Hugo Chávez and the Utopia of the Perfect Society

“If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise.”

Isaiah Berlin, theorist, in his Message to the 21st Century

This quote truly captures the common bond between so many revolutionaries: the justification of any means to achieve the supreme purpose of a perfect society, which, strangely enough, always entails the need for a few individuals to make arbitrary and exclusive use of power. 

But there are two other fairly common aspects as well: the rekindling of a patent injustice and the psychological deterioration of the individual, which becomes palpable through cognitive distortions that make him live outside the realm of reality. 

In 1989, a young Venezuelan Army major witnessed with growing indignation the violent repression that President Carlos Andrés Pérez inflicted, through the Army, on the demonstrators of the infamous Caracazo protests. He saw that repression for what it really was: an injustice, which cost the lives of dozens of peaceful and seemingly well-intentioned protesters. All out of zeal to conserve the power of a president and a highly corrupt social caste. 

Seven years earlier, in 1982, he had founded the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200, one year after the bicentennial celebration of the birth of Simón Bolívar. His dream was to refound the Republic of Venezuela, and lead it out of the corruption in which traditional parties seemed immersed.

Finally, in 1992 he would lead a military coup against that same government. However, he did not get enough support and decided to surrender. Although he did it in a rather eye-opening way: by making a statement on national television, which had been one of the first locations occupied by the coup plotters.

Meanwhile, all throughout his brilliant rise through the military ranks, Hugo Chávez had been studying communication and earning masters degrees. Perhaps it began solely as an area of interest, but he certainly had a clear vision of its political utility when starting the MBR200. 

His televised message had such an impact that, despite spending two years in prison, his popularity surpassed that of Rafael Caldera, the president who succeeded Carlos Andrés Pérez when the latter was ousted from the presidency on May 20, 1993. And so the legend was born…

Caldera made a number of mistakes that prevented him from taking credit for the fall of Pérez. Starting with corruption. Not only did he not offer the Venezuelan people something better than Pérez, but he ended up looking like a bad clone of the previous president. With almost the entire population against him, and with Chávez’s release in 1994, things were bound to change.

In the 1999 national election, Chávez cashed in on society’s disgust with a political class that was wrapped up in a corrupt system, and rode that wave all the way to the presidency. Inspired by the mission of refounding the Republic, the first thing he did was reform the Constitution and call new elections to “re-legitimize all powers.” The Carter Center monitored the results of those new elections; they were the first Venezuelan elections where the outcome could not be legitimized: lack of transparency, pressure on legislative bodies and possible electoral fraud. They were the first elections with Chávez as president, and there was already a firm resolve not to let the reality expressed in the votes of his fellow citizens impede him from carrying out the plan that he had envisioned: to create the perfect nation.

What ensued is well known: the fastest social polarization seen in a civilized country in recent years. The most violent protests that Venezuela had seen since the Caracazo. Indefinite general strikes lasting more than 60 days. The greatest public insecurity in the world. Energy crises causing nearly double-digit drops in GDP. That, along with constant scandals involving the new Bolivarian caste: opaque accounts in Spain, army generals arrested for drug trafficking, political opponents being arbitrarily incarcerated, etc. And, most importantly, an alarming scarcity of basic food and medicine in a country with abundant natural wealth. 

That is why one of the incidents that came closest to destroying Chávez’s image was the scandal involving PDVAL, the state-run network that imports and distributes most of the country’s staple foods. In 2010, a stock of expired foods exceeding 130,000 tons was discovered (advised by Cuban politicians, the network’s managers had bought more food in 2008 than they were able to distribute). The staggering price of inefficiency and incompetence.

The Bolivarian paradise advocated by Chávez never existed. And now, with his successor at the helm, it is more of a living hell than anything else. So then, why did Chávez continue to lead the country, despite making life worse for his fellow citizens? Perhaps because he knew from the start where power really resides in a modern society: in controlling public opinion; sectarian propaganda. In addition to changing the Constitution, the other move he made almost immediately when taking over in 1999 was to start broadcasting the radio program Aló Presidente, which stayed on the air permanently—except for the two days he was deposed by the failed coup d’état of 2002.

His constant television appearances fulfilled the dual purpose of maintaining high levels of popularity (he showed enormous empathy as a speaker) and countering the information presented on private channels, which were biased in favor of the opposition. By always framing confrontations in a bipolar way, such as the general strike of 2002-2003, he created an environment that is typical of populisms and sects: you are either with me or against me. The opposition (and its affiliated media) inevitably played along with his game, which allowed him to use a classic argument: any information against him was simply manipulation by foreign or capitalist interests. The public (the people) against the private (companies, independent social agents, the U.S., etc). 

Chávez managed to stay in power until his death, which itself would be used to restore the myth of the folk saint. It is highly doubtful that he accepted, even on an internal level, the widening gap between the reality that his people were experiencing and his ideas of a perfect society. Because that is precisely the most dangerous dynamic for someone with public responsibilities to fall into: confusing a noble ideal with an unrealizable utopia, confusing the desire to serve the common good with the justification of his own messianism, and confusing the perfect society with the privileges of his family circle and his closest collaborators. 

The Deterioration of an Ideal

In examining the biography of Hugo Chávez and his evolution from youthful idealism to the real consequences that his political system had for millions of compatriots, we have a legitimate doubt: whether or not he ultimately accepted the failure of his vision, his earthly paradise. 

If he accepted it, we would be talking about an intractable cynic who used a populist discourse and systematic lies simply for the benefit and power of himself and the circle of people closest to him. On the contrary, if he did not acknowledge the failure of his plan and died still believing he was the messiah of Venezuela, the question to be asked is: How does one develop such a serious cognitive distortion?

Because the case of Chávez is public and notorious, mainly because of the effects on an entire country. But there are more than just a few companies in the world that suffer from top executives about whom it would be legitimate to ask the same question: Pure cynicism or serious cognitive distortion?

When Chávez took power in 1999, he was full of idealism and reinforced by the drama surrounding the corruption of the political class. And, as with all ideologies (even the softest), he was very clear about the country’s problems and what the fast solution would be.

Perhaps early on he would not have dared consider himself the long-awaited messiah. But he did believe deep down that his ideas would save the country from political corruption, poverty, and all of its ills. They would save humankind from itself. Because this is the first fundamental flaw with any ideology: believing that the main problem lies in the circumstances, or the system. 

These circumstances are fraught with very concrete human decisions. And that system is built by very specific people. To think that a political system can change the human condition is to not fully understand humankind.

Because the greatness of a good person does not emanate from their inclusion in a perfect system; but that they freely choose the good. Although they could become corrupt (in any system), they do not. For reasons much loftier than simply doing the right thing, or obeying the law, or not going to jail. That greatness is not the byproduct of having a perfect system, although the context obviously has a major influence. This greatness is the result of a personal process of growth in which asceticism plays a dominant role. 

Thus, when hope is placed in a perfect system, the first thing that gets sacrificed is the value of freedom: and freedom is respected only if it contributes to building the perfect society. We have seen this before in other revolutionaries. That is why Chávez’s first step was to tinker with the elections that legitimized his new Constitution… The freedom of his fellow citizens was not going to spoil his vision of the perfect society. And so, when a person starts embracing a dynamic where the end justifies the means, it is almost inevitable for them to fall into cognitive distortions and lose sight of the common good, and of reality as it truly is. 

And of course, in the moment in which the concrete good of citizens is forsaken to build a utopia, the path becomes carved out for them to identify, sooner or later, with the incarnation of that ideology. It is the secular temptation to make idols on which to project illusory dreams. It is purely an exploitation of the fears, passions and ghosts of those imperfect people that all of us are. 

Chávez ultimately saw himself as a messiah because he confused himself with his own ideal: Chávez is the one who will bring prosperity to Venezuela… Chávez is the prosperity of Venezuela… Chávez is our liberator. A progressive change, but one that we clearly identify in this leader. As in many others consumed by their own vision, and its derivatives: the obsessive and narcissistic pathologies. 

All ideals must pass the reality test to avoid becoming a dysfunctional ideology… and so that those promoting them do not become false messiahs. It doesn’t matter how intrinsically good that ideal appears to be, nor that the original intentions are honest. The common good is the good of each individual and the relationships that constitute a society; and if society is fragmented, suffers, or increases its indifference toward the destiny of the other, then something must be changed in the form of exercising power. Just as in a company, where the culture is the best indicator of its long-term sustainability, the litmus test in politics is the type of relationships that are promoted within society, the cohesion and dynamism of it. But these days the leaders of Venezuela and many other places fail that test.

To summarize:

• Every ideology ultimately seeks to transform reality according to the preconceived image of the ideologist; the more they advance down that path the less they feel that many elements of reality, not their ideology, are valuable in themselves and should be respected and enhanced.
• Ideology discards the other—the one who thinks differently—as essentially mistaken, and therefore a potential enemy that they are justified to marginalize and eliminate.
• Sooner or later, that vision of the other creates a deep rift in society.

That rift is often intensified by the sociopathic character of its leader, who is presented as the original source of what should be and who shows no scruples in using any means to impose their schizophrenic utopia.