In the past, Chávez could mobilize his base among the poor on clear-cut issues--protesting the right-wing coup attempt of April 2002, voting to keep him in office in the recall election of 2004, re-electing him as president a year ago.

The constitutional reforms, however, are more complicated and controversial within the Chávez camp itself.

At issue is the balance between the creation of communal councils to enhance what Chávez calls "popular power," and measures that would strengthen the powers of the presidency and the central state in several respects.

These include the removal of presidential term limits and lengthening the term from six to seven years; the ability to appoint an unrestricted number of secondary vice presidents; the authority to determine boundaries of proposed "communal cities" of municipalities and states; and control over the use of foreign currency reserves with no constitutional limits.

The right to recall the president still exists, but the number of signatures required to trigger a vote would increase from 20 percent to 30 percent of eligible voters.

Other constitutional measures debated on the left would give the president and National Assembly the ability to impose states of emergency in which the right to information is waived--probably a response to the private media's complicity in the 2002 coup. The National Assembly would also gain the right to remove Supreme Court judges and election officials through a simple majority vote.

These changes hardly amount to the "Chávez dictatorship" conjured up in the mainstream media, and the Venezuelan constitution would remain more democratic in many respects than the U.S. Constitution, a relic of the 18th century.

The question, however, is whether the constitution promotes a transition to "popular power" and "socialism," as Chávez would have it.

Essentially, the reforms reflect the contradiction at the heart of Chávez's project--an effort to initiate revolutionary change from above.

The expansion of communal councils and creation of workers councils are seen by grassroots Chavista activists as a legitimate effort to anchor the "revolutionary process" at the grassroots.

However, the additional powers for the presidency and the reorganization of the armed forces highlight the fact that Chávez apparently sees the presidency--and the centralized state--as the guardian of the revolution.

Tellingly, it is the military, the most rigidly hierarchical institution in society, which is to protect the newly decentralized democracy, while remaining aloof from such changes internally.

Chávez's effort to combine what he calls an "explosion of popular power" with greater centralism may reflect his military past. But if the government is able to portray itself as creating "motors" of revolutionary change, it's because grassroots organizations, social movements and organized labor have so far failed to create sizeable organizations of their own.

While there is no doubt of Chávez's popularity, particularly among the poor, their role thus far has been to defend Chávez from the right during the coup and lockout, and turning out for elections. The constitutional reforms, along with the creation of the PSUV at Chávez's initiative, are intended to close the gap between these periodic mass mobilizations and the lack of day-to-day organization.

To consolidate this base, the proposed constitutional reforms offer further social gains. For example, virtually unmentioned in U.S. media accounts is the fact that the reforms would provide, for the first time, social security benefits to the 50 percent of Venezuelan workers who toil in the informal sector as street vendors, taxi drivers and the like. The workweek would be limited to 36 hours.

There are other advances as well, including the consolidation of land reform, outlawing discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, lowering the voting age from 18 to 16, guaranteed free university education, gender parity in politics and political parties, public financing of political campaigns, recognition of Venezuelans of African descent, and more.

Critics on the right claim these measures constitute a bribe to the mass of Venezuelans--handouts in exchange for political support, a version of the traditional clientleism used Latin American populists such as Argentina's Juan Perón.

In fact, Perón and other 20th century populists went far beyond Chávez in terms of nationalizing industries--Venezuela's oil company, PDVSA, has been government owned since the 1970s, and the recent state takeover of the telecommunications and electrical power companies are renationalizations.

But the Chávez project aims at a more thoroughgoing social transformation than populists of the past. The aim is to build what Chávez calls "socialism of the 21st century" by trying to bypass the capitalist state with new structures and enshrining new forms of "social," "public" and "mixed" property to promote "endogenous" economic development--that is, growth not dependent on the oil economy.

These efforts are, in turn, supposed to mesh with "communes" created by communal councils--which, under the proposed constitutional changes, will receive at least 5 percent of the national budget to manage local affairs. The text of the reform proposal explains: "The state will foment and develop different forms of production and economic units of social property, from direct or communal-controlled, to indirect or state-controlled, as well as productive economic units for social production and/or distribution."

Moreover, the proposed reform on "popular power" also calls for the creation of councils for workers, students, farmers, craftspeople, fishermen and -women, sports participants, youth, the elderly, women, disabled people and others.

This new "geometry of power," as Chávez calls it, is apparently designed to engineer social change while avoiding direct confrontation with big business, whose property rights are in fact safeguarded in the constitutional reforms. As Chávez himself said last summer, "We have no plan to eliminate the oligarchy, Venezuela's bourgeoisie."

Funds for social reforms have so far come from state oil revenues, rather than any transfer of wealth through higher taxes, and the nationalization of companies has been achieved by paying market price for stock market shares.

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