What do you think of Chávez?

[JPSartre12]

Comrades,

I've been rather MIA recently, as university has been underway again for the past month and a half or so and the course work is really adding up. I'm doing my best to come back, though, so that I can stay up to date on all the most recent revleft discussions ;)

I have several Latino/Hispanic friends that follow Central and Southern American politics much, much closer than I do. I vaguely followed Chávez's re-election campaign in Venezuela and I like the majority of the work that he has done, but I can't say that I'm well-versed enough in his policies to make an accurate judgement of him. My friends adore him. What's are you opinions on him?

[Crimson Commissar]

I'm quite fond of him in some way, even if I don't think his actions are anywhere near radical enough for what Latin America, and the world, needs right now.

I'd describe him as a moderate Democratic Socialist. Not far right enough to be labeled under any Capitalist ideology, but definitely not far left enough to be called Revolutionary in any fashion. Still, I think he's laid a good groundwork for the further development of left-wing ideas in Venezuela, and it's always possible for them to delve further into the red side from there, especially with their close co-operation with Cuba and growing hatred of the US.

[Ostrinski]

Presides over a capitalist state after what, 12 years?

What do?

[Let's Get Free]

I like him. I don't think he'll be able to magically bring about socialism with his laws or constitutional changes, as some people seem to think. But some of the infrastructure being created in terms of popular self-organization, missions, workers' control and so on, could be part of the material infrastructure for socialism were it to be achieved. The popular classes, centrally the working class, would have to take hold of these forms of popular power, invest legitimacy in them, and use them to confront the power of the bourgeoisie, including the power of the bourgeoisie that is politically concentrated in the form of the capitalist state itself. The local planning councils would have to assert their authority over the local governments and mayors. They would have to expand these institutions in terms of their social basis. There would have to be a decisive confrontation with the concentrated political power of the bourgeoisie in terms of the very form of the capitalist state. It couldn't be a drawn out gradual process; it would have to be a sharp break based on a popular offensive.

[Art Vandelay]

I guess he's alright if you like bourgeois politicians..

[Ostrinski]

On the other hand, they're probably doing the best that can be done right now within the confines of the country without running it into the ground. I'm sure the Venezuelan leadership understands that previous attempts at building socialism within a small area have been futile.

[Conflict]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

[Ostrinski]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled VenezuelaDamn, then he hasn't done a very good job. The banks remain un-nationalized and there are plenty of political parties that run against him.

Step it up Hugo!

[Conscript]

Chavez is the greatest socialist revolutionary in the 21st century and a shining example to all communists.

[Althusser]

I don't blame Chavez for not organizing some all out revolution... he'd be killed immediately, and we'd have some neo-liberal fuck running the country, or some fascist Pinochet situation. The US and the ruling elite of Venezuela tried to oust him in 2002 for the social democratic reforms he campaigned on. What would happen if he did something to actually threaten the Venezuelan elite's oil profits?

Chavez has my blessing.

[Ostrinski]

tkf_2pc2Wgk

[Geiseric]

I don't blame Chavez for not organizing some all out revolution... he'd be killed immediately, and we'd have some neo-liberal fuck running the country, or some fascist Pinochet situation. The US and the ruling elite of Venezuela tried to oust him in 2002 for the social democratic reforms he campaigned on. What would happen if he did something to actually threaten the Venezuelan elite's oil profits?

Chavez has my blessing.
I'd say it's the proletariat's fault, through struggle, that these reforms were put in effect by Chavez. You're advocating great men theory by saying that it's all his genious that is the thing driving the Venezuelan economy.

[#FF0000]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

Yo the things ex-pats say are supposed to be taken with a huge boulder of salt, dude.

[RedHal]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

lol he didn't even imprison the coup leaders that wanted him dead

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I sense much sarcasm in this thread. I'd need the intelligence of someone as brilliant as Hugo Chavez just to pick it apart.

Seriously though, he gets a lot of negative media that he truly doesn't deserve. Like that shit above about him 'taking over the banks' (which isn't true). After the 2007 credit crunch, the UK state owned controlling shares in Northern Rock for three years. Yet which one is characterised as necessary to help people and which one as a dictator ensuring he has control over money?

He's still a slimy populist working within a bourgeois capitalist framework but he's done huge things for the poor in his country. There's little wonder why he keeps getting elected.

[#FF0000]

He's still a slimy populist working within a bourgeois capitalist framework but he's done huge things for the poor in his country. There's little wonder why he keeps getting elected.

Yeah this is pretty much spot on actually.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Presides over a capitalist state after what, 12 years?

What do?

To be fair he openly ruled as a "soft capitalist" for the first of those years. Thats not an excuse but its important to remember that at first his government was no more socialist than the PT in Brazil. It wasnt until the coup that the real talk of "socialism" began. Not that its an excuse, but it puts things in some context.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

Did you ask your friend his class position? Because if he is rich and he hates Chavez then that is not proof of Chavez's tyranny, but proof of his socialism.

After all, Capitalism is hell on earth for the poor and the point of socialism is not alleviate the suffering of the entire people, but to alleviate the suffering of the working class without taking the upper class into consideration. If the capitalist state is fascistic to the poor, then the socialist state ought to treat the rich in a similar manner.

[Pravda]

Chavez has nothing in common with us communists, politically.

But i guess he seems pretty great in comparison to every other bourgeois politicians in the world, and i would maybe even vote for him.

[redstarradical]

I mean, he's better than Obama in many ways and I'd choose him if forced to make a choice. But neither are really that great, and Chavez is more of a patron than a revolutionary.

[fdfd]

At the very least he provides hope for the posibility of real socialist alternative among people in his country and worldwide. I mean, if you can take some of he power from the hands of the elite, why not go further?

[The CPSU Chairman]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

Yeah, he's such a tyrant that most of the media outlets involved in the coup attempt in 2002 continue to broadcast, and all the people involved in the coup attempt are still free today and some remain active in the right-wing opposition, freely operating inside Venezuela while openly taking CIA money. Oooh, what a tyrannical dictatorship. Show me another country on Earth that wouldn't even bother imprisoning coup leaders or shutting down media outlets that openly participated in a coup attempt. Venezuela's problem isn't that it has too little freedom of opposition; it's that it has too MUCH freedom of opposition.

And I don't know what you're doing on a site like Revleft if you believe in private oil companies and banks anyway.

Oh, and lol at "fled" Venezuela. People come and go through Venezuela's borders and airports all the time. It is not a closed state. I guess if your friend's definition of "fled" is "legally purchasing a plane ticket and passport and legally getting on an airplane which then proceeds to legally depart Venezuela while nobody gives a shit", then yeah, he "fled" lol.

Expats say all kinds of crap, especially rich right-wing expats who, in all likelihood, are butthurt over losing their power and influence to a hugely popular elected government that's finally representing the needs of the majority rather than a handful of elites. Cuba's old mafia gangsters, military thugs and capitalist fat cats have so many ridiculous myths about Fidel Castro, you'd think he molests kittens and drives around randomly shooting at schoolchildren as part of his daily routine. Right-wingers have to invent laughably absurd myths about socialists because it's the only way to make the socialists look even worse than all the horrible shit right-wingers have done in countries like Cuba and Venezuela for centuries. The more butthurt right-wingers "flee" Venezuela and start making up lies about Chavez, the more I like him.

[LiberationTheologist]

Chavez is a very thoughtful and ethically sound person of good morals. If you listen to his answers to questions when he is given time you will come to realize this. His actions are also consistent with his thoughts.

Here is one example, go to tv.globalresearch.ca search for - Chavez : La crise syrienne est planifiée et provoquée de l'extérieur. It has Spanish audio with French subtitles.

[hetz]

As far as bourgeois politicians go, he's the best of them.

[freethinker]

It is over harsh to label him as a "bourgeois" politician. There are mistakes he and his party have madeBut he is a hero to me. Just Imagine if the so called coalition for Democratic Unity had won the day, he would have opened the flood gates to western oil immediately! Simply put in my opinion the leftists that openly supported Radonski have no merit. Look I don't mean to be a social democrat here but it is such a clear choice. Someone who has fought poverty established education and medical services and praises the works of Marx or a typical contemporary "center righitst"

There is at least a semi revolutionary path and a path of exploitation take your pick

[Sea]

He kinda looks like a cabbage patch teddy bear when he smiles (or is it just me?) so I'd give him a hug.

I think that also kinda sums up how serious of a revolutionary he's proven himself to be. He is a social-democrat in practice.

[blake 3:17]

I fully support Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, I remember dismissing Chavez as a simple nationalist populist, while putting lots of hope into Lula's PT in Brazil.

Well, it turned out the other way -- Chavista movement has made tremendous gains in terms of social equity, putting limits on foreign control, and building an alternative in the Americas.

ALBA is an important step towards socialist internationalism : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivarian_Alliance_for_the_Americas

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

He may not measure up to your required level of radicalism, but Chavez's patronage is the only way Cuba's staying unaligned with the U.S (although they're probably going the way of Vietnam no matter what)

edit: He also is purposefully letting domestic security get out of hand in order to solidify his control.

[#FF0000]

edit: He also is purposefully letting domestic security get out of hand in order to solidify his control.

Are you referring to the skyrocketing violent crime rates in Venezuela these days? Do you have a source or anything to back that up? I'm not really challenging you here -- I just sort of figured that the surge in violent crime in tandem with the rise in narcotics turning up signified a shifting front in the drug war.

[Anarchocommunaltoad]

Are you referring to the skyrocketing violent crime rates in Venezuela these days? Do you have a source or anything to back that up? I'm not really challenging you here -- I just sort of figured that the surge in violent crime in tandem with the rise in narcotics turning up signified a shifting front in the drug war.

It's kind of a gut feeling.

[Let's Get Free]

I love Chavez! :wub:

[YugoslavSocialist]

Venezuelan Hero and a Great Third Camp Socialist.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The sort of people who praise Chavez are the sort of people who "uphold" anything with a red flag as genuinely emancipatory. The project of insuring the free and full development of human beings can only begin after the destruction of civil society as it has so far existed, and that begins with the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus. Socialism is not social-democracy or left-nationalism. It is the world held in common, and that can't be established using existing bourgeois states for two reasons:
1. The proletariat, the only class with the potential to end bourgeois society, has no meaningful, independent economic agency outside of class warfare and therefore can never have any meaningful, independent political power within the bourgeois states the way some young national bourgeoisies made use of aristocratic state apparatuses.
2. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a fundamentally different thing than other Class Dictatorships. Throughout the history of class society, states, monopolies on the perceived legitimate use of violence and coercion as means of reconciling conflict, arose out of necessity from conflicting economic interests to conserve the existing economic order. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a means with which we abolish ourselves as a class and construct a societal superstructure without a state. It does not conserve the economic order it exists in, it destroys it. It is not a state in the same sense as the existing states.
So yea, the situation in Venezuela is not a revolutionary one and if you support Chavez don't call yourself a socialist.

[Fourth Internationalist]

He's a step in the right (or, should I say, left) direction.

[Yuppie Grinder]

He's a step in the right (or, should I say, left) direction.

To hell with the left.

[Paul Pott]

Chavez is a reformist, populist politician. His presidency is bourgeois democratic and anti-imperialist. His basis in the ruling class is the state capitalist sector of the oil industry, and because the ruling "boliburguesia" is so narrow, it stays in power through open ended concessions to the masses through the country's oil wealth, allowing and encouraging popular forms of genuinely proletarian organization to break the hegemony of the traditional comprador elite, even though that elite still controls almost all of the major media.

Venezuela is not socialist nor can it become socialist under present conditions, but the movement Chavez has unleashed has potential, or more precisely, what it could become has potential, because the ruling class has little grip on the working class militancy that supports Chavez, and it will inevitably find itself fighting in defense of very real working class gains in case of coup and/or imperialist intervention.

Any would-be Venezuelan Pinochet will walk into a quagmire of total resistance, and swaths of the army will stay loyal to the PSUV.

[Art Vandelay]

He's the head of a bourgeois state, in all honesty I don't think much about him (as in he doesn't cross my mind too much, in the same way Raul Castro doesn't cross my mind too much). The proletarian revolution will undoubtedly contain his overthrow.

[Yuppie Grinder]

He's the head of a bourgeois state, in all honesty I don't think much about him (as in he doesn't cross my mind too much, in the same way Raul Castro doesn't cross my mind too much). The proletarian revolution will undoubtedly contain his overthrow.

He'll be dead long before that ever happens. He's not going to be around 10 years from now.

[Art Vandelay]

He'll be dead long before that ever happens. He's not going to be around 10 years from now.

That's true actually. I kinda forgot about all of his medical issues. I wouldn't ever wish someone to succumb to cancer, so in all honesty I hope that situation improves for him. But you surely won't find me shedding any tears, like it appears some people here will be. He's nothing but a social democrat spouting revolutionary rhetoric, whose draped in a red flag.

[sixdollarchampagne]

Kudos to GourmetPez for the following: "The project of insuring the free and full development of human beings can only begin after the destruction of civil society as it has so far existed, and that begins with the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus. Socialism is not social-democracy or left-nationalism. It is the world held in common, and that can't be established using existing bourgeois states ..."

* * *

For me, the salient fact is that *in 14 years* Chavez never found the time to sign a decree nationalizing the means of production, or to make a speech to Venezuelan workers, encouraging them to take over the enterprises they worked at and institute workers' control, in connection with nationalization.

I think it is very fair to say that Chávez, when he was active, was all sizzle and no steak. There is no socialist reconstruction of society possible *this side* of/without the destruction of the bourgeois state, at the hands of class-conscious workers, and Chávez was confronted with nearly a decade and a half of exceptionally favorable circumstances and just about incredible opportunities to make fundamental changes in Venezuela, with overwhelming popular support, and he failed to do so. And now, with Maduro, those possibilities are evaporating.

Given that Chávez sold roughly 1 million barrels of oil daily to the US government, for years, I certainly think he does not qualify as any kind of anti-imperialist; on the contrary, by selling all that oil to the superpower in the north, Chávez demonstrated by his actions that he is a reliable friend of US power in the world.

[Homo Songun]

For me, the salient fact is that *in 14 years* Chavez never found the time to sign a decree nationalizing the means of production,See AntiNihilisT's excellent contribution above.


or to make a speech to Venezuelan workers, encouraging them to take over the enterprises they worked at and institute workers' control.I suspect this is patent nonsense. I can't be arsed to look up any speeches where he does do this, so this is just registering my skepticism at your claim, rather than going through the trouble of refuting it.


I think it is very fair to say that Chávez, when he was active, was all sizzle and no steak. lol


There is no socialist reconstruction of society possible *this side* of/without the destruction of the bourgeois state, at the hands of class-conscious workers,true


and Chávez was confronted with nearly a decade and a half of exceptionally favorable circumstances and just about incredible opportunities to make fundamental changes in Venezuela, with overwhelming popular support, and he failed to do so. And now, with Maduro, those possibilities are evaporating.

Given that Chávez sold roughly 1 million barrels of oil daily to the US government, for years, I certainly think he does not qualify as any kind of anti-imperialist; on the contrary, by selling all that oil to the superpower in the north, Chávez demonstrated by his actions that he is a reliable friend of US power in the world.See, this is the problem with your average revleft poster. They look a gift horse in the mouth and harumph about it being no Seabiscuit.

[Homo Songun]

What does it mean that for the duration of Chavez's administration, a third to just under a half of all US oil imports are from Venezuela? What does this say about the security of the US' position as the sole superpower in the world today?

[La Guaneña]

I think I must point something out, seeing that most posters here are from Europe or North America.

The CIA has never thought twice before setting up their own game in Latin America in the past, and that shit hurt. Central and South America have been a main target of the USA imperialist policies for many years, with puppet governments, coups, torture and other nice things.

Chavez policies, to me, resemble the populist governments overthrown by the USA using the militaries in the 60's and 70's. I do not like Chavez' government for bringing socialism in Venezuela, but for acting smart and making it, along with Bolivia and Ecuador strongholds against american agression. If I were the CIA, I'd think twice about stirring shit up there.

I now sleep a lot better knowing that any Pin8 or other Lead Years stuff is going to be anwered by a huge part of the Army and the militias.

Chavez ain't no champion of the proletariat, but to understand why most venezuelans, bolivians and equatorians look kindly at him, you have to look back some 40 years to Allende, Jango and others.

[La Guaneña]

For me, the salient fact is that *in 14 years* Chavez never found the time to sign a decree nationalizing the means of production, or to make a speech to Venezuelan workers, encouraging them to take over the enterprises they worked at and institute workers' control.

I think it is very fair to say that Chávez, when he was active, was all sizzle and no steak. There is no socialist reconstruction of society possible *this side* of/without the destruction of the bourgeois state, at the hands of class-conscious workers, and Chávez was confronted with nearly a decade and a half of exceptionally favorable circumstances and just about incredible opportunities to make fundamental changes in Venezuela, with overwhelming popular support, and he failed to do so. And now, with Maduro, those possibilities are evaporating.

I agree with this, but I think that it was not Chavez who made the changes, but it was the popular pressure in the first place. If you look back, he started slow as hell.


Given that Chávez sold roughly 1 million barrels of oil daily to the US government, for years, I certainly think he does not qualify as any kind of anti-imperialist; on the contrary, by selling all that oil to the superpower in the north, Chávez demonstrated by his actions that he is a reliable friend of US power in the world.

"Amigos, amigos, negócios à parte." Friends are friends, business is something else. Venezuela needs to sell the oil, or Chavez will be out of office in a week and Venezuela will be a big pile of smoking nothing.

[Pelarys]

Given that Chávez sold roughly 1 million barrels of oil daily to the US government, for years, I certainly think he does not qualify as any kind of anti-imperialist; on the contrary, by selling all that oil to the superpower in the north, Chávez demonstrated by his actions that he is a reliable friend of US power in the world.


Huh what do you want him to do exactly? If he refused to sell it to the USA it wouldn't be long before the CIA fuck things up and bring a more "cooperative" person in charge. Being a socialist is one thing, being reckless is another.

[Art Vandelay]

Huh what do you want him to do exactly? If he refused to sell it to the USA it wouldn't be long before the CIA fuck things up and bring a more "cooperative" person in charge. Being a socialist is one thing, being reckless is another.

The point is to see him for what he is and the class interests he represents.

[sixdollarchampagne]

Comrade Chavez is spearheading the Bolivarian Revolution and delivering real change right now for the Venezuelan people, .... we must pick a real side to support. Hugo Chavez and his government are the only progressive and anti-imperialist force in Venezuela today, and thus the only side we can support.

Trotsky held that being a revolutionary meant, among other things, the ability to look reality in the eye. So, with all due respect, it is extremely likely that Chávez will soon leave Venezuela much as he found it, in terms of fundamentals and objective reality, that is, a bourgeois republic with a market economy. All of which means that no revolution has taken place during the 14 years of chavista rule.

Furthermore, the mistake involved in saying, "we must pick a real side to support" is that it ignores the fact that no bourgeois party and certainly no bourgeois militarist politician, like Chávez, is going to hand emancipation to working people. We have to win our emancipation ourselves, through implacable struggle against every representative of the bourgeoisie, including Chávez and all the other populist b.s.-experts.

[Art Vandelay]

Comrade Chavez is spearheading the Bolivarian Revolution and delivering real change right now for the Venezuelan people, whilst much of the pseudo-Left keeps their thumbs firmly jammed up their behinds all the while magically pledging their allegiance to "the working class". This is a dire position, and we must pick a real side to support. Hugo Chavez and his government are the only progressive and anti-imperialist force in Venezuela today, and thus the only side we can support.

Why are you so fond of the head of a bourgeois state? Do you have any conception of what a revolution is?

[Luís Henrique]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

In which case you will certainly be able to name the banks that were taken over, the people whose homes were taken, the people who were imprisoned, and the people who were killed.

As for the oil companyes, they were "taken over" waaaay before Chávez. I'm not sure that there were ever private oil companies in Venezuela even.

But your friend might explain it, perhaps?

Luís Henrique

[Art Vandelay]

Supporters of Chavez are fundamentally reformists; the idea that the state can be captured democratically and socialism slowly built, without the dismantling of the bourgeois state.

[Paul Pott]

He has taken over the oil companies, the bank. He has taken people's homes, imprisoned and killed people that dare oppose him.
Source(s):

A friend that fled Venezuela

Then your friend must either be a member of the FARC or a Hoxhaist.

(Chavez, early in his career, led a counter-insurgency against a Hoxhaist guerrilla group).


Red Flag Party (in Spanish: Partido Bandera Roja) is a communist party in Venezuela. It was formed in 1970 by anti-revisionist members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR). The Red Flag Party initially supported the ideology of Enver Hoxha and the Albanian Party of Labour following the Sino-Albanian split, though in later years it has gravitated back towards Maoism.

In the 1970s up until the 1990s it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the government. A young Hugo Chavez's first assignment in the Army was as commander of a communications platoon attached to a counter-insurgency force—the Manuel Cedeño Mountain Infantry Battalion, headquartered in Barinas and Cumaná. In 1976, under the US controlled presidency of Carlos Andres Perez, it was tasked with suppressing the guerrilla insurgency staged by the Party. This was common procedure for Latin American regimes, military or democratic, which ceded to US pressure to crush any and all anti-imperialist insurgencies.

[Overture]

Chavez ain't no champion of the proletariat,

Chavez is the best friend the Venezuelan working class and Indigenous have ever had in their entire history as a nation-state. If you don't think this is the case, wait until Maduro or worse, Cabello, come into power after Chavez's inevitable death.
I swear the lot of you are completely idealistic in your understanding of politics. And just so that we're clear, that's nothing to celebrate.

[TheRedAnarchist23]

I despise any person who has the power to rule a nation. It does not matter wether they are in the communist party, the democratic party, or any other party, they are to be hated, for they are enforcers of the system we are trying to eliminate.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

A bourgeois politician in a red shirt who reminds me of Arthur without the glasses.

[B5C]

He is bringing Venezuela to the right direction. He may not be the perfect revolutionary for our cause, but we have to start some where. He brought the country back from the crushing foot of Neo-Liberalism and onward to a Socialist ideal.

I really hope his health gets better and the people still give his support.

BTW: Has anybody read Richard Gott's "Huge Chavez and Bolivarian Revolution?" A month a go I bought it at Goodwill for a buck. I never picked it up yet. Still trying to finish Asimov's "Prelude to Foundation."

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41pKed4D4AL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[Paul Pott]

Chavez is the best friend the Venezuelan working class and Indigenous have ever had in their entire history as a nation-state. If you don't think this is the case, wait until Maduro or worse, Cabello, come into power after Chavez's inevitable death.
I swear the lot of you are completely idealistic in your understanding of politics. And just so that we're clear, that's nothing to celebrate.

Cabello is a suspicious figure, for sure, but what's wrong with Maduro?

[Art Vandelay]

Its really disheartening seeing so many Chavez supporters on this forum.

[La Guaneña]

Chavez is the best friend the Venezuelan working class and Indigenous have ever had in their entire history as a nation-state. If you don't think this is the case, wait until Maduro or worse, Cabello, come into power after Chavez's inevitable death.
I swear the lot of you are completely idealistic in your understanding of politics. And just so that we're clear, that's nothing to celebrate.

Right now Chavez is indeed keeping Venezuela and a great part of Latin America out of the foot of imperialism and neo liberalism.

I also understand the weight of his influence toward the poor and indigenous people here. I support his government for both reasons, but not closing my eyes to the fact that the Venezuelan bourgeoise and the international bourgeoise are still the ruling class in South America and Venezuela, and seeing the limitation of reforms inside capitalist structure.

Chavez is a progressive force, but is still limited by many factors.

[Ismail]

Chávez is a bourgeois nationalist. Bourgeois nationalists can be nice people, they can undertake progressive actions of a democratic character, and they can certainly be an irritant to some (or, depending on very specific circumstances, even all) imperialist countries, but they cannot be socialists and tailing them can only lead to a dead-end and defeat for the working-class.

The man himself seems to be rather opportunistic and "flexible" with his ideology, a clear characteristic of "radical" bourgeois nationalists. In the 90's he alternated between forthrightly saying he wasn't a socialist and praising Cuba and the scientific tenets of Marxism. After he came into the office he spoke to Tariq Ali and said that the world was not in an age of proletarian revolutions on one hand, and spoke of creating a "Fifth International" to Trot parties on the other. He uses Maoist-esque rhetoric on one occasion and on another stresses the "contributions" the middle-class (petty-bourgeoisie) are making to "socialism," which he declares is being achieved in Venezuela. Also he's religious, which is another strike against him.

So, as in all other cases, what is needed is not tailing a bourgeois nationalist, but a party of the proletariat which will expose the demagoguery and limitations of bourgeois democracy and stress the necessity for proletarian revolution, and that the PSUV is fundamentally opposed to such a revolution.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

So, as in all other cases, what is needed is not tailing a bourgeois nationalist, but a party of the proletariat

You don't say!... However, the fact that millions of workers in Venezuela are armed and believe they are the armed defenders of a "Socialist" Revolution is quite significant. Now that the reformists have won the election again, if a crisis of economic or political nature (read: military, right wing coup) happens in the next five years, there will exist an armed mass of working people who merely need to be guided by a revolutionary Marxist party to establishing the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Interesting to me at least..