US-Led Economic War, Not Socialism, Is Tearing Venezuela Apart
US-Led Economic War, Not Socialism, Is Tearing Venezuela Apart
Americans have been trained by decades of Cold War propaganda to look for any confirmation that ‘socialism means poverty.’ But in the case of Venezuela and other states not governed by the free market, this cliche simply doesn’t ring true.
by Caleb T. Maupin
July 12th, 2016
By Caleb T. Maupin
A pro-government supporter wears a T-Shirt with image of Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez, as he waits for results during congressional elections in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Dec. 6, 2015.
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WASHINGTON — (ANALYSIS) The political and economic crisis facing Venezuela is being endlessly pointed to as proof of the superiority of the free market.
Images and portrayals of Venezuelans rioting in the streets over high food costs, empty grocery stores, medicine shortages, and overflowing garbage bins are the headlines, and the reporting points to socialism as the cause.
The Chicago Tribune published a Commentary piece titled: “A socialist revolution can ruin almost any country.” A headline on Reason’s Hit and Run blog proclaims: “Venezuelan socialism still a complete disaster.” The Week’s U.S. edition says: “Authoritarian socialism caused Venezuela’s collapse.”
Indeed, corporate-owned, mainstream media advises Americans to look at the inflation and food lines in Venezuela, and then repeat to themselves clichés they heard in elementary school about how “Communism just doesn’t work.”
In reality, millions of Venezuelans have seen their living conditions vastly improved through the Bolivarian process. The problems plaguing the Venezuelan economy are not due to some inherent fault in socialism, but to artificially low oil prices and sabotage by forces hostile to the revolution.
Starting in 2014, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia flooded the market with cheap oil. This is not a mere business decision, but a calculated move coordinated with U.S. and Israeli foreign policy goals. Despite not just losing money, but even falling deep into debt, the Saudi monarchy continues to expand its oil production apparatus. The result has been driving the price of oil down from $110 per barrel, to $28 in the early months of this year. The goal is to weaken these opponents of Wall Street, London, and Tel Aviv, whose economies are centered around oil and natural gas exports.
And Venezuela is one of those countries. Saudi efforts to drive down oil prices have drastically reduced Venezuela’s state budget and led to enormous consequences for the Venezuelan economy.
At the same time, private food processing and importing corporations have launched a coordinated campaign of sabotage. This, coupled with the weakening of a vitally important state sector of the economy, has resulted in inflation and food shortages. The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.
Corruption is a big problem in Venezuela and many third-world countries. This was true prior to the Bolivarian process, as well as after Hugo Chavez launched his massive economic reforms. In situations of extreme poverty, people learn to take care of each other. People who work in government are almost expected to use their position to take care of their friends and family. Corruption is a big problem under any system, but it is much easier to tolerate in conditions of greater abundance. The problem has been magnified in Venezuela due to the drop in state revenue caused by the low oil prices and sabotage from food importers.
The Bolivarian experience in Venezuela
Americans have been trained by decades of Cold War propaganda to look for any confirmation that “socialism means poverty.” A quick, simplistic portrait of the problems currently facing Venezuela, coupled with the fact that President Nicolas Maduro describes himself as a Marxist, can certainly give them such a confirmation. However, the actual, undisputed history of socialist construction around the world, including recent decades in Venezuela, tells a completely different story.
Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1999. His election was viewed as a referendum on the extreme free market policies enacted in Venezuela during the 1990s. In December, when I walked through the neighborhoods of central Caracas, Venezuelans spoke of these times with horror.
Demonstrators gather in Bolivar Square to show their support of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. The demonstrators gathered as the Organization of American States is meeting to discuss a report from Secretary General Luis Almagro denouncing violations of the Venezuela’s constitution.
Venezuelans told of how the privatizations mandated by the International Monetary Fund made life in Venezuela almost unlivable during the 1990s. Garbage wouldn’t be collected. Electricity would go off for weeks. Haido Ortega, a member of a local governing body in Venezuela, said: “Under previous governments we had to burn tires and go on strike just to get electricity, have the streets fixed, or get any investment.”
Chavez took office on a platform advocating a path between capitalism and socialism. He restructured the government-owned oil company so that the profits would go into the Venezuelan state, not the pockets of Wall Street corporations. With the proceeds of Venezuela’s oil exports, Chavez funded a huge apparatus of social programs.
After defeating an attempted coup against him in 2002, Chavez announced the goal of bringing Venezuela toward “21st Century Socialism.” Chavez quoted Marx and Lenin in his many TV addresses to the country, and mobilized the country around the goal of creating a prosperous, non-capitalist society.
In 1998, Venezuela had only 12 public universities, today it has 32. Cuban doctors were brought to Venezuela to provide free health care in community clinics. The government provides cooking and heating gas to low-income neighborhoods, and it’s launched a literacy campaign for uneducated adults.
During the George W. Bush administration, oil prices were the highest they had ever been. The destruction of Iraq, sanctions on Iran and Russia, strikes and turmoil in Nigeria — these events created a shortage on the international markets, driving prices up.
Big oil revenues enabled Chavez and the United Socialist Party to bring millions of Venezuelans out of poverty. Between 1995 and 2009, poverty and unemployment in Venezuela were both cut in half.
After the death of Chavez, Nicolas Maduro has continued the Bolivarian program. “Housing Missions” have been built across the country, providing low-income families in Venezuela with places to live. The Venezuelan government reports that over 1 million modern apartment buildings had been constructed by the end of 2015.
The problems currently facing Venezuela started in 2014. The already growing abundance of oil due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was compounded by Saudi Arabia flooding the markets with cheap oil. The result: massive price drops. Despite facing a domestic fiscal crisis, Saudi Arabia continues to expand its oil production apparatus.
The price of oil remains low, as negotiations among OPEC states are taking place in the hopes that prices can be driven back up. While American media insists the low oil prices are just the natural cycle of the market at work, it’s rather convenient for U.S. foreign policy. Russia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and the Islamic Republic of Iran all have economies centered around state-owned oil companies and oil exports, and each of these countries has suffered the sting of low oil prices.
The leftist president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has already been deposed due to scandal surrounding Petrobras, the state-owned oil company which is experiencing economic problems due to the falling price of oil. Although much of Brazil’s oil is for domestic consumption, it has been revealed that those who deposed her coordinated with the CIA and other forces in Washington and Wall Street, utilizing the economic fallout of low oil prices to bring down the Brazilian president.
The son of President Ronald Reagan has argued that Obama is intentionally driving down oil prices not just to weaken the Venezuelan economy, but also to tamper the influence of Russia and Iran. Writing for Townhall in 2014, Michael Reagan bragged that his father did the same thing to hurt the Soviet Union during the 1980s:
“Since selling oil was the source of the Kremlin’s wealth, my father got the Saudis to flood the market with cheap oil.
Lower oil prices devalued the ruble, causing the USSR to go bankrupt, which led to perestroika and Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Empire.”
The history of socialist construction
Prior to the 1917 revolution, Russia was a primitive, agrarian country. By 1936, after the completion of the Five-Year Plan, it was a world industrial power, surpassing every other country on the globe in terms of steel and tractor production. The barren Soviet countryside was lit up with electricity. The children of illiterate peasants across the Soviet Union grew up to be the scientists and engineers who first conquered outer space. The planned economy of the Soviet Union drastically improved the living standards of millions of people, bringing them running water, modern housing, guaranteed employment, and free education.
There is no contradiction between central planning and economic growth. In 1949, China had no steel industry. Today, more than half of all the world’s steel is produced in China’s government-controlled steel industry.
Cuba has wiped out illiteracy, and Cubans enjoy one of the highest life expectancies in Latin America.
People hold up images showing Fidel Castro, second from right, Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez, center, and Cuba’s revolutionary hero Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, bottom left and right, during a May Day march in Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The image of Chavez carries the words in Spanish “Chavez : Our best friend.” (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
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When the Marxist-Leninist governments of Eastern Europe collapsed in the early 1990s, economists like Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who can be counted among capitalism’s “true believers,” predicted rapid economic growth. Since the 1990s, conditions in what George W. Bush called the “New Europe” have become far worse than under socialism. The life expectancy has decreased and infant mortality has risen. Human and drug traffickers have set up shop. In endless polls, the people of Eastern Europe repeatedly say life was better before the defeat of Communism.
Russia’s recovery from the disaster of the 1990s has come about with the reorientation of the economy to one centered around public control of its oil and natural gas resources — much like Venezuela. The Putin government has also waged a crackdown on the small number of “oligarchs” who became wealthy after the demise of the Soviet Union. Once strong state to control the economy was re-established, Russia’s gross domestic product increased by 70 percent during the first eight years of Putin’s administration. From 2000 to 2008, poverty was cut in half, and incomes doubled.
Neoliberal capitalism has failed
It is only because these facts are simply off-limits in the American media and its discussions of socialism and capitalism that the distorted narrative about Venezuela’s current hardships are believed.
American media has perpetuated a cold-war induced false narrative on the nature of socialism.
When discussing the merits of capitalism and socialism, American media usually restricts the conversation to pointing out that socialist countries in the third world have lower living standards than the United States, a country widely identified with capitalism. Without any context or fair comparison, this alone is supposed to prove the inherent superiority of U.S.-style capitalism.
If the kind of neoliberal “free trade” advocated by U.S. corporations was the solution to global poverty, Mexico, a country long ago penetrated with the North American Free Trade Agreement, would be a shining example of development, not a mess of drug cartels and poverty. The same can be said for oil-rich countries like Nigeria, where exports are massive but the population remains in dire conditions.
The governments of Bangladesh, Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, and the Philippines have done everything they can to deregulate the market and accommodate Western ”investment.” Despite the promises of neoliberal theoreticians, their populations have not seen their lives substantially improve.
If one compares the more market-oriented economy of the U.S., not to countries in the global south attempting to develop with a planned economy, but to other Western countries with more social-democratic governments, the inferiority of the “free market” can also be revealed.
The U.S. is rated 43 in the world in terms of life expectancy, according to the CIA World Factbook. People live longer in Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Sweden, Australia, Italy, Iceland — basically, almost every other Western country. Statistics on the rate of infant mortality say approximately the same thing. National health care services along with greater job security and economic protections render much healthier populations.
Even as the social-democratic welfare states of Europe drift closer to the U.S. economic model with “austerity cuts,” the U.S. still lags behind them in terms of basic societal health. Western European countries with powerful unions, strong socialist and labor parties, and less punitive criminal justice systems tend to have healthier societies.
The American perception that socialism or government intervention automatically create poverty, while a laissez faire approach unleashes limitless prosperity, is simply incorrect. Despite the current hardships, this reality is reflected in the last two decades of Venezuela’s history.
A punishment vote, not a vote for capitalism
The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.
It is odd that the mainstream press blames “socialism” for the food problems in Venezuela, when the food distributors remain in the hands of private corporations. As Venezuelan political analyst Jesus Silva told me recently: “Most food in Venezuela is imported by private companies, they ask for dollars subsidized by the government oil sales to do that; they rarely produce anything or invest their own money.”
According to Silva, the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the U.S., in addition to the oil crisis, have made it more difficult for the Venezuelan government to pay the private food importing companies in U.S. dollars. In response, the food companies are “running general sabotage.”
“Venezuela’s economy depends on oil sales. Now that oil prices are dropping down, the challenge is to get other sources of economic income,” he explained. “Meanwhile, the opposition is garnering electoral support due to the current economic crisis.”
When the United Socialist Party and its aligned Patriotic Pole lost control of Parliament in December, many predicted the imminent collapse of the Bolivarian government. However, months have passed and this clearly has not taken place.
While a clear majority cast a voto castigo (“punishment vote”) in December, punishing the government for mismanaging the crisis, the Maduro administration has a solid core of socialist activists who remain loyal to the Bolivarian project. Across Venezuela, communes have been established. Leftist activists live together and work in cooperatives. Many of them are armed and organized in “Bolivarian Militias” to defend the revolution.
Even some of the loudest critics of the Venezuelan government admit that it has greatly improved the situation in the country, despite the current hardships.
In December, I spoke to Glen Martinez, a radio host in Caracas who voted for the opposition. He dismissed the notion that free market capitalism would ever return to Venezuela. As he explained, most of the people who voted against the United Socialist Party — himself included — are frustrated with the way the current crisis is being handled, but do not want a return to the neoliberal economic model of the 1999s.
He said the economic reforms established during the Chavez administration would never be reversed. “We are not the same people we were before 1999,” Martinez insisted.
The United Socialist Party is currently engaging in a massive re-orientation, hoping to sharpen its response to economic sabotage and strengthen the socialist direction of the revolution. There is also talk of massive reform in the way the government operates, in order to prevent the extreme examples of corruption and mismanagement that are causing frustration among the population.
The climate is being intensified by a number of recent political assassinations. Tensions continue to exist on Venezuela’s border with the U.S.-aligned government of Colombia. The solid base of socialist activists is not going to let revolution be overturned, and tensions continue to rise. The Maduro and the United Socialist Party’s main task is to hold Venezuela together, and not let the country escalate into a state of civil war.
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troopersam • a day ago
Saying that Saudi oil dumping was aimed at destabilizing Venezuela is just plain stupid. Saudi pumping was intended to kill the oil frackers in the US, by driving down the price of oil to under the fracking production cost.
That's it. There was no other reason.
It didn't work simply because the Saudis didn't understand that even by bankrupting the frackers, all they did was drive them into dormancy. The frackers were bought for pennies in bankruptcy auctions, and the new owners simply waited for the Saudis to crack. It was obvious the Saudis couldn't keep their pump-and-dump trade war going forever, and eventually oil prices would have to rise again.
Venezuela suffered horribly for it because the Chavez government made the entire economy petro-based. No diversity at all. Collapse was inevitable.
So yeah, socialism failed because the guy at the top was stupid.
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troopersam • a day ago
Sounds like tankie bullsh*t to me, but okay.
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Elton Hartzler • 3 months ago
. . . Is Maupin really that stoopit? What about Chile? They don't have any oil at all, no natural resources except copper but it's the most prosperous, wealthiest country in all of Latin America. How that happen?
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Tom Tom • 4 months ago
The U.S. did not cause incredible inflation in Venezuela. The bus driver did that.
How socialism works:
1. Middle class gets wealthy due to Capitalism.
2. Send their children to leftist universities
3. Children graduate, take up positions in the gov't and
eventually take over.
4. Once they take over, because they want to "help people" and
because they've been brainwashed by idiot Marxist BMW-driving
college professors, bring in socialism though the vote and through
their mechanisms of control of the gov't.
5. Full socialism, print LOTS of money to "help the people."
6. Prices go - duh - UP.
7. Caps on prices are set by the gov't.
8. Everything sells out
9. Black market takes over from idiots in gov't. its how people survive.
10. Gov't clamps down on the business owners and arrests them, blaming
them for what the gov't did.
11. Hyper-inflation followed by deflation follows.
12. People riot and hang the socialists.
13. The people take over and restore democratic capitalism.
14. The middle class, once again, gets wealthy on capitalism, and sends their children to leftists Marxist colleges to get "educated."
Repeat
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Greg Vezina Tom Tom • a day ago
The capitalist based US government has printed $Trillions of dollars and given them free to the failed banks since 2008 when they should have gone bankrupt and the public should have owned all of them just like we did GM and Chrysler. Iceland took over all their banks and put their bankers in jail.
Socialism doesn't destroy societies it is the greed and selfishness associated with the hording of capital using tax avoidance measures that ensures that it doesn't get reinvested that does. If we had any measure of "fair enterprise" and a "fair tax" system in our global economy both capitalism and socialism would work together to improve the quality of life of all of us.
The good news is we are learning the real costs to society of throwing people to the wolves is greater than providing them with the basic minimum needs for survival. Capitalism doesn't care about anything except profits at any cost.
Providing housing for homeless is cheaper and better for society
https://phys.org/news/2017-...
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fuzzy • 5 months ago
Russia depends on oil and Russia seems to be coping with the oil price fluctuations. Venezuela went full tilt "socialist" without a clear contingency plan to deal with a natural decline in oil prices or an "economic" war by oil price manipulation. If new technologies came out that reduced the reliance on oil Venezuela would be in the same position. Oil was the piggy bank they were looting to give out freebies to everyone. When that piggy back went in decline everything came to a complete halt.
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suedi • 8 months ago
Wouldn't it be nice if socialism worked...but it doesn't. The whole idea of socialism falls apart. The gov't controls all industry but obviously can't control outside forces that drive their only industry down. First, you should never put all your eggs in one basket. Second, you can't control the outside forces. And, third, you can't control those in power...they are always corrupted by their own power. Capitalism, pure capitalism, is the only way to go. People work for themselves, make their own destinies. There's enough to help those in need. That's the USA. Our poor are rich compared to the poor in other countries. Keep capitalism.
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Dutch NotreDame • 9 months ago
Were you people BORN morons, or was it something you all worked at ?
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Slowhand Dutch NotreDame • a day ago
Pretty sad when the truth is put in front of these fools and they can't accept it because of lies they have been told their entire lives. Some people have no ability to actually think for themselves and can only manage what the government tells them. Well most of us were told those same lies but we have been able to look past the BS and see a clearer picture of the world, where the US has its hand in every single Country in this world. The only Countries they don't have their fingers in are the ones that they class as their "enemies". Enemies actually means " the Countries that don't have a Rothschild-Controlled Central Bank"!
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Tom Tom Dutch NotreDame • 4 months ago
they were brainwashed.
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Terrell Taylor • 10 months ago
*"The artificially low oil prices have left the Venezuelan state cash-starved, prompting a crisis in the funding of the social programs that were key to strengthening the United Socialist Party.
Corruption is a big problem in Venezuela and many third-world countries. This was true prior to the Bolivarian process, as well as after Hugo Chavez launched his massive economic reforms. In situations of extreme poverty, people learn to take care of each other. People who work in government are almost expected to use their position to take care of their friends and family. Corruption is a big problem under any system, but it is much easier to tolerate in conditions of greater abundance. The problem has been magnified in Venezuela due to the drop in state revenue caused by the low oil prices and sabotage from food importers."*
Exactly! The problem with extremely socialistic government is that it cannot adapt to outside forces or internal problems as well as a system of government that allows for a vastly more free economy. Governments are notorious for not knowing how to adapt to changes in any given economy let alone being able to actually turn a profit on anything.
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Slowhand Terrell Taylor • a day ago
As if your capitalist system isn't corrupt! Its the most corrupt. To suggest that corruption is a Socialist thing is pretty naive!
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troopersam Slowhand • a day ago
Wow, the intellectual superiority of whataboutism!
Seriously, if Chavez hadn't been so stupid as to make the entire Venezuelan economy petro-based, this MIGHT not have happened. Blame him, tankie.
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Gusbrum • a year ago
Most Americans have been brainwashed, and I mean BRAINWASHED with capital B, about socialism for half a century, and are deeply incapacitated to ever post or write a comment about socialism that doesn't come straight from the propaganda textbooks of the Cold War era. Reading some of the comments here, one realize how childishly, clumsy, shallow and irrelevant these comments really are. They lack even the most fundamental intellect to even be worthy of a basic debate.
The majority of Americans know as much about socialism, as the dog Laika knew about rocket launching.
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troopersam Gusbrum • a day ago
Come to think of it, you socialist tankies have a lot in common with Laika. You really have no idea what's going on, you let yourself get put into a position with little say about it, and ultimately, it kills you...and still you'll worship the one who killed you.
Good dog, Laika. Good dog.
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Gusbrum troopersam • a day ago
I bet the Laika dog could interpret texts better than you do.
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This comment was deleted.
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Elton Hartzler Guest • 3 months ago
> > > Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know they'd screw up their own oil industry, especially when it's the only thing they had going for themselves. Makes sense when you think about it, though. Consider yourself plagiarized.
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Youri • a year ago
very interesting article , don't agree with all the arguments but most of the assessment especially how Saudi Arabia and the US changing the price of oil set the motion for instability as well as how the capitalist corporate/state media frames the debates and narratives is crucial to understanding what is happening as well as basic history and suppressed truth regarding Venezuela.
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Tom Tom Youri • 4 months ago
that has to do with these current wars, Youri, nothing to do with Venezuela destroying itself.
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waicheah Youri • 7 months ago
i disagree. US oil producers suffer greatly due to low oil prices. a lot of people lost their jobs. a lot of US producers are small private companies which are great at adapting to changing circumstances, a lot of them takes on more debts to go through tough time. US producers responds to mkt price, not dictation from US government, in regards to production. OPEC's members set members' production volumes. US is not even a OPEC members. Mkt supplies & demands dictates oil prices, not US government.
Anybody who watches closely OPEC's members meeting regarding quota on productions & news of demand from CHina would know that, supply & demand at work, dictating oil prices. in this case, Venezuela only has themselves to blame for their bloated social programs & for not diversifying their investments when time is good. NOrway, for example put the oil money in a funds, investing in some other areas, preparing for the day oil price is low.
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troopersam waicheah • a day ago
The Saudis didn't care a bit about the Venezuelans, and their dumping oil on the market to lower the price wasn't aimed at them. It was aimed at US oil frackers. It was intended to drop the price below the cost of fracking, so that the frackers would go out of business.
The Saudis just couldn't do it forever, which was what they would have had to do. The frackers were bought out in bankruptcy auctions and the new owners just waited for oil prices rose again to a level that made it worthwhile to start fracking again.
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Slowhand waicheah • a day ago
The Government doesn't care about the jobs lost or the people put out. They have their own agenda to fulfill - "The Big Picture" so to speak. If that means dropping the price of oil to destroy Venezuela so they can continue to attack any Socialist systems, then that becomes the priority, not jobs or peoples' livelihoods.
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Youri waicheah • 7 months ago
it is true that Venezuela should've diversified its economy and taken the the kind of actions you suggested but its also true economic sabotage is being waged against them as well for obvious reasons.
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waicheah Youri • 7 months ago
http://www.miamiherald.com/...
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waicheah Youri • 7 months ago
http://www.americanthinker....
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waicheah Youri • 7 months ago
http://www.breitbart.com/je...
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waicheah Youri • 7 months ago
world demand for oil is not what it used to be. China has reach its peak. All commodity prices had been suppressed, including oil. All nations have to face the new reality & adapt. No collusion is need. worlds's supply & demand will determine the price. Russia suffered for a while but now has been increasing oil sales steadily to China. Saudi suffered too. There are doing austerity at home to bring down their expenditure & pondering on bringing their oil company to an IPO. US small companies had been laying off people & closing oil rigs. Now, they have been increasing rig counts because of technological innovation. US advantage is because US is very competitive because US is using very different technology than Saudi or Russia or Venezuela. This is similar to the situation in which US is not competitive in manufacturing compare to China. but when new technology is invented to bring down cost, US can still compete. There is no point in claiming victimhood. the key is to adapt to changing ciscumstances. This applies to companies & individual as well.
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JC_VA • a year ago
It's odd how Venezuela was a shining light only a few years ago, but somehow, magically, they've been laid low by machinations that take on the scope of conspiracy theory. Funny how the low price of oil has had no such effects on many other oil-rich nations.
When you're rewarding your people with toilet paper, you really need to self-examine than start more conspiracy theories :)
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timcooper62 • a year ago
Wait....I thought you guys believe that all Venezuela has to do is print more bolivar and all their problems will be solved. That's what you proponents of MMT want for the United States.
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timcooper62 • a year ago
Nevermind the millions Stalin killed. Other than that, things were just peachy in soviet Russia. Geez
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troopersam timcooper62 • a day ago
Tankies gonna be tankies, bro.
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Ian Carnel • a year ago
Petrobas was corrupt and heavily partnered with the russian state oil company AND the russian mob.
as for Israeli foreign policy having an interest in keeping oil prices low ? where's that come from ? an unfounded accusation, with nothing to back it up, just to add another smear
as for Iran, the economic sanctions aren't about their oil, socialism or anything except their foreign policy .
as far as i can tell , this is just one big propagandist smear piece.
as for Venezuela, it was corrupt before Chavez. and now that he's gone, it's corrupt once again. he was actually one of the few Venezuelan government officials that "Walked the walk".
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David Christian Ian Carnel • 8 months ago
Venezuela has shortages of food and medicine and hyperinflation under Chavez too - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
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Jacques Shellac • a year ago
Marxists are autocratic capitalists. The conflict isn't between pro-capitalist and anti capitalist forces, as being "against capitalism" makes as much sense as being "against gravity." The fight is between free market advocates and economic autocrats. What the Venezuelan Marxists are fighting for is the imposition of an autocratic form of capitalism in the country, one where only the socialist elite are allowed to own and control capital. Thus far it's made several members of the Chavez family into billionaires, so it's no surprise that the socialists are fiercely defending their kleptocracy despite widespread misery and suffering among the Venezuelan public.
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ipatrol Jacques Shellac • 9 months ago
You say that as if capitalism, a system which has existed only for the last 400 years of human history, is a law of nature. A classic misconception.
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Jacques Shellac ipatrol • 9 months ago
A classic heresy. It derives from my rejection of the Marxist religion, a Manichean faith where "capitalism" is posited as an evil entity opposed to "virtuous" Marxists.
Again. Marxists are autocratic capitalists. The argument isn't for or against "capitalism" (the true rejection of which implies a return to the barter system). It is whether or not workers are to be allowed to own and control the fruits of their own productive labor. Marxists demand all capital control be exercised by an autocratic hereditary socialist elite, and intend to impose such control by any and all means at their disposal. Thus, for example, why the Chavez, Castro, Kim and Assad families are so rich, while the sullen people they lord over are so miserable. It explains the old Bolshevik nomenklatura and the fuerdai in the PRC. Their outraged victims are "reactionaries" because they respond negatively and "react" to being robbed, enslaved, tortured, starved, murdered, etc.
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ipatrol Jacques Shellac • 9 months ago
So you think that capitalism has actually existed for thousands of years? Even in feudalism?
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Jacques Shellac ipatrol • 9 months ago
Marxism is a form of feudalism, because it's a hereditary system for assuming control of a society. Marxists are capitalists, because they invest and control capital.
This isn't rocket science.
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Morgaine68 • a year ago
"Since the 1990s, conditions in what George W. Bush called the “New Europe” have become far worse than under socialism. The life expectancy has decreased and infant mortality has risen. "
Be specific. Dubya referred to the former Vysegrad Four (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia) as "New Europe". These CENTRAL European countries have actually done fairly well since the end of communism. Czechia (Czech Republic) actually has the LOWEST infant mortality rate in the world. Despite years of Western-instigated civil war in Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia are doing fairly well. Hungary and Poland have had political crises, but economically are no worse than under Communism.
Further east, however, you are correct: I worked for EastWest Institute, a policy studies NGO in Prague, in the 90s and several of those countries-- particularly Ukraine and Belarus in particular begged for help from the US and Western Europe b/c of Russia's growing imperialism. We ignored them, and now what they feared has happened.
I am in complete agreement with you about the US's treatment of Venezuela and how much progress was made there under Chavez (and Maduro's attempts to continue the work), as well as your assessment of Rousseff in Brazil. I believe that it is also part of a global (perhaps often even subconscious) War on Women, that also brought down the South Korean woman leader. Both women did NOTHING that men in their positions haven't done in the past; and both were working to equalise economic and social institutions.
Such threats to privileged Western (and also Asian perhaps) patriarchy MUST BE STOPPED. We're seeing it in action in the US under this gross excuse for a "president".
Just please be accurate and specific in your analysis, so that no one has the opportunity to accuse you of cherry picking or "fake news" and therefore denigrating the rest of your analysis.
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Unfettered Fire • a year ago
Capitalism is designed to benefit the capitalists - only. Worker co-ops threaten their self-tailored system. Capitalism claims to espouse empowerment of the individual, but a person has vastly more power by belonging to a worker co-op than a cog in a totalitarian-run model of business, the corporation.
Richard Wolff: Is Capitalism Fading?
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Christopher L Banacka • a year ago
another onion website??
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troopersam Christopher L Banacka • a day ago
Tankie fan fiction.
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Rassah • a year ago
So explain how Norway is thriving then? This is ENTIRELY due to government setting up welfare programs based on oil revenues, after nationalizing and seizing oil assets from local and foreign companies, and then continuing to nationalize and drive business and investment out.
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David Christian Rassah • a year ago
Norway PURCHASED the assets, not seized them. It's called Nordic CAPITALISM for a reason kid.
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Gusbrum David Christian • a year ago
It's called Nordic Capitalism??? You invent the words out of thin air..
For your information the system of Norway is called Nordic Model and it is highly socialist in terms of welfare and taxation. And it is a viable alternative to the winner-take-all brand of American capitalism that has resulted in poverty, a lack of affordable quality health care and education, a deteriorating social safety net, a lack of retirement security, massive scandals in the financial markets and tremendous income disparity. The opposite of the successful social democracies in Europe.
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David Christian Gusbrum • 8 months ago
I didn't invent the phrase Nordic Capitalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
Try reading more, typing less. It's based on free market capitalism.
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Morgaine68 Gusbrum • a year ago
No, it's not socialist.
the workers do not own the means of production.
it is capitalist with a strong social welfare state, as is all of Western and Central Europe.
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Shawn Bibby Morgaine68 • 9 months ago
People have so much emphisis on meanings of words its redicules. It is part socialist part captialist. Working together, is the only way.
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PeterRBolton Morgaine68 • a year ago
You're correct. It is not socialist. But it is still much, much closer to socialism that what you have in most of the rest of the world and is arguably the best social and economic framework yet to have been developed for a human society. It is generally called social democracy and to say that "the workers do not own the means of production" doesn't mean that it has the same kind of top-heavy, CEO-, shareholder- and board-dominated style of capitalism of the United States, UK and other neoliberal bastions. For starters, there are many more checks on the power of capital. Unionization is over 80%, there are firm regulations on businesses, there are social protections which give workers more leverage and weaken the power of the employer class to exploit and abuse.
Germany and Scandinavia have more of an agreed compromise between labor and capital. True, it is not pure socialism, but it is not pure capitalism either and it goes much further in striking a balance between the two than the neoliberal societies. To say that all that that amounts to is capitalism with a strong welfare state is simply false.
