It's like a bad B movie repeating again and again.

President Hugo Chavez announced Sunday that his government's sweeping reforms toward socialism will include the creation of "collective property."

Vowing to undermine capitalism's continued influence in Venezuela during his television and radio program "Hello President," Chavez said state-financed cooperatives would operate under a new concept in which workers would share profits.

"It's property that belongs to everyone and it's going to benefit everyone," said Chavez, a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro whom opponents accuse of leading Venezuela toward Cuba-style communism.

Chavez — a leftist former paratrooper popularly known as "El Comandante" — said his government fully respects private property, but pledged to replace capitalist ideals with socialist principles on cooperatives such as cattle ranches and farms.

"It cannot be production to generate profits for one person or a small group of people that become rich exploiting peons who end up becoming slaves, living in poverty and misery their entire lives," he said. ...

Chavez, who hosted Sunday's program from a ranch in Venezuela's sun-baked plains, said his government would move to expropriate large ranches and farms spanning more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) and redistribute lands deemed "idle" to the poor under a nationwide agrarian reform.

Since the reform began five years ago, officials have redistributed over 1.9 million hectares (4.6 million acres) of land that had been classified as unproductive or lacked property documents dating back to 1847, according to a recent government census.

Critics say reform has failed to revive Venezuela's agriculture industry, which does not produce enough food to satisfy domestic demand. The government has been forced to import food amid shortages of staples such as meats, milk and sugar.

"If Mr. Chavez really wants to help Venezuela's poor farmers, he must offer them technical assistance and sufficient financing because land doesn't become productive without investment," said opposition leader Alfonzo Marquina. "We're only seeing increasing shortages and more expensive products."

Redistributing land isn't necessarily a bad idea, but the government should be buying land and redistributing it, if that's the goal, rather than setting up collective farms.

The Globalisation Institute's take.

Whilst this rhetoric may play well in the slums of Caracas, it should not be underestimated how important private property and property rights are. Property rights are the most important and fundamental requirement for lifting people out of poverty and creating prosperity in a country. By seizing land and interfering with these rights, Chavez is following in the extremely inauspicious footsteps of Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, who seized farms from white farmers and redistributed the land. Zimbabwe used to be known as the bread basket of Africa, but this disastrous policy contributed to its transformation into the fastest shrinking economy in the world, suffering from widespread famine and 1,700% inflation.

It is important for farms to be in private hands to ensure competition and efficiency in agriculture. Chavez should be careful that he does not harm Venezuela as much as Mugabe has harmed Zimbabwe. However, having praised Mugabe's land grabs as undoing “ the unfair structures of colonialism” it is unlikely that Chavez will take heed.