By[1],

Recalling the context in which it emerged

1. By the time Hugo Chávez won the 1998 presidential elections, the neoliberal capitalist model was already in deep trouble. The dilemma he faced was basically whether to refound the neoliberal capitalist model — obviously with some changes, among them a greater concern for social issues, but motived by the same profit-seeking logic — or to seek to build another model.[2]

2. Chávez chose the latter option. In naming it, he decided to resuscitate the word socialism, despite the negative connotations it had due to the past. But he specified that this was a 21st century socialism to differentiate it from the Soviet socialism of the 20th century. He warned that we must not “fall into the errors of the past”; into “Stalinist deviations” that bureaucratized the party and ended up eliminating popular protagonism; into state capitalism that focused on state ownership and not on the participation of workers in the running of companies.