Viva Chavez!

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Capitalism, marxism, fascism have failed. It seems to me there is only one way out: authoritarian socialism. Venezuela, Chavez! Free healthcare, education and retirement for all.

Viva Chavez!

I did like this guy until I found out about his secret police and how political disidents tend to disappear. At least he's taking a stand I suppose, just glad I don't live there.

[edit] I read the article I got the above info from again and can say I totally misread it no disappearing going on as far as I know just normal dictator stuff.

Last edited by racooneyes on 15 Oct 2009, 1:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I would agree with you there.

I am not so certain that authoritarian socialism is much different than Marxism.

Not only that, but why do we assume that there is a working system? We may say that the ideal goal is a working system, and that such a thing is possible, but I am not sure a stronger assumption, like the notion that a working system necessarily exists makes sense, especially given that we are already outside of the habitat for which our intuitions were made to correspond well to.

¡Viva la revolución!

¡Viva!

There's no evidence that people are disappeared in Venezuela. I have never heard of this allegation and I am aware that they claimed that this happened in Belarus where one of these "disappeared" people was caught hiding out in, where else, London.

The disappearances done by men in Ford Falcons happened in countries run by Good in the great G v E struggle, according to what we are told.

what the hell is authoritarian socialism? christ i'm a marxist and i've not a clue what that is. and how the hell is Chavez an authoritarian? the guy's a damn fool for being pally with Ahmadinejad but I can't fault him for too much else. and the whole suppression of opposition, disappearances thing gets thrown around about Cuba too but I'm yet to see anyone pull out a UNHRC report which says that anything even approaching that is or has been going on.

yea Venezuela seems like such a nice place to live

not.

Venezuela is a great place to live if you're poor - You can get money from the government, as long as you stay poor. If you ever rise above poverty, you will realize how many problems the country has. Not as bad as Cuba, of course, but they've made some pretty bad moves.

What is your metric of success? Most of the world is still capitalist and doing reasonably well (or at least better than they have done historically). Marxism has arguably never really gotten a chance to be implemented, thanks in large part to opposition from capitalists that force any socialist state to subvert its principles in order to survive (look at the USSR for a prime example). Fascism never failed under its own weight, rather, the entire rest of the world ganged up on the fascist states (Nazi Germany and Italy under Mussolini) and destroyed them militarily.

So it's hard to just outright declare that any of these three systems, much less all of them, have failed. You could argue that they are, for some reason or other, suboptimal, but there are more than enough problems with authoritarian socialism. One would have to be insane to point to Venezuela under Chavez as a model to be emulated.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
Benito Mussolini

We're in a fascist state. It's hidden under a lot of freedom rhetoric that doesn't really apply anywhere in practice...but we're pretty fascist.

As someone familiar with Latin American history and politics, my thoughts are that Chávez is just the Venezuelan version of Luis Echeverría, the Mexican populist in the early 1970s - when he became President, Mexico's economy was growing by 8% (similar to current Chinese growth) and inflation was below that of the US, the so-called 'Mexican Miracle.' Despite the discovery of large oil deposits, Mexico has never truly recovered from the catastrophic administrations of Echeverría and "the dog" López Portillo, Echeverría's handpicked successor. But at least both Echeverría and López Portillo only served one term.
Chávez is entirely dependent on oil revenue, and Venezuela's output has been steadily declining; in terms of long-term financial responsibility, he is even worse than the Bush Republicans. Add in high inflation and rampant crime (Caracas has one of the highest murder rates in the world), and it isn't rocket science to see that it will end in tears. I think I might live to see Brazil and Chile become developed countries, but I'm pretty sure that I won't live to see Mexico or Venezuela become developed, and probably the next generation won't, either.

Everyone is individually game for different types and different amounts of trade-off to live within the bounds of civilization. Normatively though - the control of information and abduction of reality for agenda as well as a president who has no term limits and very little opposition that doesn't go to jail or voters who don't follow in his footsteps - most people seemingly aren't up for that kind of trade-off. As much as so many might hate capitalism and see misinformation or pollyana crap on the TV all day long (same - propaghanda) - we at least have room to maneuver and express opposition.

Room to maneuver, that is much use when you have no healthcare, education and retirement.

Authoritarian socialism, Chavez-style, allows private ownership.

Do you approve all that Cuban violence?