Fil: Dachevsky, Fernando German. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Economicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofia y Letras; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

The Reproduction and Crisis of Capitalism in Venezuela under Chavismo

This paper explores the contradictions and limits to agrarian transformation under twenty-first Century Socialism in Venezuela. Given the historical destruction wrought by the oil-based accumulation process upon Venezuela’s agricultural sector, the symbolic and social importance of an ‘agrarian revolution’ could be seen as a yardstick with which to measure the progress of the Bolivarian Revolution in ‘sowing the oil’. Eschewing a policy focus on the role of ‘food sovereignty’ and ‘food security’, the paper analyses how the dynamics of rentier-capital accumulation have played out in the agricultural sector. The paper argues that the macroeconomic framework of the Bolivarian Revolution has diminished the possibility of expanded domestic food production and instead reduced agrarian transformation to contradictory processes of ground rent appropriation.

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The political economy of rentier capitalism and the limits to agrarian transformation in Venezuela

The Latin American regional institution of the ALBA-TCP (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America-Tratado de Comercio de los Pueblos) has garnered much deserved scholarly attention d...

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The Social Contradictions of Regional Development in the ALBA-TCP: The Case of Food Production

The global rise in primary commodity prices in recent years has put the question of the use of income from natural resources for developmental goals back on the political agenda across Latin America. Purcell examines the distinction between agricultural and mining landownership, in the context of global transformation associated with the international division labour, so as to explain the developmental trajectories of Ecuador and Venezuela. He argues that dual landlordism in Ecuador—in the form of an agro-export elite and a state-controlled oil sector—contrasts with the singular dominance of the state-controlled oil sector in Venezuela, and this, for Purcell, explains the manner in which the two national forms of insertion into the international division of labour have determined different national variants of ‘post-neoliberalism’.

‘Post-neoliberalism’ in the International Division of Labour: The Divergent Cases of Ecuador and Venezuela

ABSTRACT This paper measures with a novel methodology the amount of agrarian ground rent intersectoral transfers in Uruguay and its relative weight in the national amount of surplus value during the period 1955-2019. In order to this, the paper identifies the mechanisms through which ground rent is transferred from landowners to industrial and commercial capitals. The main results show that agrarian ground rent transfers, in particular through exchange rate overvaluation, was a recurring mechanism that has been central for capital accumulation. These transfers complement the surplus value appropriated by individual capitals, however, at the same time, consolidate the rentier nature of Uruguay due to the chronic overvaluation of exchange rate.

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Exchange rate overvaluation and agrarian ground rent transfers in Uruguay: 1955-2019

Venezuela's economic history has shown strong industrial growth since the mid-20th century and particularly from 1960 to 1970, generally related to the Industrialization by Import Substitution model. this growth ended abruptly with the sharp decline in oil prices in the late 1970s and early 1980s. An economic collapse of the non-oil sector followed the contraction in oil rent. the magnitude of the collapse was so great that even the strong growth during the 2000s has not led to a full recovery. the product per worker is at the same level in 2008 as in 1980 and only 14% higher than its level in 1970 (Baptista 2006). this scenario is even worse when compared to the great increase in productivity in the rest of the world, including latin America. this decline is not only significant in terms of progress but also with regard to the levels. the growth of income per worker generated by the manufacturing sector was at a similar level to the USA in the late 1960s (i.e., according to United Nations Industrial development Organization [UNIdO] data in 1969, the average income by industrial worker in Venezuela was 90% of the level in the USA).1The general explanation for the development of countries based on commodity exports is that the high income of the external sector generates a breakdown in the productive structure by causing an appreciation of the exchange rate with a negative impact on industrial sector competitiveness. Even the so-called dutch disease and resource curse (Auty 2001; corden 1984) explanations that take into account the real problems of countries with high incomes from commodity exports, like the difficulties in the industrial sector, fail to explain the cause of these problems.In the case of Venezuela, these interpretations cannot explain the reason for which, if the oil revenue windfall is the cause of the malfunction of capital accumulation in the industrial sector, the oil boom was followed by a strong expansion of capital accumulation during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in the industrial sector, with an increase in fixed capital stock, particularly from 1974 to 1979 and 500% growth during the boom in oil prices.This problem has already been stated by authors such as Hausmann and rodriguez (2014), and shows the inconsistency of trying to explain the growth by the same factors that explain the collapse. A similar problem arises when the explanation is not focused on the oil revenue windfall, but on the mechanisms of appropriation, particularly in debates regarding the overvaluation of the Bolivar in relation to the dollar, as there is a far from negative correlation between overvaluation and industrial growth. for an alternative explanation, we must conduct a closer analysis of the relationship between the oil and the non-oil sectors throughout Venezuela's history and the transformation of its role in the international division of labor. this will allow us to explain the general dynamic of capital accumulation in Venezuela and, more importantly, to analyze the specificity of chavism as a process of social transformation, examining the changes in state intervention and the appropriation of oil rent in historical terms. Without this long-term and international perspective, we risk analyzing chavism as an autonomous political process and not as the result of the trends of development of global capitalism in Venezuela.1. oil rent and its appropriationThe measurement of oil rent and its distribution over time is the fundamental step required for the rest of our analysis. Since rent is the consequence of extraordinary profits, we measured the rate of profit in the oil branch compared to the industrial and non-oil sector rate of profit in Venezuela. this gives us the oil rent that the state (as owner of the oil land in Venezuela) distributes directly to capital by direct and indirect subsidies and by lowering the price of the labor force through the social wage. But this is insufficient, since the dispute over rent exists before the oil sector receives its profits. …

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/worlrevipoliecon.6.1.0058

Juan Kornblihtt

Papers

Oil Rent Appropriation , Capital Accumulation , and Social Expenditure in Venezuela during Chavism