the exportation of Chavismo

The nail-biter election in Peru presents three unpleasant but difficult options: a neoliberal woman, a corrupt social democrat and a clone of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Exportation of the Chavez model is dangerous, but not for the reasons that the U.S. State Department think it is.
I have no problem with Chavez radical plan to use Venezuelan oil to fund social programs and the dislodging of the country’s oligopoly. Whether they will be replaced by a new one remains to be seen. No, the problem lies in unique situation in which Venezuela finds itself. While nearly all developing countries have natural resources that could be more equitably (and ecologically) exploited, there is no natural resource quite like crude oil. As we know, this is both a blessing and a curse in nations in which the public sphere is repressed and democratic institutions nearly nonexistent. It’s good to be a Norwegian after that country tapped into the bounty of North Sea oil. It’s not so good to be a democratic activist in Saudi Arabia or Iran.
Nonetheless, if the Bolivarian Revolution invests in institution-building as much as it does in posturing, a lot of good may come of it. But countries which are not blessed/cursed with plentiful oil reserves will have to find a different path. For Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and the rest of Latin America, the trick is to become a producer and an exporter without abandoning environmental protection, human and labor rights or being buried in debt and dependence. This is a tough line to walk- even tougher without truckloads of hard currency from oil revenues.
And this is the crux of my skepticism about Chavismo: it’s not exportable. If you don’t have the oil money, you can’t play the games that Chavez is playing. You can’t muscle the United States by yourself, you can’t thumb your nose at the risk of massive capital flight and you don’t have a reservoir of public wealth to redistribute. Bolivia’s Evo Morales will try, using coca instead of oil, and will find that he’s following (forgive me) a pipe-dream.
There’s a First World example, as well, which will no doubt unleash the wrath of my friends in Norway and Sweden. The traditional Nordic Social Democratic left has been skeptical to hostile toward European integration. It is seen, with validity, as a threat to the welfare state and to the principles of social solidarity which the labor movements of Scandinavia have worked hard to establish as hegemonic. However, of the nations of the Scandinavian peninsula, only Norway remains outside of the European Union. At the same time, only Finland has embraced it whole-heartedly. It is not an accident that, thanks to oil wealth, Norway is the richest and most fiscally independent from the rest of the region, while Finland is the poorest and most vulnerable to market pressures. I support those who argue that Norway should stay out of the EU, but I also know that this is not so easy an option for other countries. I’m also not convinced that the Union is the doomsday machine that is feared by many of my friends in Sweden.
And so, it would make no sense to me to hold up Norway’s refusal of the European Union as that country’s major contribution to the world. Instead, I look to Norway (and to Venezuela) as examples of what countries can do with their natural resources. They stand as counter examples to Kuwait, the U.S., and to Great Britain which squandered it’s North Sea oil wealth in Thatcherite privatization madness. Everybody can’t be Norway, and every Latin American leader can’t (and shouldn’t) be Hugo Chavez.



In other words, we make history, but not in the conditions of our own making…