Yet creating a socialist economy is one of Chavez’s most elusive goals — a stark example of the disconnect between the president’s rhetoric and the reality on the ground. In fact, the private sector still controls two-thirds of Venezuela’s economy — the same as when Chavez was elected in 1998, according to estimates by the Central Bank.

The reasons are political and practical: Chavez knows most Venezuelans recoil from the idea of Cuban-style state control, and his government is far from being capable of taking over and running a majority of the economy.

“Basically he recognizes that in this day and age in a global economy ... complete state control would just doom the country,” said Michael Shifter, an analyst at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

So his strategy has been to selectively nationalize companies, set up state-run supermarkets and promote worker-managed businesses, while trying to convince Venezuelans to accept his vaguely defined brand of “21st Century Socialism.”

It is a hard sell for a country hooked on consumerism.

Shopping malls are filled with middle- and upper-class Venezuelans browsing through Lacoste shirts, Guess jeans and Montblanc pens.

Just as Chavez has ramped up his anti-capitalism tirades, he finds himself facing one of the biggest scandals of his tenure involving a state-run food distributor.

The company, PDVAL, left more than 2,700 shipping containers of rice, flour, milk, chicken, beef and other foods in a port rotting or beyond their expiration dates.

Its former chief and two others have been arrested, and some Venezuelans have begun to mockingly call the state company “Pudre-val,” using the Spanish word for rotting.

One newspaper cartoon depicted Karl Marx wearing a gas mask to ward off the stench.

Chavez could have moved more quickly toward bigger state control while the economy was growing, but he had other priorities, including consolidating his political power after a 2002 coup that ousted him for two days.

He now has a favorable congress and judges. But just as he turned to his socialist economic agenda, lower oil prices and the global economic crisis cut into the money he had to take over and run companies.

Chavez now is focused on maintaining his majority in September congressional elections and on his own re-election in 2012.