That said, I’m still cautious, given the political history of that whole region. As a socialist, I am very hopeful to see the economic model he will implement. Let’s just hope that he both renounces this “by fiat” way of leading his country as soon as possible, and that the socialization of the Venezuelan economy doesn’t just devolve into another centrally-planned, Gosplan monstrosity.

After all, we’d do well to keep in mind that Chavez is more than just the president of an emerging socialist state: he is an icon that many leaders look to and emulate. His country’s success or failure will either represent an unprecedented success or a crippling setback for the cause of socialism.

Even so, Chavez is still within Venezuelan law and tradition, even if he’s at the edge of it.

Nor is his larger, unified socialist party a ‘one-party state,’ even if it is the ruling party. Nothing wrong with that. So far, Chavez’s power to make decrees is for a limited period, but we’ll see if and why it might be extended. Other parties still exist, and compete, even if they don’t do too well, hold only a few seats, and are in opposition, rather than in power. Nothing wrong with that, either.

The opposition media has been regulated, but only threatened with being shut down if they’ve broken the law, as in actively plotting an illegal coup d’etat, which some of them clearly have. Given their record on that point, it’s a wonder they’re still around this long.

A popular democracy of mass participation is clearly a ‘radical rupture,’ as Marx put it, with a bourgeois democracy of contending elites corrupted by wealth, an Venezuela has never been a shining example of this old form, either.

The Venezuelan people are the best judges of this process, and it seems to have wide support. Keep your eyes wide open, but I think Chavez and the path he has launched deserves our solidarity, and solidarity also takes the form of speaking up when you think something’s amiss.

I understand that Chavez wants to move past “representative” democracy towards embracing the nebulous concept of “participatory” democracy, ostensibly founded in a new wave of communal councils that he is trying to institue. For the life of me, though, I cant understand what is “participatory” about allowing the executive to concentrate all meaningful power in his hands and dictate the radical reconstruction of almost aspect of his country, unchecked, over the next year and a half.

This is all occurring as Chavez and his allies move quickly towards consolidating all pro-Chavez parties into one gigantic United Socialist Party of Venezuela, with Chavez at the helm. Right now Chavez enjoys the support of a number of diverse leftist parties. The consolidation of all pro-Chavez parties into one united party will effectively transform Venezuela into a one party state.

Chavez and his supporters are adamant in their claim that 21st Century Socialism is a new, democratic and participatory project. Yet a Venezuela with literally ONE political party in power, whose president has the unilateral power to do whatever he wants, seems to me increasingly reminiscent of last century’s socialist projects which were anything but democratic, participatory or succesfull.