept quaint?) would probably not matter were it not for the resonance of this bad concept in the crazy midwifery of the Pentagon, committed as it claims �to giving birth to the middle east at any cost�. �Liberalismo o muerte� as you might say, or rather, in the case of Iraq, �Neo-Liberalismo Y muerte�. Quico, combining orthodox cheek--a form of rhetorical �weightlessness� and unaccountability which dances into the Latin so as to obscure the rosary, the profound sycophancy, at the heart of the brain of your conviction--and a complete autistic defection from actually existing material life your dandyism entertains only for as long as it distracts its readers from the brutality of the conclusions being drawn from your play. Beyond the extortionary lucidity enacted on the passional life of millions by the psychological box of your bank (a pretty spinning toy); beyond the lame attempt to conflate the complicated transactional realties of Bolivarian Venezuela with the brutality and emotional legibility of armed capture (factually mad); beyond the abusive infantilization at work in your metaphor, its �prisoners� all heart and no head, the historical riskiness and improbability of el proceso inarticulately simplified to a set of skittish reflexes, a mindless scattering of birds or disturbed fish �beyond all of this, inscribed into the very fibres of your position is a defensive misapprehnsion of the energetics of power (to say nothing of Chavismo itself), one, no doubt, congenitally isomorphic with liberalism itself; namely, you fail to see the ways in which time, subjectivity, pleasure, friendship, work, space, language, production, etc-- the entire vibrating ensemble of the history of the world--has always already transpired and unwound along a horizon of cultural and material practices and limits that both antedate and outlive the instantiation of the liberal state and its capitalist correlative: cultural being itself, darling, is �heartfelt, but not free�, even there at high speeds in 89, those good ol days when Carlos was king and procedural liberalism responsibly exterminated its poor. (Did you elegantly denounce the massacres too, decry institutional graft amidst the nullities of Caldera, or is this passion for democracy a recently acquired taste, one born of a new proximity to the stink of the poor? Do politicized judiciaries and military structures only matter when you yourself are on the other side of the minoritization?)

Quico, by focussing hysterically on a facile caricature of power�a bobble head Chavez, all bristling guns and descending boots, all dangerous omniscence and forced consensus, a telepathically centralized form of absolute, paranoid remote control�you avoid having to deal with precisely the systemically global problems you paranthesize in parody, a tactic, unfortunately, which instantly functions to delegitimate the seriousness and sociological pertinence of your position. (Your parody of Marxism, by the way, is more a parody of a parody of Marxism�I think most communists stopped talking about �dictatorship of the proletariat� in 63. I have book lists if you want them�.)

In other words, �Heartfelt, but not free�, describes precisely the relation of quotidian subjection that has taken place between your own �sincere� critique and the requiring ambience of a global capitalist ether which has violated a million times over and in ways far more insidious than slogans the treasured nativity of your freedom, your pre- or post-social exteriority to cultural, political, and economic modes of determination. The political resources of Chavismo�excerpts from Bolivar and Chomsky, subsidised food, morality brigades, rallies, inaugurations, executive power, medical care, exhortations to literacy and love, even the military itself�in no way approach the experientially totalizing nature of a capitalist subjectivation that is material, continous, and psychologically far more intensive, sophisticated and controlling than the scarce modernist instruments available to el proceso. These are images, pleasures, and and passionate attachments which operate in complicated ways on the level of the unconscious itself, determinations which operate in the tiniest interstice of a pleasure, and so necessarily evade the clumsy �repression� radar cobbled together by liberals to keep away approachingly offensive blips and boots. Freedom is not a state coextensive with birth itself, nor is it the bare minimality of self-reproducing institutional liberalism: it has to be disjunctively convoked, torn always in half-measures from the grip of inertia; if its looks risky, if it looks opaque, polarizing, and brokenly intuitive, if it complicates the procedural clarities and gross depoliticizations of liberal democracy (60% of Americans await the rapture), it is precisely to the extent that this old mythological conception of freedom is dropping away into something like cultural being itself, the openness, singularity and dangerousness of a political reality indistinguishable from power and suffering, a reality literally shot through with terror and history and no longer amenable to the platitudinous equilibriums proffered by a constitutionality that is always already armed to the teeth . Though it certainly complicates the prettiness of your �skeptical� liberalism, democratic vectors can be born amidst an historically impossible festival of 32 Supreme court justices setting flame to 500 stolen years, just as total brutal authoritarianism can live comfortably amidst the punctual meetings and procedural rigorousness of parliaments (France in Algeria, U.S.A in Vietnam, Colombia, in, um Colombia, right now). Before Punto Fijo; before the clientalism and the patronage; before the miserable dyarchy; before the never-to-be-expiated racism and structural poverty; before terms of trade and debt structures rigged always to finish last; before the instabilities structuralized by unrestricted capital mobility; before the drooling cultural banalities of 20th Century market life in Venezuela (open your eyes!) the state was first and foremost a non-functioning, yet paradoxically operative fantasy (the magic show described by Coronil). Which is to say, the procedural mechanisms you mourn never existed just as the constitution they mime has never ceased to represent, against your best dreaming, a majoritarianism of the minority. Rather than tediously mourning the �break-down� of �meaningful consent�, the contamination of neutralities by the stain of the political, why not recognize the ways in which the entire history of the state as a political species has been characterized precisely by this anomalous exigency, this unpleasant deviation from gymnastical latin and parlour room psychology?

There is a loud ruse being played by the opposition in Venezuela on a snippet-hungry international system which unevenly apportions the already infinitesimal time it puts aside for �global awareness� (its busy, you know). If this weren�t the case the opposition here in Venezuela would be nothing more than good comedy, the spectacular hysteria of a minority historically scandalized by the politicization of their plenty. Recreational victims, spectators at their own executions, they are dubious freedom-fighters awash in baggy RCTV T-shirts and ill-fitting ball caps, �heartfelt� certainly, but far from �free�. But the stakes are much higher. In fact, the shrill acidity of the Venezuelan middle-class and the scopic pleasurableness of their imprisonmemt (�Freedom, Banality, Forever!) disgustingly peripheralizes the planet�s less sedentary disasters, its Palestines and Darfurs, its blasted and scarcely living zones, for whom access to web-space and groomed televisual volume is inconveniently obstructed by the flashes of machetes and gunfire. Mass graves and heads in hoods, not coke-snorting beauty-queen soliloquies. Every time Chavez and Hitler--irregardless of the scaffolding--are mentioned together in the space of a breath and with the intention of discrediting the former a dimension of reality is shed, a fabulating pollin spawned and floated filthily into space, while the mixed contents of 30,000 graves in Argentina spin and spin and spin. I don�t have the slightest idea what just what it is you care about...

gringoinvenezuela on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

gringoinvenezuela — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:56:50 +0100

Caracas Chronicles,

We all know why you aren't happy with Venezuelan democracy. We can also tell that you don't really understand the conflict going on in Venezuela either. Let me try to explain it very briefly.

One of the problems with liberal democracy historically in Venezuela has been its tendency to not be able to overcome the influence of the wealthy commercial sector in its policies. This commercial sector historically lived off the importing of goods, causing direct conflict with any government attempts to break dependency on imports. These business sectors always have managed to have a very big influence on the government.

The conflict today is that this sector no longer has any influence in the government, and they have mounted an incredibly vicious attack on the Chavez regime for just that reason. (there is no surprise that FEDECAMARAS was largely behind the 2002 coup and the 2003 oil strike.) This sector has also changed, becoming more internationalized and connected to international capital.

Much of the Chavez demand for party loyalty within his own government has to do with the level of attack that he has come under, much of it funded and organized by the State Department. The loyalty in the military is obviously in an attempt to prevent any destabilization plans. (You might look at recent evidence that a National Guard Capitan was conspiring to kill Chavez, along with his dad who has close ties to the CIA)

Also, remember that members of the military took part in a failed coup attempt, kidnapping the president and keeping him locked up for 2 days. I think if Chavez were not assuring total loyalty to the government within the military it would be pretty stupid on his part.

But, again, your analysis has a gaping hole in it. You might ask the question, where is the political opposition to block any moves that they don't agree with? After all, most of the reasons that you use to claim that liberal democracy is being dismantled have to do with the total domination of the government by pro-Chavez parties.

Who is to blame for that? You might talk to the opposition parties. You might ask them why they refuse to participate in elections for the National Assembly. You might ask them why they can't even put together a political program worth talking about.

The fact that the opposition is totally absent in the Chavez government is their own fault. They didn't participate in 2005 elections for just that reason. They don't believe in the democratic route.

In fact, they withdrew from the 2005 elections precisely so people like you could make the arguments you are now making. That was also the strategy in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. The same strategy was used in Haiti with Aristide. Its easy to make the government look totalitarian when the opposition refuses to participate.

So really, the people you really should blame for the lack of a "balance of powers" are the pathetic opposition parties in Venezuela. There is no reason why they can't develop a decent political program, and run in the elections. After all, they have practically all the private media behind them. They got nearly 4 million votes in December. There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't have representation in the government. They are the ones who chose to not have representation.

And they did it so guys like you could make the criticisms that you do.

But again, can you explain why most Venezulans ARE satisfied with their democracy?

And, again, let me just ask you one more time to see if you want to keep avoiding the question.

Can you back up your original claim as to how Chavez coerces support for him when the indicators that we are using to show that support are private independent polls that have no connection to the government?

How does Chavez coerce people to lie to independent polling companies about how they feel about Venezuelan democracy?

Greg Wilpert on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

Greg Wilpert — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:23:51 +0100

Quico (CaracasChronicler),

I�m afraid you completely misunderstood both of my main points, which is perhaps my fault, since I tried to keep it short.

First, my comparison with Puntofijo was not meant as a disqualification of you. Unlike many other debaters on Venezuela (both Chavista and anti-Chavista) I only care about people�s arguments, not their backgrounds. I don�t know where you got the idea that I was implying you were a viuda del puntofijsimo and that this disqualifies you or your arguments. Actually, I think you wrote an excellent piece that showed how dysfunctional the puntofijismo patronage was (http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2003/02/petrostate-that-was-and-petrostate.html).

No, my point was merely to remind readers (and you) that all of the terrible accusations you throw against the Chavez government�s patronage tendencies has its roots way deep in Venezuelan culture and I would even say that it seems that Chavez has managed to make Venezuelan political culture less patronage-based than it used to be. Obviously you would disagree with me on this point, but then we�d have to make specific comparisons to hash this out. My point here is merely that you cannot understand what is happening in Venezuela today in isolation from its past and its political culture and that the only relevant measure of progress or regression in this regard is the immediate past � so it has to be brought it.

Second, you also totally misunderstand my (and in my opinion Chavismo�s) questioning of liberal democracy. It�s not that most principles of liberal democracy, such as separation of powers, rule of law, human rights, etc. are wrong. Rather, what is questioned is whether liberal democracy is the best democracy we can come up with. More specifically, what Chavez and others question is whether democratic representation, which is also part of liberal democracy, is the best way to go. Instead, Chavez et al. propose to complement representation with participation and with direct democracy. This is the only part of liberal democracy that is being questioned and is currently being implemented (and might eventually replace representation). This questioning of democratic representation has a long history and Chavismo is merely connecting with this critique.

Your claims about Chavez not believing in or undermining all the principles of liberal democracy would be serious indeed, if they were true. I would say each and every one of the points you raise is either false or an exaggeration of a problem. For example, you repeat the opposition claim that there is no separation of powers. I�ve written in detail about this elsewhere, but the mere fact that Chavez�s supporters control all branches of government does not prove that Chavez does not believe in separation of powers or that there is no separation of powers. If that were true, then you�d have to admit that some of the supposedly most exemplary liberal democracies in the world have little separation of powers. Until recently Republicans controlled all three branches of the U.S. government and in parliamentary systems there is no real separation between executive and legislative anyway. The real point here should be: can Chavez actually control (i.e. dismiss or otherwise unduly influence) the other branches? That he can do so has never been proven � it�s always just guilt by association � his supporters are there, therefore he controls them. That�s a false argument. Do you control your friends/supporters?

Ok, I could go on like this with all of the examples you bring up. Perhaps I should mention one where I agree with you, which is that the military should not display partisan support for a political tendency. Indeed, here the government displays tone-deafness about why the military should not be partisan. On the other hand, I have a hard time making a big deal out of this issue because I also understand the Chavista argument that the military should be on the side of the people and to them socialism means just that, no more.

Finally, I agree with you that the argument �we�re the majority therefore we�re right� is a bad/false argument. I never made that argument in my response to you. Actually, minorities in the U.S. would be appalled with such an argument. However, the problem is that to Chavistas and to Venezuela�s poor majority the counter-argument, �we�re the minority, respect our rights� sounds like, �we�re the minority that should govern�. In other words, too often we are talking right past one another, where one side�s complaints about violations of minority rights sounds like a cover for claims to the right to govern and the rejection of those complaints sounds like dictatorship to those who feel like their rights have been violated. How do we get past this? My guess is we need to get down from the abstract level of liberal democracy or no liberal democracy, to actual problems, such as, is the prosecutor independent of the executive or not? That of course, will turn into an even longer debate�

CaracasChronicler on "The deepening of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it"

CaracasChronicler — Tue, 15 May 2007 12:56:48 +0100

Ay Greg...

I'm sorry, but I think that's pretty weak. The whole viudas del puntofijismo shtick was seldom more than a glorified ad hominem attack anyway. Me? I think the old regime shared many of the undemocratic, clientelistic traits of the Ch�vez regime, and wrote as much in the very first political pieces I ever penned - we're talking 1996, when most current foreign philochavistas had yet to notice Venezuela existed. My first stint in Venezuelan politics was as a pre-PPT split Causa R activist. So gimme a break, man, you can do better than that.

And it's not just me - for years and years before Ch�vez came to power there was an overwhelming consensus that the old Punto Fijo model needed a radical overhaul to democratize it and make it perform better. It's easier to forget now, but even back in 1993 people voted for Caldera for that reason: he was running on the chiripero ticket, as a rupture-with-the-past candidate. It's easy to ridicule that pose, but it does make it clear that as far back as that you could hardly find anyone in the country who thought Punto Fijo was working. The whole line of attack is really just the Nth Ch�vez fabricated disqualification - meant to forestall debate by impugning dissidents' right to express their ideas in the first place.

So I think that's very weak. But weaker still is this generic questioning of Liberal Democracy, for two reasons.

First-The aspersions cast on liberal democracy are always offered in highly abstract terms, in academic language, making a determined effort not to get bogged down in the specifics of what the charge entails. But lets get specific here for a moment: which liberal democratic norms is it that you have a problem with? Is it the independence of the judiciary that you don't like? Are you happy with the sequential purges we've seen in the supreme court, with the permanent-temporary status of most judges, with the firing of those who fail to toe the party line? Or is it the conceptual separation of "state" and "government" that you don't like? So are you therefore happy with the transformation of the armed forces into a partisan militia, a process that's reached such dizzying extremes that military academy cadets are now meant to routinely salute their officers saying "Patria Socialismo o Muerte"? Or is it the ideal of impartial oversight institutions that's wrong with liberal democratic norms? Do you care to explain why the country is made more democratic when the contralor�a, fiscal�a and defensor�a are put in the hands of openly partisan hacks?

So long as the debate is nice and abstract, the whole dismissal of liberal democracy can sound sort of noble, even - it's when you get nitty gritty about it that you realize it really means little more than advocating uncontrolled, unrestrained, personalized power beyond the reach of the rule of law.

Again, Buxton and yourself - as well as most of the solidarity press - seem plainly unwilling to face these realities forthrightly. And we get the feeling that the reason you constantly invoke the we're-more-popular-so-we-must-be-right shtick is that you realize that any detailed appraisal of the institutional dynamics of the chavista state would make its claims to be democratic look like the sham they are.

The second reason I think this sudden rejection of the procedural dynamics of liberal democracy is so unacceptable is that most of the rules now being openly flouted are not principles I pulled out of my ass. They're rules that feature prominently in the 1999 constitution - you know the one - the constitution Chavez championed, the constitution his supporters drafted singlehandedly, the constitution for years he called the best in the world, the constitution he assured us again and again was "his only project."

And here we see what a monumental hustle chavismo has been...because Greg, I didn't force chavistas to put an article in the constitution banning the political militancy of military officers, they did it themselves! AD didn't invent the article banning political discrimination in the civil service, this was their idea! It wasn't the State Department that forced them to put in an article saying the Prosecutor General had to be absolutely political impartial, it was chavistas who wrote the damn constitution that way. So in flouting all these norms they mock the people who lined up in December 1999 to vote to approve the constitutions. They lied to them, they lied to all of us, with this constitutional charade...

Well, like you say, I'm sure a debate like this could keep going on and on forever - something I'm not particularly opposed to, actually. It's definitely less frustrating doing it this way than with a 150 word limit, though!

Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution: why most people don't get it, Julia Buxton

Fri, 04 May 2007 00:00:00 +0100

It is hard for an outsider to get a grip on Venezuela, or the country's President Hugo Chávez. Pick up a copy of the Financial Times , the Economist, the Independent, Wall Street Journal or the New York Times and you will be presented with a frightening vision of a "ranting populist demagogue" (In the words of a British former foreign-office minister, Denis MacShane), an anti-semite who has captured the hearts and purchased the support of hoards of irrational poor people while destroying the country's economy.

In the United States, the rise of "authoritarianism" in Venezuela has led to progressive increases in funding allocated to the country's "democracy promotion" agency the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), while the "security threat" posed by the country prompted the Bush administration to set up a special intelligence committee on Venezuela.

A cursory glance at the reports of the Inter American Press Association or NED-funded Reporters Without Borders reflects a country where freedom of speech is under threat and human rights under daily assault. The misiones, the Venezuelan government's extensive package of social policy programmes are also subject to blistering criticism. Variously described by critics as a clientilist tool, indication of fiscal profligacy and / or an unsustainable welfare initiative generating a culture of dependency, this $6 billion programme has no redeeming features.

Julia Buxton is visiting professor at the Centre for Latin American Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also senior research fellow in the department of peace studies, Bradford University. Her work includes The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela (Ashgate, 2001)

The view from Venezuela

Contrast this with opinion-poll surveys, election results and statistical information "on the ground". Hugo Chávez was re-elected to the presidency in December 2006 with 1.7 million more votes than when he was first elected in December 1998. A March 2007 poll by Datanalisis shows that 64.7% of Venezuelans have a positive view of Chávez's performance in office. Moreover, the majority of Venezuelans are optimistic and confident about the future and there is a high level of support for the new institutional and constitutional framework that the government has established.

According to Latinobarometro polling, the percentage of Venezuelans satisfied with their political system increased from 32% in 1998 to over 57% and Venezuelans are more politically active than the citizens of any other surveyed country - 47% discuss politics regularly (against a regional average of 26%) while 25% are active in a political party (the regional average is 9%). 56% believe that elections in the country are "clean", (regional average 41%) and along with Uruguayans, Venezuelans express the highest percentage of confidence in elections as the most effective means of promoting change in the country (both 71%, compared to 57% for all of Latin America).

The economy is booming, country risk perceptions have fallen and despite the perception of antagonism, Venezuela remains north America's second most important regional trading partner, and the twelfth largest in global terms. There is a vibrant new community media and a highly combative and antagonistic opposition controlled private-sector media - despite the much publicised dispute that was sparked in January 2007 over the licensing of opposition stalwart RCTV.

As for the misiones, nearly three-quarters of Venezuelans receive some form of state-sponsored health, education, housing assistance or food provision. Poverty and critical poverty are on a downward trend and the World Bank has acknowledged that: "Venezuela has achieved substantial improvements in the fight against poverty".

Although critics have sniffed at the poverty reduction record - on the premise that high oil prices since 2003 should translate 2006 into an inevitable fall in poverty - the reductions achieved to date are a significant achievement given the critical situation Chávez inherited, the disastrous impact of opposition stoppages on the economy in 2001 and 2002, and the historical absence of state institutions capable of delivering welfare provision. In the Datanalisis survey of March 2007, the government's performance in education, food and health service delivery received high approval ratings (68.8%, 64.7%, and 64.2% respectively) - and, to give a human touch to a favourable picture, a second Latinobarometro poll of regional perceptions found that Venezuela (along with Brazil) is viewed as the friendliest country among Latin Americans.

Is the information cited above an example of naïve "solidarity journalism", an attempt to further embed new "myths" about the country by someone with no direct stake in the outcome?

Insights from the naïve

In one way or another, we all have a stake, direct or indirect, in the politics of Venezuela. That Venezuela's citizens have such a manifestly different perception of their democracy than that held by external actors such as the United States and its National Endowment for Democracy is significant and important. The disconnect needs serious discussion, not least because it may illuminate why US "democracy promotion" is proving so counterproductive, anti-American sentiment so prevalent and, in Venezuela, why NED-backed groups are so reviled. If the misiones are delivering improvements in welfare and poverty reduction, then they merit detailed consideration. If there are lessons that can be learned from one, some or all of the misiones, they should not be discarded simply because of subjective prejudices toward Chávez or critiqued merely as a means of de-legitimising his government.

Engaged and balanced reporting, analysis and discussion has been required for a long time. It is even more necessary now given the acceleration of the Bolivarian revolution following the presidential election of December 2007.

Also on Hugo Chávez, Venezuela, and the "Bolivarian revolution" in openDemocracy:

Ivan Briscoe, "The invisible majority: Venezuela after the revolution"
(25 August 2004)

Ivan Briscoe, "All change in Venezuela's revolution? "
(25 January 2005)

Jonah Gindin & William I Robinson, "The United States, Venezuela, and "democracy promotion"
(4 August 2005)

Ivan Briscoe, "Venezuela: a revolution in contraflow"
(10 February 2006)

Ben Schiller, "The axis of oil: China and Venezuela"
(2 March 2006)

George Philip, "The politics of oil in Venezuela"
(24 May 2006)

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, "After Bush: dealing with Hugo Chávez"
(13 March 2007)

George Philip, "Hugo Chávez at his peak"
(28 March 2007 )

Phil Gunson, "Hugo Chávez: yo, el supremo "
(13 April 2007)

Toward 21st-century socialism

Following his victory in the December 2006, Chávez unveiled plans to deepen the revolutionary agenda of the government. Central to this process is the concept of the "five motors" driving the country toward the model of "21st-century socialism" first outlined by Chávez in 2005. 21st-century socialism is seen as distinct from the "failed" Marxist experiments of the 20th century, it is strongly nationalist in influence - responding to the social and economic realities of Venezuela, and its elucidation reflects the evolution of Chávez's thinking, away from an initial position exalting Tony Blair and the "third way" model and toward a new set of "socialist" ideas that emphasis cooperation, participation and organisation.

The five motors included: the granting of enabling powers to the executive - as a means of introducing reforms to the institutional and economic framework of the state; constitutional reform; educational reform; expansion of communal power and the creation of a new geometry of power, the latter intended to enhance the responsibilities and political importance of communal councils.

Communal councils are a vitally important element of this revolutionary deepening and planned restructuring of the state and constitution. The government has experimented with a variety of organisational forms as part of its quest to create a new model of "participatory democracy" and in response to the explosion of social organization across the country since 1999 (see Diana Raby, Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today, Pluto Press, 2006).

In 2006, legislation was introduced recognising community councils as a principle form of political organisation. The councils complement and bring coherence to the multiple networks of social organisations that deliver the misiones programmes and organise political activities, such as the water committees, land committees, health committees, electoral battle-units and endogenous development groups. Based on 200 to 400 families in urban areas and twenty to thirty in rural settings, the councils are governed by citizens' assembles and their financial affairs overseen by public auditing processes. By the end of 2006, there were 16,000 communal councils across the country.

With the injection of $5 billion in funding for 2007, the government aims to increase this to over 25,000, allowing communities to become the new "eye" of political power in a radical, bottom up vision of democracy in which national government is balanced by grassroots power.

The PSUV

Running parallel with the launch of the "five motors", Chávez outlined plans for a new United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The aim of the PSUV is to bring organisational coherence to the Chavista alliance of twenty-four party political organisations and the multiple grassroots groups that support the government. The new party is being constructed over a nine month period through a process of broad public consultation led by an intended 70,000 "promoters" (30,000 of which have already been sworn in) that aim to consult over 5 million people on the structure and role of the new party. The construction of the PSUV is to culminate in a referendum, scheduled for December 2007, in which members will approve (or otherwise) the programme of the new party.

An authoritarian lurch?

The acceleration of the Bolivarian project - in both ideological and organisational terms, has fuelled concerns over the deepening of the government's authoritarian tendencies. Established cynics in the media, who have seen leftwing ideals rise and fall, and opponents in the anti-Chávez movement have been quick to point to a frightening new twist in the evolution of the Chávez government. This is seen to be represented by the recent granting of decree powers to President Chávez, the move to extend state control over key sectors of the economy and the debate over the formation of the PSUV.

However, it is at this point that the delineation between popular perceptions of democracy on the ground in Venezuela, and "elite" perceptions, articulated by the media and US "democracy-promotion" groups are revealed. There is widespread popular support for this new trajectory in Venezuelan politics. The creation of the PSUV is seen to be in line with the demands of grassroots groups to have more influence within the organisational framework of the Boliviarian project, while Chávez's use of decree powers to revise the institutional structures of the state responds to grassroots pressure for more influence, power and resources at the community level. Put simply, many Venezuelans think they are getting more and better democracy through "21st-century socialism", not less.

Squaring the circle

The promiscuous use of the terms "populist" and "authoritarian" to describe Chávez is one of the primary reasons why the nature, appeal and the durability of Chavismo has been so manifestly misunderstood by detractors. "Populism" glosses over the complex mechanisms of linkage, reciprocity and accountability that exist between government and civil society in Venezuela and the dynamics that shape the relationship between the administration and multiplicity of grassroots organisations across the country, the majority of which are far more autonomous and organisationally coherent than is implied in the "populist" narrative.

Ordinary people feel empowered by this government, a development that can only be understood through reference to the highly exclusionary model of two-party "democracy" that prevailed in Venezuela before the elections of 1998. There are two important points following from this.

First, support for Chávez is not simply predicated on the government's capacity for economic redistribution. The appeal of Chávez and 21st-century socialism is as much to do with this being a project of political empowerment as it is one of oil-"rent" distribution. As such, a fall in the oil price will not necessarily herald the end of Chávez or support for the government.

Second, what is happening in contemporary Venezuela cannot be understood through the lens of liberal democracy. The NED, the US state department and the plethora of agencies that seek to "evaluate" democratic standards such as Freedom House and Transparency International have got it fundamentally wrong in thinking that democracy is judged through reference to the procedural mechanics of liberal democracy. Venezuelans are, on the whole, contended with their democratically elected government and the radical model of participatory democracy that it is creating.

There is still a sizeable sector that lacks political representation - largely owing to the disastrous strategies of those in the anti-Chávez movement that claimed to represent them - and clearly stability in the future requires incorporating the newly excluded back into the political mainstream. But the immediate priority for the government is giving voice and power to those who have been politically marginalised since the 1980s. To date, and despite the best efforts of the NED and the perceptions created by the media, the Bolivarian revolution has been tremendously successful.

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