A Debate on the Left over the Nicolas Maduro Government

NOTE: The website “Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal” hosted a debate over the
Venezuelan Solidarity movement, the denunciations of Nicolas Maduro’s policies, and the importance of contextualization. The interchange was initiated by an article by Gabriel Hetland, associate professor at the University of Albany, followed by a rejoinder by Latin American Perspectives’ associated managing editor Steve Ellner, and then a critical response from political ecologist Emiliano Teran Mantovani. It consisted of six articles altogether. All three analysts frame issues which are useful for grasping the knotty dilemmas facing not only the Maduro presidency but other Pink Tide governments as well.

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 mobilise, the organisation and legalisation 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-introductionand 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/

  1. 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).
  2. The trade journals clearly indicated that the August 2017 executive order “targeted” the Venezuelan oil industry. That same year, The Economistpointed 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 positionof 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.
  3. Steve Ellner, “Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People.” Science and Society, vol. 87, no. 3, p. 389.