Hugo Chavez, Populist Adventurer or Revolutionary Socialist

From Random Hipatia

Often demonized in the American press as the brutal dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is little known or genuinely understood by most Americans. However, it seems many other legitimately elected national leaders who just happen to disagree with U.S. policy or corporate interests, whether speaking of Evo Morales of Bolivia, or even Iranian president Ahmadinejad, are also often portrayed as authoritarian dictators. Who then really is Hugo Chavez?

In Venezuela the answer is very simple. To many, he is simply the reincarnation of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. Young Venezuelan woman have confessed to be secretly in love with Hugo Chavez. However, in the more critical press, as found outside the influence of the U.S. government, whether of the left or right, a more interesting and honest debate has emerged; Hugo Chavez, genuine revolutionary or populist adventurer?

To understand the implications and dangers of the populist adventurer, it is important to understand their mirror image, the fascist. For our purposes, the fascist is the authoritarian of the right, often empowered by the insecure wealthy elite of a nation, and, in the case of Latin America, often also put in place with the help of the CIA to promote American interests as well. Similarly, then, the populist is the most common kind of authoritarian of the left.

For the fascist, military aggression is waged on behalf of the wealthy elite of the nation. The military becomes another tool of the wealthy to expand their wealth at the expense of others. Nationalism is used to persuade the masses to support militarism and, and can be used to distract the masses from other things going wrong in the nation.

For the populist, the threat of aggression by others is used to justify keeping the population mobilized. The threat of aggression is used to persuade the masses to support militarism by appealing to nationalism, and is also often used to distract the masses from trouble at home.

The fascist is often put in place to protect and/or expand the privilege of the wealthy. As such, the fascist will often initiate class warfare, whether against landless peasants or to stifle dissent. The fascist will do so through the use of the military and militarization of the justice system.

Similarly, the populist will also use class warfare, of the poor against the wealthy, to promote the personal power and maintain justification for continued rule, and to stifle dissent. The populist will do so through the creation of popular militias and “popular” courts.

In this we can clearly see how the authoritarian of the left, the populist, can often be a mirror image of the authoritarian of the right, the fascist. With this working definition of the populist, it is now possible to more honestly analyze who Hugo Chavez is by his policies, compared to those of a populist.

First and foremost, let us not confuse popular with populist. That Hugo Chavez is a popular leader is not in doubt. Nor is there any question that Chavez personally enjoys being president of Venezuela. While it is unproven that Chavez personally sees himself as the modern day Simon Bolivar rather than seeing his role as historic, this in itself would not make him a populist.

One thing we do know is that the populist, as well as the fascist, will try to form a personality cult. This is often found with posters everywhere of the “great leader”, as well as images of el Maximo everywhere in state and/or public media.

My first observation, on visiting Venezuela, was the virtual absence of Hugo Chavez imagery in the country, in the cities, or on state television. By comparison, it is said you cannot go anywhere in Cuba without “meeting” Fidel Castro, whether by billboard or portrait. Indeed, if there is a personality cult around Hugo Chavez, it exists without any effort or clear or deliberate intent on his part. This often being one of the signatures of the populist, I would argue Hugo Chavez does not meet the definition.

It is true that Hugo Chavez loves to speak. Many of his speeches are colored with rhetorical points that have popular appeal. Indeed, his fame for this is so great, that there are talking Chavez dolls for sale in Caracas, used as a point of redicule to make fun of his speaches. However, I suspect we would not find Castro’s Cuba quite as tolerant of taking Fidel dolls. Even so, perhaps many of his speeches do border on the populist.

But what of using external threats to appeal to nationalism? It is certainly true Chavez often speaks of the threat of invasion by the U.S. Is there a realistic basis for such fears? How realistic is such a threat, when the U.S. is so heavily involved in Iraq and perhaps soon to be involved with Iran?

Certainly, much like what the Bay of Pigs did for Cuba, the blundered U.S. engineered coup attempt against Hugo Chavez both demonstrated that a real threat does exist. It is also worth noting the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, whether fighting legitimate governments to prop up private American corporate interests, such as the Banana wars fought on behalf of United Fruit, or for ideological purposes, such as the many CIA instigated coups in places ranging from Chile to Honduras.

Further, even with the U.S. involved in Iraq, and potentially, Iran, realistically, it would not take a very large U.S. force, perhaps supported by Columbia, to successfully invade Venezuela. Indeed, a very small force the size proposed for securing the Mexican border, backed up by carrier based air power and helicopter gunships, could successfully defeat the Venezuelan military. Certainly the Venezuelan military would fight hard, and certainly occupying the country would be another matter, but the initial outcome, given the lack of training, prior experience in modern warfare, and of course lack of modern arms, is not in doubt.

Hugo Chavez’s solution has been to try and form popular militias. In a practical sense, it would make it much harder to successfully occupy the nation. However, it is also true the populist uses popular militias to intimidate opponents and engage in class warfare.

Here again, I find little immediate evidence of the populist. While it is perhaps true that members of the militia engaged in a tomato attack against the U.S. ambassador, I have seen no credible evidence to date of their use to actively intimidate political opponents or to attack the wealthy. Class warfare, in the form of civil war, does not exist in Venezuela today. Could it be possible this will happen in the future? At this time this is speculative.

Finally, then what of the question of revolutionary socialist? Here, also we find some a somewhat mixed record. If anything, we have both a capitalist economy and a socialist one existing today in Venezuela, side by side. Certainly Hugo Chavez does not seem to be an anarchist, but if he is a socialist, it is sometimes hard to say what form of socialism he believes in or wishes to create.

While Socialism itself is a scientific idea, one of the more interesting traits of Venezuelan socialism, particularly as directed under Minep (the popular ministry of economics), is the use of scientific methods to institute socialism in a controlled and incremental fashion, while carefully measuring it the success and progress of different ideas. Here we find not socialism by decree, or driven by any single clear or coherent ideology, but rather instituted itself through scientific experimentation. From the point of view of economic science, Venezuela has become the world’s largest scientific laboratory to study alternate economic models.

Given all this, I believe the question itself is incorrect. Rather than pondering whether Chavez is a populist or revolutionary, I suggest an alternate explanation; that he is a transitional figure, the result of which will not be known until sometime after his presidency. I suspect he would like that description, given that Simon Bolivar also proved to be a transitional figure.