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This article analyzes the social dynamics that sustain the integration of grassroots activists within public administrations in the context of Chavista governments in Venezuela. At the heart of this process, the moral economy built around the idea of revolution determines the political exchanges that actually shape public action, whether through the design of public institutions or through the theoretical and practical definition of the administration’s public function.Bringing the concept of moral economy into the analysis of political exchanges allows us to understand how the integration of grassroots activists within public administrations redefines the moral and practical relationships of the working classes with the state and with politics, while at the same time reproducing the conditionality of their access to public policy.