As socialist dream crumbles, Venezuelans find Nicolas Maduro 'a bad copy' of Chavez

And the sad thing about this is that there are people in the U.S. that think Socialism is a good thing.

This is exactly what the left envisions and each and every time it fails its people.

Why do societies keep repeating history?

As socialist dream crumbles, Venezuelans find Nicolas Maduro 'a bad copy' of Chavez

 

Venezuela is a classic case of the solution being worse than the problem. Chavez and his populist socialism came into power because the top 20% of the population were basically hogging all the new wealth generated by oil revenues to themselves and thus gave a big middle finger salute to the rest of the population. The problem for the 80% is that a socialist economy (especially a partial or full command economy) ends up being much less efficient over time than a free market economy is.

So there are actually two messages to be drawn from the Venezuelan experience. The rich shouldn't screw over the rest of the population and capitalism is better than socialism.

 

Venezuelan democracy in action - Maduro faces serious recall movement...

Maduro recall petition tops 1M signatures in Venezuela
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A socialist government making bad economic decisions doesn't necessarily prove that socialism is bad. It just proves that they're making bad economic decisions.

 

It must be just a coincidence that all socialist Governments seem to make bad decisions.

 

The USSR went from being 2 centuries behind the rest of Europe to being one of the world's 2 superpowers in 30 years.

After the fall of the Chinese emperors and before the PRC, China was reduced to a society of subsistence farming peasants with opiate addictions. After Mao, they could go toe to toe with the USSR.

Before the revolution, a third of Cuba's rural population had intestinal parasites and people lived in leaf huts while the American rich made Havana into their hedonistic playground. After the revolution, Cuba became the most prosperous place in Latin America.

Socialism has been astoundingly effective. Socialist countries, on the whole, are characterized by extremely rapid development. But since they aren't perfect, you think they have failed.

 

The USSR failed. It no longer exists.

Except China didn't start becoming a global powerhouse until they became the manufacturing center of the world, using capitalism to grow their economy at a fast rate.

And look at it now after 50 years of socialist stagnation.

They have failed. The only one on this list that showcases a strong, successful country is China, and that is the result of capitalism, not socialism. But you've been an apologist for virtually every socialist dictator of the 20th century, including Stalin, so your arguments should be viewed in the proper context.

 

Markets allocate resources effectively because they give signals. Centrally directed allocation of resources is bound to be ineffective.

 

This can be averted through empowering local organs of power, like workers' councils, capable of wielding enough economic power to stir things up if they aren't getting enough resources.

And markets don't allocate resources effectively at all. There's 5 empty houses for every homeless person and we produce about 1.2x the amount of food required to feed everyone yet millions are starving.

 

The first french republic failed too. That doesn't mean that the ideals behind it were inherently bad. There were just circumstances that lead to an inevitable collapse. Neutering the soviets and Khrushchev's policy of division of labour were crippling blows to socialism.

That growth was only felt by the upper class. Maoist china became a world power and everyone felt that growth. The workers are suffering in China.

Tenaciously hanging on after a half century of economic warfare and sabotage by the world's one superpower?

That's far from disheartening.

Every failure a lesson. Capitalism is inherently broken, and no amount of failed socialist states will change that. We must move beyond capitalism or the world will die. We don't need to give up on socialism, we need to learn what we did wrong and finally make the transition.

I'm not ashamed of my views on Stalin or Mao. Documents on the purge and accounts from neutral perspectives within the USSR paint a portrait of a man who, while mildly repressive, managed to transform his country for the better and repel fascism. Mao was a poet and a tactical genius and attempts to paint him as a totalitarian dictator fall apart on the slightest analysis.

 

Even with vast natural resources, socialism does what it does-fail.

Venezuelans deserve this.

 

No it cannot be averted in such a manner the proof is that such measures have never worked.

The worst starvation and homelessness is in socialist nations proving how wrong you are.

Socialists and marxists are well known for ignorance of reality

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They consistently make the same bad decisions proving that socialism is a worthless rotten idea.

Economies cannot thrive if centrally planned and work best when left free and unregulated.

 

The USSR became a superpower in military might only, after murdering millions more than Hitler did. They were fed by the USA which gave them endless tons of wheat year after year to feed their population despite having many times more fertile farmland than the USA. A;; while they were pointing nuclear weapons at the USA and trying to plot the USAs destructions.

Not a raging success story.

Neither is China which committed the worst genocide in the twentieth century possibly all of human history. Only now after partially allowing some capitalism into their economy are they catching up to the rest of the world.

Notice how you isolated the CUban story on the rural population. Ignoring that the Cubans overall were vastly more prosperous before the revolution than after. The average cuban had a greater share of the GPD than any nation except the USA. They had better education health care and more items such as cars and TVs per family than any other latin American nation.

After the revolution Castro entrusted the economy to a homophobic, racist mass murderer and rapist named Che Guevera. As a result Cuba overall was plunged into decades of crushing poverty far far worse than that suffered by the one third of the rural population you cited.

This is because socialism like all collectivist systems is barbaric inhuman and willfully ignorant of reality. The entire concept should have been flushed long ago as the evidence proves it is crap.

But of course true believers maintain the faith as fanatically as the westboro church loonies.

 

The ideas behind the USSR and all other such states are inherently bad which is why they consistently fail. The scientific dialectic view of history as an on going struggle between the haves and have nots is absolute fantasy especially if one believes humans are capable of spontaneously rising up and seizing the means of production as Marx stated. This is why such states always resort to mass murder and violence to achieve their ends. When they realize that the drug addict bastard Marx was a fool they have no choice except to slaughter all who dissent. Hanging the words " of the proletariat " after the word dictator is meaningless although they presume it means a nice dictatorship which will whither away when no longer needed. This is more insanity as dictatorships may be conquered but never simply whither away.

Socialism = From each according to his ability and to each according to his need.

Slavery = From each according to his ability and to each according to his need.

The only difference is who is the master.

These ideas are only some of the ideas you defend and they are foolish.

The economic sabotage of Cuba came from within not without.

Mao Stalin and Lenin were all bloody tyrants and that is fact which no analysis can whisk away.

 

You beat me to it.

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They can never keep up with capitalist countries. Without the profit motive, people sit around and get drunk.

 

Considering the USA spent the entirety of the 20th century engaging in ruthless imperialism and sabotaging the socialist world, I find it hard to believe that the situation is as simple as you make it out to be.

The USA would sooner starve every man woman and child in a powerful socialist country than give them aid.

oh boy it's this thing again

By catching up, do you mean getting a society as inequal and polluted as the rest of the world? Because they've done a good job of that.

Capitalism is gilded. There's a thin crust of gold on the outside, but it's only a glamour covering up the rotten core.

The cuban bourgeoisie, maybe.

Because you're manipulating averages. The outliers skew that data.

Che Guevara committed no crimes. He killed only during warfare and to execute those convicted of egregious crimes.

I won't deny that the man was homophobic, but the rest of the world was far worse at the time.

And I suspect that you're pulling the rape accusation out of your ass.

Which is why they export doctors and have the longest average lifespan and highest quality of life in Latin America.

You say this while subscribing to the ideology of capitalism, an economic system that required mass protests to stop children from crawling into moving heavy machinery.

You really only have such certainty because of the USA's propaganda campaign and success in covering up its crimes.

Are you familiar with the US-Phillipine war, our invasion of Grenada, the CIA's torture and mind control experiments in the 60s, any number of atrocities committed in the 20th century?

I've also been kicking around the idea of an analysis of the USA's history that sheds more light on the dictatorial power J Edgar Hoover wielded.

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Dialectics is the conflict between opposites producing change. It isn't about the haves and have nots. Feudalism's end was dialectic because the opposite interests of the bourgeois class from the aristocratic class drove them to overthrow the aristocrats. Capitalism will end when the opposite interests of the working class from the bourgeois class drive them to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

This has happened before. I'm not sure why you believe it's impossible. Even ultraleftists can point to Free Catalonia and the period of time in which they established full anarchist communism.

That's a non-sequitur. That has nothing to do with any of the things you said beforehand.

Why would slaughtering all those who dissent be necessary? Ideological struggle and dissent are necessary for the advancement and preservation of a socialist society.

This is a misunderstanding caused by language changing in the past century and a half or so.

When Marx referred to the dictatorship of a class, he was describing the rule of one class over another. The bourgeoisie rule right now, so we live in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The dictatorship of the proletariat would be a society where the working class is in control.

When world socialism is achieved, the state will slowly lose purpose, as the state is an instrument of class rule and social class will also wither away once the means of production are all collectively owned.

That doesn't make a lick of sense. Slavery is the use of violent force to make someone work for another person's profit without pay of their own. Really, it's more similar to capitalism, since the only difference is that you get starved instead of whipped and you get a fraction of what you produce back.

The world doesn't need the mastery of the employer over the worker. The world needs the mastery of the workers over themselves.

I find that the more virulently anticommunist someone is, the more incorrect assumptions they make about what communists believe and the more clichés they use.

Then what would you call the USA's embargo? Cuba has been forced to be entirely self sufficient, not long after the USA's aggression strongarmed them into the protection of the USSR and thus forced them into Krushchev's division of labour policy that prevented Cuba from developing self-sufficiency in the first place.

I can name a great many more capitalists who were bloody tyrants, all of which were far worse than these men.

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I'm going to skip the obvious rebuttal and bring up something you haven't considered:

What's wrong with sitting around and getting drunk? If that's what you choose to do with your leisure time, so be it. Society doesn't need to be technologically developing at the speed of light as long as people are able to live stable and happy lives.

Now, back to the obvious rebuttal:

That must be why the Soviets got all of the meaningful firsts in space.

 

Socialism is a system where people that don't know or care how the economy works have the power to make economic decisions and you think that that is a good system..

Stalin murdered and intentionally starved millions of people to death and used forced labor to create his power.

Again you accept the murder of millions of people in the name of PROGRESS and the progressives in our country are just as cold blooded.

So, you call welfare from Russia prosperity? Their cars are decades old and still the whores make more than doctors. More liberal PROGRESSS.

I think that hundreds of millions of lives taken by the governments and people still living under the iron hand of socialism is failure.

Local people making economic decisions is not socialism.

The idea that people are starving in this country is total BS and you know it. You are welcome to go find one of these homeless drug addicts rent a house for them??

All Cuba was asked to do is give the people freedom. Had they done that Cuba would have real prosperity today.

You are hopeless . You will die with this dream still only a dream.

 

I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever hear something new from a liberal ever again.

I've responded to everything you've said a thousand times before. I'm getting bored.

 

I can't believe I'm reading this. I know as a lefty I'm expected to be a Guevara fan because I suppose he was a poet and started out as a revolutionary against tyranny. But he was a mass murderer who was responsible for thousands of killings, at least 400 are known to have occurred by his own hand. And this was after the war.

But he does look cool on a shirt.

 

maybe they need to invest some of the largest combine harvesters in the world; and claim it is part of infrastructure and related costs.

 

From your estimations the Nordic countries are a hell to live in.

 

He carried out the execution of criminals. He wasn't a bloodthirsty sadist.

 

Nowhere in any of Karl Marx writing he advocated or suggested for murder, and disputing his theory based on murderess regimes in China/USSR is idiotic.
Failure of socialistic country proves that the way they implemented it is failed. To claim otherwise you need to address the specific tenets of socialism and try to debunk them, or else it is a war of examples ad-infinitum.
Hell by your logic, Capitalism has failed the moment people starve in western countries while there are enough resources to feed them all(Whole world population actually).
Take a concept and work on it, dont throw biased examples.

 

Freedom is a zero sum game. The more power the government has, the less power the people have.

Maybe some people are ok with giving up their freedoms. It has no appeal for me.

 

I agree that the liberal horde has a set of talking points that are set in stone and the have a rock to throw at every logical opinion that they hear.

You have responded to nothing because you can justify the killing/murder of millions of people by socialist leaders. The Crimea is inhabited by Russian because Stalin took the grain form the people that lived there and left them to starve. The Russian moved in and took the land for the benefit of Mother Russia and they are still there all too happy to occupy the great farm land for ever.

Socialists and progressives hate people so they are willing to control the population by whatever means necessary. In China they starved millions and still have too many people. That is why the liberal horde is so hateful, as we see in the riots associated with trump. Soros sends in his goons and the street liberals march off to throw rocks and set cars on fire. Hate leads to violence and all of the socialist leaders that you seem to love and revere hated their own people to the point of murder.

And there most egregious crimes were the love of freedom witch could not stand so the loving humanitarian - Che - killed thousands of the freedom lovers..