I wrote a little obituary of Hugo Chávez for VICE. I love writing for the venue, but it’s obviously geared for a mass audience. My more considered thoughts on the new wave of Latin American populism have been published in New Politics, In These Times, and elsewhere. In those essays I try to assign a useful, non-pejorative, descriptive meaning to word “populist” — putting Chávez in that tradition, but also explaining why the Bolivarian Revolution is more interesting and promising than old-school Peronism.

But I also think it’s important for the Left to differentiate, at a normative level, between the goals and composition of populist movements and those traditionally associated with the socialist left. That may seem like sectarian nitpicking, but if we aspire to something more radical than what the likes of Chávez can offer, keeping an alternative vision alive is important.

There was something more than state paternalism, or what old lefties would call “Bonapartism,” going on in Venezuela. From above, Chávez sparked class struggle from below. But where can Chavismo go from here?

Anyway, here’s a snippet from the VICE piece.

But it’s the extraordinary Venezuelans — not the regular Joes — who always found Chavez unbearable, and when he died yesterday, they probably all let out a collective cheer. Yet he was — and will likely continue to be — an example to his supporters as an inspiring thorn in the side of the rich. Under Chavez’s administration, the dispossessed may not have become wealthy, but they became more possessed: aspiring for more out of their lives, blaming the privileged for their lot, and building organizations to challenge their power.

When his cancer came to light two years ago, and as his health declined, many sought to make a movement that was largely dependent on Chavez’s personality into something more sustainable. It may have worked. Right now, tens of thousands of his supporters are carrying his coffin on the street in a funeral procession. Few doubt, friends or foes, that Chavez’s legacy will influence the region for years. The “Che vive” graffiti scribbled on walls across Latin America will soon have company.