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C h A P t e r e I G h t Defying the Iron Law of Oligarchy II Debating Democracy Online in Venezuela Daniel Hellinger Shortly after the polls closed on December 2, 2007, Venezuelans learned that for the first time since the presidential election of 1998, a period covering ten national elections, their charismatic president, Hugo Chávez Frías, had suffered an electoral defeat. Two packages of constitutional reforms that he put forth (after discussion and some alteration in the National Assembly) had failed to pass by less than a percentage point. But the defeat was made more palpable by opposition majorities in Chavista strongholds in poor urban barrios and by a very low turnout. On December 3, Chávez seemed to accept responsibility for the outcome, just as he had after the failed coup of 1992, saying, “I was mistaken in choosing the moment to propose the reform.”1 He also mused, “Perhaps we are not mature enough to begin a socialist project without fear. We are still not ready to launch a socialist government.”2 For the most part, the official government media, especially La Hojilla, the nightly program devoted to deconstructing opposition discourse through satire and ridicule, followed the president’s line. Many prominent Chavista politicians highlighted the effectiveness of the opposition campaign, implying that the people had been deceived about the true content of the reform packages. However, in a different media arena, the Internet, a much more profound debate was taking place about the meaning of the vote. On blogs and discussion forums, grassroots activists, officials on the lower rungs of the political hierarchy , intellectuals, and others were carrying on a rich discussion.They offered differing and often complex diagnoses of the defeat of the reform package. Some offered analyses similar to those on the oficalista media, but many others dared to question the desirability of the reform package itself and even to question the leadership of Chávez. 220 hellInGer The tenor of the discussion reflects in many respects the kind of political interaction envisioned by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in The Multitude (2004). “The Multitude,” they say, is the emerging global force for socialist emancipation, a heterogeneous “living alternative that grows with Empire” that opens the possibility for “democracy on a global scale for the very first time.” The Multitude’s heterogeneity, say Hardt and Negri, requires its parts to discover through discourse “the common that allows them to communicate and act together.” It organizes itself in a way distinct “from centralized forms of revolutionary dictatorship and command.” The “main commonality” is the desire for democracy in social and economic spheres, not just in the political sphere. These spheres “become increasingly indistinct from politics, hence socialist ” (xiii–xvi). One review of The Multitude summarized Hardt and Negri’s thesis in this way: “The network struggles of the multitude . . . are more effective and democratic than earlier models of popular or guerilla warfare. The Multitude, for example , can organize itself horizontally, siphon support for Empire, and strike proficiently using the Internet” (Tampio 2005). Hardt and Negri themselves contend, “A distributed network such as the Internet is a good initial image or model for the Multitude because, first, the various nodes remain different but are all connected in the Web, and, second, the external boundaries of the network are open such that new modes and new relationships can always be added” (2004, xv). Hardt and Negri’s conception of revolutionary socialist politics is certainly problematic. Can all points of view and priorities be encompassed within a movement for revolutionary change? How are conflicts about goals and strategies to be resolved without a more formal institutional context than a “network ”? Will disputes ultimately resolve themselves through communication? Is there a place for a political party in organizing the Multitude, and if so, what kind? Does this vision of a revolutionary social force underestimate the importance and potential of the “proletariat” defined in more classically Marxist terms? In this examination of Bolivarian democracy on the net, we shall see that forging commonality and overcoming tendencies toward verticalism and personalism are extraordinarily challenging, even on the Internet. On the other hand, the character of the Internet makes it very difficult for a government to isolate and dismiss criticism within its own ranks. Points of view and discussion rarely heard in either private and state media find expression and elicit debate in this arena. In this respect, participation on the Internet in Bolivarian Venezuela resembles in...

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