The Contribution of Hugo Chávez to an Understanding of Post-Neoliberalism

Broadening and Improving Neoliberalism

Ever since the 1998 campaign in which an anti-neoliberal but moderately neostructuralist and participatory agenda was favored by candidate Hugo Chávez, Chávez made a clear effort in rhetoric and politics to correct and tame “savage neoliberalism.” Responding to the consequences of globalization, Chávez explained, would require “profound changes” in the “corporate-economic world”’ such as a shift toward “the possibility of a new capitalism with a social and environmental sensibility” (Chávez, 2005). Yet, the first Chávez government (1999–2000) did not offer a political economic plan consistent with its radical political discourse. Instead, it was defined more by what it opposed (American imperialism and savage neoliberalism) than by a positive agenda (Gott, 2008: 1356).

Buxton (2003) argues that Chávez’s policies were aimed primarily at challenging the party-centric political system of the Punto Fijo period (beginning with the elite-pact-organized first democratic government in 1958). Rather than conforming to a radical political economy agenda, she argues, the new administration was largely responding to the organized resistance to the new government of the main actors of puntofijismo (political actors, business, and organized labor). Indeed, even in his inaugural speech Chávez (1999) explained, “Our project is not statist. Neither is it extreme neoliberalism. No, we are looking for an intermediate point, as much state as is necessary and as much market as is possible.” Building on this vision, Chávez argued for a mixed economic model that emphasized state activity in order to restore the “balance” between state and market, particularly in strategic state sectors where he felt neoliberal restructuring had gone too far (oil, mining, heavy natural resources industry, and military high technology).

The national economic and social development plan for 2001–2007, launched as political tensions were intensifying, offered a first break from the past but was neither purely neoliberal nor clearly anti-neoliberal (PDESN, 2001). Rather, it could easily be read as a Polanyian double movement correcting the perceived excesses of neoliberalism (Silva, 2009). It denounced the structural problems of the past, especially the rentist character of the economy, and proposed developing a more productive and export-oriented one. This program involved leveraging macroeconomic stability and fiscal prudence to procure foreign and national investment that would diversify economic production and reintegrate the country into the global economy (PDESN, 2001: 16–17). The state would maintain its right to protect sectors of national industry and agriculture in the event that they faced unfair competition and preserve its presence in the strategic sectors of the economy (13) but had to become more efficient and productive (17). Despite calls for increased production and efficiency, the plan emphasized social justice. The basic outline was consistent with the plans promoted by the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean for a “balance between the State and the market established by Latin American neostructuralism . . . ‘a strategy of free market aided by the government’” (Sunkel, 1993: 394).

Increased state spending was one of the more visible consequences of this approach. Social spending increased as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) from 11.34 percent in 1998 to 16.7 percent in 2001 and 18.1 percent in 2004. The bulk of this increase was in public education and health, which at their nadir in 1996 received 2.9 percent and 1.5 percent of public investment, respectively, increasing to 6 percent and 3.2 percent by 2004. The increase in social spending was juxtaposed with a diminished priority on balancing fiscal accounts, which were in deficit from 1999 until 2004 (ranging from −1.7 percent to −4.4 percent of GDP). Underlying the increase in public spending were two concerns: improving the conditions of Chávez’s poor base and recovering the state’s capacity to deliver welfare to its citizens. Neither of these goals was particularly revolutionary, and in many ways they represented a continuation of the social democratic and neostructural approaches that were typical of Venezuelan politics for much of the second half of the twentieth century.

As did many others in the region, Chávez understood political and economic marginality as being connected, and he felt that the state played a critical role in inclusion and incorporation. Although the Chávez governments became more radical over time (Buxton, 2009; Ellner, 2008), neostructural approaches persisted, among them his efforts to formalize the informal market in 2007. The informal street vendors (buhoneros), unrepresented by Punto Fijo politics, were natural Chávez supporters. While neoliberals saw informal-sector workers as proof of the inefficiency of bloated states, Chávez’s response was typical of neostructural and social democratic efforts to improve neoliberal systems. The 2001 development plan discussed the need to incorporate the informal sectors into the formal sector to reduce transaction costs while offering low tax rates and professional training to facilitate informal-sector-worker compliance (PDESN, 2001: 71). By 2007 Chávez, through an executive decree pronounced on his weekly television show, Aló Presidente, sought to remove street vendors from key intersections and install them in shopping mall complexes where they would be able to sell their wares more formally. The idea was to use the state to include groups that were seen as “excluded.” This plan was by no means novel, and elements of formalization had been articulated by previous politicians and governments. Setting aside the reasons for street vendors’ resistance in 2007, what is relevant here is that the approach of the Chávez government was consistent with efforts to fill in the gaps of neoliberalism. This was not an anti-neoliberal strategy. Rather, Chávez was trying to redeem capitalism by making it more inclusive. The problem was not capitalism as much as informality, which in this case was to be resolved by capitalism moderated by state intervention.

The inclusion of the informal vendors in the formal sector underpinned another trend that persisted during the Chávez era: consumerism. The revolutionary rhetoric of a society based on values of social inclusion, solidarity, and equality maintained a somewhat uneasy relation with an economy based on imports and commerce in which market relations prevailed. By the time that Chávez decided to include street vendors in the formal sector, trade and consumption had been increasing significantly for many consecutive years; private final consumption expenditure reached a historic high in 2008 (BCV, 2011: 129), indicating that more Venezuelans (and especially the poor) had access to goods but at the same time the economy was becoming less productive and more dependent on oil rent for imports. In this context the concern of the state was to incorporate the street vendors into the formal sector by giving them incentives to continue operating in the commercial sector as was outlined in the development plan.

Going beyond Neoliberalism

As Grugel and Riggirozzi (2012) suggest, what is most characteristic of post-neoliberalism is a form of citizenship that aims to go beyond neoliberalism’s emphasis on “social participation” (Ellner, 2012). Perhaps most representative of these efforts is the communal council, which first appeared in public life in 2002 as local forms of sociopolitical organization and became part of national public administration by decree in April of 2006. The decree tied the communal councils to the presidency but was not clear about their relations to other components of the national and municipal administration.

Although there had been a number of attempts both before and under the Chávez governments to “democratize democracy” through greater participation (Goldfrank, 2011), the communal councils were considered by Chávez and others as a deliberate effort to reconfigure the geography of power in a way that would empower a “protagonistic” democracy. ³ A group of 150-400 families in urban areas (20 in rural and 10 for Indigenous groups) needed to function as councils—filling out paperwork, applying for recognition, setting up boards, and holding elections—before they could be recognized and become eligible to receive state funding. The councils were to decide on, design, and execute projects related to the community’s organization and connect the community with the central government’s social policies (such as overseeing the local distribution of goods to families, the creation of educational and sport facilities, and the management of water and sewage). Their primary goal was to make citizens protagonists of their lives by giving them the right and the mechanisms to participate directly in local decision making and action in a very broadly conceived sphere of political and social life. However, their participatory nature often created tensions with governmental organizations; the logic of organization between state’s representative institutions and hierarchical bureaucracy was in clear contrast with the democratic, participatory, and horizontal logic of the councils.

The failed constitutional reform of 2007 had proposed giving “popular power” constitutional equivalency to the municipal, state, and national governments: “The people are the depositories of sovereignty and exercise it directly via popular power. This is not born of suffrage or any election but of the condition of the human groups that are organized as the base of the population.” Popular power was to be organized and expressed via various different local, social, and working councils (Wilpert, 2007). Some scholars argued that this was consistent with the organization of power in the Paris Commune and Marxist visions of direct democracy (Muhr, 2012).

Although more radical groups within Chavismo (which Ellner [2012] associates with anarchism) see the communal councils as spaces of authentic “constituent power,” which is contrasted with the power of the community council, this is partially the result of central government transfers of money and recognition (see Azzellini, 2010; Ciccariello-Maher, 2013). The idea is for citizenship to be broadened (by extension into previously depoliticized spaces) and deepened (as more citizens directly participate in actions that impact their lives). The state is to be used to spur such citizenship, but participation is expected to be external to the state and the elected administration.

The intention here is not to romanticize the communal councils or to suggest that they consistently meet their goals (see García-Guadilla, 2007). Rather, it is only to highlight that they were designed primarily to build a robust form of local citizenship. They do not promote an improvement or extension of neoliberal citizenship but aim at its replacement with a more vigorous form characterized by a broad sense of the political, deep local participation, and state intervention—in other words, a form of citizenship that goes beyond neoliberalism.

New Political Ontologies

Critics and supporters alike agree that during the presidencies of Hugo Chávez the practice and experience of politics changed significantly. This has often been interpreted in terms of possible regime change (see Corrales and Penfold, 2011; McCoy and Myers, 2004), but it may be more fruitful to think of it in terms of a change in citizenship. Indeed, “one of the most important legacies of Chávez may be that the new form of citizenship he promotes shapes how citizenship is understood within Venezuela and other countries in the decades to come” (Spanakos, 2008: 522). The protagonistic citizenship he envisioned was repeatedly expressed as a response to the neoliberal citizenship of the Fourth Republic. ⁴ Whereas neoliberal citizenship has been characterized by tendencies to see citizenship in terms of voluntarism, political but not economic/social rights, and individualism and consumption (see Lechner, 2007; Yashar, 2007), under Chávez both opposition and supporters began to think of citizenship differently. This was not simply a matter of improving neoliberalism or replacing it with a more developmentalist, state-centered citizenship but a wholesale effort to see the citizen and politics in a new way.

As Fernandes (2010) notes, the Bolivarian project has always involved not just political and economic but also cultural components. Rather than simply a matter of facilitating inclusion for certain groups (Afro-Venezuelans, indigenous groups, women) it has been part of a broader effort to build a new citizenship. Chávez’s constant invocation of history “from the perspective of the social and popular movements,” a collection of struggles with protagonists explicitly identified as heroic, is illustrative of this (Rein, 2012: 295). The effort to include the struggle of previously marginal citizens in history gives a central normative role to street politics and the struggle against powerful interests. While this clearly serves as a means of encouraging sympathy among the underrepresented, it is part of a broader project to (re)politicize citizenship. Indeed, whether in mass marches in public squares or in constant discussion of politics, since Chávez’s first electoral victory in 1998 Venezuelans have thought of citizenship as an activity from which one could not withdraw. Citizenship necessitated making political choices—even if it was to be neither Chavista nor opposition—and had consequences that were not limited to the political realm narrowly construed.

The emphasis on activity relies on a fundamental reshaping of the prevailing notion of citizenship. Whereas an effort to deepen or correct neoliberal citizenship might be characterized by programs to complement market forces or to involve the state more directly in citizenship-enabling practices (such as improved law enforcement and the addition of ombudsmen), Chávez’s legacy is not limited to such ideas. It is more confrontational with than complementary to previous modes of citizenship. Between 1986 and 1998 public figures privileged technical expertise in public affairs, and between 1958 and 1994 (possibly 1998) decision making was primarily produced by and within parties and then communicated publicly. After 1999, political communication and decision making became more “public” in that they involved more people, more public places, and more popular language and reasoning. Of course, many decisions were top-down, but what was remarkable was that the “street,” the public plaza, and many other places were dominated by political discussion and organizing—that people normally alienated from politics felt that they had become agents (Spanakos, 2008).

In addition to the framing of politics largely by technically trained experts, neoliberal citizenship relied on rights that were invoked only when they were challenged. Under the assumption of universal applicability of legal status, neoliberal citizenship assumes that the state need only defend the rights of citizens, rights that are contained in constitutional and legal statutes. For Chávez, citizenship relied upon not only struggle but also regular invocations of the existence of rights by people who felt that their rights were constrained. Personal testimony of the way a previous government (and periodically a poorly managed Chavista agency or municipality) had abused such rights was a recurring theme in Aló Presidente and other pro-Bolivarian productions. Here citizenship involved not invoking rights when they were threatened but reminding the public of past violations of rights whose existence could not be guaranteed solely by constitutional decree. Remembering past restrictions on citizenship became fundamental to citizenship’s politicization. For all the comical portrayals of Aló Presidente, Chávez’s occupation of the airwaves on Sundays, his constant travels throughout the country, and the popular language he used made politics unavoidable. Respondents asked whether and how often they spoke of politics generally laughed before replying, “All the time” or “Is there anything else?”, this sense that politics is “all” or at least always present a decade and a half later was largely shared by those who supported and those who opposed Chávez as well as those who identified themselves as neither.

In that sense politics is not a vocation for some or a lifestyle chosen but part of life for everyone. One may decline to participate, militate, or even discuss, but one cannot avoid the participation, demonstrations, or discussions of others. As one teacher in Barquisimeto (quoted in Spanakos, 2008: 528) expressed it,

The process has affected the ordinary citizen. Never before has there been so much protagonism in the political process. Here the people were mute; they voted and went home. . . . Now you are not only an observer of politics, you are participating in politics. . . . Now [the people] think, “I am a protagonist in my own process.”

Members of the opposition expressed similar sentiments. Indeed, virtually all the subjects interviewed—regardless of political preference, education, class, or any other marker—responded that they talked about politics “all the time” or “daily.”

In addition to politics’s attaching itself to the way the Venezuelans not only practice citizenship but understand their lives, citizenship has taken on new spatial dimensions. Although the Chávez governments have been heavily critiqued for their vague desire to change the geography of power, for their efforts at decentralization, and for their relationship with institutions more broadly (see Corrales and Penfold, 2011; Goldfrank, 2011), the area of politics has changed in very visible ways. Caracas and other urban areas contain countless formally and informally commissioned political murals and graffiti. The citizen who walks through the city cannot avoid politicizing messages. Similarly, the missions set up offices that are designed to be spaces for both the community and the government, not simply neutral state institutions. During one event in which many governmental services were offered to residents in Petare, a government official interviewed at a Barrio Adentro mission said proudly, “Now the institutions are in the street” (quoted in Spanakos, 2008: 528). This commonly expressed refrain is representative of a new way of seeing the geography of the city, one in which the political and the state are present and the citizen has the right and the obligation to contribute to both. This is not an improved neoliberal citizen or simply a return to a more state-centric matrix but an effort (not without problems and contradictions, of course) to develop something new and distinct.

The Persistence of Neoliberal Thinking

Finally, post-neoliberalism coexists with politics and thought associated with neoliberalism. Fernandes (2010: 25) is especially keen in detecting this, examining the “complex dynamics of power and contestation as urban social movements clash with the instrumental rationalities of the post-neoliberal state” and finding a surprising presence of what she calls neoliberal governmentality in Bolivarian Venezuela. Indeed, her book identifies a recurring struggle between social movements, with their “place-based consciousness, historical memory, and oral narrative to justify claims over public space and access to resources,” and administrators “who deploy instrumental and qualitative approaches in their management of community-based programs and organizations” (233). That both supported Chávez, for Fernandes, was a sign not only of plurality within the movement but of the persistence of neoliberal rationality in governmental administration even when it was controlled by anti-neoliberal politicians. Although supporters write off administrative conservativism as a reactionary bureaucratic response of the “internal opposition” or of people not yet on board with twenty-first-century socialism, and critics see this as proof that beyond the smoke, mirrors, and rhetoric not much has changed, neoliberal governmentality is still important in Bolivarian Venezuela. This should not come as a surprise, given the “stickiness” of the institutional patterns that constrain otherwise apparently significant and transformative political developments (see Skocpol and Pierson, 2002; Thelen and Steinmo, 1992).

Early in his first administration, President Chávez surprised many observers by adopting a relatively moderate, if not careful, macroeconomic approach, retaining for a short period the finance minister appointed by the previous president, Rafael Caldera, Maritza Izaguirre. Although this was strategic behavior, moderating in the area of macroeconomics while posing a more radical political agenda (in the form of a constituent assembly and broad enabling powers), and the planned privatizations were eventually abandoned, it fit within neoliberal assumptions about policy constraints and tradeoffs in a tough moment for Venezuelan crude oil prices. Deputy Finance Minister Jesús Bermúdez (2002) demonstrated the acceptance of neoliberalism when there was “no alternative,” explaining:

We hope to control this [economy’s contraction] with a privatization and concessions plan that has already begun. PDVSA has started by offering gas concessions to investors. PDVSA will have to take a 51 percent share in the first concession, but in the following ones the private investors can take 100 percent shares, and this includes foreign companies, which are likely to be the main investors.

The declarations of Bermúdez (who was later accused of corruption) were representative neither of all supporters nor of all members of the government in 2002, but that is precisely the point. Within a broad post-neoliberal coalition, particularly in moments of crisis, actors inside the government returned to a neoliberal toolkit to resolve recurrent problems. Despite the president’s declaration of the death of neoliberalism, it survived in actors that occupied some important positions in his governments.

The high-profile spending on missions and other sociopolitically oriented projects did not truly take off until after the failed coup in 2002 and the oil strike in 2003 and also, critically, after petroleum prices (globally) had opened up spaces for policy autonomy (see Weyland, 2011). Despite the immediate damage to key supporters and challenges for redistribution, the Chávez government also oversaw devaluations of the bolivar at moments in which “there was no alternative,” an expression associated with neoliberal governmentality that presents the rationality of the speaker as the only one that is viable (see Panizza and Philip, 2013).

Whereas the constraints imposed by material conditions (say, petroleum prices) might be explained by something other than neoliberal administrative techniques, it is harder to argue this for political matters. One of the repeated demands of Chavismo has been for a more participatory democracy, and critics have found the government inconsistent, particularly over time, on this matter (see Goldfrank, 2011; López and Lander, 2011). Fernandes (2010) notes that while the Bolivarian governments have increased cultural funding, actively supported public and community media, recognized marginalized sectors of society, and critiqued neoliberalism (all elements of a broad post-neoliberal agenda), they continue to employ neoliberal governmentality even in the administration of anti-neoliberal programs. The community councils are seen as a fundamental space for the transformation of geographies of power and for establishing constituent power among the people, but they require government recognition, which means responding to logics that activists often consider bureaucratic, managerialist, and neoliberal.

For many of the people of the base who believe that movement politics are at the root of the Bolivarian Revolution (“We created Chávez,” in the words of one of Ciccariello-Maher’s [2013] informants), the idea of boards is antithetical to the more organic assemblies that characterize their politics. Indeed, long-term neighborhood-association activists often find the structure of community councils yet another top-down state form that limits their autonomy and democratic potential. Similarly, state agencies and officials often have predetermined views on issues that contradict the views of the communities, such as the case of cultural production during the Bolivarian Revolution (Fernandes, 2010: 144–148). In many cases, people see their decision-making processes as revolutionary, plastic, creative, and in constant confrontation with state agents who are arteriosclerotic, conservative, and neoliberal.

Fernandes discusses a typical case in which a middle-class government official met with community activists to discuss cultural production. Although the government view was that culture was locally produced by “the people,” the facilitator, having divided the activists into groups and heard the reports of each, framed their comments in a pre-packaged notion of cultural production. It was as though culture produced by the people were the result of a mandate from above rather than a response to activity from below. More troubling still was that recognition of the producers required meeting the requirements of the administration (a board of directors, etc). The irony of the organic production of revolutionary art’s being stymied by the same government that praises it is significant.

The concern about survivals of neoliberalism among political activists within Bolivarianism has been accentuated since the death of Chávez. Many activists at the base level fear that the post-Chávez PSUV and government leadership are moving toward greater centralization and institutionalization—that they are returning politics to the technically trained bureaucrats and elected officials. This means a decided movement against the creative and more free-flowing politics of the street (post-neoliberalism as ontological project), and this has important implications for the legitimacy that key support groups accord the government. In August of 2013, the candidates for the PSUV municipal elections were announced. Dario Azzellini (2013), a longtime follower of base politics in Venezuela, writes, “They were not elected by the bases. They were named by Maduro and his buddies in the PSUV. Nefarious practice. Serious mistake.” Considering that the PSUV is a political party that has trumpeted its use of primaries to choose candidates, this was a very serious reversal, one that many at the base feel is an indication that the government is being taken over by more conservative interests.