[RobertoG]

Chomsky opinion about Venezuela is not so difficult to understand if we make a honest effort. Unfortunately a honest effort, as reflected by your link, is not very common.

Chomsky supported initially Chavez, (who, by the way, and not as your link insinuate, was democratically elected), because his government initially improved the conditions of the most humble people in the country. People that lived in misery in one of the most resources rich countries in the world, elected what was then, a new hope.

As frequently happen, the new elite was incompetent, and get corrupted fast. Consequently, Chomsky criticized them.

Here there is video of Chomsky criticizing the Venezuela government:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maHgtLp21Iw

And, for completion sake, here there is a video of the government of Venezuela criticizing Chomsky's criticism of them (in Spanish only, sorry):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urS1nx3EccI

[epx]

So Chomsky was incredibly short-sighted when he praised Chavez. I am just an average guy, but I always knew that this story would not end well.

[galacticpony2]

> As frequently happen, the new elite was incompetent, and get corrupted fast. Consequently, Chomsky criticized them.

That doesn't just happen "frequently", it has happened in 100% of socialist countries after the "revolution". The "critics" then get silenced or killed, unless they happen to (ironically) be sitting in a comfortable chair in an imperialist capitalist country such as the USA, like Chomsky.

You'd think that with this track record, a smart guy like Chomsky would begin to see that there must be something fundamentally wrong with socialist political theory. Yet, he keeps retreating into the "No True Scotsman" fallacy whenever the next socialist experiment fails.

[throw_awayfwerq]

Well you can say the same for supposedly capitalist countries. I mean US elections are a farse of external (no, not the russians) buying our elections for their economic or geopolitical purposes.

Now riddle me this. Name me one failed socialist country that failed (as I believe all will) without massive Western intervention to ruin their economy. We're kinda pricks, aren't we?

[RobertoG]

I don't think it's fair to blame external influence always in those cases. It's not honest.

Venezuela's situation main blame should go, in my opinion, to the people in charge in Venezuela. My impression, is that they really don't know what they are doing. Never liked Chavez, but compared to the current one, the guy was a genius.

Other countries have showed that you can work discretely and apply politics that help the vast majority of the population instead of a few elites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Correa#General_Balance_...

[throw_awayfwerq]

We tried a coup-de-etat within months of Chavez' victory. That doesn't set the stage for a pro-Western social democratic state, does it?

We tried to steal the Bolivian elections that got Morales in power. By then the American brand was so tarnished the ambassador got run out of the country.

So most of the blames does go to Chavez. But can we please pretend we're anything other than pricks?

[Frogolocalypse]

I'd like to think I have the same outlook for most of the places that I've lived. Mostly it gets better, because mostly, people are good. But people f up, and then they make it worse... That is life. Reading a bit of chomsky helped me form that outlook.

The world used to be much much worse. The world is getting better and better. Statistically speaking. We literally live in a golden age. For a good portion it seriously seriously sucks. But that ratio is getting lower and lower yes? 500 million people raised out of poverty in china alone over the past 30 years. That's gotta count for something, doesn't it?

[galacticpony2]

Define "massive Western intervention" first. Socialist policy at one point in history ruled half the world's economy. You'd think at that size, if those policies made any sense, it should be able to do fine even without the West.

[throw_awayfwerq]

A significant expenditure for us, an overwhelming one for the other side, of money, arms, and conflict to destroy a region's viability therefore ensuring that any (including capitalism) economic system will fail. The aim is force people to either capitulate to us in the hope we will bring in re-construction money, or terrorize others into falling in line.

Read Chomsky, he'll give you references (from the likes of the declassified CIA documents, ect)

For example

Russian Civil War. That's well before they "ruled half the world's economy". Btw, the side we picked were real pricks. The only ones who could make the Bolsheviks the better alternative.

Greek civil war. Here we started sweeping away the commies (who actually liberated Greece) while we stil at war with the Nazis.

Cuba, nasty embargo. Numerous terrorist act committed by our proxies. The point here is to demonstrate to L. America the punishment of going red.

Cambodia. Bombed them to the stone age destroying all their capital. We were so through, people predicted that millions would die even if the Khmer Rouge hadn't (the predictions, btw, predate the Khmer Rouge taking power).

Cambodian side note: by the 1980s we were siding with the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. Politics and bed fellows and all of that.

Vietnam. We dumped so much Agent Orange that they can't grow non-poisonous produce if they tried. We destroyed all their industrial capital.

N. Korea. We bombed them so throughly that we ran out of civilian* targets. We bombed them for things we hung Nazis for (irrigation damns). Needless to say they had no capital.

Read more Chomsky for more fun (and references) !

* Did you really mean economy or landmass, or population? I don't think the combined socialist countries, at their height in the late 70s, got close to third the world economy, nevermind half. To be clear, i don't expect socialism to work. I just don't get why we bomb those who try it.

[galacticpony2]

You're talking mostly about military intervention, mostly before socialists got the chance to even implement their policy.

Now, wherever you start, a functioning economic system should be able to lift even a destroyed country up eventually. Just look at what Germany accomplished after WW1 (too bad they went for another war with what they gained).

What about all the Eastern European countries that abandoned socialism without a single bullet fired? What about all the former African socialist countries that few people ever talk about?

> Did you really mean economy or landmass, or population?

I'm talking about roughly half the world (people). I may be off with that figure, but suffice it to say it should be big enough to work autonomously.

[valuearb]

So defending South Korea from being brutally over-run by an unwarranted North Korean attack is intervention into North Korea? Somehow 60 years of direct access to the massive chines market and North Korea's economy is still a fraction of South Koreas.

How did we intervene in the USSR, the largest county in the world, to destabilize it. And how could we, given socialism is so efficient and they had all the massive resources they'd ever need, right?

[RobertoG]

It's not just in socialist countries that the critics get silenced or killed, or that they are incompetent or get corrupted, but, normally, there are a more "laissez faire" attitude to those countries from the press and the political class, as Chomsky have pointed repetitively.

If you care about the welfare of people is fair to ask why a minority live like kings when the vast majority live in misery in a resource rich country. And, I think, is fair to ask for changes and try to support those changes even if you know that probably you will get disappointed finally or you will get mixed results.

The true is that, unsurprisingly, and independently of how you call those policies, spending resources in the poor improve the life of the poor.

[galacticpony2]

Socialism has failed 100% of the time. You can't get worse than that. Even if capitalist systems failed to improve the lives of the poor 95% of the time, it would still have a better track record. In reality, the most successful countries are all capitalist and free markets have lifted more people out of poverty than anything else.

The fact that some autocratic countries also employ capitalism doesn't change that. Capitalism doesn't magically cure corruption, it's merely a superior economic system. Poverty isn't a function of wealth inequality, it's function of economic development. In a socialist system, the poor may be less poor in relative terms, but they're more poor in absolute terms, because socialist economics eventually fail.

[RobertoG]

It seems to me that you define socialism as whatever it fails and capitalism as whatever it works.

Pure capitalism has never existed neither, so we have a spectrum of possibilities. I would argue that the better system is the one that improve the lives or the people and, that should be the measure.

Even if capitalism was the definitive answer, that doesn't mean that we should stop criticizing it.

If you have a system where, in the middle of the most advanced age of humanity, most of the people have not even the most basic needs covered, like was (and it's) the case of Venezuela, some criticism is needed.

I'm not going to argue that socialism is a good system, I agree with you that we have not good examples, but that doesn't automatically, leave us with a system where all resources have to be allocated by the market. In fact, if something has been proved for now, is that is a very bad idea.

So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.

[galacticpony2]

> It seems to me that you define socialism as whatever it fails and capitalism as whatever it works.

No socialist state that called itself a socialist state has been a success. None. Zero. There are democratic countries that may at some point have "social democrats" or even "socialists" in power. These countries may have passed some laws that are "socialist" in spirit, but virtually all of those countries employ a capitalist free enterprise market. Then you have countries like China that call itself communist and still employ capitalism.

Yet, socialist thinkers are pre-occupied with the perceived evils of capitalism (and finding means to abolish it), even though it has outperformed any socialist economic model thus far conceived. Capitalism is blamed for practically every ill, including the failure of socialism itself.

> So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.

Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do.

[RobertoG]

So, if they are successful and call themselves communist they are not really communist. There are not private banks in China, for just pointing a random fact. I'm not defending the Chinese model, but the diminishing of poor people in the world that you pointed before is mostly due to China.

>>"Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do."

I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".

In your opinion, what is this mix composed of?

Anyway, I think we are discussing about semantics.

[nl]

Can you define what you mean by socialist?

It seems to me that critics of the government in non-democratic countries are the ones in danger, while the ones in democracies aren't, even in socialist democracies (eg, Scandinavia).

If you don't consider these countries socialist that's ok, but the danger government critics are in within non-socialist dictatorships is something worth considering.

[galacticpony2]

> Can you define what you mean by socialist?

Apparently, anything that fails eventually is not socialist. Hence, "No True Scotsman".

> If you don't consider these countries socialist that's ok, but the danger government critics are in within non-socialist dictatorships is something worth considering.

I don't consider these countries socialist. They're not "socialist democracies" (no such thing exists as far as I can see). They're commonly called "social democracies", but that's because the word "social" is political capital. The word "socialist" on the other hand is rather toxic, so most of the mainstream left parties call themselves "social democratic". They may have a bit of "socialist" policy, but not much more so than e.g. the US. Their economic system is fundamentally capitalist.