15. Offensive Against Landlords and Speculators¶
Core Argument¶
Here, the chapter examines the period following the 2008 crash and the 2010 Venezuelan parliamentary elections, focusing on the contradictory pressures facing the Chávez government. The core argument is that the revolution was caught between the sabotage of the capitalist class—a strike of capital manifested in disinvestment, inflation, and factory closures—and the rising militancy of its own base, who demanded decisive anti-capitalist measures. The government’s response was a series of nationalisations and an offensive against landlords and speculators, but these actions are presented as fundamentally flawed, combining the worst of capitalist anarchy with bureaucratic inefficiency.
The chapter details the context: a recession, a devalued bolívar, and soaring food prices. Capitalists, rather than investing, demanded cheap dollars and state subsidies while leaving firms idle, forcing the government to nationalise unprofitable enterprises and pay compensation to the very saboteurs causing the crisis. This, the text argues, amounted to nationalising losses while privatising profits. The government’s radicalisation is traced through the emergence of Eduardo Samán’s ‘Radical Tendency’ within the PSUV, which called for accelerated action against capital. Though the tendency faded after Samán was co-opted into a state post, Chávez himself adopted a tougher line, nationalising Agroisleña and Owens-Illinois, and using an Enabling Law passed after devastating floods to target housing speculators and construction firms. The chapter also covers the long-standing land reform, noting that while 5.8 million hectares had been ‘rescued’ and rural poverty reduced, the caudillos retained most of their land, and increased food production still lagged far behind rising demand.
The chapter is sharply polemical. It argues against the notion that these measures constituted a genuine socialist advance, characterising them instead as a bureaucratic management of capitalist crisis, viable only while oil revenues flowed. The most notable polemic, however, is directed at Chávez himself. The chapter concludes with the case of Joaquín Pérez Becerra, a Colombian revolutionary activist whom Chávez handed over to the Colombian authorities in flagrant disregard of legal procedure. This act is presented as a serious political error that drove a wedge between the president and the revolutionary activists who were the movement’s backbone, demonstrating a willingness to respect bourgeois legality when it came to crushing a fellow revolutionary. The chapter thus argues that the offensive against landlords and speculators, while popular, was ultimately a top-down, contradictory process that failed to break decisively with capitalist logic or bureaucratic methods.