By: Gregory Wilpert
Source: Venezuelanalysis.com
“We have assumed the
commitment to direct the Bolivarian Revolution towards socialism and to
contribute to the socialist path, with a new socialism, a socialism of the 21st
century, which is based in solidarity, in fraternity, in love, in justice, in
liberty, and in equality,” said Chavez in another speech in mid 2006.[1] Also,
this socialism is not pre-defined. Rather, said Chavez, we must, “transform the
mode of capital and move towards socialism, towards a new socialism that must
be constructed every day.”[2]
Given this rather vague
explanation and the concrete policies the Chavez government has pursued in the
past seven years, is Venezuela
really heading towards something that could be called “Socialism of the
21st century”? That is, is Venezuela
heading towards something that might be called a post-capitalist order in which
the age-old dream of individual freedom, equality, and social justice (libertà©,
egalità©, et fraternità©, to use the motto of the French Revolution) becomes a
reality for all its citizens?
Before we can answer that
question, we need to clarify exactly what is meant by the term capitalism,
which is a notoriously vague term. A relatively simple definition of capitalism
identifies at least three predominant elements in a social order for us to call
it capitalist. First, a capitalist order involves the private ownership of the
means of production, that is, of land, factories, and other forms of capital
that allows the production of sellable goods and services.
A second crucial element of
capitalism, in its “pure” form, is that distribution and exchange are
regulated via competitive markets. Competitive markets are an essential and
integral aspect of capitalism, which help regulate not only distribution, but
also prices and thereby guide what things are or are not produced. As long as
owners are interested in making sure that they do not lose their investment to
competitors who try to maximize their profit and who reinvest this profit in
their business, all owners must aim to maximize profits. That is, private
ownership of production combined with competitive markets also necessarily
implies the pursuit of profit maximization.
Finally, the third
essential element of capitalism is a regulatory system, a state, which helps
correct capitalism’s frequent dysfunctions and erratic behavior. That is,
capitalism needs a state that not only makes sure that contracts between
individuals, upon which exchanges are based, are adjudicated in cases where
disputes arise, but also acts as a mediator in social conflicts, usually
between owners and non-owners, who enter into frequent conflicts over issues
relating to inequality. While social movements have historically managed to
demand that the state responds better to their needs, mostly by democratizing
the state, the state is to a large extent influenced by the owners of capital
because these lobby, finance political campaigns and mass media, and generally
wield much power in capitalist democracies.
Moving away from
capitalism, however, does not, by itself, mean that a society is moving towards
socialism. After all, it could move towards feudalism or towards some other
form of undesirable social organization. What, then, would constitute socialism
or, more specifically 21st century socialism? Rather than engage in a long
theoretical discussion of the matter, I will just provide a rough outline,
based on what it is not (capitalism) and the fulfillment of certain social
ideals or values. That is, I would argue that in contrast to the actually
practiced socialism of the 20th century (mostly in Eastern
Europe), 21st century socialism would fulfill all three aims of
the French Revolution. State socialism of the 20th century fulfilled only the
aims of social justice (or solidarity or fraternità©) and, to a limited
extent, of formal equality (since party members were “more equal” (Orwell) than
non-members). 21st century socialism would thus have to fulfill (completely)
the ideals of formal equality, liberty, and solidarity (or social justice). In
other words, for 21st century socialism to distinguish itself from 20th century
state socialism, it would have to be a libertarian socialism, which
assures that the “free development of each is a condition for the free
development of all” (Marx).
Is Venezuela
Moving towards a 21st Century Socialism?
With these general
definitions of capitalism and 21st century socialism, we can now see how the
policies of the Chavez government compare to these.
Changing Ownership of
the Material and Intellectual Means of Production
Taking each of the three
elements of capitalism one at a time, one can first focus on the ways in which
the Chavez government’s policies affect or transform the ownership of the
relations of material (as opposed to intellectual) production. While the vast
majority of Venezuela’s
productive capacity is still either owned privately or by the state, one of the
government’s main areas of emphasis has been to expand non-private forms of
ownership and control, such as via cooperatives, co-management, and expanded
state management/ownership.
For example, during the
Chavez presidency the number of cooperatives in Venezuela has increased from
about 800 in 1998 to over 100,000 in 2005 – an over 100-fold increase in seven
years. Over 1.5 million Venezuelans are thus now involved in cooperatives,
which represents about 10% of the country’s adult population.[3] The government
has been actively supporting the creation of cooperatives in all sectors,
mostly via credit, preferential purchasing from cooperatives, and training
programs.
With regard to
co-management, the government has been experimenting with several state-owned
enterprises in this regard, such as the electricity company CADAFE and the
aluminum production plant Alcasa. Depending on how these experiments go, the
government is considering turning over more state-owned enterprises to
co-management. These businesses will not be turned over to complete worker
control, however, because, according to the government, they are too important
for Venezuela
to be governed only by the people that work there. That is, they have an impact
for the entire society and thus, according to the principle of subsidiarity,
the society, through its representatives in the state, should also have a say
in how the enterprise is run.
Another strategy for
changing the ownership and control over the means of production has been the
expropriation of idle factories. Currently at least four production plants,
which produce paper, valves, and agricultural products, have been expropriated
and turned over to worker control. Working together with the national union
federation UNT, the government is evaluating 700 other idle production
facilities that could also be expropriated and turned over to former workers of
these plants.
Finally, with regard to
expanding state management, the Chavez government has created several new
state-owned enterprises, such as in the areas of telecommunications, air
travel, and petrochemicals. Also, it reined-in the previously semi-autonomous
state oil company PDVSA and brought it under direct government control.
Of course, just because
there are more enterprises that go against the logic of capitalism, that are in
essence anti-capitalist endeavors, such as cooperatives, co-managed
enterprises, and state-owned enterprises does not mean that Venezuela is now a
post-capitalist society with regard to the ownership of the means of
production. However, there is a definite movement in this direction. Whether
such forms of ownership will become predominant within the Venezuelan economy
it is too early to tell. The real test of the extent to which the government is
willing to go in this direction will come if and when private capital is forced
to become marginal in the overall economy. Whether such a direct confrontation
will take place and how it will play out is impossible to say at this point.
However, creating a sphere
of non-privately owned or controlled means of production by itself is not much
of a change if such ownership and control follows the same principles as
private ownership does, of maximizing profit above all else and of funneling
non-reinvested profits towards elite consumption. Thus, so as to ensure that
the cooperative, co-managed, and state managed enterprises follow a new set of
principles, the Chavez government has created a new type of economic production
unit, which is known as social production enterprise (EPS, in Spanish).
Social Production
Enterprises are, “economic entities dedicated to the production of goods or
services in which work has its own meaning, without social discrimination nor
privileges associated with one’s position in a hierarchy, in which there is
substantive equality between its members, planning is participatory and operate
under either state, collective, or mixed ownership.”[4] In order to qualify as
an EPS and thus for preferential treatment for low-interest credits and state
contracts, companies must fulfill a list of requirements, such as to, “privilege
the values of solidarity, cooperation, complementarity, reciprocity, equity,
and sustainability, ahead of the value of profitability.”[5] If these values
are indeed fulfilled, then one can say that with regard to ownership and
control over the means of production Venezuela is moving away from
capitalism and towards 21st century socialism.
Moves Away from Market
Exchange
With regard to moving
beyond market exchange for regulating production and distribution of goods and
services, the Chavez government has mainly focused on using the state as a
non-market based mechanism. That is, the state has been very active in
redistributing wealth during the Chavez presidency, whether through its rural
and urban land reform program, its oil revenue-funded social programs for free
health care, education, and subsidized food markets, or the provision of
subsidies and other support for key sectors, such as cooperatives and “endogenous
development nucleuses.” Of course, while state redistribution mechanisms go
against a basic principle of capitalism, these do not break the logic of
capital as long as most exchange still occurs in a free market context, as is
still the case in Venezuela. As such, such policies are more social democratic
than socialist.
The principle of moving
away from market-based distribution has also been valid in international trade
for Venezuela.
Not only has the Chavez government vehemently opposed the free trade agreements
the U.S.
has been promoting, but it is also involved in a large number of trade deals
that are based on principles of solidarity instead of competition. For example,
the Petrocaribe agreement provides for discounted financing of Venezuelan oil for
Caribbean nations and also allows them to pay
for oil with in-kind payments. In the most prominent case Cuba has been providing Venezuela with
20,000 doctors and medical assistants in exchange for Venezuelan oil shipments.
Similar agreements exist with Argentina,
Uruguay, and Ecuador.
Again, this kind of
non-market based trade, which emphasizes cooperation, complementarity, and
solidarity over competition is still far smaller than traditional market
exchange. How and if the Chavez government can find ways to increase non-market
based exchange mechanisms remains to be seen, especially since exactly how
cooperative (instead of competitive) exchange could function on a large scale
is still quite unclear in Venezuela.
Governance No Longer
Guided by Private Interests
With regard breaking away
from the third important element of capitalism—a system of governance that is
under the sway of powerful private interests—Venezuela has advanced the most.
There are at least three ways in which the Chavez government has done this over
the past few years. First, it has had the opportunity to break free from the
sway of private capital, due to the combination of massive oil revenues and the
complete delegitimation of the old regime. Second, it has instituted forms of
direct democracy and increased citizen participation in the state. Third, it
has weakened the possibility that the military could be used to repress the
civilian population, via what it calls civil-military union.
The first aspect is perhaps
the most important because it has enabled practically all other anti-capitalist
measures of the Chavez government. That is, Venezuela’s oil revenues, which
increased, on a per-capita basis, from $226 in 1998 to $728 in 2005,[6] has
been a bonanza that has given the Chavez government a tremendous amount of
freedom from private capital’s ability to threaten with investment strikes.
Also, the institution of capital controls in early 2003 further expanded the
government’s independence from private capital. While most leftist governments,
such as that of President Lula of Brazil, are constantly faced with
the choice of pursuing progressive policies and alienating capital and thereby
economic well-being or abandoning progressive policies and encouraging private
investment, the Chavez government is by and large freed from this dilemma.
Enormous oil revenues allow the government to invest, to pursue progressive tax
policies and regulations, and to spend freely, without having to worry much
about capital flight or disinvestment.
This freedom, combined with
the opposition’s recurring self-destruction (via the coup attempt, the oil
industry shutdown, the failed recall referendum, and the boycott of the December
2005 National Assembly elections) is perhaps the main reason why the Chavez
government has been able to pursue increasingly more anti-capitalist policies
with every passing year in office. This stands in stark contrast to the history
of most progressive governments, which time and again start out with radical
rhetoric, only to eventually succumb to the demands of private capital.
The second way in which the
government is shaking loose the influence of private capital is by introducing
participatory democracy in numerous areas of the state. This is happening
through local planning councils, citizen participation in social programs, and
a variety of other institutionalized mechanisms for civil society involvement
in government (referenda, selection of high-level state officials, and citizen
audits of state institutions).
One of the most important
forms of citizen participation are the local planning councils, which were
launched in Venezuela in 2001, but were at first stillborn due to a variety of
limitations in the local planning council law, such as creating councils that
were too large to be manageable or participatory. A new effort was launched in
early 2006 with the communal council law, which bases councils on units of 200
to 400 families and which practice direct democracy in their communities,
allocating financial resources and creating local ordinances.
Participatory democracy in Venezuela also
takes the form of citizen participation in the recently created “missions,”
which provide education, health care, subsidized food, social services, land
reform, and environmental protection. These missions, rather than being just
imposed from above are largely directed by the citizens in any given community,
in the form of health committees, land committees, and educational task forces.
Finally, there are the
constitutionally guaranteed rights to participatory democracy, in the form of
four different types of citizen-initiated referenda (recall, approbatory,
abrogatory, and consultative), the right to conduct citizen-initiated audits of
state institutions (contraloria social), and the right of civil society
organizations to co-nominate candidates to the Supreme Court, the National
Electoral Council, and the Moral Republican Council (consisting of Attorney General,
Comptroller General, and Human Rights Defender).
Citizen involvement in all
levels of government like this increases accountability and weakens the sway of
powerful private interests. While citizens might still succumb to threats of
disinvestment from private capital, at least they have more influence over
decision-making than when elected representatives decide matters mainly under
the influence of powerful private groups that are constantly lobbying them and
paying for their electoral campaigns.
The third area where the
Chavez government has made a conscious effort to enable a more direct democracy
has to do with transforming one of the traditional means for suppressing
citizen involvement and discontent: the military. Historically, the military in
Latin America was used to repress the
citizenry and to keep it from resisting the imposition of government policies
it did not like. For Chavez and for most poor Venezuelans, the 1989 riots
against IMF-imposed economic policies, which dramatically increased the price
for public transportation and for many food staples, was an expression of
discontent with the relatively undemocratic[7] government of Carlos Andrà©s Perez.
This outburst of discontent was immediately suppressed with massive military
force, which ended up killing anywhere between 300 and 3,000 poor Venezuelans.
According to Chavez, the
reason Venezuela’s and Latin America’s military forces were able to repress
their own populace so often and so easily was because the military was always
kept separate from the population. That is, their lack of contact with
civilians, their sequestration, made it easier for them to act without sympathy
or remorse against their own people. In contrast, Chavez, following a Maoist
maxim, argues that “the military should be to the people like the fish is to
water.” The application of this principle is called “civil-military union,” and
means, in practice, that the military should be as integrated as possible with
the civilian population, being in constant contact with them and even taking on
civilian tasks in the process. The military has thus become heavily involved in
the various “missions,” often providing services such as food distribution,
construction help, and transportation, for example. Furthermore, the civilian
population is being asked to sign up for Venezuela’s
military reserves, to learn to fight a guerilla war, should an outside force
such as the U.S.
ever invade. This, according to Chavez, is supposed to further strengthen the
civil-military union.
Critics of this
re-conceptualization of Venezuela’s
military argue that it has militarized civilian society and could become a
means for doing precisely what Chavez says it is supposed to ward against, of
repressing the population. However, there is no concrete evidence for this. As
any visitor to Venezuela can attest, the military in Venezuela has a far less
militaristic presence in the general population than it did in countries where
the military was indeed used for repression, such as in Argentina in the 1970’s
or in El Salvador in the 1980’s. No one in Venezuela fears the military and
its activity in the general population is limited to fulfilling the civilian
functions mentioned above, but not to repress. Human rights groups such as
Human Rights Watch do not cite the military as being perpetrators of human
rights violations. Rather, in Venezuela,
the main culprit in this regard remains (since long before Chavez’s coming into
office) the notoriously corrupt and local government controlled police force.
In other words, it would appear that rather than militarizing civil society,
the civil-military union has served to “civilize” the military.
These three factors, the
tremendous oil revenues, the creation of a more participatory democracy, and
the “civilizing” of the military, have meant that the Chavez government is far
freer to pursue policies that are independent of the powerful private interests
that normally shape government policy in capitalist countries. The freedom the
Chavez government enjoys to pursue leftist policies is unique in comparison to
most of the rest of world in many ways. While there are other countries that
enjoy such a freedom due to their wealth in natural resources (such as a
state-owned national oil industry), these other countries tend to be in the
hands of extremely conservative authoritarian regimes (such as in the Middle East) and have no interest in pursuing progressive
policies.
This freedom has allowed
the Chavez government to pursue policies that clearly move away from private
ownership and control over the means of production, away from market-determined
allocation and distribution, and towards what could be called more socialist
economic and governance forms. However, this is clearly not the state-socialism
of the 20th century, as was practiced in Eastern Europe and China and still is in Cuba. Rather, it is a more
libertarian form of socialism, in that it actively seeks citizen participation
and even forms of direct democracy.
Obstacles for 21st
Century Socialism in Venezuela
The main obstacles to 21st
century socialism in Venezuela
fall into the two general categories of external and internal obstacles. The
external obstacles are those that are external to the Bolivarian project, such
as a domestic opposition that continuously seeks to undermine the Chavez
government without engaging in the political process, a U.S. government that is
intent on isolating the Chavez government, and domestic and international
forces of capital that make 21st century socialism in one country extremely
difficult to institute. The internal obstacles include the persistence of an
anti-democratic political culture of patronage and of personalism.
The opposition includes practically
all sectors that used to have a determining role in Venezuelan society, such as
the former governing parties, the old union federation, the church hierarchy,
big business, and almost all of the private mass media. The key problem for the
Chavez government with this opposition is not so much its power, which it has
lost steadily largely due to its own disorganization and failures, but its
unwillingness to play the democratic game, as it did during the April 2002 coup
attempt, the December 2003 oil industry shutdown, and the December 2005 boycott
of the National Assembly elections. Rarely during the Chavez presidency has
this opposition come forward with concrete proposals about how it would govern Venezuela
differently. Currently the opposition is continuing on this track of denying
the government’s legitimacy by threatening to boycott the December 2006
presidential elections, on the basis that the electoral registry is flawed.
However, an audit by the Inter-American Human Rights Institute showed that
errors in the registry were negligible. The gradual self-destruction of the
opposition, though, has made the opposition less of an obstacle and has thus
increased the government’s freedom to maneuver.
The second external
obstacle to creating 21st century socialism is the Bush administration. From
documents that have become available in the past few years it is clear that the
Bush administration knew about the 2002 coup attempt in advance, but instead of
opposing it beforehand or while it was in progress, Bush gave it support by
denying that it was a coup and by blaming Chavez for his own downfall. Also,
via the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) the Bush administration has been funneling several million
dollars per year to opposition groups in Venezuela, in an effort to create
an opposition in its own image. And, in terms of applying overt measures
against the Chavez government, the Bush administration has been applying a
variety of minor economic sanctions[8] and has been conducting a campaign to
isolate Venezuela
internationally. All in all, each one of these measures has been a relative
failure. For example, the opposition, despite its receiving funds and advice
from the U.S., is hopelessly disorganized and of little consequence in
Venezuela, following its many failures during the Chavez presidency.[9] The
economic sanctions have little effect, given that Venezuela’s foreign currency
income comes almost entirely from oil revenues, which the U.S. will not cut
off. Last, the efforts to isolate Venezuela have met with little approval
elsewhere in the world.
Finally, the third external
obstacle is for many countries the most serious obstacle to progressive
governing because of its ability to initiate an investment strike if a
government initiates too many policies against its interests. Venezuela,
though, with the recent boom in oil revenues (essentially since mid 2003)
remains a lucrative place for investment, despite the government’s
anti-capitalist rhetoric and its frequent tax increases for the oil industry.
Also, capital flight has been held in check via a restrictive exchange rate
policy. As a result, domestic and international capital is not that much of an
obstacle now as it was earlier in Chavez’s presidency.
The much more serious
obstacles to instituting 21st century socialism in Venezuela thus are the internal
obstacles. The most serious of these is probably the persistence of a culture
of clientelism-patronage. That is, there is much anecdotal evidence that
despite Chavez’s criticism that previous governments were riddled with
patronage systems, new forms of patronage have taken their place. While
previously it was practically impossible for people who were not members of one
of the ruling parties to get government jobs or services, evidence has emerged
that although party membership is not an issue now, officials in the Chavez
government are often preventing anti-Chavistas, as Chavez opponents are
known, from acquiring government jobs and some kinds of services.
The most notorious example
of this practice has been the so-called “Tascon List,” which pro-Chavez
National Assembly deputy Luis Tascon set up, which lists all Venezuelans who
signed the petition in favor of a recall referendum against President Chavez.[10]
The original purpose of the list was to allow Chavez supporters to make sure
that they did not appear on the list because they were concerned that the list
fraudulently included many who did not intend to be on it.
Patronage that gives
government jobs and services mainly to Chavistas not only counteracts Chavez’s
campaign promise of creating a government that will not exclude anyone, but it
also undermines the rule of law, thus providing an opening for corruption and
the delegitimization of the government and it counters the principle of formal
equality. More than that, patronage systems encourage a limited form of
solidarity, which extends only to one’s own group (in this case one’s political
group) and is fundamentally at odds with an effort to create a society in which
solidarity includes all people, regardless of nationality or political beliefs.
The second internal
obstacle is the latent personality cult around Chavez and the tendency towards
personalistic politics in Venezuela
in general. On the one hand, Chavez’s ability to bring people together in a
large “Bolivarian” movement for radical change in Venezuela
is practically unparalleled in recent Venezuela history. On the other
hand, this ability has resulted in an extreme dependency of the movement on
Chavez, to the exclusion of a clearly defined political program or political
organization. Thus, if Chavez were to disappear from one day to the next, the
entire movement would fall into a thousand pieces because it would have lost it
unifying glue. This extreme dependence on Chavez also means that it is
extremely difficult for Chavez supporters to criticize Chavez because every
criticism threatens to undermine the project because it gives rhetorical
ammunition to the opposition. A further consequence is that the lack of
criticism insulates Chavez and makes it very difficult for him to test his
ideas and policies against the outside world. Criticism from within the ranks
is rarely present and criticism from outside the ranks is easily dismissed. The
result is a strong potential for wrong-headed policies.[11]
The third internal obstacle
is a strong tendency towards top-down leadership, not only by Chavez, but by
everyone in the public administration. Despite the very real pursuit of
participatory democracy at local levels, the government bureaucracy is still by
and large a top-down operation, which Chavez’s military instincts have reinforced.
Such leadership in the public administration further exacerbates the problems
mentioned of a personalistic political culture, so that questioning of one’s
superiors and correcting errors in the administration of public policies is
extremely difficult.
Prospects
It is very probable that
the Chavez government will continue on its course of increasing radicalization
because it has managed to either defeat or avoid nearly all of the obstacles to
governing that progressive governments normally face. That is, most governments
face what some political scientists have called, the “contradictions of the
welfare state,” whereby democratically elected governments in capitalist
countries have to answer to two contradictory masters.[12] On the one hand,
governments have to fulfill the wishes of the population that elected them,
lest they be removed from power in the next electoral cycle. On the other hand,
they have to fulfill the wishes of capital, lest they face a capital strike and
economic crisis. These two pulls on governments is a serious problem because
they tend to pull in diametrically opposite directions. Citizens generally want
the government to protect them from the ravages of capitalism (advocating for
regulations on businesses, environmental protection, workplace safety,
protection from economic crisis, etc.), while capital wants to be as free of
government regulations and taxes as possible. Following an effort to at least
partially resolve this contradiction via debt spending, governments in both the
First and Third World borrowed heavily, so
that they could fulfill the financial needs of the welfare state, without
having to tax either capital or the general population. However, once the debt
crisis became too much of a burden, governments cut back government spending
and by and large adopted neo-liberalism as a supposed way out of the
contradiction. Neo-liberalism, though, did not resolve the contradiction, but
shifted the balance of power in favor of capital.
Recently, though, with the
failure of neo-liberalism to provide for any meaningful increase in people’s
standard of living and with a dramatic increase in inequality, the peoples of Latin America have been voting against neo-liberalism and
in favor of a wide variety of leftist governments. The contradiction between
the pulls of capitalism and of the general population remains in nearly all of
these countries. The only exception seems to be Venezuela, which, by virtue of its
oil wealth, is far less dependent on private capital and thus on its demands.
Added to this economic independence comes the Venezuelan old elite’s repeated
failures to topple Chavez. Chavez, who started out as a fairly moderate
politician in 1998, could thus easily afford to become increasingly more
radical with each subsequent defeat of the opposition. Also, as someone who was
not formed politically by a political party or ideology, but more as a result
of his confrontations with state power, Chavez steers a path that is pragmatic
and free from orthodoxies of any kind, thus opening him up to steering a more
radical path, should opportunity and his perceived analysis of what Venezuela
needs lead him in that direction.
In other words, while
further advances in defining and applying 21st century socialism in Venezuela are
very possible, due to the relative lack of external obstacles, it is the
internal obstacles of the cultures of patronage and personalism that are most
likely to threaten to derail the project. Figuring out how to overcome these
obstacles, which would require a re-building of the state, in order to overcome
patronage structures, and the creation of an effective political movement that
does not depend on Chavez, in order to overcome personalism, remain the
greatest challenges for 21st century socialism in Venezuela.
This is
a revised version of a paper that was presented at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Havens Center, April 11, 2006.
[2] Ibid.
[3] SUNACOOP (National Superintendency
of Cooperatives), www.sunacoop.gob.ve
[4] “Empresas de Produccià³n Social,” article
in PDVSA’s corporate magazine, Siembra Petrolera, Issue, No. 1,
Jan.-Mar. 2006, p.55
[5] Article 3 of Decree No. 3,895, of
September 13, 2005, published in Gaceta Oficial No. 38,271
[6] Author’s own calculation, based on
data from Venezuela’s finance
ministry, the national statistics institute, and the Central Bank of Venezuela.
[7] Chavez’s Bolivarian movement, as
well as many outside analysts, considered the period of 1958-1993 to be a
fairly undemocratic period because state repression and an elite pact (Pacto
de Punto Fijo) between the two main political parties prevented challengers
from coming to power in this period.
[8] These sanctions are the result of
putting Venezuela
on a variety of lists, such as one of countries that are not doing enough in
fighting terrorism, fighting drug trafficking, and in fighting human
trafficking.
[9] These failures include the April
2002 coup attempt, the December 2002 oil industry shutdown, the August 2004
recall referendum, and the December 2005 boycott of the National Assembly
elections.
[10] There are probably nearly as many
accounts of opposition employers using this list to weed out Chavez supporters.
However, this does not excuse the practice, especially not for a government
that originally campaigned against patronage systems.
[11] An example of such a wrong-headed
policy is the recent passage of changes to the penal code, which slightly
broadened penalties for insulting government officials. The law has been on the
books for decades, but an increase of the maximum penalty for such offenses is
anti-civil rights and did not serve any useful purpose.
[12] One of the main theorists of this
thesis was Claus Offe, in his book, The Contradictions of the Welfare State,
1984, MIT Press
