Hugo Chavez dies: socialists might see him as a saint but this charismatic conman was no angel

Hugo Chavez dies: socialists might see him as a saint but this charismatic conman was no angel

By Tim StanleyWorld
 

Chavez's populist socialism hid a record of economic and civil decline

Hugo Chavez, the revolutionary giant of Latin America, has died in a military hospital in Caracas. Although adored by many of Venezuela’s poor and lionised among the Western Left, the record he leaves behind is mixed at best. It’s also, sadly, typical of a strain of Latin American populism that puts rhetoric above substance and class war above national interest. He might have seemed like the future to those with short memories, but he was really a very old fashioned demagogue.
First, the good stuff. Chavez spent Venezuela’s oil money on reducing destitution and expanding access to healthcare and education. As a result, poverty was cut in half, child mortality fell by a third and death from malnutrition fell by 50 per cent. Homelessness was reduced and almost everyone gained access to clean drinking water. To his fans, this was all part of new model of development that was socialist without rejecting some element of free enterprise and activist without sacrificing democratic checks and balances. Between communism and capitalism, Chavez’s revolution held out the hope for a future without the exploitation that invariably accompanies both.
But at the centre of populist movements is usually an authoritarian personality, and Chavez had the will power and vanity required of banana republic Bonaparte. His bluster – wearing pajama suits and appearing on TV to harangue his enemies – disguised a darker design. Although his supporters often talk of the various illegal attempts to remove him from office, Chavez himself entered politics by way of a coup attempt in 1992 (the government he tried to overthrow was incompetent and corrupt but technically legitimate). He was a late convert to the ballot box and when he did finally form a government he wrote his own constitution and, even then, regularly broke its spirit. He persuaded a loyal legislature to grant him the right to rule by decree and he used it to pursue a revolution based on exploiting high oil prices to build a powerbase among the poor. His critics were basically anyone with an interest that conflicted with his – the Catholic Church, trades unions, private business, liberal parties. There is a global Left-wing myth that Chavez survived so long in power because his only opponent was the USA. In fact his domestic critics were plentiful, but they were either too divided to exploit their numbers or else were overpowered by Chavez loyalists in the military or the slums. It also helped that the great leader shut down over 30 radio stations and many newspapers and TV stations.
As Brendan O’Neill notes, this was not democratic socialism on the liberal European model but rather authoritarianism on the Peronist model. Juan Peron, several-time president of Argentina, also pursued a “Bonapartist” political strategy that combined strong national appeals with handing out confiscated money to the urban poor. And Peron also maintained a sliver of constitutionality while using accumulated powers and the fury of the mob to terrify opponents. Aside from its moral bankruptcy, the problem with Peronism is that it falls apart if a) the economy slumps and the state can no longer hand out goodies and b) the personality that guides it dies. After Peron there could be (by definition) no Peronism and Argentina sank first into anarchy and later into military dictatorship. After Chavez, we might ask how long the Venezuelan revolution can last, too.
And nor does it deserve to. Chavez should have spent the oil money on building a capitalist economy and a stronger civil society. Instead his administration was notorious for corruption and waste. During his time in office there were 120,000 murders, a rate four times that of post-war Iraq. The causes were inflation running at highs of 30 per cent, stubborn unemployment and poorly paid police. Socialism only existed within the remit of state enterprises and social welfare. Otherwise society remained untransformed and depressingly Darwinian: the strong prospered and the weak were mugged, kidnapped or butchered. The Venezuelan Violence Observatory concluded that, “Killings have become a way of executing property crimes, a mechanism to resolve personal conflicts, and a way to apply private justice.” They were symptomatic not of the creation of a new social order but the decay of a neglected old one.
Hugo Chavez did not offer a model for development that should be, or even could be, emulated by anyone else. It was motored by a unique personality and sustained by the good fortune to sit on a lot of oil. The poor of his nation might mourn someone who gave them a voice, but this brilliant conman rarely used it to articulate their genuine best interests.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100205533/hugo-chavez-dies-socialists-might-see-him-as-a-saint-but-this-charismatic-conman-was-no-angel/