The slow death of a democracy
What happened in Venezuela could never happen in the US or Western Europe. Right?
Claire Berlinski and Venezuelan expat Simón Franco take a deep dive into the catastrophic collapse of Franco’s oil-rich home country:
Venezuela is now the poorest country in Latin America. More than 5.4 million Venezuelans have fled, creating a refugee crisis exceeded in numbers only by Syria’s. To the rest of the world, Venezuela is synonymous with hyperinflation, starvation, disease, crime, corruption, and misery.
One of the most astonishing and alarming aspects of Venezuela’s story is that only recently, it was the wealthiest country in South America. It was believed to be one of the most stable democracies in the region. Indeed, in the 1950s, Venezuela was one of the wealthiest countries in the world—it ranked fourth—with a per capita GDP that rivaled West Germany’s. Well into the 1980s, Venezuela had far more in common with the United States than with Syria.
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Venezuela’s story inspires horror, for it suggests that a single mistake at the ballot box can lead to ruin, starvation, and despotism. The name Venezuela has become a morality tale. On the right, it signifies the dangers of socialism: Right-wing figures in the United States invoke Venezuela much as they do meth. Not even once. The more lunatic even intimate that Joe Biden is the gateway drug. The left, meanwhile, prefers to ignore the socialist sources of Venezuela’s misery and explain its plight entirely in terms of American sanctions.
Simón Franco is Venezuelan political scientist who lives in exile in the United States. On a recent Cosmopolitan Globalist Zoom call, I asked him what we should really learn from Venezuela. Is this just a classic example of the application of socialist ideology? Or is Venezuela’s crisis less the consequence of its socialism than of its populism, corruption, and authoritarianism? Or perhaps some of both?
What are the lessons of Venezuela, really? If we’re really only an election away from this kind of disaster, it would be best to be precise.
The election of fiery socialist Hugo Chavez was a turning point, but Franco says the collapse was decades in the making. Even during the good old days, there were warning signs:
The burgeoning oil industry in Venezuela brought hitherto unseen riches to the country. In 1970, national GDP reached US$ 11.56 billion, creating a new middle class of educated technocrats and professionals. By 1980, per capita GDP was growing at a rate of 19.05 percent annually. By the 1990s, however, the gulf between the haves and have-nots was increasing rapidly. Enticed by the riches of the oil boom, many families had migrated to densely populated urban areas, where they settled in shanty towns on the cities’ outskirts. The settlers in these newly formed barrios at the fringes of the cities and Venezuelan society came to be known as los marginales, or the marginalized. The concept of extreme poverty entered the social vernacular through regular news broadcasts. All of these maladies devolved from the government’s mismanagement of oil revenues.
In 1989, the government’s failure to invest in social programs, city planning, or education led to a social schism that ignited the streets of Caracas and other cities. An IMF-approved plan to restructure the debt caused gasoline prices to rise, leading to the riots known as El Caracazo. Hugo Chavez erupted onto the Venezuelan scene against this backdrop of social unrest, which continued through the early ‘90s. A failed coup, in 1992, overnight propelled Chavez—an unknown army lieutenant colonel—to stardom. Los marginales saw Chavez as a savior. In 1994, having been pardoned and sprung from prison, Chavez travelled to Cuba, where Castro and his regime feted him as a hero. Many believe that during this encounter, Castro passed on to Chavez his Cuban-style revolutionary playbook. Chavez returned to Venezuela, spent the next few years campaigning, and was elected president in 1998.
The first order of business for the new Chavez administration was abolishing the 1961 Venezuelan constitution. La Moribunda, he called it—the Dying. A constitutional congress was called in 1999; the constitution was abrogated in 2000.
Chavez spent millions on social programs when oil prices were high, though much of the money ended up in his cronies’ pockets. Meanwhile, if you weren’t on his team, you could say adios to your government job:
The new constitution changed the structure of the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. The executive branch, for example, now directly controls the state-run oil company. The Venezuelan congress lost one of its cameras; its bicameral congress and senate became a single institution. Finally, the judiciary became in every practical sense the servant of partisan politics. The judiciary’s egregious lack of independence was exemplified in 2009, when on national television Chavez condemned a judge who displeased him to 30 years in prison. The Supreme Court complied with his mandate.
In 2002, a general strike prompted Chavez to fire all opposition from the state-run oil corporation. Thousands of executives and workers, along with their years of collective expertise and technical knowledge, were lost overnight and replaced by Chavez’s cronies. People with no experience, education, or concept of how to run a corporation now presided over the future of the goose, its golden eggs, and by extension the whole country.
But in a stroke of luck for Chavez, the early 2000s saw oil soar near reach of US$ 100 per barrel. By contrast, the budget of the previous administration had been based on forecasts of Venezuelan crude selling at US$ 7 a barrel. Chavez tightened his grasp on this bonanza’s purse strings when he once again changed the hydrocarbon law, levying exorbitant taxes on the few foreign companies still in Venezuela. Those who refused faced expropriation. Some holdouts decided to let Chavez take their oilfields and equipment so they could later sue the Venezuelan government for billions; others chose to stick it out and play the long game, betting on regime change.
The Chavista regime used the oil bonanza to jolly the public with myriad social programs. Housing, education, and health plans for the needy—“the great missions”—were enormously popular, but they rested upon a dangerous façade.
First, Venezuela imported thousands of Cuban doctors and other social engineers under the pretext of collaboration between nations. These specialists did bring expertise in their fields. But they were also Castro’s agents. They were placed in strategic government posts that allowed them to spy and report on the bureaucracy to both Chavez and Castro.
Second, the programs were simply mismanaged. From the outset, Chavez surrounded himself with passionate loyalists who were unqualified to govern. The great missions became black holes into which money would disappear, never to be seen again. Corruption became ubiquitous. Many new fortunes were created during this period through the diversion of funds destined to help the poor.
Finally, the true purpose of the great missions was not, really, to aid the poor. It was to serve as a smokescreen to popularize and advance Chavez’s—and Castro’s—socialist revolution throughout the Americas. …
Nicholas Maduro - who has all of Chavez’s worst traits, but none of his predecessor’s charisma nor his intelligence - is trying to follow the same playbook, but at a time when oil prices are much lower, and everyone who actually knows how to run the industry is now living in Miami.
Maduro has continued Chavez’s legacy in every respect. He has staunchly adhered to the tradition of appointing technically unqualified but politically loyal goons to manage the finances and destinies of the Venezuelan people. But unlike Chavez, Maduro has not been lucky. Shortly after Chavez’s demise, oil prices plummeted from US$ 106 a barrel to less than US$ 50 a barrel. The sudden drop in the price of crude pulled the rug out from under the Bolivarian Revolution’s social programs, in Venezuela and abroad. This was when we began to see the characteristic long lines for whatever meager products could still be found on the supermarket shelves and the mostly empty drugstores.
Venezuela’s economic maladies can all be traced to corruption, mismanagement, and lack of diversification in the productive sectors of society. When the petrodollars that propped up the economy evaporated, the house of cards collapsed. After 2000, Venezuela over-relied on imports, from consumer goods to foodstuffs. So when the state’s purchasing power was slashed by more than half, the country could no longer feed itself.
Those who correctly understood the economic signs and foresaw the impending disaster—those with skills and education, that is—were the first to leave Venezuela. They left in the first decade of the millennium. When the economy melted down in 2013, everyone who could flee did. We’ve all seen stories of Venezuelan migrants who leave Caracas and walk the entire length of South America to reach places as far away as Argentina, many of them dying en route of cold, hunger, or exhaustion. It’s a modern-day search for El Dorado, except the gold they seek is just three meals a day. The Venezuelan diaspora, thus, fled in two stages: first, those who had a choice; then, those whose only choice was starvation.
Franco believes American sanctions have hurt Venezuelan’s kleptocrats, but have also given them a convenient scapegoat for the country’s problems. So far, they’ve worked as well as they have against Cuba.
The United States is not Venezuela, and despite the enthusiasm of some kids on TikTok, isn’t likely to elect a self-professed “socialist” as President any time soon. But Franco says it’s about more than the economic system: a complete collapse of public trust in government institutions helped lead Venezuela down this dark path:
It’s easy to forget, living in stable societies, what we learned in civics class: The division of power, and a country’s political and social institutions, offer checks and balances on the government. We forget because we take those institutions for granted. We forget how easily things can derail. The erosion of trust in a system, coupled with widespread social discontent, is all that’s needed for a reformist with a hidden agenda, like Chavez, to create a catastrophe like the one seen in Venezuela.
Do not misunderstand me. I believe systems are flawed and that many things need to change in the world. But we must pay particular attention when changing things. We cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater, as we say in the US, when trying to solve societal issues. As an immigrant, I appreciate that the US Constitution is more than 200 years old. I appreciate that we have recognized the fallibility of the framers of the Constitution and amended it 33 times. I certainly appreciate that times change, and the Constitution must change with it—within the permitted framework. But I quake at the thought of ripping up the Constitution and starting over with a new one. To be sure, it is not just longevity that provides legitimacy and strength to a country’s institutions; it is also the people’s trust in the system, and a social contract that has mechanisms for correcting wrongdoing even as it provides stability.
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Could it really happen here? The answer is yes and no. Yes, the horrors and suffering of the Venezuelan people can be exported. Socialism as a political ideology is alive and well in the world. But socialism does not mean what most in the West think it does. The general public does not understand and apply the term the way political scientists do.
Socialism is not about social programs. It is about seizing the means of production and then mismanaging the hell out of them. It is about capitalizing on social unrest to persuade people that socioeconomic inequalities can be alleviated by governmental oversight. It is about thoroughly eroding trust in political institutions so you can start over with new ones. It is about making sure these new social and political institutions look and feel right to the masses, all the while hiding plans to concentrate power, in perpetuity, in the hands of a new elite that claims to be able to save the public from the evils of the old elites. It can happen here if populism and demagoguery prevail over reason.
In America in 2016, populism and demagoguery did prevail over reason. It almost happened again in 2020. And don’t be so confident it won’t happen in 2022 and 2024.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world from Venezuela, and the other end of the political spectrum from Chavez and Maduro, European right-wing populism is having its moment:
In Portugal’s recent presidential elections, when only 30 percent of the general public were cooperating with COVID-19 restrictions, the Chega party’s vote share of 11.9 percent completely eclipsed the 1.3 percent it garnered in the previous general elections, in 2019.
On the other side of Europe, last December, the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) emerged from complete political obscurity to take 9 percent of the vote in the general elections and become the fourth-largest party in Romania’s Parliament.
Again, pandemic fatigue was among the factors attributed to its significant increase.
Then there is the far right’s remorseless rise in the polls in some big European countries.
In France, one of the most recent projections of the possible outcome of the country’s upcoming presidential vote in 2022 has seen far-right leader Marine Le Pen make a record surge in popularity to reach near-parity with incumbent Emmanuel Macron.
Across the border in Italy, the Fratelli d’Italia party has doubled its support compared with a year ago, from 6 percent to 15 percent.
Meanwhile, in northern neighbour Belgium, ultranationalist Vlaams Belang currently stands on an all-time maximum of 26.3 percent, six points clear of their nearest rival.
And south of the Pyrenees, Vox is predicted to take up to 10 seats in Catalonia’s Parliament in the region’s February 14 election.
This Al-Jazeera piece was posted before the election, in which Vox did even better than expected - eleven seats, more than the mainstream right-wing party. My knowledge of Spanish political history is negligible, but a party accused of being pro-Franco making a breakthrough in Catalonia seems like a big deal.
The far-right tide ebbs and flows in Europe, so it’s possible these parties may fizzle out in the coming years. Germany’s AfD appears to have stalled at around 8% in the polls, and Golden Dawn, an explicitly neo-Nazi party that briefly caused a stir in Greece, has completely collapsed. But one thing is clear: Donald Trump’s embarrassing defeat, and the post-election insanity he incited, hasn’t hurt the European parties from which he drew inspiration.
I was a fan of Rush Limbaugh, during my hardcore right-wing phase in the early nineties and then during my second hardcore right-wing phase in the early 2000s. I’m not sure if it’s me or him who changed the most.
Twitter was a particularly ugly place - even more than usual, if such a thing is imaginable - when the news of his death broke yesterday. “Rot in Hell” was trending, and we had the usual edgelord tweets from people saying they wish Hell was real so Limbaugh would be suffering in it.
You never see these people say they wish Heaven was real when people they like pass away.
For better or for worse, Rush was a major influence on my political development and even my writing and speaking style, so I will not celebrate his death. Anyone who could do three hours per day of solo radio, the way he did, had some serious talent.
It is just a shame about some of the ends toward which he devoted that talent, clouding punching down at AIDS victims and other vulnerable groups, and supporting the malevolent American political cult took that root and eventually power in the 2010s. So I will not shed any tears, either.
My condolences to his friends and family. Lung cancer is a hard way to go.