Nice post that summarizes the situation, which is comparable to that of Brazil.

Not so long ago, I supported Chavez. I thought his ultra-state policy was socialism, and I thought he was fighting private property by running the printing press.

Since then, I have read Marx, and I have understood that Chavez and Castros are the worst enemies of the people, those whom he calls to fight rifle in hand in his address of 1850: those who take power just after a Revolution, those who claim to control the production for the people but without it, those who disarm the people and say: "The Revolution has won now that we are in power," these are the most dangerous enemies of a people.

Chavism, like Castrism, like Leninism, are NOT progressive forms of socialism. They are forms of monarchism: state bureaucracies, which control the whole apparatus of production, out of all democratic control, which sinks rapidly into absurd and costly policies, based on the superstition of the printing press.

If we cut off the sound of the speeches and concentrate on the analysis of the mode of production, Chavez's Venezuela looks very much like the France of Louis XVI.