I dont know enough to say how right or wrong what hes saying is, but unironically trying to explain it to fucking epstein is absurd
pretty sure 2015 was when I the first (that I read) UN rapporteur to venezuela came back and said “yeah it’s a problem that they haven’t diversified the economy BUT it’s the sanctions that are killing people, 100%, people would stop facing any food insecurity if they simply ended the sanctions”
weird how that wasn’t front page news everywhere
Your movement is disqualified as socialism if a bunch of countries put sanctions on you and you have to nationalize your primary economic resource to stay afloat, and also you use that resource to subsidize the economy of Cuba for economic loss because you have solidarity with them
Real socialism is when ancient ivy league professors go on private jets with billionaire pedophiles
when he finally dies all the news coverage will glaze him and not mention his Epstein connections
Is there a person alive whom chomsky hasn’t responded to by email?
Their relationship was much deeper than an email, this one’s just funny because of the argument
“completely directed from the top down”
Buddy, the Communes are right fucking there!!
Funny how all the “it’s not a real socialism” guys always ignore the communes.
This speaks volumes of who Chomsky was. Yes, Venezuela had a massive crisis due to oil prices plummeting, but it hit them uniquely hard because THE US FUCKING BLOCKADED THEM DURING THIS CRISIS. Failing to point that little caveat means you’re an imperialism propagandizer.
“Corruption and incompetence” mfer you are replying to a pedophile who has blackmail on Western/pro west leaders who didnt even use a burner email.
Chomsky this man was convicted in 2008 of “procuring children for prostitution” and also “soliciting prostitution”, for which he only served 13months in prison (conspicuously short), you should not be replying to him in 2016.
TFW the Expanse book 1 Leviathan Wakes came out in 2011. In the Expanse series the big technological conceit is that we invented super efficient fusion powered space travel. It is referred to as the Epstein drive.
In the Trails video game series, the guy who came up with the concept of orbal technology (basically the equivalent of electricity in that universe, and also kind of magic too) is called Professor Epstein. If I had a nickel, etc.
The first game was released in 2004 and now they’re stuck with having something called the Epstein Foundation play a major part in the games.
At least in 2004 that was before his first conviction lol
At least the possibility of a large organization secretly being a child sex trafficking operation kind of fits the lore of Trails
They also shit on Stalin, randomly, in a throw-away one-liner for some reason.
Man it’s been a while since I read the books and watched the show. What was the line. I kinda remember some shit that annoyed me about some of the politics. Like Marcos Inaros being 100% right about everything but turned comically evil for no reason other than “oh shit we accidentally wrote the most based person ever but he’s supposed to be evil so lets make him do mass murder to prove how bad he is (dropping one two rocks on the seat of earth’s power would still be cool and good though)”.
Yea, the writers are liberals and thus it often is guilty of The Swerve. Can’t remember what Marcos Inaros has done, it’s been a long time, but I’m unsurprised.
The main thing is that
spoiler
he drops all those rocks on earth. Like the first couple I can see if they are targeted at the seat of power but he just indescriminately obliterates all of earth to force people to move off planet and elevate the OPA position in the power structure.
Ah yea figures. Again, the swerve.
other people have the misfortune of being named Epstein
Oh yea I know it is just a coincidence but I could never not think about it while reading the books. Great series though. Probably my favorite contemporary Sci Fi series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Epstein
Despite the awful name he was pretty based.
The issue is that basically everything pop science/nerd culture is sus now. Epstein was all over everyone and I wouldn’t be surprised that even folks who aren’t implicated in sex stuff chose to name stuff after him because they meet him at a party once or something.
BUT IT WAS JUST FINANCIAL THINGS! - Zombie Noam
In the trenchiest of trenches arguing for socialism, by arguing against socialism.
Thank you for your service (extremely derogatory and sarcastic)
Explaining leftist discourse to a multimillionaire human trafficker who neither knows or gives a shit what the fuck ur talking about
Western leftist moment
Socialism betrayed by nationalizing the nations primary revenue source
deleted by creator
I mean, someone correct me if I’m wrong, but most of the success in Venezuela was due to nationalizing the oil production and using it to fund social welfare right? I genuinely would love to be further educated on the topic, but I don’t see how that’s much different from Norway and most of us here wouldn’t call Norway socialist.
Nationalizing oil and distributing the funds to a variety of people-focused projects was the crown jewel, yes. Not just social welfare, it supported (supports, technically) the neighborhood/regional councils, the indigenous-focused anti-poveety projects, and, relevant here, economic diversification efforts, particularly food sovereignty projects. The latter was interfered with by sanctions, as substituting importa for an entire extraction economy in mere years is not possible.
Venezuela has substantial socialist formations including those who were in the orbit of Chavez. It also has and had plenty of opportunists, both in the “socialist in name only” sense and in the “I am literally a capitalist making deals at your expense” sense. As everywhere, the revolution leaves you with, more or less, the population you went into the revolution with, and Venezuela had a reformist “revolution” largely at the ballot box.
People here do not say that socialism is when there is some nationalization. But nationalization is a socialist policy, it is something you, a socialist, focus on using the state to do, as it expropriates the means of production and makes it something that can be leveraged by the political organs of the mass oppressed classes.
Not necessarily the point you’re at, question’s already answered, and I say this /with you/ not /at you/ (I can come across as aggressive in a written format sometimes so I’m trying to tone indicate more):
Like idk though for my money I’ve stopped labeling whole countries as socialist or not socialist---- kindaaaa. Nationalizing an industry is a socialist policy if you think that government is adequately derrived from popular consent, sure. That’s at least a form a democratic control of the means of production by one method in a certain way depending. It /does/ address that central contradiction of capitalism using a popularly controlled, democratic method. It /can/ be valid. (You see I’m careful wording this because I really don’t know a lot about Norwegian politics and I couldn’t say with any certainty how well it does that democratic/popular control part. Could be ass for all I know. The money from that oil could go to capitalists in the country or elsewhere and might not help those people. I can’t say.)
I’m not an expert enough on Norway and VZ to go further then that but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say the electorate in both countries share a pretty similar amount of power from what I understand.
Like China I’d say is overall ideologically communist and has a market-socialist economy with varying degrees of central-demand organization.
Norway I’d say is ideologically liberal-capitalist but they implement socialist policies in their economy using market-socialist methods. They also do a lot of global hegemon stuff for NATO/US (iirc) which I would personally consider antithetical to socialism. If you work to oppress other people’s efforts to democratize their economies that, at best, makes you a hypocritic socialist (though you could argue they’d still be socialist none-the-less). It’s an ideology, not something we call someone when we think they’re the good guy (not saying you’re doing that but I’ve seen some people treat it like that before).
VZ gets tricky huh? The revolutionary communist ideology of Latin America is kind of a branch in and of itself, and Chauvismo a branch within that branch. They take more of an economic approach more like A Norway but in some aspects like A China as far as I know.
I think it comes down to analyzing the mode/attitudes of governance as it interacts with the economy. VZ (as much as one could say the following about an entire “country” with how nebulous of a concept a country is) fundamentally, ideologically, sees the economy as an extension of politics and popular demand. It understands the influence of imperial extraction in Latin America as an extension of capitalism-based phenomena and is more then willing to treat the market like a tool and not like an enshrined human right that’s as sacred as religion.
Norway does the market liberal thing and kind of treats the economy more like a Hellenic god or an invisible force. They have that western liberal reverence towards it even /with/ the policies they implement and they’re still attached to the American-based economic umbilical that feeds Europe (petrol dollar especially a part of that too I think yeah?)
I think that’s the closet thing to a label I’d personally put it at. You need the What, How and Why at a minimum imo. I think we put to much stress on labeling things broadly when they’re as complicated as an economy that’s woven into a global system 8.5 billion people large. Nationalizing oil is mostly a socialist thing to do. But the “country” or the government as a whole might be more attitudinally market-liberal or they might implement nationalization selectively and do different things with the money.
Personally though, gun to my head, I’d call VZ socialist and Norway Capitalist-with -heavy-use-of-socialist-policies mostly by factoring in the underlying ideological attitude and popular political currents. I don’t think I’d argue too much with anyone if they disagreed so long as we both recognize that both countries do nationalization and social welfare but they do it for different reasons and use the fruits of that policy in different ways. Mechanism Understanding > Labels to me I guess.
The US is a capitalist hellhole though. We at least got that one figured out.
Oh you’re good. I’m aware of my lack of knowledge on VZ so I was teeing up for someone(s) to come help out because the little research I did before posting didn’t give me the answers I was looking for.
And to be clear I completely agree that nationalizing the oil industry in any capacity is a socialist policy, I just wasn’t sure that was enough to call a country “socialist”, though also I completely agree that by and large trying to nail down entire complex countries and systems to 1 of 2 boxes is probably a waste of effort in and of itself.
For me in general I feel like it comes down to a matter of degree. I know that the Chinese government has the majority stake in just about any relevant industry in the country , and their political reforms seem to work well and get people involved and keep power in the hands of the socialists, so I feel like it’s safe to say they are socialist by and large.
I was not aware until someone replied, of the neighborhood / community councils and other projects that were being setup which I feel like definitely bolsters the argument that they are socialist.
Yes, but perhaps more importantly is that the oil industry in Venezuela was nationalized decades before Chavez, let alone Maduro. This narrative that either of them nationalized the industry as a “power grab” is entirely ahistorical. The real change under Chavismo was that the largesse from the oil industry started getting directed towards the lower classes and away from the politically connected bourgeoisie.
Oh well yeah 100%. I actually had an argument with my friend a while back and he was flabbergasted when I mentioned this happened decades before chavez. Chuds stay ignorant as fuck about history
The other prevailing myth is that Chávez kicked foreign affiliates out of the oil industry. In fact, the change was simply a mandatory 51% minimum stake in any joint venture with foreign capital. This ensured domestic control over the nation’s own resources, but did not in any way prevent foreign investors from profiting from Venezuela’s oil.
The reason the foreigners left, such as ExxonMobile, is that they couldn’t take yes for an answer. They threw a tantrum, took their ball, and went home to complain to the US government that they didn’t get every single thing they wanted. That’s the original sin of the Bolivarian Revolution that led to all of this bullshit.
