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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:this is all true, and not something i ever denied; what i deny is that this destabilization is an exogenous attempt by external forces to curtail the spread of revolutionary socialism Chavismo is hardly revolutionary, and has a lot more in common with a classically populist Caudillo government than anything genuinely socialist or communist. I think the PSUV deserves a lot of credit for eradicating illiteracy, and spreading the oil wealth throughout society, but they get far too much credit from self-described Marxists imo.
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Feb 13, 2016 22:50
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Homework Explainer posted:svoboda's been barricaded out now, yeah, but as i linked above the government's fully invested in neoliberal austerity. a fascist gov would be worse, but this one isn't much of an improvement! the eu is basically neoliberal austerity personified
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Feb 13, 2016 22:51
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:retarded leftist reason: amerikkka and the rest of the OWG sabotaged poor noble chavez before murdering him and intentionally bankrupted venezuela to send a message to brave socialists worldwide i read that the country had to import most of its food wtf thats super dumb no one thought of having a mixed agricultural sector under worker self management whoops another opportunity in the trash
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Feb 13, 2016 22:53
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Top City Homo posted:i read that the country had to import most of its food Comparative advantage is good except when leftists do it
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Feb 13, 2016 22:55
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:A labor shortage is not the same thing as full employment. A shortage of labor may be great for an individual, but very little gets done in the aggregate for the economy. The ideal is to achieve full employment and eradicate the Reserve Pool of Labor, not to artificially inflate an individual's bargaining power by suppressing the labor supply. Workers organized in union have far more collective bargaining power than they would individually regardless, under any circumstances. If there's one thing America isn't dealing with right now, with incredibly high unemployment, especially among black and hispanic youth, it's a labour shortage. Top City Homo posted:the eu is basically neoliberal austerity personified And yet the european left backs EU membership and uses economic fearmongering to try to prevent countries from voting to leave.
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Feb 13, 2016 22:56
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:what has happened in venezuela is a pretty textbook example of what happens when a country with a heavy reliance on imports for staple goods rapidly develops its export sector. chavez and later maduro certainly reacted in the worst possible way to this and their policies have made things much, much worse-- also both were/are incredibly, almost cartoonishly corrupt-- but the core problem is that venezuela experienced a huge oil boom, resulting in a serious influx of foreign funds that made it difficult for local businesses to afford imports. a kleptocratic moron takes over the reigns of government, fails to understand that his government took over from another government that lost power after the price of oil collapsed and fails to plan ahead like the Norwegians. doesn't develop worker cooperatives in agriculture hands out industry to cronies instead of workers fails spectacularly chavez is another terrible idiot on the road to communism as they said in russia Forward on the road to Communism! But I am hungry! "No one said you will be fed on the road to communism."
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Feb 13, 2016 23:00
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the thing about capital fleeing a country destabilising left governments is also one of the arguments for the free movement of people between countries. living breathing people will never be as mobile as entries in a database, but it helps.DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:this is all true, and not something i ever denied; what i deny is that this destabilization is an exogenous attempt by external forces to curtail the spread of revolutionary socialism, rather than an endogenous reaction to purely internal forces. capital flight is not a reaction to left wing governments, it is a reaction to specific policies which, while they are today associated with the left wing, are not inherently revolutionary or necessary for the establishment of a properly functioning left-wing state. when rats flee a sinking ship, you don't then shake your fist at the rats and blame them for the disaster-- you go looking for the hole. well there was also a coup attempt. but this thread is about a communist party, so i think in the context here a 'left-wing' government probably is going to inspire capital flight.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:02
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Enjoy posted:Comparative advantage is good except when leftists do it 
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Feb 13, 2016 23:03
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Enjoy posted:Comparative advantage is good except when leftists do it i think the fate of the psuv shows the danger of left-wing governments relying on comparative advantage, yes no matter whose 'fault' it is they'd be better off right now with more domestic production of neccessities
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Feb 13, 2016 23:08
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Jewel Repetition posted:I doubt that would be why, but Fishmech is a Something Awful socialist and he had a long retarded argument in the Dem thread about how the TPP was real cool. its one of those retarded "scientific leninist marxist" socialism arguments that we must literally stomp the working class to death by building up a corporate capitalist system like some autistic bullet point instead of just encouraging worker control locally like the Communist Party of Italy did in Emilia-Romagna.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:09
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Peel posted:the thing about capital fleeing a country destabilising left governments is also one of the arguments for the free movement of people between countries. living breathing people will never be as mobile as entries in a database, but it helps. I do think that we have a problem here where regimes that claim the banner of socialism inspire enough fear in capital that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereas a left wing government working hand in hand with pre-existing private enterprise could produce better outcomes for all. Of course that's incompatible with PURE COMMUNISM (which can only be failed and can never fail) but even if it wasn't capital interests have definitely played up this fear to protect themselves. This is a real problem and is about as far as I'll go down the rabbit hole of claiming that communism's many failures are the fault of right wing counter revolutionary forces. Also because there appear to be two threads of discussion here I'll go on the record saying that I am in favor of free movement between countries and I do not believe that immigrant workers are scabs, that's silly.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:12
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Omi-Polari posted:I'd just want to point out that the U.S. oil industry is getting hammered, too. The difference being that the American economy is not a rentier state dependent on a single, highly risky commodity to keep the whole country afloat. (That's just North Dakota, Alaska and, to a lesser extent, Texas.) ah the us is overfinancialized monopoly/collectivist capitalism personified and we are basically rentier considering we took pharmaceutical life saving drugs that have for centuries been considered as a public good like air and water and gave them to worthless ip trolls same with oil land telecoms energy no one actually knows what the US produces any more other than weapons and bad cars
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Feb 13, 2016 23:12
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shut the gently caress up about fishmech
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Feb 13, 2016 23:13
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:chavez is never dead, comrade. as long as somewhere, a central bank president buys his sixteen year old mistress a thirty thousand dollar dress... a twitter account is opened for people to report their neighbors for "counterrevolutionary" activity... as long as somewhere, a 19 year old history major furiously tweets a twelve-part defense of nationalizing industry, chavez lives within us all arguably capital flight is a response to a lack of capital controls on banking chavez could have eased the economy into socialism by using oil money to purchase stock of national leaders and banks but he basically went around willy nilly expropriating with blunt force no framework no nothing
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Feb 13, 2016 23:16
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Top City Homo posted:no one actually knows what the US produces any more other than weapons and bad cars
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Feb 13, 2016 23:23
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America's most valuable exports are USD.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:25
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Top City Homo posted:arguably capital flight is a response to a lack of capital controls on banking You know if Chavez had sterilized capital inflows and gradually built up investment in things like education while maintaining a strong safety net I'd probably be singing his praises. As long as he wasn't jailing dissidents and enriching his buddies. But then he wouldn't be Chavez.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:25
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:you are entirely divorced from the material consequences of the regimes you support and policies you propose, otherwise you would not support them. it's easy for american marxists and fellow travelers to cross their arms and refuse the acknowledge that some left-leaning regimes are in fact as evil and corrupt as the center-right and right-wing US, because they don't suffer under those regimes and lose nothing by defending them. for people actually in venezuela removing maduro and restoring some measure of sanity to government is a matter of life and death, which is why their attitude about it is perhaps a bit more nuanced than your own "US BAD, CHAVEZ GOOD!" bleating. you are entirely divorced from how u.s. imperialism actually operates. it's not a conspiracy theory to claim the u.s. is meddling in their affairs and attempting to subvert the government. in fact, there is clear funding of opposition groups towards that purpose: http://www.ned.org/region/latin-america-and-caribbean/venezuela-2014/ http://beta.foreignassistance.gov/explore/country/Venezuela and this is the transparent funding, if you're going to claim there are no covert programs by the usa running in venezuela you really have no grasp of american foreign policy or history of latin america you can either believe we're spending millions of dollars simply to "defend and strengthen democratic practices, institutions, and values that support human rights, freedom of information, and Venezuelan civic engagement." or believe it's an avenue to funding opposition to destabilize a regime the u.s. dislikes and put a neoliberal infrastructure in power. considering that USAID and NED programs have documented links to sowing chaos and destablizing governments, as in haiti just before the coup, i'm liable to believe the latter. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/11/coup-connection http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/international/americas/29haiti.html?pagewanted=all if your definition of imperialism is purely focused on military involvement, you have a poor definition of it. and you speak as if the administrations of chavez and maduro aren't made possible, in fact only made possible, by the outpouring of popular support. poverty reduction and other social programs have improved life immensely in the country for the vast majority of people, and those "material consequences" are what have kept their support among the people strong. sure, it's not the elites or bourgeois in venezuela benefiting from those policies, because they are a class would certainly improve materially with neoliberal reforms while the majority suffer with austerity. but if that is your goal, then yes, of course you simply aren't a leftist. on a side note, i'm looking forward to what else that "sane" government of neoliberal reformers will accomplish. quote:The MUD has since backed down, only to enrage Chavistas by removing a portrait of 19th Century liberation leader Simon Bolivar from the assembly. The MUD's National Assembly head Henry Ramos Allup justified the removal by arguing the portrait made Bolivar look too dark-skinned, and not sufficiently Caucasian. 1mpper fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Feb 13, 2016 |
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Feb 13, 2016 23:32
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anyway if anyone is interested in the ideological and theoretical underpinnings of the effort for socialism in venezuela, i highly recommend this article: http://monthlyreview.org/2015/04/01/chavez-and-the-communal-state/
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Feb 13, 2016 23:36
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1mpper posted:anyway if anyone is interested in the ideological and theoretical underpinnings of the effort for socialism in venezuela, i highly recommend this article: http://monthlyreview.org/2015/04/01/chavez-and-the-communal-state/ i read it a while back its good but chavez was still a gently caress up and the US did meddle due to its long history of south american imperialism but if he wasn't such a gently caress up he could've made it work i understand that the history of south america is that even moderate left wing popular movements are targeted by US coercion so why not go full on socialist from the get go but it was done in a very bad way and left them vulnerable to corruption and coup thats my take away
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Feb 13, 2016 23:45
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1mpper posted:and you speak as if the administrations of chavez and maduro aren't made possible, in fact only made possible, by the outpouring of popular support. lol they're hosed then, idk if you've been paying attention but they're not the most popular bunch right now I'm not denying the insidious soft power influence of the US especially in South America. but you're making the classic mistake of assuming that anyone who opposes the US is a good guy. Chavez was a terrible leader whose policies directly led to his country's current state in a very transparent way. He relied on useful idiots like yourself who appreciated that he said the right things about BU$H to cover for his misdeeds. He knew there would always be a cadre who would defend him no matter what as long as he claimed to be fighting US imperialism and lo, it came to pass.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:49
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like, I've been more or less continually enraged at Obama since he ordered the death of anwar al-awlaki but I don't think awlaki was a good guy or feel compelled to defend him.
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Feb 14, 2016 00:03
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:like, I've been more or less continually enraged at Obama since he ordered the death of anwar al-awlaki but I don't think awlaki was a good guy or feel compelled to defend him. That's ok, because you can defend his 14 year old son instead. 
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Feb 14, 2016 00:06
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you're making the classic mistake of taking the vast amount of propaganda about venezuela, financed by that soft power, at face-value. what a surprise that literally every person who actually does fight against u.s. imperialism is portrayed as a corrupt evil monster by the institutions intimately intertwined with western and bourgeois power structures. i reject the narrative that it's purely individual chavista policies that contributed to the current crisis, because that's obviously not the case.
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Feb 14, 2016 00:07
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1mpper posted:you're making the classic mistake of taking the vast amount of propaganda about venezuela, financed by that soft power, at face-value. also the vast amount of propaganda that says opposing mass immigration is wrong and racist
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Feb 14, 2016 00:10
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to get things back to the psl, i'm curious what people itt think the function of such parties is or should be. without getting all mtw i think we can agree the outlook for socialist parties in the us and europe is pretty dim right now. is the idea to just run interference and be a thorn in capital's side as much as possible until an opportunity appears or is it thought that you can build support for socialism over time through activism and organisation even without a dramatic change in material conditions? to what extent is it worthwhile to try to affect disputes inside the capitalist state? obviously the whole premise of the Peel fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Feb 14, 2016 |
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Feb 14, 2016 00:19
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1mpper posted:you're making the classic mistake of taking the vast amount of propaganda about venezuela, financed by that soft power, at face-value. what a surprise that literally every person who actually does fight against u.s. imperialism is portrayed as a corrupt evil monster by the institutions intimately intertwined with western and bourgeois power structures. i reject the narrative that it's purely individual chavista policies that contributed to the current crisis, because that's obviously not the case. no one said it was purely terrible policies but they helped so did the embargo and allying with iran this is one of the dumb things that leftists have to get over bad people will sometimes sound like you but they are still terrible people its like some weirdo leftie affinity scam that keeps on popping up
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Feb 14, 2016 00:24
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1mpper posted:and you speak as if the administrations of chavez and maduro aren't made possible, in fact only made possible, by the outpouring of popular support. poverty reduction and other social programs have improved life immensely in the country for the vast majority of people, and those "material consequences" are what have kept their support among the people strong.
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Feb 14, 2016 00:32
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The flip side is that the elections showed how the hyperbole about a Chavista dictatorship was just that: hyperbole. The government was willing to allow an opposition victory. Debates about Venezuela are extremely polarized, and it's a fact that the PSUV had a lot of popular support ... until recently. The opposition won a bunch of Chavista strongholds including Hugo's home state. It wasn't just the bourgeoisie getting its act together -- most Venezuelans are fed up and want to live in a normal country.
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Feb 14, 2016 00:38
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tbh venezuela is demonstrative of the inherent instability of democratic socialism, as chile was before it. but that doesn't mean the psuv deserves to die
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Feb 14, 2016 00:40
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Homework Explainer posted:tbh venezuela is demonstrative of the inherent instability of democratic socialism, as chile was before it. but that doesn't mean the psuv deserves to die Que horror!
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Feb 14, 2016 00:47
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Omi-Polari posted:most Venezuelans are fed up and want to live in a normal country. The history of Liberal and Rightist rule in Venezuela is characterized by just as much corruption, if not moreso than the PSUV. They had practically an entire half-century to leverage oil wealth into a healthy economy and enriched themselves instead. There's no guarantee that the opposition will be any less corrupt than the PSUV.
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Feb 14, 2016 00:53
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:The history of Liberal and Rightist rule in Venezuela is characterized by just as much corruption, if not moreso than the PSUV. They had practically an entire half-century to leverage oil wealth into a healthy economy and enriched themselves instead. There's no guarantee that the opposition will be any less corrupt than the PSUV. It'll be good for them.
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Feb 14, 2016 01:22
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Peel posted:to get things back to the psl, i'm curious what people itt think the function of such parties is or should be. without getting all mtw i think we can agree the outlook for socialist parties in the us and europe is pretty dim right now. is the idea to just run interference and be a thorn in capital's side as much as possible until an opportunity appears or is it thought that you can build support for socialism over time through activism and organisation even without a dramatic change in material conditions? to what extent is it worthwhile to try to affect disputes inside the capitalist state? Actually I'm very bullish on the prospects for explicitly Marxist political parties outside the Democratic Party. I think Sanders, and the constituency he approaches, represents much more of a threat to the Democratic Party than Cruz or Trump or their own demographic irrelevance pose to the Republicans. I would not be surprised at all if young voters began leaving the Democrats for a new political formation (whether or not Sanders wins), while the weight of the bourgeoisie found a place in a socially liberal Democrat party. Dramatic changes to material conditions are still coming to America, whatever anyone does. The current electoral chaos is a reflection of those broader social and economic facts. All of it points to deepening contradictions and crisis. It's a good time to be a thirty-something Marxist, in my opinion.
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Feb 14, 2016 04:17
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Omi-Polari posted:I accept that. But what should Venezuelans do? Stick with the status quo? It's a reasonable position to take, but "they're just as corrupt as we are!" is not a very optimistic or inspiring message. I think the PSUV needs to spend some time in the opposition for awhile. I just have this knee-jerk reflex against Liberal optimism, because the typical sentiment in the Venezuela thread is "I don't see how any other leadership could have been worse." It could have been a lot worse. Really I think what the Venezuelan Left needs is a healthy dose of Bolshevist discipline. It's practically impossible to construct socialism when so many elements are skimming off the social produce along the bureaucracy.
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Feb 14, 2016 06:15
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Hi so since Bernie is about to hit a brick wall in SC can we change the thread title to explicitly welcome "bern out" converts? Thanks comrades.
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Feb 14, 2016 06:30
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The sanders campaign has more officers and staffers in SC right now than the Hillary campaign, he'll do better than expected. Like it honestly doesn't matter if he wins or loses, but the more he wins, the better position the overton window is in.
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Feb 14, 2016 07:44
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:I just have this knee-jerk reflex against Liberal optimism, because the typical sentiment in the Venezuela thread is "I don't see how any other leadership could have been worse." It could have been a lot worse. Top City Homo fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2016 07:55
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Top City Homo posted:bolshevik discipline is a thin wedge to fascism Hm. No.
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Feb 14, 2016 08:40
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:The only reason you were even able to make this post is because of the excessive profits extracted from 3rd World laborers, who mined and shipped the minerals and semiconductors your computer was made with. If those laborers were paid at parity with laborers of the First World, then your doodads wouldn't be nearly as affordable and you wouldn't be able to enjoy a much higher standard of living based on Superprofits. Unfortunately, international development is way more complicated than a just-so story of the winners kicking down the losers. Global capital does not "want" to keep countries at a lower level of development, if anything it desperately seeks the opposite because it enables secure, high-growth investments and the employment of ever-cheaper labor. Politically-led industrialization (irrespective of ideology, by the way) seems to be possible in some countries and not others. This is most likely due to material circumstances, which is why the People's Republic of Benin was a miserable failure and the Soviet Union had the quickest and most extensive industrial development in history.
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Feb 14, 2016 18:16
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