Money and generous benefits can easily alter a person’s political outlook. Ideology follows the money. - L.K. Samuels

After the bourgeoisie, middle class, and merchants instigated the French Revolution and sat on the left side of the aisle in opposition to the authoritarians, their legacy was ignored. The Socialist and nationalist intelligentsia sought to consciously bury the memory of original left-wing middle-class history and sitting arrangements. They mercilessly co-opted the left-wing label from the bourgeoisie revolutionary ‘Free Left,’ and denounced anyone who opposed their social revolution as reactionary or right-wing. These usurpers not only stole the left-wing designation from the bourgeoisie insurgents, but also absconded with their revolutionary ancestry. English historian William Doyle acknowledged this historical thievery, writing that after the French Revolution, the socialists were able to ‘appropriate the left-wing label and… lay exclusive claim to the revolutionary heritage.’

At an early meeting of a political group that eventually turned into the Nazi Party, Hitler told Friedrich Krohn, an early supporter of the party, that he preferred a type of ‘socialism’ he referred to as ‘national Social Democracy’ that was not dissimilar to nations like Scandinavia, England, and prewar Bavaria.

Chávez’s Marxist legacy continued under his successor, Nicolás Maduro, who watched Venezuela free fall into an economic abyss. The socialization of Venezuela resulted in a crisis where hospitals had no drugs or basic supplies, where the poverty rate went from 30 percent in 1999 to 87 percent in 2016, chronic food shortages erupted, and children and the sick began dying from malnutrition.