Venezuelan Collapse Watch

Sure, Venezuela will be another notch in the history books against socialism and dictatorship, but I can’t call it a triumph. Nobody wins.

I’m not so sure. History shows us that the vast majority of the people living in nations that manage to crawl out from under socialism or despotism or any of a host of thugism’s end up much better off than they were. Is it easy? Hell no but all you have to do is look at the people in the nations of Eastern Europe to see that even as socialistic as some of those nations are today they are far better off than they were under Communism.

Uh…what? Venezuela remains a bourgeois state, at the service of one bourgeois, not the working class. Hugo Chavez merely wears his red shirt to gain support from the working classes by exploiting some of the moral appeal of socialist ideas among the community, but his policies have been a complete support of the bourgeoisie, foreign investment, large state landowners, and so on, including his constitutional reform, made by him and friends, which was voted against by the Venezuelan left because it was only a maneuver to reaffirm the bourgeoisie as a tactic to gain more power. But Venezuela is not a socialist state, and Chavez is far from being a socialist, just as Stalin wasn’t, Mao, etc, at least in traditional socialism or, say, Marxist tradition, or left libertarian tradition, which are highly democratic. Venezuela is heading towards a very totalitarian social-reformist bureaucratic pro-bourgeoisie Government. I don’t see any control by the workers over production, communities, the institutions in which they work, etc. etc., I mean, what are you talking about?? If Lenin or Marx were to see what Hugo Chavez is doing, they would slap him in the face, even Stalin, who was a complete scum for socialism, would! I’m not defending Venezuela, Chavez or socialism, but people who love calling whatever sort of mixed or autocratic Government “socialism” without even analyzing if it follows the basic core minimum requirements of socialism need to think better before making this sort of claims, and abandon this little scapegoat once for all. Call it what you like, but I don’t see any prime example of socialism’s failure here.

And at what point do you not get that ‘democratic socialism’ is completely contradictory? You can’t vote what everyone’s values will be, and vote yourself the product of their labors. If people disagreed on things like who does what, or who gets what, then how does a vote solve that? Because it means that you know ahead of time what crimes you’ll be punished for? Oh, but it’s democratic, so there’s no punishment. It’s a voluntary arrangement? You volutarily associate with the commune, and you all lovingly vote for what’s best then are committed to the result? If you don’t like it, you can ‘opt out’ of the commune. Oh wait, isn’t that market capitalism? Idiot.

Marxism leads to violence because it’s all about compulsion and sacrifice. Sacrificing others. Even Marx understood that. I hate this post-modern neo-Marxist bs. Lenin was a monster, but a good Marxist. I do not apologize for my tone. You have to understand that your very ignorance, in the context of your attempt to evade a great and obvious evil, is a direct and violent threat against me.

I still think the worst mistake George W. Bush ever made was not backing the coup that, all too briefly, ousted Chavez earlier this decade.

You could be right, but I think non-involvement is always better. By back do you mean ‘acknowledge diplomatically’ or ‘support financially/militarily’. The first I think would have been okay to maybe not so okay - unlike the example of Honduras, I’m not sure the coup against Chavez was all that proper in the context of their government. The second would be very inappropriate.

My understanding is that about half (%30-40) of Venezuelans are against Chavez, but the greater plurality of the uneducated poor like his populism and handouts. Let them resolve their own crisis.

I’m all for letting them emigrate here should things get really bad and they choose that as their last resort.

Chavez hasn’t been appointed dictator for life yet, has he? Didn’t he fail that election? Isn’t he presently term-limited? As for the society, if we do see the train wreck then maybe the populism will lose its appeal? At that point their society will get better, so it is a triumph.

Chavez is more annoying to American than anything. Let him be marginalized, let Venezuela do its thing.

Let them resolve their own crisis.

They will, socialism is auto-cannibalistic.

They will, socialism is auto-cannibalistic.

Absolutely. The Socialist Revolution is the mother who eats her babies.

Bob Kolker