Capitalism and authoritarianism in Maduro’s Venezuela

First published at New Labor Forum.

On January 10, 2025, Nicolás Maduro began his third six-year presidential term in Venezuela, proclaiming during his inauguration, “I have never been, nor will I ever be, president of the oligarchies, of the richest families, of supremacists, or of imperialists. I have one ruler: the common people.”1 Maduro’s rhetoric, alongside his ability to withstand years of U.S. attempts to overthrow him, has garnered him significant support from the global left. First elected in 2013 after his predecessor Hugo Chavez died in office, Maduro also benefits from his association with Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, which at its height (2003-2011) facilitated a 30 percent reduction in poverty, a 71 percent decline in extreme poverty, a steep drop in inequality (with Venezuela’s Gini coefficient [a statistical measure of inequality within a population] falling from 0.5 to 0.4), and an impressive if contradictory process of popular empowerment.2 Noted leftists like Vijay Prashad, Manolo De Los Santos, and Podemos co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero defend Maduro as democratic, revolutionary, and anti-imperialist.3 Other leftists, such as Steve Ellner, have similarly defended Maduro, albeit with caveats.4 Is such a defense merited? Is Maduro an anti-imperialist revolutionary with democratic legitimacy?

Close analysis of Maduro’s actions shows there is no warrant for this view. In fact, Maduro’s rule has been characterized by the consolidation of an increasingly repressive form of authoritarianism and predatory capitalism. Maduro’s authoritarianism has garnered significant attention, as has the humanitarian crisis that he has presided over for the last decade. There has been less notice of the transformation in Maduro’s class base, away from workers and popular sectors and toward capital. Maduro’s foreign policy continues to exhibit traces of anti-imperialism, but even this is highly limited. This has caused much, but not all, of the left to distance itself from Maduro in the Global North, Latin America, and in Venezuela. 

This article proceeds in three parts. Part 1 examines Maduro’s consolidation of authoritarian rule, aspects of which have been justified as necessary to defend the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution. Part 2 shows the shortcomings of this position by delineating the rise of predatory capitalism under Maduro. Part 3 reflects on the broader lessons of this case. 

Consolidating authoritarianism 

While Maduro continues to be seen as democratically legitimate by a surprisingly large contingent of the Global Left, the evidence of Venezuela’s authoritarian turn under Maduro is overwhelming. This turn largely followed 2015 parliamentary elections, in which the opposition to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela won a two-thirds supermajority. Rather than dealing with Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis (which commenced in 2013 and was marked by years of negative growth, widespread shortages, and increasing immiseration of the population), the opposition-controlled National Assembly, Venezuela’s sole legislative body, focused its efforts on removing Maduro from office, including through a recall referendum. The National Electoral Council, which oversees elections, suspended the drive to hold the referendum in October 2016 and shortly thereafter postponed gubernatorial elections scheduled for December until 2017. In March 2017, Venezuela’s Supreme Court — which like the electoral council is beholden to Maduro — dissolved the National Assembly, prompting months of often-violent protests, which left dozens of protesters and state security forces dead. The three leading opposition candidates were banned from running in the 2018 presidential election, with the U.S. sanctioning the remaining leading opposition candidate, Henri Falcon, a former Chavista whom many felt could have defeated Maduro had the opposition united behind his candidacy instead of largely boycotting the election. Maduro prevailed but in conditions that were clearly far from being “free and fair” due to Maduro’s and U.S. actions, for example, imposing punishing sanctions on Venezuela’s international financial transactions in August 2017, marking the beginning of President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign to remove Maduro. 

Maduro faced and overcame a new set of challenges beginning in 2019, when U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself president in a move closely coordinated with the U.S. government, which recognized Guaidó immediately and imposed sanctions on oil (with the intent of pressuring Maduro to resign). Guaidó, a member of his mentor Leopoldo López’s far-right opposition party Voluntad Popular, initially enjoyed the support of over 60 percent of Venezuelans,5 but this faded as Guaidó tried a series of increasingly desperate moves, including a failed attempt to incite a military coup in April 2019, and supporting and partially funding a comically ineffective maritime invasion of Venezuela by U.S. mercenaries in May 2020. During the period of Guaidó’s “interim government” Maduro faced even more debilitating sanctions, escalating an outmigration that, as of early 2025, has reached nearly eight million, a quarter of the population. 

Guaidó’s failure led the opposition to pursue a new strategy in the July 2024 presidential election. Biden eased U.S. sanctions in 2023 in exchange for Maduro’s promise to allow robust opposition participation in the 2024 election. Far-right politician María Corina Machado easily won an October 2023 primary but was banned from holding office (and thus from running in the election) due to her support of U.S. sanctions as well as allegations of corruption. Biden criticized the ban on Machado and reduced sanctions relief in April 2024. Machado threw her support behind Edmundo González, who became the unified opposition candidate. 

The July 2024 election was largely peaceful but problems emerged soon after polls closed. With just over 80 percent of the vote counted (allegedly), the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner, despite the fact that the number of outstanding votes, two million, far exceeded Maduro’s supposed margin of victory of 800,000 votes. The opposition cried foul and gathered evidence in the form of paper ballots seeking to show that González had secured a landslide victory. Maduro’s government claimed that a hacking incident prevented the customary release of voting booth level results and has defied repeated calls from Venezuelans, foreign governments, including the U.S. and former Maduro allies Colombia and Brazil, and innumerable grassroots community groups and human rights organizations, to release detailed electoral results.

The widespread sense that Maduro had stolen the election led to nearly 1,000 protests across the country, mostly in popular-sector barrios. The government responded to the largely peaceful protests with brutal repression, arresting around two thousand protesters (the exact number varies in different reports), particularly in poor barrios.6 This follows a larger pattern of state security forces targeting Venezuela’s barrios, especially men of color living there; this has been interpreted as a form of social control designed to limit popular sector dissent, which tarnishes the government’s image with leftist supporters abroad and because such dissent is threatening, since opposition to Chávez and Maduro had been largely middle class and upper class until recently.

In the weeks before Maduro’s 2025 inauguration, the government launched a new wave of repression, including arresting Enrique Márquez, former vice president of the National Electoral Council and one of the opposition candidates who ran against Maduro in the July 28, 2024 election. The Venezuelan Communist Party and many leftist organizations, including the Popular Democratic Front of which Márquez is a member, denounced his arrest and detention.7

Given its continuing use of leftist and revolutionary rhetoric, the Maduro administration’s actions against Venezuelan leftists are noteworthy. The administration intervened in the Venezuelan Communist Party and attacked other dissident leftist parties that long supported Chavismo (and for years formed part of the Chavista coalition) such as the Tupamaros, the Electoral Movement of the People, and the Fatherland for All party. After the July 2024 election, the Popular Democratic Front, a new formation comprising leftist and moderate parties, was formed. The Front joined the human rights organization Surgentes, the (non-intervened) Communist Party of Venezuela, the Citizens’ Platform in Defense of the Constitution, and the National Independent Autonomous Workers’ Coordinating Committee, in denouncing the wave of repression that often targeted leftist and working-class dissident organizations, unleashed by the Maduro regime in January 2025.8 Alongside the December 2024 formation of Comunes, which self-identifies as “a new political current of the popular left,” this is evidence of increasing left-wing dissent to Maduro’s authoritarianism.9

Leftist analysts like Steve Ellner have offered qualified support for some of Maduro’s repressive actions (particularly against the right), speaking of them in terms of “taking the gloves off.”10 The argument, which is implied in the writings of other pro-Maduro figures, is essentially that Maduro represents a bulwark against U.S. imperialism in Latin America, and offers the best hope for realizing progressive redistribution within Venezuela. Therefore, while it may be regrettable that Maduro has engaged in repression (“taking the gloves off”) this is more or less justified. But a close analysis of Maduro’s economic policy in recent years suggests that this position is without empirical support.

Maduro’s predatory capitalism 

In his 2025 inauguration, Maduro delivered a ninety-minute address to his guests. Notably, only two Latin American presidents, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz Canel, were present. Former Maduro allies (turned harsh critics) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro were notably absent. They strongly criticized the lack of transparency of the 2024 election, though for strategic reasons did not fully break relations with Maduro, unlike fellow leftist Gabriel Boric of Chile (who also denounced him as a dictator). An analysis of Maduro’s address is revealing of how his administration has changed since he first took office, when he spoke fervently of socialism and referenced Hugo Chávez constantly. During his most recent address, there was not a single mention of socialism. Maduro spoke of Chávez only a handful of times and referenced Simón Bolívar an equal and perhaps greater number of times. Maduro spoke of popular movements a few times and portrayed himself as “the worker president.” But one of the most notable and fervent lines of the speech was Maduro’s explicit invitation to the capitalist class to work with his administration: “I would like to send a very clear message to all the businessmen and businesswomen of Venezuela, to all the entrepreneurs, to all those dedicated to trade and economic activity: we have the plan, we’ve laid the foundations, we’ve had great successes in growth, and we should unify ourselves more and more, so that Venezuela continues its path of recovery and the construction of a new economic model. Count on me, entrepreneurs. I count on you.” Fervent applause followed.11

Maduro’s rhetorical shift, away from socialism and toward private business, is no accident but reflects the clear transformation of his class base and economic project over the last decade. When he took office in 2013, Maduro pledged to continue Chávez’s project of “socialism of the twenty-first century.” While vague and contradictory, this project was in essence a blend of social democracy and left populism in which the government made pro-poor spending a priority. Business was hardly sidelined during Chávez’s time in office, but his policies succeeded in making Venezuela the most equal country in Latin America by the time of his death.

Maduro was hit with multiple crises after taking office, with the price of oil plunging in 2014 and opposition protests demanding his ouster taking place that year. Growth slowed markedly in 2013, and from 2014 to 2022, Venezuela experienced a profound economic crisis that destroyed over three-fourths of the economy. At least three factors contributed decisively to this crisis: the country’s continuing dependence on oil; the maintenance of a highly flawed currency policy, first established in 2003 by Chávez and only ended in 2019; and U.S. sanctions, particularly under Trump from 2017 on.

Maduro’s response to the crisis was an attempt to engineer what Luis Bonilla-Molina calls an “inter-bourgeois pact” bringing together the “old” and “new” bourgeoisie.12 The old bourgeoisie refers to businesses aligned with the opposition during the Chávez years, with the major business association, Fedecamaras, playing a leading role in the 2002 coup that briefly removed Chávez from office. This old bourgeoisie vociferously opposed Chávez’s populist redistribution and sought to roll back the clock to the pre-Chávez order. The new bourgeoisie refers to the state-aligned businesses (a mixture of private and state-owned enterprises), the so-called “Bolivarian bourgeoisie” that benefited from Chávez’s policies. Many of these businesses were linked to imports and the military and benefited from the aforementioned dysfunctional currency system, which allowed an estimated hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars to be siphoned from government coffers. In 2013, officials estimated up to 40 percent of funds (totaling 15 million USD) allocated through Venezuela’s currency system, known as CADIVI, went to shell companies. Former Chávez officials estimated that more than 300 billion USD was siphoned off through the currency system. Businesses favored by the state also benefited from the massive state spending, on infrastructure and domestic consumption of imported goods, facilitated by the 2003-2014 oil boom.13

The combination of the end of the oil boom and U.S. sanctions under Trump — which limited Venezuela’s ability to access finance and devasted oil production — pushed Maduro toward an inter-bourgeois pact. In August 2017, Trump issued an order prohibiting Venezuela from borrowing in U.S. financial markets. While this was part of a broad regime change effort, the official position was that it was done to pressure Venezuela to show greater respect for human rights.14 In January 2019, Trump sanctioned Venezuela’s oil industry directly in a blatant bid to push Maduro out.

Maduro’s efforts to engineer an inter-bourgeois pact appeared to have worked by the time of the 5 July 2024 presidential election. This can be seen by the fact that Fedecámaras has not supported Edmundo González since the stolen 2024 election — a notable contrast from its support for an unconstitutional coup against democratically elected Chávez in 2002.15 To address the country’s crisis, Maduro implemented an orthodox adjustment plan beginning in 2018. This plan led to huge cuts in public spending and the decimation of wages, and in recent years, the privatization of numerous state-owned enterprises.

This went hand in hand with a weakening of labor protections. In the Chávez and Maduro years, there have been three labor federations: the Workers’ Confederation of Venezuela, which is pro-opposition and supported the 2002 coup; the National Union of Workers, formed in 2003 to support the government and which was divided between more autonomist and more pro-government factions; and the explicitly pro-government Bolivarian Workers’ Central, which formed in 2011 and has consistently supported government policies.16 All three federations have lost mobilizational capacity over time. There have been various attempts at more autonomist labor organizing but none have overcome the polarization and party-driven nature of unions that have characterized Venezuela for decades. More autonomous unions have protested Maduro’s neoliberal turn, eliciting fierce repression, with the Venezuelan NGO Provea finding that Maduro has arrested 120 union leaders and threatened three thousand four hundred since coming to office in 2013.17

Maduro’s repression of labor has facilitated his alliance with capital. Following an order issued in 2018, the 

government has banned strikes, the presentation of demands, the right of the working class to mobilise, the organisation and legalisation of new unions, while prosecuting and sending to prison union leaders who question internal practices in companies, or simply ask for a pay rise and health insurance.18

In a statement in December 2024, Comunes wrote, 

The government’s authoritarianism goes hand-in-hand with its decision to hand Venezuela over to the interests of national and international capital. It no longer has the support of the people, but it does have the support of Fedecámaras, Chevron, the old and new bourgeoisie and numerous shady capitalists out to make a quick fortune in the country. The government needs to do away with democracy and silence protest and resistance in order to impose its ferocious neoliberal package. Amid this process, the social gains achieved under [former president Hugo] Chávez have disappeared.19

During his January 2025 inaugural address, Maduro spoke of a new constitutional reform. Critics see this as an effort to further weaken labor protections and consolidate the government’s alliance with the private sector. Are such moves justified by the desperate situation Venezuela has found itself in over the last decade? Might we think of Maduro’s strategy as a form of revolutionary retreat, as Steve Ellner has suggested, that will prime him to advance again when conditions are more propitious?

There are at least two reasons that this analysis is flawed. First, there is no evidence that Maduro’s strategy of uniting with business has helped the working class and the poor. Widespread protests after the July 2024 election in poor communities indicate Maduro has lost popular-sector Venezuelans’ support to a great extent (though precise details are challenging to collect in the absence of electoral results). Comunes and other grassroots organizations see Maduro and the right-wing opposition as “two sides of the same coin,” arguing that Maduro’s policies are similar to those the right-wing opposition proposes in that both aim to bolster profitability for capitalists but do nothing to address the crisis facing Venezuela’s majority.20 Second, there is a widespread sense that corrupt state officials and business leaders are enriching themselves in a manner that does not help ordinary Venezuelans or develop Venezuela. While a degree of economic growth has been restored in Venezuela, it does not appear to be reaching popular sectors in any real way, but is simply enriching well-connected elites. Maduro has used the alleged threat of fascism and right-wing reaction (that has been a problem in Venezuela for a significant time) to justify draconian policies and broad repression against workers and the left. This repression and his increasing support from business are key to Maduro’s staying power, besides support from Russia and China.

Maduro has clearly failed to bring about a socialist transformation of Venezuela. For this he is hardly responsible, as it would have been nearly impossible to do so under the adverse circumstances he has faced during most of his time in office. But he has not presided over developmentalism in any way. Instead, he has forged a transformation of Venezuela into a predatory state, in which state officials and corrupt business leaders enrich themselves at the expense of the majority.21 Venezuela’s profound economic crisis appears to have passed, aided by Maduro’s alliances with business and the easing of sanctions by Biden. But Maduro’s hardening authoritarianism means that the working class has few if any means of holding the government accountable. In conjunction with U.S. sanctions, Maduro has destroyed the essence of what Chavismo was: a flawed but largely democratic project of bottom-up redistribution and empowerment.

At the time of writing, it appears that President Trump will dramatically increase sanctions on Venezuela and its oil sector yet again, possibly even more than during his first administration. This will cause a severe deterioration of the already precarious living standards of ordinary Venezuelans, an increase in out-migration, including most likely to the United States, and a worsening of the already dire situation for labor and popular organizations in Venezuela. It will also likely lead to a hardening of the repressive nature of the Maduro administration, which has abandoned any real democratic accountability, in its representative and participatory forms, and consolidated a predatory regime that benefits a small elite at the expense of the vast majority.

Gabriel Hetland is associate professor of Latin American Studies and Sociology at SUNY Albany. He is the author of the award-winning book, Democracy on the Ground: Local Politics in Latin America’s Left Turn (Columbia University Press, 2023).

• 1

  Manolo De Los Santos. “The US Once Again Fails to Impose Its Will on the Venezuelan People,” People’s Dispatch, January 11, 2025, available at https://peoplesdispatch. org/2025/01/11/the-us-once-again-fails-toimpose-its-will-on-the-venezuelan-people/

• 2

  Gabriel Hetland. Democracy on the Ground: Local Politics in Latin America’s Left Turn. (New York: Columbia University Press 2023):52–53.

• 3

  Vijay Prashad. 2024. “Venezuela Is a Marvellous Country in Motion: The Thirty Second Newsletter.” Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, August 8, 2024; De Los Santos, “The US Once Again Fails to Impose”; Juan Carlos Monedero, “De dictaduras y frivolidades: Maduro, Venezuela y un poco de purpurina,” Público, January 12, 2025, available at https:// www.publico.es/opinion/dictaduras-frivolidades-maduro-venezuela-poco-purpurina.html.

• 4

  Steve Ellner and Federico Fuentes, “Prioritising the Struggle Against US Imperialism,” Green Left Weekly, November 7, 2024, available at https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/prioritizing-struggle-against-us-imperialism. [Editor's note: a longer version of this interview can be read at https://links.org.au/prioritising-anti-us-imperialism-maduros-venezuela-and-complexities-critical-solidarity-interview]

• 5

  Per polling by the reputable Venezuelan firm Datanalisis. Andreina Itriago and Nicole Yapur, “Venezuelan Lawmakers Vote to Remove Juan Hetland 7 Guaidó as Head of Opposition,” Bloomberg. December 22, 2022, available at https://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-22/venezuela-lawmakers-vote-to-remove-guaido-ashead-of-opposition.

• 6

  According to the Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social, this repression was particularly concentrated against protests occurring in popular sectors; the Observatory’s report found 80 percent of arrests and state security violence took place in poor barrios. Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social. “Represion a los pobres en Venezuela,” Report, August 14, 2024, available at https://www. observatoriodeconflictos.org.ve/actualidad/ represion-a-los-pobres-en-venezuela.

• 7

  The leftist human rights lawyer, María Alejandra Díaz, was also harassed by the government in the leadup to Maduro’s inauguration.

• 8

  Various, “Statements from the Venezuelan left: End the detentions, forced disappearances and repression!” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, January 9, 2025, available at https://links. org.au/statements-venezuelan-left-end-detentionsforced-disappearances-and-repression.

• 9

  Comunes, “The Maduro Government and RightWing opposition Are Two Sides of the Same Coin,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, December 24, 2024, available at https:// links.org.au/comunes-venezuela-maduro-government-and-right-wing-opposition-are-two-sides-same-coin; Comunes issued a January 2025 statement, “Keys to Understanding What Is Happening in Venezuela (Plus Statement: ‘A de facto government is born, let’s organise the rebellion’),” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, January 14, 2025, available at https://links.org.au/comunes-keys-understanding-what-happeningvenezuela-plus-statement-de-facto-government-born-lets. The Statement Notes, “Every left party that stood by Chávez is today under legal investigation or has been intervened, with their rightful political leaderships stripped of their party’s electoral registration. Handpicked impostors imposed by the organs of power are rewarded for taking control of political organisations [sic.] that have a decades-long tradition of struggle.”

• 10

  Ellner and Fuentes, “Prioritising the Struggle Against US Imperialism.”

• 11

  Maduro’s speech can be viewed here, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiO9xSoxiCs

• 12

  Luis Bonilla-Molina, “La situación de la clase trabajadora en Venezuela (2013-2024),” 2024, available at https://luisbonillamolina.com/2024/09/22/la-situacion-de-la-clase-trabajadora-en-venezuela-2013-20241/. [Editor's part: Part I and Part IV of this article can be read in English at https://links.org.au/venezuelan-working-class-under-maduro-2013-24-part-i-introduction and  https://links.org.au/venezuelan-working-class-under-maduro-2013-24-part-iv-2024-presidential-elections-and-madurismos.] 

• 13

  Alejandro Velasco, “The Many Faces of Chavismo,” NACLA Report on the Americas 2024: (54):1:20-73:62.

• 14

  Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2019), p. 7.

• 15

  Salvador De León, “Maduro’s Constitutional Reform: ‘New Economy,’ Same Objectives,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, January 19, 2025, available at https:// links.org.au/venezuela-maduros-inaugurationushers-new-cycle-class-struggle-plus-constitutional-reform-new.

• 16

  Iranzo, Consuelo, 2018. “La triste historia del sindicalismo venezolano en tiempos de revolución: Una aproximación sintética,” Nueva Sociedad 274 / Marzo—Abril.

• 17

  Posado, Thomas, “Toma de posesión de Maduro: ¿cómo Venezuela se convirtió en un régimen autoritario?” El Grand Continent, January 8, 2025, available at https://legrandcontinent. eu/es/2025/01/08/toma-de-posesion-de-maduro-como-venezuela-se-convirtio-en-un-regimen-autoritario/.

• 18

  Ana C. Carvalhaes and Luís Bonilla, “The ProMaduro Left Abandons the Workers and People of Venezuela,” International Viewpoint, August 20, 2024, available at https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article8641.

• 19

  Comunes, “The Maduro Government and Right-Wing opposition.”

• 20

  Comunes, “Comunes issued a January 2025 statement.”

• 21

  Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).