CR

The assessment of the fifteen years under Chávez’s leadership is different from the assessment of the last three years since Maduro took power. The death of the late president marked the beginning of a new phase. But as for the years that Chávez was in power, I would summarize them as follows: it was a progressive and highly contradictory period.

It was progressive for two fundamental reasons. The first reason is that Chávez’s rise established a key social and political dynamic in the country based on the mobilization and promotion of popular democratic participation at the national level.

Through social mobilization, the government has been pushed to take measures that favor the people. Sometimes, even Chávez — after implementing regressive measures such as, for example, the increase in the sales tax — had to retreat because the people mobilized to pressure him.

The second reason is that there was a change in the pattern of capital accumulation in the oil industry, which is the main source of wealth in Venezuela. Chávez — after winning important political victories such as the Enabling Law, the defeat of the 2002 coup against him, thanks to popular resistance, the defeat of the bosses’ oil strike and the defeat of the recall referendum — emerged as the sole political entity who defined how the country’s oil revenues were to be distributed. And no one could challenge his decisions because those victories were won with millions of people in the streets. This new way of sharing the oil wealth thus had a popular character.

These two factors consolidated a new regime in Venezuela, in which Chávez was the undisputed leader, and there was a new social dynamic at the national level, where people are in constant dialogue with the government.

Thus, I characterize this period as a positive one because there was a lot of investment and a substantial increase in the quality of life for most Venezuelans. Concrete examples of this are the drastic reduction of extreme poverty and the fact that 98 percent of the population is now able to eat three times a day and have a balanced diet.

Venezuela had one of the highest average salaries in Latin America. This was a period when the Venezuelan working class has had the capacity to accumulate some savings and to live a better quality of life in general.

However, the assessment is not only positive. We must understand that there were some revolutionary changes during his time, but there was never a socialist revolution.

Chávez, as a leader of the state, made some important mistakes. Among these were his hyper-leadership role, which consequently led to a lack of collective leadership of the process and the bureaucratization of politics. This facilitated the consolidation of an important bureaucratic caste that Chávez never tried to stop. At the same time, the government didn’t promote consistent anticapitalist politics.

This bureaucratic caste consolidated state power and was able to accumulate capital rapidly through government contracts and deals with private and transnational companies. In just a few years, a new social class of business owners took shape. It was popularly known as the “Bolibourgeoisie” (the “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie).

Chávez proposed a new economic model consisting of a mixed economy, but one in alliance with the needs of the Venezuelan business class, a parasitic class since it relies on oil revenue. This deepened the country’s dependency on oil income. For businessmen, it’s always much cheaper to import than to invest because they then can obtain dollars much more easily.

The logic of implementing this model for Chávez was that, in his view, it would encourage the business class to invest more in internal production. But this never happened. Thus, we get to the alarming situation where 98 percent of our export income is from the oil fields, with 2 percent from everything else. This difference had never been so great.

Another problem was having the wrong international policy, where Chávez allied himself with friendly governments, while ignoring the peoples’ struggles in those countries.

We did achieve important victories in the international arena, such as the defeat of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, the Petrocaribe initiative (providing lower-priced oil to numerous Caribbean nations taking part in the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas), etc. But the model of international solidarity that Chávez started fell apart when he died, because he only made commitments to the governments, and not to the people struggling in those countries.

Finally, another mistake was the fact that Chávez’s politics were very state-centered, and that greatly limited what he could do. The Venezuelan state is a capitalist institution, and for this reason, it always remained a clientelist and paternalist institution, not a revolutionary one.

It is for all of these reasons that I would say that the assessment is progressive but highly contradictory.