Photograph Source: Wilfredor – CC0
Recently, labor educator and economist Michael Yates of the Monthly Review stated, “Happy to see that Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, won reelection, and by a healthy margin. The mainstream media always refer to Maduro as an authoritarian, a strongman, autocrat, etc. Yet, like Chavez before him, he keeps winning elections in what many outside observers say is one of the most transparent and fair voting systems in the world. The US, as usual, will do what it can to put the rightwing in power, just as it does everywhere in the world. But as Vijay Prashad has pointed out (see CounterPunch, 7/31/2024), the US has to find a way to get Venezuelan oil to Europe given the heavy sanctions placed on Russia. So, it will have to deal with the Maduro government. What an irony. In any case, let’s hope the communes in Venezuela continue to grow and develop cultures of solidarity.”
In this interview, exclusive for CounterPunch, David Smilde, the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations, and Senior Associate at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University, offers an additional take and discusses the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election that featured Nicolas Maduro (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and Edmundo Gonzales (Democratic Unitary Platform). Smilde, along with editor Daniel Hellinger, published Venezuela’s Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics, and Culture under Chavez (Duke University Press), a widely read survey of the country’s political landscape.
Smilde addresses how his approach on the topic differs from others on the left regarding the election and he begins by outlining his Neo-Weberian framework and the different ways of looking at the concept of orientalism. Further, he summarizes the recent past of America’s foreign policy with Venezuela and provides a commentary on the media coverage of Venezuela. Smilde offers a better understanding of Venezuela and the left as he explains the critical case against Maduro and how it crosses a political divide.
Daniel Falcone: Can you talk a little bit about how your work helps address the moving parts of Venezuela’s electoral political framework especially in the current electoral moment?
David Smilde: What is perhaps unique about my work is that I am a left progressive but do not rely on Marxian theory. I work with Michael Mann‘s Neo-Weberian framework that is different in two ways. First, it recognizes not only how the capitalist economy leads to a concentration of power, but how political actors, through states and parties, seek monopoly — and how culture in the form of media, religion and popular culture also can crystallize into ideology.
Of course, Gramscian theory deals with these elements too, but generally wants to see them as in sync through concepts such as “totality.” Neo-Weberian theory thinks they are often at odds and does not give priority to economic factors. A second important difference is that Neo-Weberian theory does not work with notions of teleology. There is no necessary direction of human society in the global long term or in any particular social context. This means that critical engagement in any context requires actual research and cannot depend on broad brushstroke treatments based on the supposed teleology of global geopolitics. It requires actual research to figure out who is trying to preserve their advantage, monopolize resources and disempower others.
Daniel Falcone: Can you provide some context on what you see to be the ideological points of division on the left regarding the US and the West’s reaction to Maduro’s dubious victory? The right wing is calling him a dictator and the progressive left is upholding Maduro as a revolutionary figure. What’s going on here?
David Smilde: Working on the Global South from the privileged position of the Global North entails responsibilities. In his seminal texts, Edward Said used the concept of “orientalism” to describe the tendency of journalists, scholars, and writers to portray people and leaders in the East as irrational, emotional and dangerous. We can absolutely see, from the beginning of the Chávez era this tendency towards what I think of as “right orientalism.” Chavez and Chavistas have been portrayed in the media precisely as childish, emotional, self-defeating, and dangerous to the rest of the world. But we can also see what I think of as “left orientalism.” This is the tendency of global progressives to portray any revolutionary leader who declares her or himself anti-imperialist, in uncritical, heroic terms and ignore their abuses of the basic rights of their people as well as their corruption. In both its left and right forms, orientalism is essentially the same. Distance and lack of information allows orientalists to misrepresent the people and contexts of the Global South. In doing so it denies their full humanity. Given that it is generally done as a way of engaging in the politics of the Global North — broadly understood to include the identity-work of individuals and groups as well — it is a form of imperialism. It essentially uses the Global South as a resource base for consumption in the Global North.
Daniel Falcone: If we can go back to the Chavez years up until now, how would you evaluate and compare Bush’s or Obama’s foreign policy regarding Venezuela as well as how respective Trump and Biden doctrines might materialize in the region?
David Smilde: This is a big question because not only do you have different administrations, but quite different approaches at different moments within these administrations. We can basically think of different moments in which the policy has been to 1) ignore, 2) to engage diplomatically, 3) to pressure, and 4) regime change. I think the most damaging moment was the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign in 2019 and 2020 during which sectoral sanctions and secondary sanctions were levied and even military action was threatened. This, on the one hand, helped consolidate and unify the Maduro coalition, reducing internal discussion and criticism as everyone prioritized survival. On the other hand, it undermined opposition to the government as the sanctions contributed further to the economic collapse that was begun by Maduro’s economic mismanagement. It generated a wave of migration and led the people who stayed to concentrate on daily survival. In such a context, the Maduro government’s power over the population increased.
The Trump policy largely continued during the first year of the Biden administration as key personnel such Ambassador Jimmy Story continued in their positions and continued to support the interim government of Juan Guaidó. This changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. At that point the geopolitics and political economy of US relations with Venezuela changed and the Biden Administration had much more motivation to change course and engage in diplomacy with the Maduro government. Since then, it has continued to engage and use sanctions relief as a way to try to promote democratic elections. To my eye, this has been the most successful period of US policy towards Venezuela. While the elections did not lead to an immediate democratization, they have put Maduro in a place in which his authoritarian regime has been exposed to the domestic and international audiences that before were dubious. There are no guarantees to where this will lead. But it is always better to force an authoritarian government to play the political game than to just sit back and consolidate its power.
Daniel Falcone: How is the agenda-setting and mainstream corporate media covering the election in your view in general?
David Smilde: There was a time when I thought the corporate media was part of a big conspiracy to defend the interests of capital, and that it therefore systematically misrepresented the interests of underprivileged people seeking liberation. There is something to that view, of course. But over the past fifteen years, I have been working closely with journalists from major corporate media and have found them to be quite open-minded — often more oriented to facts and with less of an axe to grind than my academic colleagues. Most journalists are quite progressive and have a significant sense of vocation. They generally want to do good reporting and are quite happy to complicate power. If they do not have good information, are on tight deadlines, and must cover contexts they do not fully understand, they will often use the narrative hooks typical of right orientalism. But if they have good sources that give them quality information and explain the history, context, and probable evolution of events on the ground, they generally relish writing stories that complicate power and humanize average people.
Daniel Falcone: I read that even in Petare, the barrio, once a Chavista stronghold, was resisting and revolting against Maduro’s “win.” Obviously, this differs from Republican, Democrat, and elite institutional criticism of the election results. But can you discuss the need, or difficulty in pushing back against US hegemony while making critical cases against Maduro?
David Smilde: We are indeed seeing a new demography of protest in Venezuela in this round. On July 29, the day of Maduro’s proclamation it was the popular sectors who went to the streets to protest, despite María Corina Machado‘s calls on the population *not* to take to the streets. This should not surprise. They are the sectors that have most suffered in recent years with the economic collapse and were most hoping for change. And it is precisely because they are not the traditional opposition base — that they did not pay attention to the call not to protest — and went to the streets. The optics of this protest are quite difficult for Maduro as it is not easy to portray them as the same middle class, violent protests of 2014 and 2017.
The critical case against Maduro really crosses the left/right divide. Apart from Marxist hardliners, who think democracy and human rights are bourgeois tools and think a dictatorship is necessary to reach socialism, those of us who are left, because we reject the structural inequality created by people in positions of privilege and power, should be squarely against Maduro. He has used his control over the state, the military, and the oil industry to give himself and his officials a life of luxury while average Venezuelans struggle day-by-day to put food on the table and a roof over their heads and educate their children. There is nothing progressive about Maduro and his government. Criticizing and working against Maduro’s authoritarian government does not require support for U.S. hegemony, just the opposite. It will only be through a multilateral, regional diplomatic effort that any solution will be forged. The US can facilitate but should allow the governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to lead advocacy for a solution.
In the long term, the best way the left can push back against US hegemony would be to advocate for and support movements and governments that work against structural inequality in all its forms, through democratic means. Concentrating power does not lead to more democracy, it just remains concentrated. And as suggested above, this advocacy should be based on actual knowledge and concrete portraits of people and contexts in their full humanity. There are no angels in Venezuela or elsewhere, just people with the usual set of vices and virtues with a constant tendency to create structural inequalities and monopolies. This must be combatted and is a struggle that will never end.
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