An article about Venezuela in the most recent Economist made me think of doublespeak ominously echoing back to the rhetoric common in the pre-1989 Soviet bloc. Contrary to the Orwellian newspeak, “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year,” Venezuelan doublespeak seems to be expanding daily, as president Hugo Chávez comes up with new terms to describe the direction in which his country is going. “Bolivarian Revolution”, “21st century socialism”, “petroleum socialism”– these are powerful phrases meant to evoke lofty ideals of social equality and using the country’s mineral riches to empower the poor.
But the reality on the ground is the same as it has been throughout history, whenever and wherever in the world populist slogans were raised to the function of state policy. Namely, they remained slogans only because their implementation led to quite the opposite results. The outcome in Venezuela is proving no different with the emergence of key beneficiaries of Chávez’s policies: “Boli-bourgeoisie.” This new elite, far from representing the ideals of socialism, is instead eager to display its newly found wealth derived from close relations with the government and fueled by petrodollars. So does the president really mean what he says proclaiming that “being rich is bad” and lashing out at what he calls “the oligarchy”? Or are Venezuelans simply being subjected to more doublespeak practices? If his words are genuine…
… strange, then, that the streets of Caracas are clogged with big new 4x4s (Hummers are especially favoured), it is hard to get a table at the best restaurants, and art dealers and whisky importers have never had it so good.
Here is what’s happening:
The price of Venezuela’s main export [oil] has increased almost eightfold since 1999 and the economy has been growing at 10% a year. But (…) inflation is close to 20% and the official value of the currency is twice its black-market exchange rate. So the savvy investor looks for access to cheap dollars, import opportunities and government contracts, all of which are largely conditional on political obedience. (…) The importers (…) have grown rich. But Venezuela’s ranchers are becoming extinct, threatened by expropriations, land invasions and price controls, as well as by extortion and kidnappings by criminal gangs.
This is the not-so-glamorous result of Chávez’s version of a socialist revolution:
For those with connections, however, the rewards are great. The World Bank recently ranked Venezuela as the second-worst country in the Americas for the control of corruption, above only Haiti.
So despite the glorious rhetoric, Venezuela remains another example of a regime that failed to make socialist slogans anything more than deceptive doublespeak, refusing to call the reality what it is: a major power shift to a new elite that has little to do with benefiting the poor. But that’s nothing new under the sun – after all, the sources Mr. Chávez’s favorite Marxist quotes had made the same mistakes before.
Published Date: August 20, 2007