https://theconversation.com/oils-corrosive-impact-on-democracy-is-the-true-socialist-gateway-drug-113176
[links in online article]
Oil’s corrosive impact on democracy is the true socialist gateway drug
April 2, 2019 5.04pm EDT
Russell Cobb
Associate Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Alberta
During the Cold War, socialism was portrayed as a gateway drug to
communist orthodoxy. The crisis in Venezuela has resurrected tired old
tropes about “pinks” and “useful idiots” who start out as democratic
socialists, but end up marching in lockstep towards a workers’ dystopia.
United States Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted recently that new Democratic
congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “and her new socialist colleagues
seem hell-bent on making sure that our last 12 years will be spent as
Venezuelan socialists, not Americans.”
A Republican National Committee email called Ocasio-Cortez a “mini
Maduro,” a reference to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, and accused
her of leading the Democratic Party “to the left with nothing more than
an unsubstantiated, factually incorrect socialist wish list.” Reason’s
John Stossel and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens have all taken
readers down the slippery slope from democratic socialism to Venezuelan
disaster socialism.
It is a powerful fallacy. The bogeyman of Venezuelan “socialism” has had
repercussions throughout the Americas. A close contest in last year’s
Colombian presidential election swung toward the ruling party as the
conservative candidate Ivan Duque accused the leftist Gustavo Petro of
wanting to turn that country into Venezuela.
Even in a jurisdiction as far away as Alberta, conservatives have tried
to use the Venezuelan crisis as wedge. The right-wing Rebel Media asked
whether Alberta would become the next Venezuela as the moderate leftist
leader rolled out a carbon tax.
If Maduro’s Venezuela is the guiding light for democratic socialism, it
has attracted the support of some rather anti-democratic leaders. It’s
not Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib who have leapt to Maduro’s defence.
Rather, Vladimir Putin, Bashar Al-Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of
Russia, Syria and Turkey respectively, have been among the staunchest
defenders of the Venezuelan president since Juan Gauidó declared himself
interim president.
Leftist litmus tests
There was a time in the early 2000s when Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez served
as a tidy litmus test for the international left.
Much like his nemesis, George W. Bush, he divided the world into people
for him and people against him. For those on the left with serious
misgivings about Chávez’s penchant for authoritarianism, there wasn’t
much wiggle room. The United States was the empire. The bloc of Cuba,
Bolivia and Venezuela represented the revolution. Forced to choose
sides, anyone wanting to maintain their leftist credentials had to pick
Chávez.
Since Venezuela descended into chaos under Maduro, however, protesters
have transcended political divisions.
Women’s groups and many leftist parties have turned against Maduro,
while militaristic nationalists in the Middle East have become his
biggest supporters. Yes, there are a few “fellow travellers” — to borrow
another Cold War idiom — in the West who continue think of the
humanitarian tragedy in Cold War terms. Oliver Stone, who once tweeted
that his “heart goes out to Nicolás Maduro,” is a particularly egregious
example.
Anyone who’s paid attention to the real cost in human suffering,
however, knows that Venezuela’s crisis looks a lot like a classic
natural resource curse. Venezuela, like virtually every other nation
blessed with abundant fossil fuels, has known for decades that it must
diversify away from its dependence on oil.
Even the CIA in the 1970s made the case that the influx of petro dollars
could destabilize the country in the long term. Oil could create a class
of oligarchs that would represent a target for leftist militants.
Venezuela became more oil-dependent
Chávez promised to redirect oil revenue into programs promoting food
security and domestic farming. Yet Chávez, too, found the temptations of
the rentier state too much to resist. Despite all Chávez’s lofty goals
and rhetoric about self-sufficiency, the country became more dependent
on the rents from oil and gas than before his so-called Bolivarian
Revolution.
Chávez pumped proceeds from oil revenue into poverty alleviation
programs, but the infrastructure of the industry gradually fell into
decay and technocrats left for Canada and the U.S. Despite it all,
Venezuela still sent around half a million barrels of oil a day to the
United States in 2018.
We know that our consumption of fossil fuels is the primary driver of
climate change. But less well-known is oil’s corrosive effect on
democracy. An American political scientist found that the states that
most depended on the rents from the extraction of oil and gas tended to
be the least democratic and the most corrupt.
Looked at through ideological glasses, the myriad problems facing
Russia, Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia can be blamed on corrupt
right-wing politicians, Islamism or socialism, depending on your
political predisposition.
These rentier states, however, all have one thing in common: they rely
on the royalties from unearned income rather than taxing individual
citizens to make the government work. The result is a less accountable
and more corrupt political system.
Whether that state is nominally socialist, as in the case of Venezuela,
Islamic, as in the case of Iran, or ethno-nationalist, as in the case of
Russia, is far less important than the overall damage that the reliance
on natural resources does to the social and environmental health of its
citizens.
If there was a gateway drug to the current crisis in Venezuela, it was
oil, not socialism.
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