The Bolivarian movement came to embrace socialism for pragmatic reasons. Through the practical experience of governance, it became increasingly clear to Chávez and those around him that capitalism with its ethic of production for profit could not achieve their social justice objectives. Out of the socialist tradition, Chávez has championed community councils and other instruments of participatory democracy, cooperatives providing employment and education in communitarian values to their members, and worker managed industries.
The accomplishments of the Bolivarian Revolution to date are many: land distributed to the landless, poverty rate halved and extreme poverty reduced by two-thirds, child malnutrition reduced, access to safe drinking water increased, etc. Social expenditures have been increased and pensions for the elderly went from less than 400,000 to over to two million, while hundreds of thousands of new homes were built for those in slums. Venezuela went from being among one of the most economically unequal nations in the Latin America to being among the most equal through the exercise of state power for the populace.
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