Matthew Owen: Comparing capitalism and socialism - Political & Economic Theory

One of the reasons that Hugo Chavez has been so reluctant to embrace socialism has been a keen awareness of the degeneration of the USSR into an undemocratic system: it wasn't until the last year of his first Presidential term that he read Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution,' which, in turn, stimulated a reading of the Marxist classics cited by Trotsky.