Boiling Mud: Toward a Comparative Political Economy of Venezuela and Alberta

The staple trap metaphor is ubiquitous in Canadian political economy. It implies that Canada’s wealth is rooted in the exploitation of natural resources, and that the export of these staples forms the (very unstable) core of the economy. This paper will explore the staple trap metaphor through a comparative analysis of Venezuela and Alberta. Venezuela has the same oil-soaked mud as does Alberta – but Venezuela remains extremely poor, while Alberta is a centre of enormous wealth.
First the paper will compare the two boiling mud economies through the lens of Canada and Venezuela’s very different locations in the world economy. Canada is very much at the top of the hierarchy of nations, not at the bottom. It is one of the architects of the current world system, not one of that system’s principal victims.
Second, the paper will deploy the “political” half of the couplet “political economy.” Alberta’s economic development has occurred in the context of a capitalist class whose establishment of effective sovereignty and the creation of a home market has roots going back to the 19th century in Central Canada, and to early in the 20th century in the West. Venezuela, it will be argued, has only begun to assert effective sovereignty this century, in the shape of the controversial rule of President Hugo Chávez Frías.
This paper is a continuation of research developed in a forthcoming book, Escape from the Staple Trap: The future of Canadian political economy.