Bernd
08/13/2019 (Tue) 23:51:51
No.28642
del
Maduro's regime, besides no longer providing day-to-day services like law enforcement and healthcare, doesn't even have a true monopoly on violence: though he is the nominal highest authority of his "Holy Roman Empire" he is in fact very weak, not only in the sense that he relies on foreign puppetmasters (of which Cuba can nearly boast of running an occupation force) but also that he has to delegate power to a myriad of entities: coletivos, paramilitaries (including Colombian militias), cartels, local police and army units which largely fund themselves through drug trade (though even Maduro's family members take part in that) and extortion of the population. As they can find resources of their own they're not fully reliant on Maduro. The forces which do rely on Caracas and are directly subordinate to it in an official, bureaucratic hierarchy can't supress the population on their own. But they can harass lesser forces and Maduro can give or retract the state's blessing. So an arrangement develops in which those local entities are given a free hand but help Maduro remain in power. This has a lot in common with feudalism. It's also what happened in Syria to a large extent, where Assad is little more than a figurehead over a patchwork of militias.
In everyday life, too, Venezuela strides towards the past. Electrified, consumerist, interconnected society is gone. Internal trade has shrunk to a minimum, barter is common and production methods become ever more primitive. If anything, Maduro, like Mugabe, should be an idol to primitivists.
Chavismo doesn't rule like Lee Kuan Yew or Macron and its mindset completely breaks with the centrist consensus in the power centers of the West. It rejects any pretension to technocracy, careful consideration of long-term effects and following experts; el Presidente improvises, based on his nonexistant culture and knowledge, measures to save the people on the spot and that's it. Westerners say private actors should be assured of the safety of their property and contracts, while Chavismo seizes lands, encourages invaders, acts erratically and doesn't care about contracts. Westerners say extensive price controls are a recipe for disaster, Chavismo does them anyway. Westerners say a combination of a fixed foreign exchange rate, free capital movement and an independent monetary policy are an "impossible trinity", Chavez had them as his mainstay. And so on. For the future to resemble Venezuela leaders must embrace Venezuelan policies, but thankfully that seems unlikely.
Chavismo is classical South American autocratic demagoguery combined with moldy old Third Worldist, anti-imperialist and Marxist rhetoric. It doesn't look like a blueprint for what will happen in the future, but just another point in the long line of tinpot Third World autocracies.