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I think its safe to say that my warning last week about utilitarian socialism in Venezuela is perpetuating itself. Earlier today Venezuela centralized political power to the brink of dictatorship. The Venezuelan congress voted to sacrifice its power legeslative check to President Hugo Chavez so to expedite the nationalization of key sectors of the economy in the broader movement towards socialism.

Al Jazeera reports ‘Chavez granted rule by decree’:

Venezuela’s congress has granted Hugo Chavez, the president, powers to rule by decree–enabling him to push through plans to nationalise key industries as part of his “socialist revolution”.

The special powers, which las for 18 months, will enable him to transform 11 broadly-defined areas including the economy, energy, and defence.

Roberto Hernandez, the congressional vice-president, said: “We in the national assembly will not waver in granting President Chavez an enabling law so he can quickly and urgently set up the framework for resolving the grave problems we have.”

Concentrating power, it must be said, is not in and of itself evil but it leaves room for any extent of evil to be committed. The reason we have checks and balences in our constitution is to keep the government in line, and to power from being centralized on a single whim. Making Chavez, in effect, a temorary autocrat is not dangerous just for the reason of puting the fate of every Venezuelan’s freedom soly in his hand, but it is outright suicidal when we see why it is being done.

The same article observes that,

The president has already said that he will use the law to decree nationalisations of Venezuela’s largest telecommunications company and the electricity sector, impose new taxes on the rich and greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries.

Chavez’s supporters deny the law constitutes an abuse of power and say radical steps are necessary to accelerate the creation of a more egalitarian society.

The opposition accuses Chavez of being a tyrant in the making, taking a slow approach in following Fidel Castro…

Once again we see the corolation between the tyrannical means (dictatorship) and the tyrannical ends (socialism). Nor is it a suprise that Chavez has received the ardent support of his people in concentrating his power. Pure democracy and pure autocracy are not opposites but they are conceptually the same, insofar as they have in common an abscence of checks on power. In an unlimited democracy, where the majority rules, there is no force stopping the majority from doing anything they want; in a autocracy there is no force stopping what the autocracy wants. In Venezuela the majority has perpetuated the move to socialism and also excused Chavez’s consolidation of power in doing so–either way, there was never any check on power.

Too often Democracy is misconceived as an inherent value, but it is not. President Bush, for one, has perpetuated this idea in his foreign policy and he continues to apply the same idea to Venezuela:

 George Bush, the US president, said Chavez’s expanded powers and possible plans to nationalise key economic interests left him worried about Venezuelan democracy.

“I’m concerned about the Venezuelan people, and I’m worried about the diminution of democratic institution(s), as well as nationalisation efforts that may or may not be taking place,” Bush told Fox News television.

Asked whether Chavez, a perennial thorn in Washington’s side, posed a military threat to US interests, Bush replied: “I think the bigger threat is the diminution of democratic institutions.”

But in the same way that he was mistaken in thinking that democracy could bring freedom to Iraq, he is also mistaken in thinking that they serve as cause and effect, respectively, in Venezuela. Whether or not a law is passed by a majority or by a single ruler does not change whether it is right or wrong. Freedom can as easily be destroyed by democracy as it can by dictatorship. There is no inexorable connection between the policy and the mode of government, and thus the policy–whether or not a country is free–must be what is judged in evaluating the morality of a government. The evil is not in the means of government–although it is indicative of it; the evil we see is in the progressively totalitarian ends which are being perpetuated by unchecked power (first democracy, now dictatorship). Its about time the world recognized that socialist governments such as Venezuela are immoral by their nature, whether or not a majority of the country’s population agrees.

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The Chavez further consolidates power by New School Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.