Steve Chapman
November 25, 2007
Communism is dead in Russia, a shell of itself in China and just hanging
on in Cuba. But Lenin's corpse has a rare reason to smile. A new
workers' paradise is sprouting in Venezuela under the direction of the
sometimes clownish but always cunning President Hugo Chavez.
Most of the rest of the world learned the folly of autocratic socialism
back in the 20th Century, but Chavez prefers to repeat mistakes rather
than learn from them. He has nationalized oil holdings, created
state-run firms, confiscated privately owned land and politicized
finance while endeavoring to take over telecommunications and power
companies.
All this is part of his grand plan for "Bolivarian socialism" and "the
formation of the new man." Chavez does not dream on a small scale. "The
old values of individualism, capitalism and egoism must be demolished,"
he says, and he is eager to get on with it, in spite of—or, maybe,
because of—what else will disintegrate in the process.
In case you have lingering doubts about what sort of country he has in
mind, Chavez offers a color scheme for his educational program: "red,
very red." It is no coincidence that he is a close ally of Fidel
Castro's Cuba. But his anti-Americanism endears him to non-Communist
tyrants as well. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made multiple
trips to Venezuela to embrace Chavez as "the champion, the leader of the
struggle against imperialism."
Chavez, like Castro and Ahmadinejad, is hostile toward political as well
as economic freedom. He has closed some opposition media outlets while
cowing others through laws making it a crime to disparage him or his
confederates. The judiciary and electoral council have been stripped of
their independence. The government has refused to admit human rights
monitors from the Organization of American States.
Sometimes Chavez is just, well, strange. In August, he announced that he
would move the nation's clocks ahead so the time in Venezuela would be
three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time instead of four. "It's
about the metabolic effect, where the brain is conditioned by sunlight,"
he explained.
But all this is merely a prelude to the next stage of his revolution. It
is expected to commence after a national referendum Dec. 2 on a package
of constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez and his confederates.
The changes would not only repeal the two-term limit on his office,
allowing him to serve for life, but also transfer virtually all power to
one person: the president. He would gain the authority to supersede
local governments on a whim, declare a state of emergency anytime it
suits him and seize farms and processing plants if he deems it necessary
for "food security."
The question is not what Chavez will be able to do if this plan passes.
The question is what he will not be able to do—and the answer is, not much.
Still, Chávez apparently remains popular among the poor, who may be
unaware of the economic stagnation generally produced by this brand of
socialism. In following the example of Cuba, Chavez is doing something
exceptionally novel: modeling his economy on one far poorer than his
own. It's as though General Motors, dissatisfied with its fortunes, were
to embrace the business plan used by American Motors.
But Chavez's "reform" plan is expected to pass anyway. One reason is
that it includes such enticements as a six-hour workday and expanded
social security benefits. Other reasons: Government control of the media
makes it hard for opponents to get their message out, and some
dissenters are boycotting because they see the plebiscite as rigged
against them.
Still, supporters of pluralistic, constitutional democracy have not
given up. University students have marched in opposition to the
proposals, despite violence from pro-Chavez forces and jeers from the
president, who calls them "fascists" and "rich bourgeois brats." But as
Douglas Cassel of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the
University of Notre Dame put it in a recent radio commentary, "Show me a
revolution opposed by uni- versity students en masse, and I'll show you
a phony revolution."
A phony revolution may nonetheless be a durable one. If the Venezuelans
who go to the polls next Sunday give Chavez what he wants, they are
likely to discover a paradox: They can bring about dictatorship through
democracy, but not the reverse.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-071125chapman-column,1,2491852.column
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