Maybe the solution then isn’t a revolutionary government. Revolutionary governments have a nasty habit of being lead by egotistical folks with a god complex and a desire to be the supreme ruler for life. These do not make for people who can establish a healthy political culture that thrashes out ideas and works on them. They instead make for people who use roll up all government power into the executive, then proceed to use the power of the state to try and smash the opposition. Predictably, when this happens only right wing political parties have any capacity for resistance, and you are left with a psychotic leftist statist party that has exiled their saner leftist counterparts. They are not good decision makers. The road to dealing with your oligarchy is boring, long, and never finished.
Many liberal democracies have arisen, and they all had to deal with their oligarchs. The successful ones dealt with them through a boring and protracted campaign of creating a stable political system and establishing rule by law. The work is never done and you will be fighting oligarchs from now until then end of time, but it works. Boring, I know.
That simply isn’t true. Lots of leftist revolutions have had success in relieving issues with basic necessities. Where revolutionary governments fail is that they relieve poverty by cannibalizing their own infrastructure and accumulated resources. Even this might not be such a bad thing if they were building anything for the future. Unfortunately, leftist revolutionary governments that have rolled up all of the power of the state into the executive and the party are essentially worthless at anything approaching sane economic investment for the future. Chavez’s party is absolutely no exception. There isn’t a whole lot of rational talk about how to best build Venezuela into a sustainable economic power that competes internationally going on in the Chavez camp. The only real difference is that Venezuela can cannibalize its infrastructure for longer than most such governments. It isn’t building anything stable. It is doing the opposite in fact. It is tearing down all attempts to build viable long term infrastructure.
You can pose the question, but until you have an answer, following in the footsteps of every single revolutionary leftist government without even a vague attempt to do something even a little different is pretty stupid and gives you predictable results. Not only do you fail to solve any underlying problems in your economy and cannibalize your infrastructure, but you also ruin your political system for the next couple of decades. Great job.
Personally, if I had a magic wand, a pile of oil money, and a mandate, instead of collapsing all power in the country into executive branch and into the party, I would use my oil wealth to take care of basic necessities, build infrastructure, and build a functional political system that can handle future challenges. I would build better separations of powers to try and root out corruption and implement rule of law. I would actively encourage small businesses and creating a friendly environment for economic activity while whittling away at the oligarch. You can help your least well off members while still creating a atmosphere where normal activity can continue, as the Scandinavians have so thoroughly shown us. When my term was up, I would set a good example and leave instead of trying to use all of my political power and the state to last forever. Then again, I am not a megalomaniac who thinks that I and only I have the wisdom to rule. In fact, I would probably spend a lot of time second guessing myself and wondering if I am fucking up. Yeah, I would be a pretty bad revolutionary leftist government. The best I could ever hope for would be being a competent administrator who left the country better off than when I started. Boring, I know, but that is good boring vs “oh look, another revolutionary leftist government crashed their economy and ruined their political system for the next couple of decades” boringly predictable.
