Walking the Tightrope of Socialist Governance: A Strategic-Relational Analysis of Twenty-first-Century Socialism

Nicos Poulantzas and Socialist Transformation

The strategic-relational approach to the state developed by Poulantzas is particularly useful in helping to contextualize structural and contingent agential factors involved in socialist transformation where capitalist forms persist. Notably, it provides insight into the importance of process and conjuncture in a transition toward socialism and the irremediable tension between the short-term survival of a socialist project in perilous conjunctures and its long-term viability and scope. Basically, the strategic-relational approach to the state conceptualizes it as the “specific material condensation of a relationship of forces” in particular historical circumstances (Poulantzas, 2014: 127). In other words, the presence of class struggle as a social relationship within the state shapes the institutional materiality of the state itself. In turn, the evolving nature of class struggle within fluctuating political and economic circumstances lends a conjunctural indeterminacy to the shape of the state. ⁴ The state is conceived as a “site” in which the relationship between dominant and dominated classes and a “power base” representing the divergent interests of a power bloc are organized. To be clear, a power base or power apparatus may be located anywhere in the state, whether it be a ministry, an agency, or a branch (129–133). Consequently, for Poulantzas, the state is an inescapable and evolving terrain of struggle essential to any project of socialist transformation.

In view of this, he argues that a democratic road to socialism necessarily involves maintaining and managing certain preexisting state economic apparatuses with all of their inherent contradictions. Thus, he explains, even where a left government begins to take over important apparatuses, the “state institutional structure allows the bourgeoisie to meet a popular accession to power by permutating the sites of real and formal power” (2014: 138). This means that even if a left government representing the interests of dominated classes managed to exercise formal power over “the heights of the dominant state apparatus and apparatuses,” dominant classes could “permutate” their power within the state by making previously secondary power apparatuses decisive (for example, using the justice system or nominally symbolic institutions to impeach a government or block legislation) or by moving real power from the hierarchical summit of an apparatus to a lower level. Thus a dominant class may move its power horizontally across apparatuses but also vertically within apparatuses (139), and an electoral victory by a left government is only the beginning of a process of transformation in that capitalist classes retain power both within and outside of the state.

This means that governing from the left is much like walking a tightrope, with transforming the state economic apparatus being necessary for any transition to socialism to take place but doing so incautiously risking economic “paralysis” that could render a “boycott” by the bourgeoisie decisive (Poulantzas, 2014: 198–199). Therefore, dominant classes retain the ability to shape leftist state projects or programs through struggle via their important resources outside of the state and their power apparatuses within the state. It follows that dominated classes, according to Poulantzas, need to modify the configuration of the state by engendering a transformative tension that acts upon their simultaneous inclusion in and exclusion from it. They need to pursue a “political strategy of autonomy” whereby they organize on the “terrain of power” within the state and/or, depending on the conjuncture, outside of it by seeking to “constantly maintain and deploy centres and networks at a distance from these apparatuses” (153). This autonomy and transformative dynamic can be ensured by strengthening the institutions of representative democracy within the state, organizing centers of power for dominated classes according to the principles of self-management and participatory democracy, and continually taking on “new popular demands” from different social groups, including nonclass ones, to expand the support for the process of transformation. Creating centers backed by a broad popular movement is essential to resisting opposition by dominant class fractions. Pursuing this dual strategy of democratization acts as a counterweight to the integrative force of preexisting networks of power and to the temptation to pursue change from above, divorced from popular struggles (as in techno-bureaucratic statism). Democratizing the state does not, however, prevent statism or ensure a successful transition toward socialism. Poulantzas readily admits that engendering such a process of change can lead to new risks that may enable dominant classes to reassert themselves by different means (256–264). What the experience of twenty-first-century socialism in Latin America demonstrates is that democratization may expand the scope for socialist transformation but only temporarily and precariously.

Twenty-First-Century Socialism in Ecuador

Of the three countries examined here, Ecuador is the one in which twenty-first-century socialism most clearly took a techno-bureaucratic statist turn. The political project of Rafael Correa’s government has been characterized by a top-down approach to reform that employed periodic plebiscitary mobilizations bypassing organized social movements (Silva, 2016: 7). Also, despite a rhetorical commitment to buen vivir (living well) that commits the government to respect for indigenous rights, harmony with nature, and deepening democracy, Ecuador’s extractivist vocation was never called into question (Caria and Dominguez, 2016: 23). Notwithstanding these factors, the AP did not entirely shy away from confronting dominant classes. In fact, an important component of its Citizens’ Revolution has been to conceptualize the state as an autonomous subject capable of pursuing the interests of the nation as a whole once it has been purged of external influences. Therefore, it has sought to increase the institutional capacity and autonomy of the state vis-à-vis corporatist interests that historically enjoyed preferential treatment from the state. Significantly, it challenged the interconnected financial and media elites that loomed large even after the collapse of the partidocracia party system in the late 1990s (Ramírez, 2016: 149). Nevertheless, what it challenged was not the power bloc (the dominant class fraction and its allies) but its most politically vulnerable fractions. Additionally, in seeking to establish the autonomy of the state, the AP government has also incidentally confronted nonelite civil society actors such as unions and indigenous organizations (Silva, 2016: 7), the very constituencies around which centers of power could have been organized. Therefore, dominant classes, especially the fractions linked to the export sector, have retained both instrumental and structural power beyond and within the state. This has made the government vulnerable to a rapprochement with dominant class fractions in view of the reduction of revenue provoked by the decline of commodity prices (Wolff, 2016: 135). This rapprochement, in turn, has limited the expansion of twenty-first-century socialism and placed the country firmly in the “intermediate result”referred to by Katz, with little ambition to go beyond it.

What the rise of the AP has in common with the rise of the Movimiento V República (Fifth Republic Movement—MVR) in Venezuela and the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement toward Socialism—MAS) in Bolivia is that they all emerged in the wake of the collapse of party systems and dissatisfaction with neoliberal reforms. Nevertheless, what is distinctive about the rise of the AP is that it took place while social movements were in retreat as a result of their having spent a substantial amount of their political capital in getting Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez elected in 2012. When Gutiérrez failed to challenge local and global dominant class fractions and pursued neoliberal reforms despite promises not to do so, he was removed from office by an aggregation of different actors that had not previously been particularly active in civil society (Errejón and Guijarro, 2016: 36–37). The popularity of the AP was bolstered by the protests, and its militants consisted of an amalgamation of Ecuador’s old left, new left, academics, and middle-class groupings that coalesced against neoliberalism, which they believed had weakened the autonomy and institutional capacity of the Ecuadorian state (North, 2013: 114). Importantly, indigenous social movements and the other social movements that had initially supported Gutiérrez were not at the forefront of the movement to overthrow him, nor did they form a central component of Correa’s electoral success, though they did ally themselves with the AP to help get him elected in the second round (Ramírez, 2016: 145–146). Correa received support from social movements, but it was not a goal of the AP to bring social movements into the state so as to create centers of power within it.

Rather than targeting dominant classes as a bloc, the AP targeted certain class fractions that were deemed especially responsible for weakening the Ecuadorian state and economy. The major thrust of its offensive was against the “banking-speculative investment lobby” that it held responsible for initiating and supporting neoliberal reforms in the 1990s and generating the financial crisis that afflicted the Ecuadorian economy in 2000. To that end, consistent with its conception of the state, Correa’s government sought to block that sector’s influence on policy making by excluding anyone formally associated with it. Additionally, it seized the assets of the powerful Isias business groups and imposed important regulations on the financial sector (Ramírez, 2016: 150). It also challenged the imperatives of the financial sector by reducing interest rates to promote the productive sector and pressuring that sector to repatriate savings held outside of the country (Wolff, 2016: 135). More important, it sought to constrain the power and influence of the financial sector by enshrining in the constitution measures that would prevent the financial sector from possessing holdings in other sectors of the economy and the media (Kitzberger, 2016: 32). Throughout its tenure, the AP has had a tense relationship with the financial sector, but it also has had periods of cooperation such as that in response to the 2007–2008 financial crisis (Wolff, 2016: 135–136). The government has pursued a policy of confrontation with this sector along statist reformist lines, but it has not sought to alter relations in that sector by democratizing it.

The AP government’s relationship with the exporting sectors of the economy has been less confrontational. This is in part because of Ecuador’s dependence on capital generated by exports resulting from the dollarization of its economy in the wake of the 2000 financial crisis. This has, in turn, contributed to an overvalued currency that has hampered Ecuador’s economic diversification and stunted the growth of its manufacturing sector, locking it into being a “low-wage, primary-export economy” (North, 2013: 120–121). Therefore the AP has had to rely on agricultural and mineral exports to pay for its social expenditures. Despite a constitutional guarantee that people and communities have “equitable, permanent, and quality access to water, air, and land and to the benefits of ground resources and natural assets” (Republic of Ecuador, 2008: Art. 276.4), the AP has not pursued substantial land reform, thus avoiding conflict with agricultural elites in spite of inequitable distribution. Consequently, despite some initial uncertainty the AP government has enjoyed a relatively stable relationship with both coastal and highland agricultural elites, who produce approximately 25 percent of export revenue (North, 2013: 118–119). There has, in fact, only been modest redistribution involving mostly public land in a way that has not altered social relations in that sector of the economy (Caria and Dominguez, 2016: 26).

A similar pattern emerged with the petroleum sector, despite an initial phase in which it forcefully reasserted its role in that sector. The AP government’s relationship with foreign petroleum companies got off to a difficult start as a result of a 2007 decree that increased the state’s share of the profits, uncertainty pertaining to royalties brought about by changes to the Mining Law and the constitution, and a new agreement that classified all petroleum production as state property in 2010 (Gamso, 2016: 113; Wacaster, 2013: 1–4). These changes did alter the regime of accumulation in that country to the advantage of the state, but at the same time they committed Ecuador to its extractivist vocation. Nevertheless, eventually the AP government sought to stabilize its relationship with foreign petroleum companies, and foreign direct investment increased in that sector between 2011 and 2013 (Wacaster, 2013: 1). The fluctuating nature of the relationship between the AP government and dominant classes, which has tended toward accommodation in the long term, has blunted the transformational thrust of the Citizens’ Revolution, but it has also provided a stable political framework from which to pursue its more limited agenda.

This pattern of confrontation and accommodation has taken a toll on the government’s relationship with indigenous and social movements, especially in that it has entailed greater reliance on resource extraction. It is in this relationship that the AP’s statism has come into conflict with its rhetorical goals of buen vivir and socialist transformation. For example, when indigenous and environmental groups mobilized to oppose extraction in the Yasuni National Park, the government repressed the movement and attacked the groups politically by invoking the state’s imperative to harness natural resources as a way to fund social spending (Holst, 2016: 209). Accordingly, improvements in the material condition of dominated classes and its confrontation with financial capital have not eliminated the unequal power relation between the indigenous and the mestizo population. Additionally, the AP has not politically mobilized dominated classes, especially in the agricultural sector, to that end. Liisa North (2013: 125) explains that instead of “encouraging popular organization and mobilization” the government “blames policy failures and deficiencies, at least in some realms, on unions, professional associations, indigenous organizations, and ecoterrorists who protest mining projects, among others.” The difficult relationship between the government and the social movements highlights the limits of pursuing an agenda of social transformation in the context of extractivism guided by a statist outlook.

The government has relied instead on referenda and direct appeals to the population in a way that bypasses civil society altogether (Errejón and Guijarro, 2016: 44). This strategy has for the most part benefited the government, since it continues to enjoy popular support (Telesur, 2015). Nevertheless, it did face a coup attempt organized, in part, by police officers. The crisis brought forward the difficult relationship with social movements as certain groups, including indigenous ones, used the occasion to criticize the government’s recalcitrant attitude toward them. Consistent with this was that it was military and international pressure that returned Correa to power and not a significant popular uprising as was the case during the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela. In the wake of the coup, Correa criticized indigenous social movements for their lack of support and recognized the role of the military in returning him to power (Becker, 2016: 85–86). This means that the AP has had to rely on an unreformed state and existing social relations for its grip on power. Accordingly, its project will hinge on high commodity prices to buttress its plebiscitary appeals rather than on “trench systems” of defense within the state and civil society. Therefore mobilization of significant cross-sectoral dominant class opposition has not emerged in Ecuador, the imperatives of which were not substantially challenged.

Twenty-First-Century Socialism in Bolivia

Compared with Correa’s AP government, Evo Morales’s MAS government was much more explicit in its desire for transformation. In the early stages of its tenure, the MAS had a much closer relationship with social movements and sought, at least rhetorically, to challenge established social relations. As a consequence, it faced a more substantial onslaught from the country’s elites, especially those from the agribusiness sector in Bolivia’s eastern lowland states, that had led the economy and the state to the “verge of collapse” (Errejón and Guijarro, 2016: 46). These mobilizations left an important imprint on government projects and the institutions responsible for implementing them as the MAS eventually sought to stabilize its relationship with insurgent elites. In fact, it was only once the MAS had adopted a more pragmatic approach that it was able to proceed with its project. However, the space for pursuing this project had been constrained by the price of compromise with the elites, since it committed Bolivia to its extractivist vocation and the continued dominance of agro-industrial elites in the agricultural sector. This compromise was made palatable through a techno-bureaucratic statist strategy of improving the material conditions of dominated classes through social spending paid for by resource revenue. Thus the government became politically and economically dependent on continued high commodity prices, which brought it into confrontations with constituencies that should have formed its social base (Achtenberg, 2016). Losses in local elections and the defeat of the February 2016 referendum on Morales’s proposal to run for a fourth term demonstrate the government’s increasing difficulty in walking the tightrope of socialist transformation.

The MAS’s rise to power began as the stable party system that had dominated Bolivian politics between 1985 and 1995 began to disintegrate as a result of the neoliberal reforms its parties implemented during that decade (Cyr, 2015: 293). Importantly, it was the privatization of public services that generated the new kinds of mobilization that buoyed MAS’s rise to power. To be clear, the MAS was not a major force behind the water war (1999–2000) and the gas wars (2003 and 2005), which were driven by territorially based social movement alliances that bridged urban/rural, racial, and class divides (Spronk, 2015: 37). Nevertheless, it adopted a “supraclass” strategy that brought together the different segments of Bolivian society that were disaffected after decades of neoliberal reforms, targeting indigenous and campesino sectors, particularly coca farmers, and urban constituencies touched by the water and gas wars. Not only did it adopt some of the organizational modalities of the social protests around the water and gas wars but also it positioned itself favorably vis-à-vis those movements by adopting some of their demands and later co-opting sectors of their leadership (Anria, 2013: 27–28). Errejón and Guijarro (2016: 45) explain that the MAS was able to universalize the particular demands of coca farmers by joining them with urban issues framed in terms of “defense of national sovereignty, defense of indigenous peoples, and rejection of neoliberalism.” Yet its relationship with social movements was marked by a lack of formal ties, and this distance became more apparent as social movements grew uncomfortable with its emphasis on extractivism and on stabilizing its hold on power not by expanding its base through democratic mechanisms but by accommodating elites. The evolution of the relationship between the MAS and social movements was stamped by developments that took place during the constituent-assembly process.

Consistent with what occurred in Ecuador and Venezuela, the MAS sought to modify power relations by altering the nature and structure of the state via a new constitution. However, it faced much greater opposition during the process than the other two regimes. Its strategy signaled its proximity to social movements by implementing the October Agenda developed by the Unity Pact social movements during the gas wars (Errejón and Guijarro, 2016: 46). Plans for the new constitution included constitutionalizing the government’s nationalization of hydrocarbons, land reform, legalizing coca, democratic reform, changing the division of powers, decolonizing the state, and recognizing the rights of Bolivia’s indigenous populations. However, the process of constitutional change of 2006–2009 quickly became a terrain of confrontation, sabotage, and paralysis, with Bolivia’s dominant classes threatening to jeopardize the entire MAS project.

As proceedings were initiated with a constituent-assembly election in 2006, the MAS government faced challenges on two fronts. First, within its own base, indigenous movements were taken aback that it broke its promise of indigenous representation in the assembly. It became clear that the MAS had a closer relationship with campesino organizations that proposed centralizing the state’s authority at the national level than with the indigenous groups that emphasized local autonomy over the territories they inhabited (Schilling-Vacaflor, 2011: 8). There was also the perception that the MAS had become detached from the Unity Pact organizations that had buttressed its victory as it increasingly staffed key positions with “invited members” who were connected neither with the MAS nor with social movements (Anria, 2013: 35–36). This was reinforced by the fact that the relationship between the MAS and social movements had never been formalized and there was no space in which they could develop common strategies. This meant that much of the day-to-day decision making at the time fell to Morales and the people around him (Anria, 2013: 37; Fuentes, 2007: 107). This narrowed the scope of the broad popular alliance that could have been mobilized during the constituent-assembly process and certainly shaped the decision to engage the opposition as opposed to confronting it.

The second challenge came from dominant classes rooted in the eastern lowlands. In order to convoke the constituent assembly, the MAS had negotiated an agreement with the opposition in Congress that changes would require two-thirds of the seats in the assembly, and the MAS did not control the two-thirds. Political wrangling over this rule and other procedures over the next few years led to paralysis and crisis as the opposition mobilized itself at the regional level in its power base in the eastern lowlands (Lehoucq, 2008: 119–120). Several referenda on autonomy conducted in opposition-held states essentially paralyzed the process and, in the words of the vice president, Álvaro García Linera, led to a “catastrophic tie” between the government and the opposition (Errejón and Guijarro, 2016: 46). In view of these factors, the government held additional elections only to see the opposition legislate greater autonomy in the departments it controlled. This opposition was further amplified as sections of it mobilized street violence, occupied government buildings, and organized a failed coup in 2008. Faced with an impasse, Brazil and the Unión Sudamericana de Naciones brought the MAS and the opposition together to negotiate a text in 2008 that set the MAS on a more conciliatory and pragmatic course. However, the 2008 text fell short of the October Agenda and previous drafts by legalizing large land holdings, reinforcing the right to private property, and confining indigenous autonomy to other levels of government (Regalsky, 2010: 36–37). The constitution was approved by a referendum in 2009, and the MAS’s grip on power began to stabilize.

The compromise reached with the opposition to get out of the constitutional impasse limited the degree to which Bolivia’s power relations could be altered. Therefore the MAS had to contend with Bolivia’s dominant classes, who maintained their dominant position in the economic field although with diminished political power. This ushered in a period of rapprochement between 2009 and 2012 and eventually cooperation beginning in 2013. Wolff (2016: 130–131) explains that the relationship between business and the government improved dramatically when the business sector realized that the government sought to improve the material well-being of its base not by redistributing wealth but by expanding hydrocarbon production and focusing agricultural production on monoculture. Furthermore, the government made subsequent concessions to business with respect to landownership, access to credit, forestry, and trade. In the end, it engaged a dialogue that culminated in a formal public-private agreement in 2013 called the Agenda Patriótica 2025 (Wolff, 2016: 130–131). Instead of trying to marginalize dominant classes within the state, the MAS stabilized its relationship with them by institutionalizing it.

One of the costs of greater social and political peace with both local and transnational dominant class fractions has been constraining the aspirations of Bolivia’s indigenous populations. The growing emphasis on hydrocarbon extraction and monoculture has also called into question the government’s commitment to the rights of Mother Earth. This was confirmed when it failed to enshrine the rights of nature as part of the 2009 constitution. In 2012 a framing law on Mother Earth and buen vivir was passed but as a declaration of principles rather than a document with actionable legal weight. Also, the law reintroduced the modern conception of development, which implicitly legitimated the government’s extractivist orientation. Economic growth was framed in terms of a “new progressive extractivism” aimed at delivering the government’s progressive objectives. This rhetorical framework allowed the government to criticize any opposition to its economic program as consistent with a “conservative restoration” (Gudynas, 2013: 24–25). This tendency was confirmed by the limited scope of the autonomías indígenas originarias campesinas (Indigenous First Peoples’ Peasant Autonomies—AIOCs). According to Jason Tockman and John Cameron (2014: 48), because of compromises during the constituent-assembly process they look more like “reformed municipalities” than self-governing entities capable of administering the economic activities that take place in their territories. Failing to expand indigenous autonomy represented a missed opportunity to deepen democracy within and outside the state and, worse, placed the government on a collision course with indigenous groups over the administration of territory and natural resources.

Tensions resulting from the simultaneous inclusion and marginalization of indigenous movements within the MAS project and from reliance on hydrocarbons came to a head over the proposed construction of a highway through the Territorio Indígena del Parque Nacional Isiboro-Sécure (Indigenous Territory of the Isiboro-Sécure National Park—TIPNIS) to the benefit of transnational capital and peasants with larger holdings who were engaging in agro-industry. Importantly, it offered little to the small-scale indigenous farming populations living in the TIPNIS. The project thus engendered protests that were heavily repressed by the state in such a way that the protesters garnered widespread support (Webber, 2015: 315–322). The heavy-handed repression did not sink the MAS government’s popularity among its core constituencies, but it did indicate that the compromises it made with dominant classes as a result of the pressure they exerted within and beyond the state have limited its ability to integrate the demands of dominated groups and classes into its state project. It has instead relied on social spending funded by hydrocarbon revenue, and this has constrained its project and made it dependent on commodity prices.

Twenty-First-Century Socialism in Venezuela

Of the three countries, Venezuela was the country where there was the most comprehensive attempt to alter the relations of production and create centers of power both within the state and outside of it. Incidentally, it illustrates most starkly the difficulty of walking the tightrope. The severity of the political and economic crisis of 2016 brought a decline of commodity prices and economic sabotage, and government mismanagement elucidated the complexity of bringing about a transition toward socialism. Previous extraconstitutional attempts to remove the government from power and the economic crisis brought about by private-sector hoarding demonstrates that dominant classes can effectively struggle against a leftist government and leave a significant imprint on the evolution of its project. Additionally, it shows that rent-funded policy mechanisms do not always play the same role in the context of broader political projects. Notably, the rent generated by the persistence of an extractivist rentier capitalism was used for funding not only social programs but also centers of power within and beyond the state that threatened to alter the underlying social relations in Venezuela. However, it also rendered the MVR/Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela—PSUV) governments politically vulnerable in the long term by promoting centralization, clientelism, and corruption—vulnerabilities that the opposition has used to undermine the legitimacy of the Bolivarian Revolution and justify its ongoing economic war of attrition with the government. Thus, the Venezuelan case demonstrates the important limits that maintaining the country’s location in the global capitalist economy through the primary export model can place on social transformation despite attempts to deepen democracy and alter social relations.

The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela did not start off as an explicitly socialist project that sought to transform the social relations of production. In fact, Ryan Brading (2014: 49) explains that when it came to power in 1999 the MVR was in a position to usher in a “passive revolution” whereby dominant groups could “secure their interests and create a position of power” in a new political context brought about by a crisis. During the 1998 election, Hugo Chávez Frías was backed by a broad coalition of economic and political interests that were disenchanted with the Punto Fijo party system that had dominated Venezuelan politics since the restoration of democracy in 1958. As with Ecuador and Bolivia, the popularity of the MVR and Chávez was spurred by the broad societal disaffection brought about by a decade of neoliberal reforms associated with the previous party system. Consequently, the MVR received support and funding from segments of Venezuela’s business sectors (Brading, 2014: 54–56). In the early stages of the Bolivarian Revolution, there was no programmatic threat to alter social relations, and this allowed the MVR to cobble together a multiclass coalition with dominant and dominated class elements.

The relationship between dominant classes soured, however, when in 2000 Chávez obtained the constitutional right to pass laws by decree. In 2001 he presented 49 laws that touched upon the economic interests of dominant classes, including land reform and changes to the petroleum sector. What was particularly upsetting to those classes was a law that nearly doubled petroleum royalties and ensured majority state control of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (Petroleum of Venezuela—PDVSA), in joint ventures. Combined with a recommitment to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries quotas, this reassertion of national sovereignty ran against the general orientation of the PDVSA leadership, which had been promoting the opening up of the petroleum sector to foreign investment and ownership (Hellinger, 2016: 12–13). Changes to the petroleum sector were not the only factor that generated protests among dominant classes, but they crystallized their discontent. This anger was further stoked when Chávez fired PDVSA officials who were critical of the law and placed loyalists on the board of directors. As a result, PDVSA employees went on strike and were joined in protest by members of the Federación de Cámaras y Asociaciones de Comercio y Producción deVenezuela (Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce—Fedecámaras) and the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (Confederation of Workers of Venezuela—CTV). This anger was expressed in street protests that culminated in the failed April 2002 coup (Brading, 2014: 58). Though hostile elements in the PDVSA participated in the protests, they were not directly responsible for orchestrating the coup. The PDVSA did, however, take a much more active role in organizing a strike in December 2003 that paralyzed the economy for three months (Hellinger, 2016: 13). Essentially, the conflicts of 2002 and 2003 were struggles over the control of a key apparatus within the Venezuelan state. Buoyed by popular mobilizations that maintained his government in power, Chávez was able to repel opposition from dominant classes more forcefully than the AP and the MAS. This allowed the government to bring the PDVSA more firmly under its control. The PDVSA would subsequently be used as a center of power for dominated classes to fund the programs associated with the radicalization of the Bolivarian Revolution and a central organ of twenty-first-century socialism.

Controlling the PDVSA had its advantages, allowing the MVR (which became the PSUV in 2007) to increase social spending, fund alternative economic initiatives such as cooperatives, amplify the reach of its foreign policy, and fund nationalized industries placed under workers’ control. The MVR/PSUV also went much farther than the AP and the MAS in harnessing extractivism in the service of democratization and transformation. Nevertheless, although dominant classes were pushed out of their key power apparatus in the state in terms of controlling the disbursement of petroleum rent, they were by no means devoid of power resources, since the domestic private sector still controlled over 90 percent of the import sector and 95 percent of manufacturing (Purcell, 2011: 63). The private sector has leveraged its control of imports and manufacturing to amplify the economic crisis that has afflicted the country since 2015. Additionally, even though dominant classes both domestic and foreign were no longer in visible command of important state institutions, they had not been expelled from the state completely. Importantly, initiatives designed to enhance “protagonistic democracy” and to decentralize power such as communal councils, cooperatives, and worker self-management schemes have faced resistance from bureaucrats within the state institutions designed to manage them (Azzelini, 2015: 146–147). Lastly, the centrality of the PDVSA as an engine of change reflected a rentier logic that would undermine the project of twenty-first-century socialism by maintaining statist tendencies and some of the worst political dynamics of the Punto Fijo era, including clientelism and corruption even within the centers of power instituted to check them. Relatedly, as with the other countries examined, it rendered the health of the Venezuelan economy and the sustainability of the projects associated with twenty-first-century socialism dependent on the price of petroleum, a fact that was the more apparent with the decline in price in 2014.

Petroleum and Socialist Transformation

As experienced by Ecuador and Bolivia, harnessing mineral wealth to fund social programs and political transformation has its risks. An important consequence is that it places the distribution of petroleum rent at the center of political and economic interchanges. At a structural level, reliance on the export of petroleum renders other sectors of the economy dependent on the transfer of petroleum rent by the landlord state and maintains the conditions of rentier capitalism. Therefore the underlying structural logic of rentier capitalism provided the backdrop to the process of socialist transformation and rendered it vulnerable to opposition mobilization within and outside the state. Notably, the logic of the landlord state in terms of capturing and disbursing rent penetrated the programs and initiatives that were supposed to bring about socialist transformation (Purcell, 2015: 171–173). Consequently, the top-down statist dynamics that have limited the breadth of twenty-first-century socialism in Bolivia and Ecuador have remained a factor in Venezuela even within the programs that were designed to counter them. Another consequence of enduring rentier capitalist forms is that the lack of linkages generated by petroleum and dependence on imports for domestic consumption increase the structural power of economic agents involved in importing goods, which the private sector continued to dominate and could utilize as an instrument of boycott despite the MVR/PSUV’s control of the “commanding heights” of the economy (the PDVSA) via the state.

In practice, the structural logic of the landlord state persisted as the MVR/PSUV tried to pursue a socialist transformation. On the one hand, it tried to democratize the state by creating centers of power based on participatory democracy such as community councils within and outside of the state. Initiatives such as cogestión (co-management) challenged the imperatives of capital in some sectors of economy and the corporatist interests of state personnel. These initiatives played an important part in sidelining the opposition and shifting power relations in Venezuela in favor of dominated classes. On the other hand, dependence on petroleum rent and the persistence of rentierist forms introduced long-term structural limits and vulnerabilities that began to appear within the centers of power themselves. For example, Steve Ellner (2008: 130) explains that the government consistently relaxed the requirements for receiving funding for worker cooperatives and the state did not provide the supports necessary for them to succeed, which led to both waste and failure. Additionally, Azzelini (2015: 154–155) demonstrates that co-management in factories such as CVG-ALCASA has been stunted by the reassertion of clientelist relations with state personnel on the part of management and certain sections of the rank and file. The projects designed to democratize the Venezuelan state and society were undermined by the logic of rentierism by encouraging weak oversight by state personnel, corruption, and inefficiency (Purcell, 2015: 163). These factors served to discourage supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution and encourage its opponents.

The persistence of the landlord state not only undermined the projects geared toward democratizing the state and society but also maintained the clientelist economic practices of the Punto Fijo era. Ellner (2016) explains that as a result of Fedecámaras’s involvement in the 2002 coup attempt, the government embraced sections of the business community that were nominally politically neutral. However, the so-called boliburguesía proved to be a less than reliable ally, and the legitimacy of both parties was undermined as elements of the boliburguesía engaged in corrupt and clientelist practices with actors associated with the regime. Business sectors associated with the opposition were also found to have engaged in this type of activity during the same period. Importantly, both sectors were involved in a 2012 currency scandal and abused the differential exchange rate for businesses (Ellner, 2016). That being said, these practices strained the government’s legitimacy and affected its budget in a context of galloping inflation and declining revenue (Ellner, 2015). Additionally, concessions to the business sector and attempts to enter into dialogue with it did not create a loyal business sector or attenuate the hostility of opposition elements in the business community that have waged economic war with the government. In fact, opposition business sectors leveraged the susceptibilities introduced, in part, by their previous mobilizations and by hoarding goods and selling them on the black market in a way that led to shortages and inflation (Ellner, 2016). The PSUV therefore stands at a crossroads where it can either move away from its reliance on petroleum rent or opt for a techno-bureaucratic statist strategy of accommodation. The choice is not an easy one, since both have the potential to lead to the collapse of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Conclusion

The experiences of Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela demonstrate the complexity of fostering a socialist transformation where pluralist democracy and capitalist economic forms persist. In short, they all negotiated the tightrope that democratic socialist governments must face between seeking to implement the substantive reforms that would transform their societies and attempting to remain in power in view of significant political and economic resistance from interests that oppose such change. This has not led to a uniform experience for all three of the governments in question. While, as a means to manage the resistance presented by dominant classes, all of them have relied on pragmatic measures funded largely by rent from extractive industries, these measures have been deployed in very different conjunctural circumstances as components of distinct strategies of transformation. An important consideration is the degree to which each government sought to deepen democracy and to expand the popular alliances that sustained it, which, according to Poulantzas, can offer left governments more freedom to introduce substantive reforms. The degree to which each government engaged such democratic deepening impacted the degree to which it was able to challenge existing social relations. However, deepening democracy along the lines outlined by Poulantzas is no panacea. Each phase of transformation presents new challenges and risks that have the potential to place the entire process in question, especially in view of the persistence of capitalist forms and subordinated incorporation into a global capitalist order.

In Ecuador, with some exceptions, the Correa government pursued a much more modest statist path to socialism that did not seek to challenge the economic interests of the country’s dominant power bloc. Therefore it did not face a sustained reaction from the power bloc as a whole, and this helped it to remain in power without recourse to deepening democracy and mobilizing a broad popular alliance. It did, however, seek to deliver social goods to its electoral base by deploying social programs that could be deemed populist funded by rent generated by extractive industries. This rendered its project dependent on global commodity prices and set it on a collision course with social movements that could have formed the basis of a broad popular alliance. In Bolivia, the Morales government did try to launch a substantive transformation during the constituent-assembly process. In contrast to the Correa government, it did have the backing of an alliance of social movements (although there were early tensions with indigenous ones), but it faced a powerful reaction from the eastern lowlands that brought the process and the country to the verge of collapse. Instead of mobilizing its base in aid of a deepening of democracy—which, to be fair, involved important risks—it sought to engage the opposition to resolve the standoff. This relationship culminated in a compromise that stabilized the government’s hold on power but committed it to an extractivist model, with all of its limits and contradictions. The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela was exceptional in its attempt to reconcile extractivism with a deepening of democracy. Consequently, although it faced important mobilizations by the opposition, it was able to pursue a more ambitious transformational program by mobilizing centers of power for dominated sectors of society that had been established through democratization within and outside of the state. Nevertheless, persistent rentierist forms placed important limits on this process and maintained political dynamics such as clientelism and economic ones such as dependence on global commodity prices that opened it up to increasingly successful political attacks. Thus today the Maduro government is faced with the choice of pursuing a further deepening of democracy or continuing to try to manage the contradictions stemming from a rentierist economic model. If it opts for the former it will continue to face risks and challenges to its power but could increase the opportunities for transformation that might move it beyond the intermediate result that has dogged twenty-first-century socialism in Latin America.