[AlexCoventry]

Is there some crucial factor in Venezuela's woes which clearly arises from socialism? It seems likely that the US will soon become the latest demonstration that corruption can damage a country with any form of government. Chomsky identifies that as the problem in Venezuela, which I find plausible.

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/5/chomsky_leftist_latin_...

[em3rgent0rdr]

-Redistribution and price controls, which have brought production, and therefore consumption, to a halt.

-Preventing markets and prices from working and substituting with centralized economic planning.

https://fee.org/articles/you-cant-deny-that-venezuela-is-a-s...

[ue_]

Interestingly enough, redistribution isn't a Socialist policy; if the workers (proletariat) control and own the social means of production, i.e not a state which is clearly not under control of the workers (i.e not a dictatorship of the proletariat) then redistribition would not be necessary unless agreed to on a voluntary basis by the community.

Instead, we see there is still wage labour. Thrre is still money, which as Engels reminds us contains the law of value in embryo, there is still private property, both state owned and private (as we saw in the USSR and Cuba and more obviously in China).

The very fact we are discussing prices shows the proof is in the pudding - there is no Socialism, there is a government attempting to control a capitalist (fitting all of Marx's conditions for a capitalist mode of production as outlined in Capital) economy, the fact that the free market has been limited, or that the state owns private property rather than McDonald's or Microsoft is frankly irrelevant.

[em3rgent0rdr]

Sounds like you are talking about a pure idealized version of socialism. However, I referred to Venezuela as an example of state socialism. Let me quote the wiki article so we both know we are talking about the same thing:

"State socialism is a classification for any socialist political and economic perspective advocating state ownership of the means of production either as a temporary measure in the transition from capitalism to socialism, or as characteristic of socialism itself..."

and: "State socialism was traditionally advocated as a means for achieving public ownership of the means of production through nationalization of industry. This was intended to be a transitional phase in the process of building a socialist economy. The goals of nationalization were to dispossess large capitalists and consolidate industry so that profit would go toward public finance rather than private fortune. Nationalization would be the first step in a long-term process of socializing production..."

So there still may be private capital, prices, money, and other things like redistribution in a state socialist country. Even if they eventually want to transition to pure socialism.

[Frogolocalypse]

Sounds like you're not talking about socialism at all.

[ue_]

>"State socialism is a classification for any socialist political and economic perspective advocating state ownership of the means of production either as a temporary measure in the transition from capitalism to socialism, or as characteristic of socialism itself..."

I agree that this can exist and has the potential to exist, and the usage of the state temporarily to secure the power of the proletariat (their dictatorship) was something espoused by Marx and Engels. The issue is that it requires the proletariat as a whole to be in control of this state; at the moment, the state is run not by workers but by people who are acting as bourgeois on a global scale - buying and selling in a capitalist economy, trading commodities. They employ wage labour. As such, Venezuela does not operate a state Socialist system.

There is some confusion around the meaning of Socialism; in Marx's day, the word 'Socialism' and 'Communism' were synonymous, though Marx distinguished between lower and higher stages of Communism. The idea that Socialism is a form of state in the first place I am willing to concede, though this is largely a Leninist invention.

>So there still may be private capital, prices, money, and other things like redistribution in a state socialist country.

I don't know if I agree; the key component of a Socialist economy is outlined by what doesn't exist in the capitalist economy, namely in particular the absence of the law of value, which prescribes that commodities have both exchange and use value; if production is predominantly focused such that use values, but not exchange value is being produced (i.e we have products rather than the specific form of product, commodity) then it can be said that the workers own the means of production, that they are not paid wages in order to exchange products. Socialism is the breaking of Marx's chain of exchange (M-C-M').

The nationalisation of industry is conducted in the transition of power from the bourgeois state to the proletarian state (which necessarily incorporates proletarian democracy); however as soon as this transfer of power is complete, the state should start dismantling, withering away is Engels put it.

And we do not see this happening in Venezuela. The state continues to trade on a global scale (oil etc.), employing wage labour (showing that the state is not in the control of the workers) and is thus not Socialist. If you can find any major Socialist theorist who is in support of wage labour within a Socialist economy, I'd be surprised.

[geezerjay]

> Is there some crucial factor in Venezuela's woes which clearly arises from socialism?

Ah, the never-ending cycle of socialist revolution, followed by establishing socialism, and finally followed by a string of desperate attempts to pin the effects of socialism because no true socialists would ever do any wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[boomboomsubban]

Or the realization that capitalist Venezuela had a worse version of this same crisis. Why are the socialist policies to blame this time?

[geezerjay]

> Or the realization that capitalist Venezuela had a worse version of this same crisis.

Don't go lecture me about how bad "capitalist Venezuela" was. I have family members living in Venezuela, and not only did they saw their property and livelihood seized by Maduro's thugs, one family member also died due to restrictions imposed on access to basic medical care by your pet socialist utopia.

[boomboomsubban]

I'm sorry for your loss.

Maybe worse is overstepping, things under the capitalist government were often fairly rotten as well. Blaming it all on socialism needs more proof than I've seen provided

[jose_zap]

Worse in what way?

[boomboomsubban]

Poverty rate, wealth inequality, corruption, violent unrest. Admittedly, 2015 is the last year data seems available for, and pre-Chavez years get very little coverage online. Either way, you can't just point at the problems and say socialism is to blame.

[jose_zap]

Clearly, you haven't lived in Venezuela. The current crisis cannot be compared to anything in the last 60 years.

I was born in the middle of a crisis, but never lacked anything important. Nowadays I can say with certainty that my family is poorer than when I was a kid.

Chavez left a country with a deeply broken economy before he died.

[AlexCoventry]

> no true socialists would ever do any wrong.

That's irrelevant to my question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man