ladies and gentlemen, hugo chavez
the name hugo chavez ignites strong feelings in people. either you love him or loath him. few people have nothing to say about him. some think he is a timely addition to the current world situation. others see him as nothing more than an anachronism.
in some ways he is a bit of both. as the left has shifted it's focus from a marxist based socialist agenda to an environmental one, the irony of the great leftist leader is that he makes his money from the object most despised by the current left - oil. without it's massive reserves and the world's dependency on this resource - the resource that will eventually lead to it's own destruction - venezuela would yet be another country that college grads from the mid-west couldn't identify on a map.
without the oil money flowing in, he wouldn't be able to implement any of his reforms or buy the 100,000 kalishnikovs for his peasant army. even in utopian socialist states it takes lots of money to implement reforms and keep the populace from removing their leaders. shifting an economy from a free-market model to a socialist one requires these reforms on a colossal scale.
another irony is that he gets the money to implement these reforms by selling his oil on the world market. the world market is the realm of neo-conservative, liberal-economist, adam smith quoting, globalization fanatics. he is wise in this respect - he knows the value and importance of oil and that the world powers are powerless without it. in a funny way, he is using the situationist tactic of using an established paradigm to subvert itself. the typical paradigm for the situationists was the media, but for chavez it seems to be capitalism. he is using capitalism's lust for oil to subvert capitalism. but, in reality he needs the same capitalism that he wishes to destroy in order to keep his socialist utopia alive. he also needs for his oil reserves to be ever plentiful.
the collapse of the soviet union left the developing world with no alternatives as to the ideological direction of their respective economies. until the soviet union's collapse, socialism was a viable alternative to capitalism - as long as the soviets were there to dole wealth and resources among it's constituent member-states. after it's collapse, these economies were forced to find a replacement for the soviet teet and found it in the form of the world bank, imf and wto. but, upon entry to this new club, one is required to open it's assets to foreign ownership and investment and adopt a free-market based economic model. a poor country that implements this system hasn't the means to compete monetarily against the massive corporations that now have full access to their markets, for retaining ownership of their resources, including ones that are crucial for their populace to function on a day to day level. these corporations, with limitless available cash-flow are free to buy all mining rights, drilling rights, crops, timber, fishing, salt, livestock, etc. in the end, these new member countries own nothing and are possibly not even allowed even to regulate these foreign entities' actions, not even to protect their own environment. in the documentary the corporation there is a chapter which deals with a us corporation's ownership of water rights in bolivia. this corporation, get this, actually owned a river. what this meant was that not only did they own the water in the river, but it's tributaries and the rain that came from the sky that ended up in the tributaries. it was now illegal to drink or use any water - the water that they depended on for millennia, because it was now all owned by a corporation. this isn't science fiction, this is reality. this is also why a socialist is now the leader of bolivia, you can only put up with bullshit for so long.
oil is the world's most important commodity. is also one of the most lucrative. when you open drilling rights to corporations such as shell oil or chevron or whatever, you lose out on the vast majority of wealth that comes from this resource that happens to reside under your property. chavez is the first one to grow some balls and challenge this.
there is a reason why he can get away with this now and wouldn't have been able to 30 years ago. 30 years ago, the united states had one specific focus - to defeat the communist threat and it's repective non-free-market ideologies - especially when that threat appeared in what it considered it's own backyard - latin america. the us was actively involved in the insurgency against marxist regimes all over latin america and was complicit in the removal of peru's democratically elected marxist leader and subsequent slaughter of it's populace by pinochet. as the left has shifted it's focus, the united states has changed it's perceived enemies. the current enemies of the united states are china and al-qaeda. hugo chavez happened because the spectre of communism no longer exists, allowing him to slip in under the radar. he would have been removed and/or there would be a contra-esque insurgency against him if this was 1982. while the united states slept, he took control of one of world's greatest oil-producing countries and got away with it.
also, a reason why this could happen now is that the united states and europe are no longer the only consumers of massive amounts of oil. there are new players on the field in the form of china and india. even if the united states put an embargo on venezuelan oil chavez has other options. if that did ever happen, he could easily sell it to one of bush's competitors at a lower price out of spite, as he's been know to do. he doesn't need the us as much as the us needs him.
there is a lot of talk that the available output of saudi arabian and north sea oilfields are on the decline, thus increasing the importance of other sources of oil. according to capitalist economics, this means that the less oil there is, the price of available oil goes up. we haven't hit hurricane season yet and already oil is at $68 per barrel - yet more good news for chavez, more tools for his revolution.
his ideas are catching on in south america and the united states' only response has been to send bush to brazil to tout the benefits of bio-fuels(funny that he can't even do that here) and give a little extra aid to a few countries down there. that's pretty pathetic. argentina is the latest to use his inspiration and they are benefitting greatly. it has decided to ignore the world bank's "advice" on how to run it's economy. "advice" that at one point brought the country to it's knees. now the economy is apparently healthier and growing faster than the united states'.
it will be interesting to see if his ideas spread to places like nigeria or elsewhere.
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