In recent days, the United States deployed 5,000 Marines to the Caribbean, including three guided-missile destroyers stationed near the Venezuelan coast. At the same time, the Trump administration increased the bounty for the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to $50 million—twice the amount once offered for Osama bin Laden. On the Colombian side of the border, a massive billboard advertises the reward, serving as an obvious lure for paramilitary groups, some of which attempted to invade Venezuela with the same objective several years ago.
All this makes the analysis of the Maduro government particularly urgent. The website Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal hosted a debate on the Venezuelan solidarity movement, the criticisms of Nicolás Maduro’s policies, and the importance of contextualization. The exchange was initiated by an article by Gabriel Hetland, associate professor at the University at Albany, followed by a rejoinder from Latin American Perspectives’ associate managing editor Steve Ellner, and then a critical response from political ecologist Emiliano Terán Mantovani. In total, six articles were published, which are reproduced below.
Two basic opinions are represented in this debate. Hetland and Terán highlight Maduro’s concessions to business interests and his government’s repressive policies. In contrast, Ellner argues that both issues have to be contextualized. For example, he maintains that the concessions to business interests have, among other objectives, succeeded in dividing the opposition between an intransigent, pro-U.S. wing—singularly focused on regime change—and a moderate wing that currently rejects electoral abstention and, in some cases, has participated in elections since 2020 and recognizes the legitimacy of the Maduro government. Ellner also acknowledges the excesses of the government’s actions against adversaries but stresses the need to take seriously its claims that sectors of the opposition have engaged in violence and even terrorist activity.
These and other issues framed by all three analysts are useful for grasping the knotty dilemmas facing the Maduro presidency.
FIRST ARTICLE
Capitalism and Authoritarianism in Maduro’s Venezuela
by Gabriel Hetland
April 19, 2025
On January 10, 2025, Nicolás Maduro began his third six-year presidential term in Venezuela, proclaiming during his inauguration, “I have never been, nor will I ever be, president of the oligarchies, of the richest families, of supremacists, or of imperialists. I have one ruler: the common people.”1 Maduro’s rhetoric, alongside his ability to withstand years of U.S. attempts to overthrow him, has garnered him significant support from the global left. First elected in 2013 after his predecessor Hugo Chavez died in office, Maduro also benefits from his association with Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, which at its height (2003-2011) facilitated a 30 percent reduction in poverty, a 71 percent decline in extreme poverty, a steep drop in inequality (with Venezuela’s Gini coefficient [a statistical measure of inequality within a population] falling from 0.5 to 0.4), and an impressive if contradictory process of popular empowerment.2 Noted leftists like Vijay Prashad, Manolo De Los Santos, and Podemos co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero defend Maduro as democratic, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist.3 Other leftists, such as Steve Ellner, have similarly defended Maduro, albeit with caveats.4 Is such a defense merited? Is Maduro an anti-imperialist revolutionary with democratic legitimacy?
Close analysis of Maduro’s actions shows there is no warrant for this view. In fact, Maduro’s rule has been characterized by the consolidation of an increasingly repressive form of authoritarianism and predatory capitalism. Maduro’s authoritarianism has garnered significant attention, as has the humanitarian crisis that he has presided over for the last decade. There has been less notice of the transformation in Maduro’s class base, away from workers and popular sectors and toward capital. Maduro’s foreign policy continues to exhibit traces of anti-imperialism, but even this is highly limited. This has caused much, but not all, of the left to distance itself from Maduro in the Global North, Latin America, and in Venezuela.
This article proceeds in three parts. Part 1 examines Maduro’s consolidation of authoritarian rule, aspects of which have been justified as necessary to defend the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution. Part 2 shows the shortcomings of this position by delineating the rise of predatory capitalism under Maduro. Part 3 reflects on the broader lessons of this case.
Consolidating Authoritarianism
While Maduro continues to be seen as democratically legitimate by a surprisingly large contingent of the Global Left, the evidence of Venezuela’s authoritarian turn under Maduro is overwhelming. This turn largely followed 2015 parliamentary elections, in which the opposition to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela won a two-thirds supermajority. Rather than dealing with Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis (which commenced in 2013 and was marked by years of negative growth, widespread shortages, and increasing immiseration of the population), the opposition-controlled National Assembly, Venezuela’s sole legislative body, focused its efforts on removing Maduro from office, including through a recall referendum. The National Electoral Council, which oversees elections, suspended the drive to hold the referendum in October 2016 and shortly thereafter postponed gubernatorial elections scheduled for December until 2017. In March 2017, Venezuela’s Supreme Court — which like the electoral council is beholden to Maduro — dissolved the National Assembly, prompting months of often-violent protests, which left dozens of protesters and state security forces dead. The three leading opposition candidates were banned from running in the 2018 presidential election, with the U.S. sanctioning the remaining leading opposition candidate, Henri Falcon, a former Chavista whom many felt could have defeated Maduro had the opposition united behind his candidacy instead of largely boycotting the election. Maduro prevailed but in conditions that were clearly far from being “free and fair” due to Maduro’s and U.S. actions, for example, imposing punishing sanctions on Venezuela’s international financial transactions in August 2017, marking the beginning of President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign to remove Maduro.
Maduro faced and overcame a new set of challenges beginning in 2019, when U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself president in a move closely coordinated with the U.S. government, which recognized Guaidó immediately and imposed sanctions on oil (with the intent of pressuring Maduro to resign). Guaidó, a member of his mentor Leopoldo López’s far-right opposition party Voluntad Popular, initially enjoyed the support of over 60 percent of Venezuelans,5 but this faded as Guaidó tried a series of increasingly desperate moves, including a failed attempt to incite a military coup in April 2019, and supporting and partially funding a comically ineffective maritime invasion of Venezuela by U.S. mercenaries in May 2020. During the period of Guaidó’s “interim government” Maduro faced even more debilitating sanctions, escalating an outmigration that, as of early 2025, has reached nearly eight million, a quarter of the population.
Guaidó’s failure led the opposition to pursue a new strategy in the July 2024 presidential election. Biden eased U.S. sanctions in 2023 in exchange for Maduro’s promise to allow robust opposition participation in the 2024 election. Far-right politician María Corina Machado easily won an October 2023 primary but was banned from holding office (and thus from running in the election) due to her support of U.S. sanctions as well as allegations of corruption. Biden criticized the ban on Machado and reduced sanctions relief in April 2024. Machado threw her support behind Edmundo González, who became the unified opposition candidate.
The July 2024 election was largely peaceful but problems emerged soon after polls closed. With just over 80 percent of the vote counted (allegedly), the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner, despite the fact that the number of outstanding votes, two million, far exceeded Maduro’s supposed margin of victory of 800,000 votes. The opposition cried foul and gathered evidence in the form of paper ballots seeking to show that González had secured a landslide victory. Maduro’s government claimed that a hacking incident prevented the customary release of voting booth level results and has defied repeated calls from Venezuelans, foreign governments, including the U.S. and former Maduro allies Colombia and Brazil, and innumerable grassroots community groups and human rights organizations, to release detailed electoral results.
The widespread sense that Maduro had stolen the election led to nearly 1,000 protests across the country, mostly in popular-sector barrios. The government responded to the largely peaceful protests with brutal repression, arresting around two thousand protesters (the exact number varies in different reports), particularly in poor barrios.6 This follows a larger pattern of state security forces targeting Venezuela’s barrios, especially men of color living there; this has been interpreted as a form of social control designed to limit popular sector dissent, which tarnishes the government’s image with leftist supporters abroad and because such dissent is threatening, since opposition to Chávez and Maduro had been largely middle class and upper class until recently.
In the weeks before Maduro’s 2025 inauguration, the government launched a new wave of repression, including arresting Enrique Márquez, former vice president of the National Electoral Council and one of the opposition candidates who ran against Maduro in the July 28, 2024 election. The Venezuelan Communist Party and many leftist organizations, including the Popular Democratic Front of which Márquez is a member, denounced his arrest and detention.7
Given its continuing use of leftist and revolutionary rhetoric, the Maduro administration’s actions against Venezuelan leftists are noteworthy. The administration intervened in the Venezuelan Communist Party and attacked other dissident leftist parties that long supported Chavismo (and for years formed part of the Chavista coalition) such as the Tupamaros, the Electoral Movement of the People, and the Fatherland for All party. After the July 2024 election, the Popular Democratic Front, a new formation comprising leftist and moderate parties, was formed. The Front joined the human rights organization Surgentes, the (non-intervened) Communist Party of Venezuela, the Citizens’ Platform in Defense of the Constitution, and the National Independent Autonomous Workers’ Coordinating Committee, in denouncing the wave of repression that often targeted leftist and working-class dissident organizations, unleashed by the Maduro regime in January 2025.8 Alongside the December 2024 formation of Comunes, which self-identifies as “a new political current of the popular left,” this is evidence of increasing left-wing dissent to Maduro’s authoritarianism.9
Leftist analysts like Steve Ellner have offered qualified support for some of Maduro’s repressive actions (particularly against the right), speaking of them in terms of “taking the gloves off.”10 The argument, which is implied in the writings of other pro-Maduro figures, is essentially that Maduro represents a bulwark against U.S. imperialism in Latin America, and offers the best hope for realizing progressive redistribution within Venezuela. Therefore, while it may be regrettable that Maduro has engaged in repression (“taking the gloves off”) this is more or less justified. But a close analysis of Maduro’s economic policy in recent years suggests that this position is without empirical support.
Maduro’s Predatory Capitalism
In his 2025 inauguration, Maduro delivered a ninety-minute address to his guests. Notably, only two Latin American presidents, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz Canel, were present. Former Maduro allies (turned harsh critics) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro were notably absent. They strongly criticized the lack of transparency of the 2024 election, though for strategic reasons did not fully break relations with Maduro, unlike fellow leftist Gabriel Boric of Chile (who also denounced him as a dictator). An analysis of Maduro’s address is revealing of how his administration has changed since he first took office, when he spoke fervently of socialism and referenced Hugo Chávez constantly. During his most recent address, there was not a single mention of socialism. Maduro spoke of Chávez only a handful of times and referenced Simón Bolívar an equal and perhaps greater number of times. Maduro spoke of popular movements a few times and portrayed himself as “the worker president.” But one of the most notable and fervent lines of the speech was Maduro’s explicit invitation to the capitalist class to work with his administration: “I would like to send a very clear message to all the businessmen and businesswomen of Venezuela, to all the entrepreneurs, to all those dedicated to trade and economic activity: we have the plan, we’ve laid the foundations, we’ve had great successes in growth, and we should unify ourselves more and more, so that Venezuela continues its path of recovery and the construction of a new economic model. Count on me, entrepreneurs. I count on you.” Fervent applause followed.11
Maduro’s rhetorical shift, away from socialism and toward private business, is no accident but reflects the clear transformation of his class base and economic project over the last decade. When he took office in 2013, Maduro pledged to continue Chávez’s project of “socialism of the twenty-first century.” While vague and contradictory, this project was in essence a blend of social democracy and left populism in which the government made pro-poor spending a priority. Business was hardly sidelined during Chávez’s time in office, but his policies succeeded in making Venezuela the most equal country in Latin America by the time of his death.
Maduro was hit with multiple crises after taking office, with the price of oil plunging in 2014 and opposition protests demanding his ouster taking place that year. Growth slowed markedly in 2013, and from 2014 to 2022, Venezuela experienced a profound economic crisis that destroyed over three-fourths of the economy. At least three factors contributed decisively to this crisis: the country’s continuing dependence on oil; the maintenance of a highly flawed currency policy, first established in 2003 by Chávez and only ended in 2019; and U.S. sanctions, particularly under Trump from 2017 on.
Maduro’s response to the crisis was an attempt to engineer what Luis Bonilla-Molina calls an “inter-bourgeois pact” bringing together the “old” and “new” bourgeoisie.12 The old bourgeoisie refers to businesses aligned with the opposition during the Chávez years, with the major business association, Fedecamaras, playing a leading role in the 2002 coup that briefly removed Chávez from office. This old bourgeoisie vociferously opposed Chávez’s populist redistribution and sought to roll back the clock to the pre-Chávez order. The new bourgeoisie refers to the state-aligned businesses (a mixture of private and state-owned enterprises), the so-called “Bolivarian bourgeoisie” that benefited from Chávez’s policies. Many of these businesses were linked to imports and the military and benefited from the aforementioned dysfunctional currency system, which allowed an estimated hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to be siphoned from government coffers. In 2013, officials estimated up to 40 percent of funds (totaling 15 million USD) allocated through Venezuela’s currency system, known as CADIVI, went to shell companies. Former Chávez officials estimated that more than 300 billion USD was siphoned off through the currency system. Businesses favored by the state also benefited from the massive state spending, on infrastructure and domestic consumption of imported goods, facilitated by the 2003-2014 oil boom.13
The combination of the end of the oil boom and U.S. sanctions under Trump — which limited Venezuela’s ability to access finance and devasted oil production — pushed Maduro toward an inter-bourgeois pact. In August 2017, Trump issued an order prohibiting Venezuela from borrowing in U.S. financial markets. While this was part of a broad regime change effort, the official position was that it was done to pressure Venezuela to show greater respect for human rights.14 In January 2019, Trump sanctioned Venezuela’s oil industry directly in a blatant bid to push Maduro out.
Maduro’s efforts to engineer an inter-bourgeois pact appeared to have worked by the time of the 5 July 2024 presidential election. This can be seen by the fact that Fedecámaras has not supported Edmundo González since the stolen 2024 election — a notable contrast from its support for an unconstitutional coup against democratically elected Chávez in 2002.15 To address the country’s crisis, Maduro implemented an orthodox adjustment plan beginning in 2018. This plan led to huge cuts in public spending and the decimation of wages, and in recent years, the privatization of numerous state-owned enterprises.
This went hand in hand with a weakening of labor protections. In the Chávez and Maduro years, there have been three labor federations: the Workers’ Confederation of Venezuela, which is pro-opposition and supported the 2002 coup; the National Union of Workers, formed in 2003 to support the government and which was divided between more autonomist and more pro-government factions; and the explicitly pro-government Bolivarian Workers’ Central, which formed in 2011 and has consistently supported government policies.16 All three federations have lost mobilizational capacity over time. There have been various attempts at more autonomist labor organizing but none have overcome the polarization and party-driven nature of unions that have characterized Venezuela for decades. More autonomous unions have protested Maduro’s neoliberal turn, eliciting fierce repression, with the Venezuelan NGO Provea finding that Maduro has arrested 120 union leaders and threatened three thousand four hundred since coming to office in 2013.17
Maduro’s repression of labor has facilitated his alliance with capital. Following an order issued in 2018,
the government has banned strikes, the presentation of demands, the right of the working class to mobilize, the organization and legalization of new unions, while prosecuting and sending to prison union leaders who question internal practices in companies, or simply ask for a pay rise and health insurance.18
In a statement in December 2024, Comunes wrote:
The government’s authoritarianism goes hand-in-hand with its decision to hand Venezuela over to the interests of national and international capital. It no longer has the support of the people, but it does have the support of Fedecámaras, Chevron, the old and new bourgeoisie and numerous shady capitalists out to make a quick fortune in the country. The government needs to do away with democracy and silence protest and resistance in order to impose its ferocious neoliberal package. Amid this process, the social gains achieved under [former president Hugo] Chávez have disappeared.19
During his January 2025 inaugural address, Maduro spoke of a new constitutional reform. Critics see this as an effort to further weaken labor protections and consolidate the government’s alliance with the private sector. Are such moves justified by the desperate situation Venezuela has found itself in over the last decade? Might we think of Maduro’s strategy as a form of revolutionary retreat, as Steve Ellner has suggested, that will prime him to advance again when conditions are more propitious?
There are at least two reasons that this analysis is flawed. First, there is no evidence that Maduro’s strategy of uniting with business has helped the working class and the poor. Widespread protests after the July 2024 election in poor communities indicate Maduro has lost popular-sector Venezuelans’ support to a great extent (though precise details are challenging to collect in the absence of electoral results). Comunes and other grassroots organizations see Maduro and the right-wing opposition as “two sides of the same coin,” arguing that Maduro’s policies are similar to those the right-wing opposition proposes in that both aim to bolster profitability for capitalists but do nothing to address the crisis facing Venezuela’s majority.20 Second, there is a widespread sense that corrupt state officials and business leaders are enriching themselves in a manner that does not help ordinary Venezuelans or develop Venezuela. While a degree of economic growth has been restored in Venezuela, it does not appear to be reaching popular sectors in any real way, but is simply enriching well-connected elites. Maduro has used the alleged threat of fascism and right-wing reaction (that has been a problem in Venezuela for a significant time) to justify draconian policies and broad repression against workers and the left. This repression and his increasing support from business are key to Maduro’s staying power, besides support from Russia and China.
Maduro has clearly failed to bring about a socialist transformation of Venezuela. For this he is hardly responsible, as it would have been nearly impossible to do so under the adverse circumstances he has faced during most of his time in office. But he has not presided over developmentalism in any way. Instead, he has forged a transformation of Venezuela into a predatory state, in which state officials and corrupt business leaders enrich themselves at the expense of the majority.21 Venezuela’s profound economic crisis appears to have passed, aided by Maduro’s alliances with business and the easing of sanctions by Biden. But Maduro’s hardening authoritarianism means that the working class has few if any means of holding the government accountable. In conjunction with U.S. sanctions, Maduro has destroyed the essence of what Chavismo was: a flawed but largely democratic project of bottom-up redistribution and empowerment.
At the time of writing, it appears that President Trump will dramatically increase sanctions on Venezuela and its oil sector yet again, possibly even more than during his first administration. This will cause a severe deterioration of the already precarious living standards of ordinary Venezuelans, an increase in out-migration, including most likely to the United States, and a worsening of the already dire situation for labor and popular organizations in Venezuela. It will also likely lead to a hardening of the repressive nature of the Maduro administration, which has abandoned any real democratic accountability, in its representative and participatory forms, and consolidated a predatory regime that benefits a small elite at the expense of the vast majority.
NOTES
1. Manolo De Los Santos. “The US Once Again Fails to Impose Its Will on the Venezuelan People,” People’s Dispatch, January 11, 2025, available at https://peoplesdispatch. org/2025/01/11/the-us-once-again-fails-toimpose-its-will-on-the-venezuelan-people/
2. Gabriel Hetland. Democracy on the Ground: Local Politics in Latin America’s Left Turn. (New York: Columbia University Press 2023):52–53.
3. Vijay Prashad. 2024. “Venezuela Is a Marvellous Country in Motion: The Thirty Second Newsletter.” Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, August 8, 2024; De Los Santos, “The US Once Again Fails to Impose”; Juan Carlos Monedero, “De dictaduras y frivolidades: Maduro, Venezuela y un poco de purpurina,” Público, January 12, 2025, available at https:// www.publico.es/opinion/dictaduras-frivolidades-maduro-venezuela-poco-purpurina.html.
4. Steve Ellner and Federico Fuentes, “Prioritising the Struggle Against US Imperialism,” Green Left Weekly, November 7, 2024, available at https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/prioritizing-struggle-against-us-imperialism. [Editor’s note: a longer version of this interview can be read at https://links.org.au/prioritising-anti-us-imperialism-maduros-venezuela-and-complexities-critical-solidarity-interview]
5. Per polling by the reputable Venezuelan firm Datanalisis. Andreina Itriago and Nicole Yapur, “Venezuelan Lawmakers Vote to Remove Juan Hetland 7 Guaidó as Head of Opposition,” Bloomberg. December 22, 2022, available at https://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-22/venezuela-lawmakers-vote-to-remove-guaido-ashead-of-opposition.
6. According to the Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social, this repression was particularly concentrated against protests occurring in popular sectors; the Observatory’s report found 80 percent of arrests and state security violence took place in poor barrios. Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social. “Represion a los pobres en Venezuela,” Report, August 14, 2024, available at https://www. observatoriodeconflictos.org.ve/actualidad/ represion-a-los-pobres-en-venezuela.
7. The leftist human rights lawyer, María Alejandra Díaz, was also harassed by the government in the leadup to Maduro’s inauguration.
8. Various, “Statements from the Venezuelan left: End the detentions, forced disappearances and repression!” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, January 9, 2025, available at https://links. org.au/statements-venezuelan-left-end-detentionsforced-disappearances-and-repression.
9. Comunes, “The Maduro Government and RightWing opposition Are Two Sides of the Same Coin,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, December 24, 2024, available at https:// links.org.au/comunes-venezuela-maduro-government-and-right-wing-opposition-are-two-sides-same-coin; Comunes issued a January 2025 statement, “Keys to Understanding What Is Happening in Venezuela (Plus Statement: ‘A de facto government is born, let’s organise the rebellion’),” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, January 14, 2025, available at https://links.org.au/comunes-keys-understanding-what-happeningvenezuela-plus-statement-de-facto-government-born-lets. The Statement Notes, “Every left party that stood by Chávez is today under legal investigation or has been intervened, with their rightful political leaderships stripped of their party’s electoral registration. Handpicked impostors imposed by the organs of power are rewarded for taking control of political organisations [sic.] that have a decades-long tradition of struggle.”
10. Ellner and Fuentes, “Prioritising the Struggle Against US Imperialism.”
11. Maduro’s speech can be viewed here, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiO9xSoxiCs
12. Luis Bonilla-Molina, “La situación de la clase trabajadora en Venezuela (2013-2024),” 2024, available at https://luisbonillamolina.com/2024/09/22/la-situacion-de-la-clase-trabajadora-en-venezuela-2013-20241/. [Editor’s part: Part I and Part IV of this article can be read in English at https://links.org.au/venezuelan-working-class-under-maduro-2013-24-part-i-introduction and https://links.org.au/venezuelan-working-class-under-maduro-2013-24-part-iv-2024-presidential-elections-and-madurismos.]
13. Alejandro Velasco, “The Many Faces of Chavismo,” NACLA Report on the Americas 2024: (54):1:20-73:62.
14. Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2019), p. 7.
15. Salvador De León, “Maduro’s Constitutional Reform: ‘New Economy,’ Same Objectives,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, January 19, 2025, available at https:// links.org.au/venezuela-maduros-inaugurationushers-new-cycle-class-struggle-plus-constitutional-reform-new.
16. Iranzo, Consuelo, 2018. “La triste historia del sindicalismo venezolano en tiempos de revolución: Una aproximación sintética,” Nueva Sociedad 274 / Marzo—Abril.
17. Posado, Thomas, “Toma de posesión de Maduro: ¿cómo Venezuela se convirtió en un régimen autoritario?” El Grand Continent, January 8, 2025, available at https://legrandcontinent. eu/es/2025/01/08/toma-de-posesion-de-maduro-como-venezuela-se-convirtio-en-un-regimen-autoritario/.
18. Ana C. Carvalhaes and Luís Bonilla, “The ProMaduro Left Abandons the Workers and People of Venezuela,” International Viewpoint, August 20, 2024, available at https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article8641.
19. Comunes, “The Maduro Government and Right-Wing opposition.”
20. Comunes, “Comunes issued a January 2025 statement.”
21. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
This article was posted at https://links.org.au/capitalism-and-authoritarianism-maduros-venezuela
SECOND ARTICLE
‘Neoliberal and Authoritarian’? A Simplistic Analysis of the Maduro Government that Leaves Much Unsaid
by Steve Ellner
May 18, 2025
Gabriel Hetland’s article “Capitalism and authoritarianism in Maduro’s Venezuela,” published in New Labor Forum and reposted at LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, presents a one-sided and decontextualized view of Venezuela under President Nicolás Maduro. According to Hetland, the Maduro government is virtually devoid of any redeeming characteristics. Hetland refers approvingly to the claim made by Maduro’s harshest critics on the left, that his government and the right-wing opposition are “two sides of the same coin.”
Yet any serious examination of Venezuela under Maduro needs to incorporate the impact of US-imposed economic sanctions into its analysis and not simply make passing reference to them. The Washington-engineered economic war significantly undermined the effectiveness of potentially sound policies initiated by Maduro. To dismiss these policies as evidence of incompetence — or to ignore them altogether, as Hetland does — is misleading.
Rather, the negative effects of the interface between Venezuelan government policy and Washington’s acts of aggression have to be placed at the center of analysis. Hetland’s black-and-white approach does a disservice to the complex and, in many respects, unique experience of Chavismo. A more nuanced and critical examination is essential if we are to draw the necessary lessons from the nation’s unfolding political process.
War on Venezuela
To begin with, the same criteria cannot be used to evaluate governments such as those of Venezuela (or Cuba), as to analyze progressive governments such as Brazil under Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, or Argentina under the Kirchners (Néstor and Cristina). The illegal and semi-legal actions undertaken by Washington and Venezuela’s right-wing opposition have been numerous and relentless almost since the start of the Hugo Chávez presidency in 1999. They were in many ways intensified under Maduro.
These include: abortive coups; assassination attempts, one involving drones1; recognition of de facto governments; open appeals by top US officials urging Venezuelan military officers to intervene; invasions by paramilitary forces from Colombia; covert and public international campaigns to isolate Venezuela; foreign funding of opposition groups on a scale far exceeding that provided for neighboring nations; widespread and protracted street violence aimed at regime change; and sweeping secondary sanctions to pressure corporations and governments around the world to avoid commercial dealings with Venezuela, amounting to a de facto embargo. All these actions have been extensively documented.2
The full scope of the war on Venezuela has to be brought into the picture. Yet Hetland’s readers are left unaware of what the Maduro government is up against. The impacts of the war on Venezuela are far more than a matter of academic interest. They are an essential element in the debate over whether the Maduro presidency should be deemed an outright failure, a view defended by the right and segments of the left, including Hetland. Far from recognizing the multifaceted nature of the aggression against Venezuela, this perspective reduces it to the issue of sanctions, which are considered no more — and in many cases far less — responsible for the nation’s economic misfortunes than Maduro’s errors and alleged incompetence. These Maduro critics underestimate the devastating effect of the war on Venezuela, especially given that Maduro’s errors were, in many cases, overreactions to Washington-backed provocations.
Furthermore, Washington has systematically countered every initiative undertaken by the Maduro government to address economic difficulties facing the nation. For example, when the Maduro government attempted to renegotiate its foreign debt in response to the sharp decline in oil prices, in August 2017 US President Donald Trump prohibited the trading of Venezuelan bonds in US markets. Maduro then responded to Washington’s measures against the Venezuelan oil industry3 by turning to gold exports, but Trump issued an executive order in 2018 banning the purchase of Venezuelan gold. Simultaneously, the Maduro government launched a crypto currency, the Petro, to bypass the US-controlled SWIFT system that had caused numerous banks to avoid transactions involving Venezuela — what Maduro called a financial “blockade.” Trump responded with another executive order prohibiting the use of Petros under US jurisdiction.
Now, the second Trump administration has refused to renew “licenses” the Biden administration granted Chevron and other corporations to operate in Venezuela, just when the nation’s oil industry was beginning to enjoy a slow but steady recovery of levels of production. Maduro had reformulated oil policy to facilitate the granting of these licenses.
These are just a few examples of how Washington thwarted Venezuela’s initiatives. They illustrated the extent to which Maduro’s options were limited and raise the broader question of what options were available.
Advances and Concessions
Certainly, Maduro’s rapprochement with the private sector — what Hetland refers to as an “inter-bourgeois pact” involving traditional business interests (grouped in Fedecámaras) and the emerging business sector (pejoratively labelled the boliburguesía) — should be debated. In my opinion, however, the discussion should center on the concrete terms of these alliances, not on whether such alliances are justified under current circumstances. Claiming that Maduro sold out is not conducive to open, dogmatic-free debate on the matter. Hetland acknowledges prevailing conditions did not allow Maduro to advance toward a “socialist transformation,” as advocated by some groups further to the left.4 But if he opposes alliances with the private sector, one is left to ask: What course of action does he support?
The strategy of developmentalism — which in Latin America has been based on an alliance between left-leaning governments and business sectors — may represent a viable non-socialist option in an acute situation such as that faced by the Maduro government. Hetland alleges Maduro “has not presided over developmentalism in any way,” yet offers no evidence to support the claim. Maduro, however, in his 2025 annual Speech to the Nation announced that 85% of the food sold in supermarkets is now “Made in Venezuela,” the inverse of the situation 10 years earlier. If accurate, this shift is largely due to a “strategic alliance” between agricultural interests and the government, currently coordinated through the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Industry and National Production. A rigorous critical analysis would acknowledge Maduro’s claims and present empirical evidence to challenge them, or identify specific shortcomings in the implementation of developmentalism. But Hetland leaves much out of the picture and fails to confront certain positions on the left that do not coincide with his.
For instance, Hetland makes no reference to the government-promoted communes (community production units), whose existence contradicts the notion that Maduro is really a neoliberal in leftist disguise. Although Maduro had downplayed the communes for several years, more recently he has injected energy into them, declaring 2023 “the Year of the Communes.” Chris Gilbert explores this revitalization in Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project, drawing extensively on personal observations and interviews throughout the country. Gilbert’s work shines light on the position of critical support for Maduro, a perspective that came to the fore at the founding congress of the Communard Union in March 2022. That point of view was articulated by Angel Prado, the head of El Maizal, the nation’s most successful commune, which hosted the event.5
The following year, Maduro appointed Prado as Minister of the Communes. Despite his history of confrontations with the Venezuelan government and ruling party, Prado continues to view the state as a contested arena, where remnants of the “bourgeois state” are pitted against the communes and other popular forces. The experience of Prado and the communes is clearly at odds with Hetland’s interpretation of the Venezuelan government under Maduro. Hetland makes no mention of critical supporters among writers and political figures, Venezuelans and non-Venezuelans, but refers extensively to the recently formed group Comunes, composed of leftists who supported Chávez and now demonize Maduro.
Repression and Contextualization
Similarly, in his discussion of the protests that followed the July 28, 2024 presidential elections, Hetland fails to take into account a viewpoint on the left that runs counter to his own. He writes: “The government responded to the largely peaceful protests with brutal repression, arresting around two thousand protesters.” There is a different side of the story coming from the left, although the two sides may not be totally mutually exclusive.
Following the two days of protest on July 29-30, Attorney General Tarek William Saab presented extensive evidence alleging that on those two days delinquents, in cahoots with the Venezuelan right, carried out attacks on symbols of the state: 11 Metro installations, 28 metrobuses, 27 police vehicles, 27 statues, 57 educational institutions, 10 National Electoral Council facilities, and 10 headquarters of the governing party. Prior to Chávez’s rise to power, Saab was a leading champion of human rights and his denunciations of violence instigated by the opposition deserve to be considered seriously, even if they are ultimately refuted.
Another example of Hetland’s lack of objectivity is his accusation that I justify political repression in Venezuela — an assertion he fails to substantiate. Given the gravity of the charge, there is no excuse for making it without carefully examining the facts. Hetland cites my use of the term “taking the gloves off” in reference to Maduro: “Therefore, while it may be regrettable that Maduro has engaged in repression (‘taking the gloves off’), this [according to Ellner] is more or less justified.” Yet my statement conveyed something quite different. What I actually wrote was: “Some left analysts fault Maduro for taking off the gloves and not abiding by the norms of liberal democracy. In some cases, the criticisms are valid but they have to be contextualized.”
Contextualization is not the same as justification. To take an extreme example, one may point out that NATO’s eastward expansion has long been a source of great concern for Russia’s leaders. The statement, however, does not necessarily signify support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
In fact, I criticized important aspects of Maduro’s “playing hard ball” and “taking the gloves off” strategy. I called the government’s official recognition of a small splinter faction of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) — rather than the main party that included all the principal Communist leaders — “a minus for the Maduro government.” I also noted that the same tactic had previously been used against other opposition parties, which I stated “undeniably… flouted the constitution.”6
Critical Support
Hetland’s portrayal of my views reflect a broader trend in writing on the left that polarizes discussion on the Venezuelan government — in which Maduro is either demonized or viewed uncritically. This binary framing leaves little room for other positions, such as that of critical support for Maduro.
At the outset of his article, Hetland alleges that I defend Maduro but with “caveats.” He then poses the question: “Is Maduro an anti-imperialist revolutionary with democratic legitimacy?” The very framing of the issue precludes a nuanced analysis. Rather than identifying the “caveats,” Hetland attempts to refute my central arguments by labelling the Maduro government anti-working class and corrupt. The “caveats” in my writing on Venezuela that he ignores include my critique of Maduro — and, to a lesser extent, Chávez — for failing to seize favorable moments to deepen the transformation process and deliver decisive blows against corruption.7
Hetland would do well to take off the blinders and read Mao Zedong’s On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People to grasp the distinction between “secondary” and “antagonistic contradictions”. In my view, the tensions between Maduro and the PCV were initially of a “secondary” nature, and Maduro’s sectarianism contributed to the eventual rupture, which is now clearly beyond repair.8 The failure of analysts (and political actors in the case of Maduro and the PCV) to appreciate the importance of nuances and assimilate Mao’s principle on enemies and allies obstructs serious discussion and debate. This, in turn, leads to errors and a missed opportunity to draw invaluable lessons from more than a quarter-century of Chavista rule.
In summary, the errors and shortcomings of the Maduro government cannot be pushed under the carpet or justified, but they nevertheless must be understood in context. There is a direct correlation between the intensity of imperialist aggression and the ability of a government committed to real change to achieve its social, political and economic goals. Chávez recognized early in his rule that forging alliances with business sectors was necessary to offset the aggression waged by domestic and foreign adversaries. What should have been clear to everyone within the movement was that such alliances were conducive to corruption and would generate pressure from allies to halt or reverse the process of change.
Since then, criticism that identifies the downsides of the policies of the Venezuelan government and defines political opportunities has been essential. But critics need to appreciate the fact that the challenges faced by Maduro are in many ways greater than those Chávez encountered, at least in the years following the regime change attempts of 2002-03. These included the plummeting of oil prices (beginning in 2015), Obama’s 2015 executive order (which signaled an escalation of hostility from Washington), and the erosion of public enthusiasm that inevitably occurs in prolonged periods of sacrifices and hardship.
Within this context serious errors were committed. But, due to the extreme polarization that has characterized the Chavista period, the struggle to rectify errors had to come from within the movement; that is, from the governing party and its allies. This would not have necessarily been the case in a more relaxed political environment. Any frontal, unqualified attack on the government from a leftist perspective, particularly one that fails to grasp the severity of the current challenges, will ultimately be counterproductive.
NOTES
1. Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, in his The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir, hinted at the fact that the U.S. was behind the drone attack. Bolton wrote that after the incident, “Trump said to me emphatically… ‘Get it done…This is the fifth time I’ve asked for it.’” https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/07/14/trump-john-bolton-coup-venezuela/
2. Among the relatively recent books that document the Washington-engineered war on Venezuela are: Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur, Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2021); Anya Parampil, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire (New York: OR Books, 2024); Timothy M. Gill, Encountering US Empire in Socialist Venezuela: The Legacy of Race, Neocolonialism and Democracy Promotion (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022); Alan MacLeod, Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting (New York, Routledge: 2018).
3. The trade journals clearly indicated that the August 2017 executive order “targeted” the Venezuelan oil industry. That same year, The Economist pointed out that the oil sector had “suffered from disinvestment” and predicted that the Maduro administration would not remain in power beyond 2019. At the time, Hetland himself recognized the devastating impact of Washington’s measures on the Venezuelan economy. He wrote: “Beyond supporting the hardline opposition, U.S. actions have directly exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis. The United States has pressured American and European banks to avoid business with Venezuela, starving Venezuela of needed funds… U.S. sanctions (increasingly supported by other countries) have also exacerbated the crisis.” The issue of the adverse effects of Washington’s actions against Venezuela between Obama’s 2015 executive order — which declared Venezuela a “threat” to U.S. national security — and the August 2017 order is important. The standard position of the Venezuelan right, supported by analysts including some on the left, is that the country’s economic crisis preceded the main U.S. sanction which was issued in January 2019 and was designed to cripple Venezuelan oil exports. This claim lets the U.S. off the hook for the hardship inflicted on the Venezuelan people and blames it entirely on Maduro’s misguided policies and corruption. Yet even John Bolton admitted that the U.S. sanctions under Trump were aimed at “driving the state-owned oil monopoly’s production as low as possible,” in an attempt “to crash Maduro’s regime.” Hetland, “The Promise and Perils of Radical Left Populism: The Case of Venezuela.” Journal of World Systems Research. Vol 24, no. 2, 2018, p. 289; The Economist Intelligence Unit, “Country Forecast Venezuela November 2017 Updater. Country Forecast, Venezuela.” New York, November, 2017.
4. Steve Ellner, “Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People.” Science and Society, vol. 87, no. 3, p. 389.
5. Chris Gilbert, Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2023), pp. 126-139.
6. Ellner, “Maduro and Machado Play Hardball.” NACLA: Report on the Americas, Spring, 2024, pp. 9, 11.
7. Ellner, “Class Strategies in Chavista Venezuela: Pragmatic and Populist Policies in a Broader Context,” in Ellner (ed.), Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings (Lanhan, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), pp. 180-184.
8. Ellner, “Objective Conditions in Venezuela,” pp. 401-402, 408, 410.
This article was posted at https://links.org.au/neoliberal-and-authoritarian-simplistic-analysis-maduro-government-leaves-much-unsaid
THIRD ARTICLE
The Pro-Maduro Left’s Blind Spots: Against the ‘Nuancing’ of Venezuela’s Disaster
by Emiliano Teran Mantovani
May 30, 2025
Steve Ellner’s article, “‘Neoliberal and authoritarian’? A simplistic analysis of the Maduro government that leaves much unsaid,” written in response to Gabriel Hetland’s piece “Capitalism and authoritarianism in Maduro’s Venezuela” and published at LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, provides an opportunity to continue and deepen an important debate about Venezuela’s current political situation and the direction of the Bolivarian government. I want to weigh in on this debate, primarily to respond to several of Ellner’s arguments.
In my view, his piece attempts to dampen or minimize criticisms of the increasingly authoritarian and regressive course taken by the Venezuelan political system under Nicolás Maduro. His defense of the Maduro government also reflects a broader problem among some sectors of the left: a tendency to remain tied to decaying regimes, while lacking any ideas and imagination to chart out alternative paths that are both critical and rooted in popular struggles. Such political clarity is urgently needed in a world where far-right movements and authoritarianism are gaining ground.
Ellner’s central argument is that criticism of Maduro should be more contextualized and nuanced, and that greater rigor is needed. However, his article simply amounts to a series of so-called “nuances” to Hetland’s arguments that, in effect, justify Maduro’s repression of workers, destruction of wages and implementation of a highly aggressive neoliberal regime. Paradoxically, Ellner’s own arguments lack nuance. He makes glaring omissions on issues that are essential to any analysis seeking to avoid simplistic binaries, especially one grounded in solidarity with popular struggles. In the end, Ellner falls into the very trap he criticizes. As for rigor, it is worth noting Ellner often fails to provide any of the data he demands of Hetland. In some cases, his sources are no more than statements from Venezuelan government officials. For this reason, it remains necessary to carry out the work of critical nuance that Ellner claims to value — but unfortunately does not practice.
Sanctions as a Tool to Silence Criticism and Dissent
Ellner raises several key issues. For example, he argues international sanctions should be central to any analysis of the situation in Venezuela. I want to make my position clear from the outset: these sanctions are entirely condemnable, especially coming from a government such as the United States, with its long-standing tradition of interventionism and neo-colonialism. I would also add that this is an almost universally shared position on the Venezuelan left — diverse as it is — which has consistently rejected sanctions. In fact, these measures are broadly unpopular across Venezuelan society. Even some liberal scholars, intellectuals and opposition figures have spoken out against them, though others have not. The problem, however, is that Maduro’s government has turned the issue of sanctions into a tool to suppress criticism and debate, and the perfect excuse to justify an ongoing series of economic and political abuses.
If we are going to talk about nuance and rigor in relation to sanctions, then it is only fair to ask whether these measures actually triggered the worst crisis in Venezuela’s history, and to what extent they have shaped its course. Ellner refers to the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in 2015, but those were limited to freezing assets and bank accounts in the US, as well as revoking visas and restricting entry for Venezuelan government officials and key figures. What he does not mention is that by 2017 — when the first sanctions targeting Venezuela’s economy were introduced — the country’s GDP had already plummeted by 31.9% from 2013, imports had collapsed by 81.76% compared to 2012, inflation was the highest in the world at 438.1%, and external debt had soared to a staggering $148.3 billion.1 In fact, the slow decline of oil production, along with the deterioration of numerous state-run industries and key agricultural sectors such as sugarcane and corn, began during the Hugo Chávez years. Something was already deeply wrong then, stemming from the deepening of Venezuela’s oil rentier model during Chávez’s government together with a disastrous administrative and economic management. This all unfolded at a time when Chávez enjoyed nearly 70% popularity and benefited from record-high oil prices, years of unprecedented revenues, control over state institutions, and significant regional influence and alliances.
Ellner fails to mention this context, as well as the rather significant detail of the huge corruption scandals that drained public coffers and harmed the population. These include: foreign exchange fraud through Cadivi; multiple large-scale corruption cases within the state oil company PDVSA, the state food supply network PDVAL and the China-Venezuela Fund; various infrastructure project scams; and a long, ongoing list of other such examples. Ultimately, the widely-promoted narrative of an “economic war” was, in reality, the work of a network of actors that included government officials (sometimes at the highest levels), working in conjunction with international and business-sector elites. This process has continued under Maduro’s government — something even authorities have acknowledged, with the arrests of several high-ranking officials (including multiple presidents of PDVSA) and the revelation of more recent scandals involving the oil company and the state’s cryptocurrency regulator, Sunacrip, that entailed more than $21 billion in uncollected revenue. Given the scale and continuity of this plunder, it is hard to see this as just anomalies or the work of a few unscrupulous individuals. A truly critical thinker must recognize it as a systematic and large-scale mechanism for the illicit appropriation of wealth.
Some may wonder how the Chávez government, which enjoyed huge popularity during the first decade of this century, sank to a disapproval rating hovering between 70-80% under Maduro. The immeasurable suffering of Venezuelans — soaring poverty, collapsed hospitals and basic services, etc — stands in stark contrast to the luxurious, excessive lifestyles of the ruling elites. These elites have luxury apartments in Dubai or Europe, ride around in high-end SUVs, dine in gourmet restaurants, and throw extravagant parties. This reality is deeply rooted in the consciousness of the Venezuelan people and embedded in the national imagination. It explains the widespread loathing of Maduro’s government, the hollowing out of popular support, and the huge voter turnout for the July 28, 2024 presidential elections by a population desperate to end what they perceive as a nightmare. It also helps explain the protests that erupted on July 29-30 against electoral fraud — mobilizations that were primarily driven by working-class neighborhoods such as Petare, La Vega, El Valle and Catia.
I watched in astonishment as these protests were criminalized by sectors of the international left who, with chilling ease, labelled them as demonstrations by “people from the far right,” thereby legitimizing the brutal repression that unfolded in the days and weeks that followed. We have seen a similar criminalization of popular protest under right-wing presidents such as Iván Duque in Colombia and Sebastián Piñera in Chile during the huge 2019 protests. If we are to talk about nuance, then there should be deep reflection on the reasons behind the huge public discontent in Venezuela. Followers and supporters of Maduro’s government seem to always prefer to look for external scapegoats and criminalize dissenters rather than take a hard look at how and why they lost the support and connection with the population.
Sanctions have had a subsequent negative impact on the course of the crisis and indeed made recovery from Venezuela’s economic free fall more difficult. But they do not explain the root causes of the societal collapse we have lived through. Nor the fact that this entire process has unfolded within a framework that both triggers and enables wealth appropriation, and that emerged from the heart of the Bolivarian government itself. The official sanctions narrative functions as a powerful mechanism for neutralizing debate and criticism — and has unfortunately been adopted by a section of the international left to avoid confronting our reality.
Clinging to Narratives of the Past to Justify the Disaster of the Present
There is a persistent tendency to cling to arguments from the Chávez government era — when oil revenue was widely distributed throughout society, the nominal monthly wage was US$400, and popular participation in politics was encouraged — and transpose them onto a present reality that has dramatically changed. Several examples can be mentioned. Ellner refers to the communes, even though he himself acknowledges that under Maduro they were marginalized for years. He refers to a “renewed push” to support communes, but does not mention that this marginalization was part of a broader process of demobilization and hollowing out of popular organization, which had very harmful effects, such as stripping the communal idea of its original meaning, with the concept reduced by Maduro to the CLAP food distribution system. Today, the commune proposal has been reinterpreted as an instrument to facilitate the state/government’s territorial control within a political system that has evolved into a kind of neopatrimonial model.
When people talk about the “Bolivarian process,” we are no longer referring to a system based on a national-popular alliance with an emphasis on the most disadvantaged classes. That formula has been drastically reconfigured: the alliance with the military has multiplied the presence of security forces throughout the state, while priority is given to coordinating with the main national business federation (Fedecámaras), working with evangelical church elites, strengthening partnerships with US oil corporation Chevron and Chinese capital in the Orinoco Oil Belt, and supporting bankers and new elites born from within the so-called “revolution.” Importantly, practically all capitalists operating in Venezuela are profiting from the country’s wealth under shamefully preferential conditions, with generous advantages and without any restrictions or mechanisms of accountability. Laws such as the Anti-Blockade Law, the Law on Special Economic Zones, and the Law for the Protection of Foreign Investment, along with tax exemption decrees for companies, backdoor privatizations, Chevron’s License LG41, and the agreements with the China National Petroleum Corporation, among many other examples, demonstrate this reality. What is striking is not that most leftist forces in the country — especially the most combative — have strongly opposed this surrender of national assets, but that the only left still supporting, and even applauding, all this is the pro-Maduro left.
Another example of the disconnect between an outdated narrative and the current regime is Ellner’s insistence that we must not forget the role of the (traditional) Venezuelan opposition when understanding the “scope of the war against Venezuela.” Undoubtedly, this opposition has played a part in the country’s political decay — through certain insurrectionary cycles driven by its more radical wing having further degraded political life, and with its minimal grassroots organizing and very few efforts to build real alternatives. What the author fails to explain is how the government ended up crushing not only the right-wing opposition — which lies in ruins, helping explain the rise of María Corina Machado — but also any political or social force that dared oppose it. This included intervening into and splitting traditional parties, such as Acción Democrática and Copei, to impose new leaderships handpicked by the government. The end result is the kind of “opposition” we now see presented to the public. It also included the persecution and imprisonment of union members, community leaders, social organizations and NGOs. Ellner should have highlighted the arrest of grassroots Chavistas and communal organizers, the use of torture in Venezuelan prisons, the crackdown on the Communist Party of Venezuela and the chilling effect of the “Law Against Hate.” But on such sensitive issues, there are no “nuances” in his text — and that is a serious omission.
Ultimately, Ellner does not acknowledge that Venezuela today is not the Venezuela of 2017 or 2019. We face a different scenario today — one shaped by a system of power without any real checks and balances. Any analysis must evolve, just as history does.
Nuancing the Destruction of a Country? On the Limits of the Unacceptable
One of Ellner’s conclusions — in my view quite striking — is that Maduro’s mistakes were forced by Washington. This kind of argument reflects a Manichaean outlook, in which a dark, malevolent force (the US) pushes Maduro into wrongdoing. Seen this way, the other side is not truly “bad,” it is merely forced to act that way. It is the kind of reasoning you would expect from someone who follows a leader out of sheer faith. It is difficult to respond with reason to someone who portrays the Maduro government as a victim while failing to mention in the same article the victims within Venezuelan society — those produced by the regime’s decay and predatory turn. Ellner — and here I agree with Hetland — ends up constructing a narrative of justification. For example, Ellner justifies the new alliances with Fedecámaras and their policies, but says nothing about the deliberate destruction of wages or the persecution and imprisonment of workers.
Perhaps at the heart of all this is the question of the limits of the unacceptable. That there are things that quite simply no longer allow for nuance. That there are things that have come to embody the very worst of the horrors the left once spent decades denouncing. That today’s geopolitical dynamics — as abominable as they may be — are not enough to “nuance” the barbarity and devastation of a country carried out by its own government, and in the name of nothing.
Those who advocate for a supposed “critical support for Maduro” are not far removed in their logic from those who might claim critical support for El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, Argentina’s Javier Milei, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega or Russia’s Vladimir Putin. In the end, anything can be nuanced, anyone can be made a victim. Donald Trump, for instance, can be the victim of the US “Deep State,” Benjamin Netanyahu a victim of Hamas. The argument can be stretched to cover anything — but it always only serves to justify abuse. In the end, such a path can only lead us astray — into a world where we relativize barbarism and plunder, turning them into the new global “normal.” Once there, the left will have lost its way forever.
Epilogue
One of the many questions that can be raised about Venezuela is this: if that section of the international left that supports the Maduro government is fully aware of the regime’s abuses and corruption but considers it a matter of “honor” to not support traditional opposition leaders or parties, why not instead dedicate their energy, resources, support and advocacy to strengthening a left-wing opposition that might someday challenge for political power? If it is truly about preserving a leftist identity with integrity, why not build bridges with sections of the left opposition inside Venezuela? Why not help develop an alternative that is not neoliberal, but rooted in popular demands — a political project with national reach, capable of uniting diverse organizations and defending wages, workers, popular sovereignty, public education, and other historic demands?
These questions seem crucial to me and open the door to other much-needed debates.
NOTES
1. GDP figures are from the IMF; import data calculated using figures from the BCV, ECLAC, and the OEC; inflation data from the World Bank, IMF, and BCV; external debt figures from ECLAC.
This article was posted at https://links.org.au/pro-maduro-lefts-blind-spots-against-nuancing-venezuelas-disaster
FOURTH ARTICLE
Demonizing Nicolás Maduro: Fallacies and Consequences
by Steve Ellner
June 20, 2025
Criticism of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from a leftist perspective is absolutely necessary. Some of it comes from those who, to varying degrees, support his government. Emiliano Teran Mantovani and Gabriel Hetland — who recently criticized my position on Maduro — and I are in agreement on the importance of such critical analysis.
However, in spite of this common denominator, there are fundamental differences between us with regard to my insistence on the need to contextualize the errors committed by Maduro and go beyond a simplistic binary of uncritical support for Maduro versus demonization.
These issues have far-reaching implications. The failure to objectively contextualize errors, transcend binaries and recognize shades of differences translates into an underestimation of the gravity of US sanctions and the denial of positive aspects of the Maduro government. These positions and shortcomings seriously undermine international solidarity work and anti-imperialism in general.
Centering the US war on Venezuela
Teran begins his article stating, “I want to make my position clear … these sanctions are entirely condemnable,” a position that he acknowledges is “universally shared” on the Venezuelan left and even by “some liberal scholars, intellectuals and opposition figures.” His pronouncement, however, glosses over one of my main points. It is misleading to say “I am opposed to the sanctions” and then proceed to attack government policy as if they are two separate topics.
My article explains in detail why the war on Venezuela needs to be placed at the center of any serious analysis of the Maduro presidencies. The Washington-orchestrated war on Venezuela extends well beyond sanctions since it encompasses a broad array of regime-change and destabilization actions. Yet Teran, like Hetland, limits his references regarding Washington machinations to the sanctions.
To make matters worse, Teran, in effect, downplays the severity of the sanctions, claiming they “do not explain the root causes” of the nation’s crisis. For Teran, the sanctions only had a “subsequent negative impact” — subsequent, that is, to the allegedly grievous errors committed by Maduro, and Chávez before him.
One example of Teran’s underestimation of the effects of the sanctions is his statement: “Ellner refers to the sanctions imposed by the Barack Obama administration in 2015, but those were limited to freezing assets and bank accounts in the US…” Teran portrays Obama’s executive order as an innocuous, symbolic measure. It hardly was.
As I noted, Obama’s order, which declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security, “signaled an escalation of hostility from Washington.” Even Hetland, writing a few years back, points out that Obama “pressured American and European banks to avoid business with Venezuela, starving Venezuela of needed funds.” It is not difficult to grasp why US companies operating factories in Venezuela disinvested in response to the president of their country calling Venezuela a threat to US national security.
As I previously wrote, “Obama’s executive order sent a signal to the private sector. After the order was implemented, various large U.S. firms including Ford and Kimberly Clark closed factories and pulled out of Venezuela.” They were soon followed by General Motors, Goodyear, and Kellogg’s, as well as Japanese firm Bridgestone.
Indeed, even before Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, a de facto financial embargo had already been imposed on Venezuela. Opposition spokesperson and economist Francisco Rodríguez noted back then that “the financial markets are closed to Venezuela.”
Teran’s minimization of the effects of the war on Venezuela reinforces and legitimizes the opposition’s narrative, which ridicules Maduro’s assertion that Washington’s actions are responsible for Venezuela’s dire economic situation. Moisés Naím, one of the architects of Venezuela’s neoliberal policies of the 1990s, for example, writes: “Blaming the CIA … or dark international forces, as Maduro and his allies customarily do, has become fodder for parodies flooding YouTube.”
Similarly, Teran says: “Followers and supporters of Maduro’s government seem to always prefer to look for external scapegoats.” In my article, I cite specific examples of the abundant, well-documented literature that substantiates Maduro’s allegations regarding generously financed “dark international forces.”
In his effort to discard the relevance of the war on Venezuela, Teran even suggests that explanations of Maduro’s implementation of neoliberal policies on the basis of US imperialist aggression are akin to those put forward by those who seek to justify Netanyahu’s genocide against Palestinians on the basis of Hamas’ October 7 attack.
But it should seem pretty obvious to anyone on the left that drawing an equivalence between US imperialism and the October 7 attack is somewhat farfetched, and that placing Maduro’s economic policies in the same category as Netanyahu’s genocide is even more outrageous.
Neither praise nor condemnation
Turning to the second area of contention, serious analysis of Maduro needs to avoid absolutes with regard to either praise or condemnation of his government. Failing to grasp the complexity of how a progressive government is forced to navigate a situation imposed by the world’s most powerful nation located in the same hemisphere, leads to simplistic conclusions that often align with those of the political right.
Teran accuses me of being one-sided. He claims my “arguments lack nuance” and that I fail to “avoid simplistic binaries.” In doing so, he overlooks the criticisms of Maduro that I presented in my article and have analyzed in other publications.
Accusing me of one-sidedness mirrors what others who vilify Maduro do when they brand supporters of progressive Latin American governments as “campist,” or upholding “a Manichaean outlook” – a phrase used by Teran. Both terms are reminiscent of McCarthyism, with its attack on the entire left for being crypto-Communists or fellow travelers.
By failing to recognize the validity of the position of critical support for Maduro, Teran shows he is on board with a polarization of Venezuelan politics that leaves gradations out of the picture. For example, Teran (like Hetland) unfairly accuses me of justifying repression by omission, adding that after the July 28, 2024 presidential elections, “sectors of the international left” ended up “legitimizing the brutal repression.”
He neglects to mention that I suggested the evidence of significant right-wing and foreign involvement in the post-July 28 violent protests does not rule out the possible use of excessive force by the Venezuelan state, as the two are not “mutually exclusive.”
Which Left?
Teran ends by asking why, instead of providing critical support to Maduro, does the international left not “dedicate their energy, resources, support and advocacy to strengthening a left-wing opposition [in Venezuela] that might someday challenge for political power?” The question, however, is somewhat ambiguous.
If Teran is referring to what political scientists call “a loyal opposition” — one that recognizes the challenges facing Maduro, does not hesitate to support him in his denunciation of imperialist aggression, and avoids equating him with the Venezuelan far right — then such a proposition sounds reasonable.
But the bulk of the Venezuelan left opposition hardly fits this description. It demonizes Maduro, just as Teran and Hetland do, and the actions of many of these leftists play into the hands of the political right.
If Maduro is brought down, the far right — headed by María Corina Machado, who says she wants to see Maduro and his family behind bars — will undoubtedly dominate the new regime, with Washington’s blessing. If this were to happen, the most likely scenario would be the kind of brutal repression that has historically followed the downfall of progressive governments, from Indonesia in 1967 to Chile in 1973. The anti-Maduro left is simply too weak to shape the course of such events.
It is troubling, for instance, that the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), in spite of its glorious history dating back to its founding in 1931, endorsed the presidential candidacy of Enrique Márquez in last year’s election. Márquez was a prominent leader of one of the main parties that actively promoted destabilization and regime change in the protracted street protests against Maduro in 2014 and 2017, and wholeheartedly supported the right-wing parallel government of Juan Guaidó after 2019.
International solidarity
Two key implications of the debate over the demonization of Maduro hold particular significance for the solidarity movement. First, vilifying Maduro discourages solidarity work. I have reached this conclusion based on my experience giving numerous talks sponsored by solidarity groups in cities throughout the US and Canada since 2018.
Solidarity activists have made clear to me that a fairly favorable view of the Maduro government — specific criticisms notwithstanding — is a motivating force for them. By contrast, those who despise a government are unlikely to work with the same degree of enthusiasm in opposition to US interventionism.
In this respect, the solidarity movement differs from the anti-war movement, which tends to be less focused on the domestic politics of the nations of the South and more concerned with military spending and the death of US soldiers, in addition to the devastation caused by US armed intervention.
Secondly, an analysis that contextualizes government errors and the erosion of democratic norms leads to a fundamental conclusion. The extent to which the war on Venezuela is relaxed directly correlates with the potential to deepen democracy, invigorate social movements and expand the government’s room for maneuver, thereby increasing the likelihood of overcoming errors.
History, after all, teaches us that war and democracy are inherently incompatible. In their vilification of the Maduro government, Hetland and Teran overlook this simple truth.
The article was posted at https://links.org.au/demonising-nicolas-maduro-fallacies-and-consequences
FIFTH ARTICLE
US Sanctions Have Decimated Venezuela, but the Left Should Still Oppose Maduro’s Brutal Authoritarianism
by Gabriel Hetland
July 4, 2025
What criteria should leftists consider when deciding whether to support a government? The government’s self-proclaimed political-ideological character? Its past record? Who its enemies are?
These are important features, but the most important criterion by far is the government’s actions, and in particular how these affect social sectors the left champions: workers, the poor and other historically marginalized groups, including women, racialized communities, immigrants and LGBTQI communities.
Leftists should support governments that further the interests of these groups by raising living standards, combatting patriarchy, xenophobia and racism, or empowering workers and the poor politically and economically (that is, extending and deepening democracy).
Leftists should oppose governments that harm the interests of these groups by favoring corporations and the rich over workers and the poor, repressing working-class protests, stifling dissent, stealing elections or eroding political, civic, and labor rights. The left should oppose governments whose policies harm marginalized groups, even if they proclaim to be progressive/revolutionary and to support “the people.” Ultimately, what matters is not what a government says but what it does.
Of course, governments do not act in a vacuum; they operate in historical contexts saturated by power and inequality. This is particularly important to note in the case of left-of-center progressive and radical governments that purport to favor less powerful groups. Their actions will inevitably bring forth a reaction from the powerful. This reaction, in turn, will constrain the space within which the progressive government can act.
It may well be that a government wants to pursue policies that favor workers, the poor and the interests of marginalized groups, but is unable to do so (or only to a highly limited extent) due to constraints placed upon it by powerful enemies. When leftists evaluate a given progressive government, the context they operate in must be kept in mind.
This brings us to Venezuela’s government and my ongoing debate with Steve Ellner (see my original piece, Ellner’s response, a response by Emiliano Teran Mantovani to Ellner , and Ellner’s second response to Teran and myself).
Chávez
Like leftists around the world, Ellner and I were both vocal (but not acritical) supporters of Venezuela’s government while Hugo Chávez was in office. This support was based not only, or even primarily, on Chávez’s revolutionary (and later socialist) rhetoric, but his record in office.
As both Ellner and I have written about elsewhere, Chávez pursued policies that made life significantly better for popular sectors and other marginalized groups. This assessment is borne out in indicators demonstrating huge reductions in poverty and inequality. My own research and that of others shows Chávez’s reforms also facilitated an impressive degree of popular empowerment in terms of decision-making.
While positive in many ways, Chávez’s policies were contradictory and, ultimately, unsustainable. There are three main reasons.
First, Chávez was unable to overcome Venezuela’s longstanding hyper dependence on oil, which deformed Venezuela’s polity and economy in numerous ways: for example, by making industrialization much harder and facilitating immense corruption inside and outside the state.
Second, Chávez faced intense, and at times violent, opposition.
Finally, Chávez made major policy errors by, for instance, giving military loyalists control over key state functions and maintaining a highly flawed currency policy for years past its usefulness, which facilitated corruption amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is important to note — as I have done in a recent article — that these errors were often direct responses to opposition actions. For example, Chávez’s dependence on military loyalists increased after the 2002 coup; and Chávez implemented currency controls to counter capital flight in 2003.
Maduro
But over the course of Nicolás Maduro’s presidency, which started in 2013, I have become ever more critical of Venezuela’s government. There are two main reasons.
First, the government has become increasingly authoritarian — this is particularly true from 2017 onwards, with Maduro effectively closing any possibility for meaningful electoral competition (at least for the presidency) and brutally repressing opposition protests, including those by dissident leftist organizations and working-class communities (though the latter two should not be conflate with the former)
Second, the government has increasingly pursued policies that harm workers and the poor while benefiting foreign corporations. The clearest example of this is Maduro’s implementation of an orthodox adjustment plan in 2018 that cut public spending, decimated wages, directly reduced labor protections and involved significant privatizations of state-owned enterprises.
Although these policies appear to have facilitated a return to economic growth in more recent years, there is no evidence (that I am aware of) that they have benefited workers and the poor. Ellner calls for greater use of evidence to substantiate arguments, but I would note the government has not released key economic and social indicators for years.
Ellner and I largely concur regarding Chávez, but our views on Maduro differ sharply. Ellner sees Maduro’s government as progressive; I view Maduro as authoritarian and predatory. Ellner argues Maduro’s actions must be viewed within the broader context he operates in and offers a lengthy list of actions taken by the US government and Venezuela’s domestic opposition:
abortive coups; assassination attempts, one involving drones; recognition of de facto governments; open appeals by top US officials urging Venezuelan military officers to intervene; invasions by paramilitary forces from Colombia; covert and public international campaigns to isolate Venezuela; foreign funding of opposition groups on a scale far exceeding that provided for neighboring nations; widespread and protracted street violence aimed at regime change; and sweeping secondary sanctions to pressure corporations and governments around the world to avoid commercial dealings with Venezuela, amounting to a de facto embargo.
I agree it is essential to note this context. Indeed, pace what Ellner implies, I have never sought to minimize or ignore it. In fact, I relied extensively on Ellner’s work in a recent piece for Catalyst, where I discuss the numerous ways in which the actions of the US government and opposition shaped Chávez’s and Maduro’s policy choices. Ellner’s claim that I fail to do this is completely without merit.
It is true that I emphasize different aspects of Venezuela’s situation in different pieces, and if I were to rewrite some pieces I would place greater emphasis on US sanctions, for fear readers might not give them the weight they deserve.
I also acknowledge I should have been more careful in how I characterized Ellner’s position on Maduro’s repression. I wrote in a way that suggested Ellner supports Maduro’s repression. In fact, Ellner’s position is not entirely clear. This lack of clarity is itself a problem, but it is not the same as explicitly supporting repression.
Sanctions
Setting these issues aside, I will state clearly and forthrightly that there is no question US sanctions have wrought immense harm to the Venezuelan people and played a major role in determining Maduro’s policy choices. I would, however, also add that Maduro has weaponized the issue of sanctions to justify and distract from his own authoritarianism, repression and erroneous and inept policy choices.
The fact that context shapes leaders’ choices does not mean those choices were the best ones or deserve to be defended, either in whole or in part. To make this point as sharply as possible, my position is that the immense and entirely unjustified harm caused by US sanctions and US aggression should not mean leftists give Maduro a free pass for the repressive, authoritarian and predatory way he has governed for many years.
I would further note that this is the view of many Venezuelans, including quite a few leftist organizations, who recognize the horrors of US sanctions but find Maduro’s actions utterly untenable.
My disagreement with Ellner boils down to the question of whether there are certain lines a government cannot cross if it wishes to be considered progressive, revolutionary or even democratic, in any meaningful sense. I am convinced there are such lines, and that Maduro has repeatedly and brazenly crossed them.
Even if there were doubts about this in the past — and my view is that there has been no real doubt on this score for years — Maduro’s blatant theft of the 2024 presidential election should have put them to rest.
In an interview last year, Ellner appears to acknowledge Maduro committed electoral fraud in those elections and says such actions are unacceptable. I must, however, admit to uncertainty with respect to Ellner’s position, and ask him to answer in a clearer and direct fashion: was electoral fraud committed and should the left condemn it?
Additionally, I would ask whether a government that commits electoral fraud and then brutally represses popular sectors protesting against this can be referred to as progressive?
I assume Ellner’s response to the second question will be to point out the US provided support to the opposition and sought to stoke protests against Maduro, including in popular sectors. This is true and should be condemned. But it does not negate the gravity of Maduro’s actions.
And it is simply not true that all or most of these protests were orchestrated by the US or US-funded actors (for more on this, see my August 2024 Sidecar piece on the election and its aftermath).
The best available evidence indicates the vast majority of the approximately 1000 instances of protest, mostly in popular sectors, were spontaneous and not directed or funded by the US. Available evidence also indicates these protests were the expression of a profound and genuine discontent felt by the vast majority of Venezuelans towards Maduro.
It is of course also true that this discontent is related to the US sanctions, which have made ordinary Venezuelans’ lives immensely harder. But two things can be true at the same time: namely, (1) US sanctions have decimated Venezuela, and (2) Maduro’s own actions and policies have immensely harmed Venezuelans.
The fact Maduro’s actions occur in the context of US sanctions matters, but does not exonerate him. Indeed, this is precisely the conclusion of millions of Venezuelans who oppose US sanctions and Maduro.
Solidarity
That is why opposing both US sanctions and Maduro is the best way to show real solidarity. Letting Maduro off the hook by, for instance, constantly saying his actions have to be seen in context — which cannot be read in any other way than saying he deserves only a modicum of blame for his actions — provides him with cover to continue doing the same.
While Maduro is in no way equivalent to Saddam Hussein, it is useful to compare how US leftists approached US aggression against Iraq. In Iraq’s case, the standard leftist position was anti-war. This did not entail supporting Hussein, whose actions were odious and reprehensible. It would have been ridiculous and strategically foolish to demand that the millions opposing the US war on Iraq proactively declare their support for Hussein.
Notwithstanding the immense differences, the same is true regarding Venezuela today. Demanding leftists support Maduro, or turn a blind eye to his egregious actions, is foolish. A far better strategy, practically (and morally), is to oppose US sanctions without supporting Maduro.
I would also point out it is necessary to forthrightly criticize Maduro in order to retain credibility. Otherwise, leftists lay ourselves open to the charge of being supporters of authoritarianism and repression.
To summarize as clearly as possible: leftists should oppose US sanctions without supporting Maduro because, even when considered in context, his actions deserve to be strongly condemned.
At the same time, the reverse is also true: however odious Maduro’s actions are, they are no justification for the reprehensible sanctions that have led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths and immense suffering for millions more.
This article was posted at https://links.org.au/us-sanctions-have-decimated-venezuela-left-should-still-oppose-maduros-brutal-authoritarianism
SIXTH ARTICLE
Solidarity with Venezuela: The Real Issue Is Demonization, Not Criticism of Maduro
by Steve Ellner
July 23, 2025
One important debate on the left over the past century has centered on assessing governments committed to socialism that, when confronted with imperialist aggression, veer from their original course.1 Cases in point include: the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin and after 1953, Cuba under Fidel Castro, Vietnam following the death of Ho Chi Minh, China under Mao Zedong and Venezuela under President Nicolás Maduro.2
The exchanges on the pages of LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal between Gabriel Hetland, Emiliano Teran Mantovani, Pedro Eusse and myself over the Maduro government must be seen in this wider historical context. In his latest rejoinder, Hetland does a good job summarizing areas of agreement and differences between us, making any further recap unnecessary. This article will only examine four gaps.
Prioritizing Anti-US Imperialism
First, the left worldwide needs to center its attention on the struggle against US imperialism, and quite possibly characterize it as the number one priority today. Consider the US’s omnipotent role in combating progressive movements around the world, the devastation it has unleashed in Gaza and across the Middle East, and its military budget that fuels arms races and heightens the risk of a nuclear confrontation.
Just one example is its construction of the Golden Dome missile defense system and the Pentagon’s program for the mass production of drones. The aim is to force China to keep pace militarily, thereby straining its economy. The Ronald Reagan administration pursued the same strategy in the 1980s, which the right credits with hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mao’s dictum on the importance of determining the principal contradiction at any given moment — defined as imperialism during the Japanese occupation of China — is applicable to Venezuela. Its economy is dependent on petroleum to the extent that it is hard to imagine any leftist government escaping the devastating impact of US-imposed sanctions.
Considering Washington’s relentless regime-change actions, US imperialism must be seen as the principal contradiction confronting Venezuela. Yet in his discussion of what he calls “the most important criterion by far” for evaluating the Maduro government, Hetland indicates — at least implicitly — that he does not share this view on the imperative to prioritize the struggle against US imperialism.
Venezuela and Cuba are the front line of defense against US imperialism in Latin America. What is at stake is the prospect of total subjugation — hinted at by US President Donald Trump and his neocon supporters when they invoke the Monroe Doctrine, viewed as essential to safeguarding US national security.
Moreover, US intervention has given rise to failed states and prolonged civil wars in countries such as Haiti, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether this depiction is relevant to the debate over the Maduro government is a valid question, which merits inclusion in the discussion.
Maduro’s Progressive Aspects
Second, nowhere in the two articles by Hetland is there any discussion of what I identify as the Maduro government’s positive or progressive aspects (foreign policy, communes, community participation). His only comment along these lines is: “Maduro’s foreign policy continues to exhibit traces of anti-imperialism, but even this is highly limited.” Hetland, however, offers no explanation as to why he considers it “highly limited.”
The failure to address these issues is a fundamental shortcoming because my articles in LINKS do not deny important downsides of the Maduro government, but address the negative consequences and inaccuracies of demonizing Maduro. My basic argument against Hetland, Teran and Eusse (writing on behalf of the Partido Comunista de Venezuela/Communist Party of Venezuela, PCV3) is that demonizing Maduro is counterproductive, as it undermines the work of the Venezuelan solidarity movement in opposing sanctions.
The issue at stake is not mistaken policies but demonization. Recognizing important positive aspects runs counter to the demonization that permeates their articles in LINKS. Following from the premise that anti-imperialism needs to be prioritized, the largely progressive nature of Venezuela’s foreign policy has to be brought into the picture in a major way.
The details matter, especially when they go beyond mere rhetoric. Examples include Venezuela’s solidarity toward Cuba in the form of shipments of much-needed oil on generous terms, despite the logistical difficulties imposed by US sanctions.
Furthermore, in the context of Latin America’s increasing political polarization, Venezuela has been in the forefront of clashes with right-wing governments, including those of Argentina’s Javier Milei, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and Panama’s José Raúl Mulino.
Moreover, Maduro’s actions have stood in solidarity with Venezuelan immigrants, at the same time as he has lashed out at Washington’s inhumane policies toward them. Also significant is the Maduro government hosting the World Congress against Fascism last year, which drew 500 activists from 95 countries, and vehemently defending the Palestinian cause.
Grey Areas
Third, open debate, transparency and the free flow of information are the first things that get sacrificed when a nation is in a wartime-like situation. Such an environment has been thrust on Venezuela since 2014-15, with the four months of regime change street actions (known as the “guarimba”) and Barack Obama’s executive order declaring the nation a threat to US national security.
The resultant “grey areas” pose a dilemma for analysts lacking inside information and complicate the task of reaching well-founded conclusions. Numerous examples can be cited. One is the cash transactions for oil on the high seas (known as “cash and carry”) to avoid secondary sanctions against buyers and shipping companies, a practice conducive to corruption.
Another is the strengthening of the military faction within Chavismo (which dates back to the start of the Chávez presidency, if not earlier) as a result of Washington’s open calls on military officers to overthrow the government. The unity of the two main longstanding currents within Chavismo, led by Maduro and former military lieutenant Diosdado Cabello, was a sine qua non for the survival of the Maduro government from the outset.4 This reality may have limited Maduro’s options.
The existence of grey areas does not rule out possible condemnation in absolute terms of a president of a given nation. They do, however, underscore the need to recognize that Maduro’s Venezuela represents an extreme case of a nation facing imperialist aggression, and to give serious consideration to the resultant challenges.
The existence of important grey areas also suggests that a nuanced analysis regarding the complexity of the Venezuelan case is more appropriate than the black and white one put forward by those who demonize Maduro.
Solidarity Movement
Fourth, in the section in his second article under the subheading “Solidarity,” Hetland notes that the anti-Iraq war movement stopped short of defending the Saddam Hussein regime. He concludes that, by the same logic, there is no reason why the Venezuelan solidarity movement needs to highlight anything positive about the Maduro government.
The example of the Iraq War, however, is compelling precisely because it demonstrates the opposite. Hussein’s reprehensible image contributed to the disappointing mobilization capacity (after an initial spurt) of the anti-war movement — in sharp contrast to the huge protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. One reason (although undoubtedly not the main one) was that large numbers of those who protested in the ’60s were inspired by the tremendous prestige that Ho Chi Minh enjoyed at the time.
Moreover, one of the most important and effective activities of the Cuban and Venezuelan solidarity movements has been organizing trips to these countries (as the anti-Vietnam war movement also famously undertook.) One may ask: would an organization that demonizes the Maduro government be likely to sponsor delegations of activists and sympathizers to Venezuela?
Finally, Hetland’s comparison between the Iraq War and the international sanctions against Venezuela falls short, since anti-war movements (as in the case of Iraq) and solidarity movements (as with Venezuela) focus on different issues, as discussed in my previous rejoinder. The effectiveness of international solidarity movements, more than the anti-war movement, largely hinges on the positive image of the government that is being targeted by imperialism.
Anti-Imperialism and Socialist Governments
In closing, I would like to bring into the discussion Domenico Losurdo’s Western Marxism: How it Died, How it can be Reborn5 which recently has been the source of considerable debate on the left. Losurdo contends that historically much of the left (those he calls “Western Marxists”) has failed to grasp the anti-imperialist nature of socialist governments.
Elsewhere, I have criticized Losurdo for casting too wide a net in placing individual leftists in the pejorative category of “Western Marxism.” On the positive side, however, Losurdo’s book skillfully articulates what the experience of socialist governments have clearly demonstrated over the last century: socialist construction in Global South countries, in a world in which capitalism is hegemonic and imperialism predominates, is a far more complex process than the struggle to achieve state power. Even more so, in the case of Venezuela, which has been singled out by Washington for special attack, a fact that has been thoroughly documented.6
Losurdo contends that only leftist purists deny the role played by private capital in socialist transition. None of the four articles in this debate recognize the complexity involved in the economic transformation of a nation committed to socialism, such as Venezuela, and specifically the thorny issue of tactical allies with the private sector, which beyond doubt open the door to corruption.
Hetland notes that Chávez (and Maduro) “was unable to overcome Venezuela’s longstanding hyper dependence on oil,” while Eusse asserts that the Chavista government left the “rentier” model intact. While both statements are accurate, the authors fail to outline a viable alternative economic strategy, taking into consideration current circumstances. Indeed, there are no ready-made blueprints or panaceas to deal with the types of challenges the Maduro government has faced on the economic front since 2015, when Washington escalated its war on Venezuela and options became limited.
Any realistic analysis that offers solutions to the pressing economic problems confronting post-2015 Venezuela will inevitably be at odds with black and white thinking that demonizes Maduro and equates his government with the right-wing opposition.
NOTES
1. I would like to thank Leonardo Flores and Lucas Koerner for their critical comments on this article as well as the previous one posted by LINKS.
2. On what basis do I assert that Maduro is committed to socialism? Maduro’s personal and political trajectory is relevant. His background is not that of a social democrat-type politician. Born into a leftist family, Maduro was an activist and member of radical left parties in his youth, before joining the Chavista movement in the 1990s. For six years he served as foreign minister under former president Hugo Chávez, who few would deny was a socialist. Maduro heads the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV), which officially adheres to scientific socialism and Marxism.
3. With regard to the PCV’s critique of, and split with, the Maduro government in 2020, I have argued elsewhere that both sides committed errors that contributed to the falling out. I would like to add that throughout my career as a writer and analyst, I have written extensively on the PCV’s history (beginning with my PhD dissertation) and have highlighted its heroic struggles. In the process, I interviewed, got to know, and developed great admiration for numerous PCV historical leaders. Ellner, “Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions among the People.” Science & Society (July 2023), p. 401-402.
4. When Chávez died in 2013, there was considerable speculation that Maduro and Cabello would come into conflict over control of the Chavista movement. Maduro, who in the early years of the Chávez presidency headed the Chavista labor movement fraction in the National Assembly, was associated with worker demands and leftist ideology, unlike Cabello. Ellner and Fred Rosen, “Chavismo at the crossroads: Hardliners, moderates and a regime under attack.” NACLA: Report on the Americas (May-June, 2002), pp. 9-11.
5. Losurdo, Western Marxism: How it Died, How it can be Reborn (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 2024).
6. Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur, Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2021), pp. 21-23; Ellner, “Objective Conditions in Venezuela…,” pp. 396-399
This article was posted at https://links.org.au/solidarity-venezuela-real-issue-demonisation-not-criticism-maduro
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