Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle analyzes the Chavez regime from an antiauthoritarian Venezuelan perspective. It debunks claims made by Venezuelan and U. S. rightists that the Chavez government is dictatorial, as well as claims made by Venezuelan and U. S. leftists that the Chavez government is revolutionary. Instead the book argues that the Chavez regime is one of a long line of Latin American populist regimes that--"revolutionary" rhetoric aside--ultimately have been subservient to the United States as well as to multinational corporations. The book concludes by explaining how Venezuela's autonomous social, labor, and environmental movements have been systematically disempowered by the Chavez regime, but that despite this they remain the basis of a truly democratic, revolutionary alternative. --Book Jacket.