Chavecista ideologues and pseudo-intellectuals are experts in staging epic battles against straw men, ideological ghosts and souls which exist only in the writer's prolific imagination. The goal is, as always, to deceive the gullible readers.

As an example you can read, for instance, the article titled "From the Liberal philosophy (bourgeois) towards the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution's phylosophy" published on Aporrea.org by Professor Humberto Mendoza. An excerpt of the article will suffice to illustrate my point:

One important variable we must propose is that the dominant libertarian structure, referred to the power and to the spaces suitable to be used for communal participation, blocks the theoretical constitutional mandate and the wills who wish the realization of that legal postulate, which would allow to realize the longed for popular power, so that communities can appropriate the certain possibility of creating the material and spiritual life and work conditions for the production of their social lives. [emphasis added]

For the person writing this, there exists in Venezuela a dominant libertarian structure, which hinders the full exercise of the "popular power". In which country such a person lives? Who told him that in Venezuela rules or ruled at any time any sort of libertarian order? Certainly not any person in his right mind, nor any person completely sober. If you ask me, it could have been some sort of comunist with one too many beers on his system.

In Venezuela never has any libertarian order ruled. Certainly not in the post-WWII Venezuela.

Any person who believes that any sort of libertarian political order has ruled in Venezuela is severely confused or is trying to deceive his or her readers. Or both things at the same time.

Because a classical liberal political order implies that state power is severely limited to certain and very few tasks: public order, external defense and justice. In a classical liberal order there is absolute separation between the economic and the public sphere, i. e., the state does not interfere in the economy and the economic agents or actors don't try to influence politics, since the power of the state is so reduced that it's not worth the effort. A libertarian or natural order would imply a complete abolition of the state.

Now try to remember your Venezuelan history lectures and tell me when in the history of the country after the death of Juan Vicente Gómez the power of the state has been limited in any meaningful way and when has the state left the economy run its natural course.

The answer to the previous question from any honest person who knows a bit of Venezuelan history has to be that never in this country has such a political and economic order prevailed. Venezuelan history registers a long (and growing) list of state interventions in the economy and a continuous growth of state power at the expense of social power and personal freedom. Just consider that the "eocnomic guaranties" (or economic rights) recognized by the 1961 constitution were suspended in 1961 by the president Rómulo Betancourt. And they were not re-established until 1991! My friend Klaus Meyer has a more detailed list in his blog (in Spanish) ...Y todo lo demás.

But of course, if the people is convinced by chavecista ideologues that the previous and disastrous political and economic order was that of classical liberalism, naturally they will be less inclined to give a chance to the only economic system that can challenge the neocommunism of the "socialists of the XXI century": free market capitalism.

One of our tasks is to ensure out of touch neocommunists don't succeed in this subtle but fundamental goal.

 Venezuela, Politics