I’ve been watching Venezuela for a while and trying to make sense of what is happening there. It’s difficult to follow what is happening in every country in the world, but Venezuela stands out from many other countries because of the fact that Hugo Chavez’s government has been embarking on a left wing course of government expropriation of resources. Thus Venezuela has become a place in which several fundamental questions- about government ownership of the means of production, expropriation of property, redistribution of wealth, etc. can be examined.
I must admit that I don’t know enough about Venezuela and I have never been there. My fellow students and I studied Venezuela in one of our courses at the Institute of Social Studies. A few months ago I began to conduct some research about it but have since forgotten much of what I read. Perhaps after re- reading those articles I can re- write this post.
A further problem, like so many debates between left and right, is that all the arguments are so heavily propagandized, depending on the perspective of the author, that it is difficult to know who and what to believe.
I have no doubt that Chavez has done some good things in Venezuela, and the benefit of distributing the wealth gathered from oil to the mass of the population should never be underestimated. Its hard in a blog post like this to really adequately recognize how much of a difference this may make to the ordinary person.
Yet I have also had some serious doubts about Chavez, which grew worse when I saw this article. (Chavez Accused of Gagging Media) This BBC article details the closure of 34 radio stations, with 200 other stations to follow. This kind of activity, which will no doubt further eliminate critical speech in a country where the political and economic power is already highly concentrated, seems dubious at best, and threatens to turn Venezuela into a country which lacks pluralist debate.
Chavez’s Questionable Foreign Alliances
This is not the first thing that Chavez has done which caused me concern. I am a person who particularly values political rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, and I have concluded that some form of democracy is the political system which is most likely to bring justice to the people of the world’s countries. Thus I am not too favorably inclined towards the governments of countries like Iran and China. Yet Chavez, while launching unending criticisms of the United States, made friendly overtures, even alliances to these countries. On one overseas tour (which I believe was in 2005), Chavez even planned to visit North Korea, but was dissuaded from doing this by his advisors.
I can understand Chavez’s criticisms of the Bush administration. But befriending the enemies of the Bush administration, whoever they may be, merely for the sake of realpolitik, when these regimes are serious human rights offenders, suggests that he does not really care about the rights of people. It shows that he was merely interested in augmenting his own power through alliances with the enemies of his enemy.
If Chavez were one who truly stood consistently on the side of justice, he would have pointed out the failures of both the Bush administration, and the failures of those other countries.
I also do not appreciate Chavez’s style of discourse. When making criticisms of someone or something, I think it is important to make level- headed, rational criticism, and also acknowledge any strengths of the object of criticism (if one sees any.) But Chavez spends literally hours making exaggerated criticisms of the United States, which, while not without some basis, are way overblown. I just do not appreciate this demagogic, caudillo style. It’s a matter of personal taste, I suppose.
Socialism and Expropriation of Property
Over the past few years, we have observed how Chavez has ordered the expropriation (or taking over) of more and more privately held economic enterprises in Venezuela. While one could argue about the benefit or harm of this course of action, I do believe at the very least that the state, when expropriating property, should pay a fair price for the property. However, in several instances (perhaps more that I am not aware of), when the companies involved did not agree to the price Chavez offered (they felt the price was too low), Chavez basically bullied them into accepting the price that he offered.
Now I’d like to turn to a discussion of socialism in general, applied to the case of Venezuela. Before doing so, I’d like to discuss different forms of socialism, which can then be applied to the case of Venezuela.
1- Soviet/ Cuban/early Chinese style socialism: In this case the state owns all the means of production, arranges all transactions between economic enterprises through centralized planning, and fixes prices based on its own determination. In other words, the market plays no role in determining prices.
2- Government ownership/ market pricing mechanism: In this scenario, the government or state owns all of the means of production, but it allows market interactions between different state owned enterprises to determine prices in the economy. I am not aware of any historical examples of this, but no doubt there are some.
3- Hybrid state and private ownership/ market pricing mechanism: In this case the state owns some of the means of production, but some of the means of production is also in private hands. At the same time, market interactions determine prices (with perhaps some government interventions). Since, even in most capitalist countries, some economic enterprise is state owned (for example the postal service, or the train system), cases in which very little is owned by the state, would then be referred to as capitalist.
Venezuela, to my understanding, is clearly in the third category. I am not aware what percentage of the economy is privately owned vs. state owned, but it is clear that the general trend is for the state to own more, and the private sector less. On the other hand, most developing countries have a large segment of the economy which is called the “informal economy”, or small, often unlicensed merchants: people who sell things from small stands, push ice cream stalls through town, repair shoes at the roadside, etc. (What in communist orthodoxy would be referred to as ‘petty bourgeois’, coming from ‘petite’ or ‘little’ bourgeois) I doubt very much whether Chavez intends to expropriate these people’s property as it would be very unpopular, and the Venezuelan state would be unlikely to be able to find work for all of them.
The question is whether this expropriation of property and the movement towards a hybrid form of socialism, in which more and more is owned by the state, is beneficial.
In some ways it may be beneficial, if it means that more wealth in the form of profits from these enterprises are redistributed to the general population. And it may prevent profits from being taken out of the country.
But there may also be weaknesses which socialists are not ready to recognize. For one thing, in most historical cases that I am aware of (and Venezuela seems no different in this way), the actual people of that country had little say over the operation of the state owned enterprises, or how its profits were used. For example, during the early communist period in China, the profits from state owned enterprises in China were used to purchase and develop military weapons while many people starved to death. Since the people had little right to object or participate in decision making, the system itself was exploitative, earning the term used by some leftists to describe these Stalinist systems as “state capitalism”.
While Venezuela is definitely not a Stalinist system, it appears to me that the Venezuelan people are generally not involved in the decision making process about how profits from these enterprises are used. They may benefit from oil wealth, but they are the recipients of the decisions made by an elite in the upper echelons of the power structure.
The ideal scenario would be one in which the people of a state had real democratic decision making power in the operation of these enterprises and the uses of the profits. While this may be difficult to institute in practice, I do think it is at least possible that the heads of these enterprises could be elected.
A further criticism is that, without real transparency in the operation of these enterprises, the resources involved could be misused and corruption could become problematic.
Of course, there is the oft repeated criticism that, without competition between different enterprises, or without the genuine possibility of failure due to government subsidy, these enterprises will become inefficient.
Chavez Serves Himself
There is another aspect of the way this hybrid socialism is being implemented in Venezuela that disturbs me. It is not merely a neutral state which is administering socialism on behalf of the people. Rather, Chavez has orchestrated the system such that he himself personally delivers the benefits to the people, thus winning their adoration and building a personal patron- client network between himself and the Venezuelan people. That is, it is basically self- serving.
One wonders whether Chavez does not have kind of a big ego. He sees his own legacy at stake and perhaps would like to have a place in history along with the likes of great socialist heroes like Lenin, etc. (In fact I don’t know which people he would pose as heroes, this is just an example.)
In aiming to achieve this, I think he is trying to achieve too much too quickly. If socialism is in fact a better system (something which should still be up for debate), it should be something which takes over gradually. But Chavez’ muffling of the media shows that he is willing to stifle diversity of thought and pluralism in order to achieve his goals. The logic seems to be: “socialism will bring more justice to the poor, so it is OK to violate people’s rights to freedom of expression in the process.” But I think that socialism would be more successful in the long run if it gradually wins acceptance in the presence of competition from other forms of thought. Or perhaps there is another ideology, which is even more advanced than socialism, which will eventually win out?
Long Term Rulers Are Unhealthy for Society
I’ll finish up with one of my beliefs about governance. In general, I think that long periods in office for one President or Prime Minister are unhealthy for a country, and will eventually cause problems. In fact, the repression of diverse thought that we are now seeing in Venezuela may be a result of Chavez staying on too long. The longer Chavez stays in power the more he seeks to deepen his grip. In my opinion, it would be better for him to let go and turn it over to someone else for a while.
Conclusion
Its difficult to say where this situation will go. It seems likely that, since Venezuela is gifted with oil, that it could go on for a long time. Since even poor governance can be covered up with the glut of money that oil is likely to produce, this whole experiment could go on for quite a while even if it is not actually that well managed or successful.
To conclude, my advice for Chavez would be three-fold:
- Stop the grand- standing political rhetoric (which reminds me of George Bush’s style, actually)
- Stop limiting other people’s political rights
-Stop forging alliances with some of the world’s worst rights abusers, sheerly for reasons of realpolitik- have the nerve to stand alone in the world, in necessary, if it means taking the position with the greatest integrity.
See also: The Ambiguity of Hugo Chavez
A few days ago I found out about the twist in events in Guinea in the last two months or so.
Guinea is the west African country which I only heard about when living in Liberia, but it stood in contrast to Liberia in that it was relatively stable, during the latter part of the 20th century. Liberia had years of war, while Guinea was dominated by Lansana Conte. Oddly enough, however, even though Guinea had been stable compared to Liberia, there were still serious problems with power shortages and other basic necessities, meaning it was not that much ahead of Liberia developmentally. This apparently was due to the corruption or mismanagement of the Lansana Conte regime.
Then in 2008, Conte, died, and a military regime took over power. They seemed promising at first, pledging to hold civilian elections, but as time wore on, the military group under Captain Moussa Camara grew more and more restrictive and controlling. Human rights abuses became more widespread. Then in late September there was an incident in which the military killed a large number of civilians in what some have called a massacre- an armed attack on a peaceful pro-democracy rally. Women were maliciously violated and raped in the aftermath.
Now a man who media has described as “a top aide” shot Camara in an attempted assassination. This may have changed the picture considerably, as Camara has basically been incapacitated- he seems to no longer be fit to govern. In this news article, from Burkina Faso, Camara now says he supports a transition to democracy and that he will not run in future elections.
According to this news article, a member of the opposition has become the Prime Minister, and elections are to be held within six months.
The question now is whether the deputy of Camara, General Konate, will do what he says and let go of power to allow elections to take place.
In any event, the events of the last month have potentially opened the door for change in Guinea’s story, as Camara has been sidelined, and the pro- democracy movement appears to have gained more power. Or is that an illusion? Let’s hope that it works out for the best- I’m sure the Guineans could use a service oriented civilian government to improve livelihoods and conditions in the country.
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Posted in Civil War, Country commentaries, Democracy and Elections, Government | Tags: assassination, Captain Moussa Camara, coup d'etat, democracy, demonstration, Guinea, Guinea assassination, Guinea politics, Guinea transition, Lansana Conte, military coup, pro-democracy