Chavez is indeed from a poor family, but he rose in the military to the rank of lieutenant colonel, as noted by Charles. The term petit-bourgeois is meant to be descriptive of that strata (cf. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Colonel>) rather than a pejorative one, though if anyone prefers upper-working-class or something like that instead, that is fine with me.
Generally speaking, both populist and socialist leaders often come from the petit-bourgeois class (such as lawyers, military officers, medical doctors, and so on, and nowadays clerics also). That is so because leaders of revolution, be it a war of position or a war of maneuver, must be intellectuals, whether they are formally or informally educated. This won't change until the working class get better educated.
> > his relationship with his primary social base: the urban
> > poor who have filled the ranks of the informal economy
Quite so. That is the primary social base of populism led by petit-bourgeois leaders today, and that will be also the primary social base if the leaders take their project beyond populism into socialism of the 21st century proper.
> > As to "political supremacy," I would argue the opposite,
> > that what distinguishes Chavismo is its fragility. That
> > while he may have electoral and rhetorical hegemony,
> > he doesn't have institutional hegemony yet.
> > Part of this is that he represents a revolution, a political one at
> > least, that came to power through the ballot box, and not a
> > protracted insurgency that would have produced an ideologically
> > coherent cadre that could replace the old order. As a result,
> > Chavismo has had to make considerable compromises
> > with power blocs in the military, police, state b'cracy,
> > unwilling to give up its privileges and to in fact use the
> > openness of the moment to extend them. In other words,
> > the corruption that still plagues VE society
> > is a result of Chavismo's weakness, not its omnipotence.
The professor quibbles over words "political supremacy" too much. In substance, I actually agree with the professor on both points, though the professor doesn't appear to realize that. Not only has the Bolivarian process not annihilated the old ruling class but it has yet to achieve what the professor calls "institutional hegemony." The establishment of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela is meant to create organizers for the hegemony at that level. I do think, however, that Chavismo has attained not only electoral victories but also political hegemony (which goes far beyond rhetoric per se, though it depends on how one defines rhetoric), if, for instance, a December 2006 Gallup poll is to be believed (though it is possible that it has eroded since the poll due to inflation, the RCTV controversy, the establishment of a disciplinary tribunal, etc.): <http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/10/venezuelans-evaluate-socialism-and.html>.
So, Chavismo probably isn't as fragile as the professor believes, though its strength will be surely tested if and when it challenges the logic of capital more fundamentally than it has. -- Yoshie