Why is Venezuala failing?

[Jacob Cliff]

Not making an argument against the Venezualan government, but for a country with one of the highest petroleum reserves in the world, why are basic necessities like toilet paper a rarity? Why so many shortages? Why is there so much crime?
What are the causes, and how should socialistic Venezuala respond to these crises?

[RedWorker]

Number 1. It's not socialist.
Number 2. There's no such thing as 'socialistic'.

[Atsumari]

Horrible economic policy by Maduro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro_governm ent
I am waiting for the apologists to come in and go "But the fascists, America, and rich people" like the Democrats do whenever things do not go their way, even when they have the power.

[Tim Cornelis]

'Horrible economic policy' means economic policies that largely ignores the interests of capital causing capital flight. It is a bourgeois state that doesn't rule in the interests of capital, which is termed "economic mismanagement" in mainstream terminology. This includes price controls and maximum prices to ensure affordability of consumer goods for the common people, but the result is that capitalists scale back production to remain profitable, and therefore shortages of goods. It's almost trying to create a for-needs economy within the framework of profit maximisation, and that's bound to fail.

This should be the nail to the coffin of reformism and gradualism.

[Atsumari]

Whether the term means capitalist interest or not, awful infrastructure, healthcare, and food shortages is horrible economic policy for anyone, regardless of ideology.

[Asero]

This should be the nail to the coffin of reformism and gradualism.

You know it won't. :unsure:


To reiterate what RedWorker said, Venezuela is not socialist. It isn't even a workers' state let alone "socialist." Using the most uncontested definition, socialism among radical leftists is a system without private property, social classes, and commodity production and exchange. Venezuela has all of that.

The only path to any genuine 'socialism' in modern society is via violent social revolution and proletarian dictatorship, with all its insuing social transformation. Just because the people in charge of the country are self-proclaimed "democratic socialists" doesn't make that country any more "democratic" or "socialist."

[Dialectical_Materialist]

Tim, can I quote your quick analysis of Venezuela on another message board?

[RedWorker]

Whether the term means capitalist interest or not, awful infrastructure, healthcare, and food shortages is horrible economic policy for anyone, regardless of ideology.

That's not economic policy. That's merely results, which may be the result of a well-intentioned or not economic policy, or maybe something else. Without context it's useless to just state it.

[Tim Cornelis]

Tim, can I quote your quick analysis of Venezuela on another message board?

Sure. Maybe add how Bolivia is doing the opposite, trying to relax regulations for corporations and create a hospitable business environment.

[tuwix]

Not making an argument against the Venezualan government, but for a country with one of the highest petroleum reserves in the world, why are basic necessities like toilet paper a rarity? Why so many shortages? Why is there so much crime?
What are the causes, and how should socialistic Venezuala respond to these crises?

As it was said, Venezuela isn't socialist state, but a state of their economy is an effect of some Leninist methods that were proved that don't work during years of their applying.


For example, there is an inflation. The government then release an act that price of any product must be permanent. So black market in the product of such regularities is available for higher price, but it isn't available in official shops. Then government starts to fight with "speculators" that causes an even greater scarcity of the product and higher price in black market.


But the solution is to print less money. Of course, government won't do that because they don't have a money from oil and state is dependent form money from oil.


So Leninist methods in quiet classic capitalist environment (private property is still predominant there) gives their fruits...

[Fourth Internationalist]

As it was said, Venezuela isn't socialist state, but a state of their economy is an effect of some Leninist methods that were proved that don't work during years of their applying.


For example, there is an inflation. The government then release an act that price of any product must be permanent. So black market in the product of such regularities is available for higher price, but it isn't available in official shops. Then government starts to fight with "speculators" that causes an even greater scarcity of the product and higher price in black market.


But the solution is to print less money. Of course, government won't do that because they don't have a money from oil and state is dependent form money from oil.


So Leninist methods in quiet classic capitalist environment (private property is still predominant there) gives their fruits...

I don't see where any Leninist methods are being applied by the Venezuelan government.

[Georg Lukacs]

Venezuela does not have a dictatorship of the proletariat, or anything approaching a nation wide implementation of worker controlled factories, or soviets. The social relations are thoroughly capitalistic--nothing close to socialism can be achieved without changing the dynamic between capital and labour, and not just in terms of property and ownership of the means of production, but in terms of the reproduction of daily life. But in a country as large, divided and violent as Venezeula, short of revolutionary radicalism, nothing can really change. As has been said, this is reformism, and the legacy of the worst of Eurocommunist accomodationism.

[Dire Helix]

Pay him no mind. He uses the term Leninist as a euphemism for whatever he doesn't like.

[Tim Cornelis]

Euphemism or hyperbole?

[RedKobra]

'Horrible economic policy' means economic policies that largely ignores the interests of capital causing capital flight. It is a bourgeois state that doesn't rule in the interests of capital, which is termed "economic mismanagement" in mainstream terminology. This includes price controls and maximum prices to ensure affordability of consumer goods for the common people, but the result is that capitalists scale back production to remain profitable, and therefore shortages of goods. It's almost trying to create a for-needs economy within the framework of profit maximisation, and that's bound to fail.

This should be the nail to the coffin of reformism and gradualism.

This is a brilliant post. Simple and clear. There is no such thing as a mixed economy. There is only Capitalist logic and socialist logic. As someone else, I think Xhar Xhar Binks, said in another thread 'you can't pick a bit from column A and a bit from column B'. Its a recipe for disaster and always leads to ruin and or betrayal.

[Dire Helix]

Euphemism or hyperbole?
On second thought, it seems like a sort of a blanket term for things he perceives as inherently bad with socialist and pseudo-socialist politics rather than a euphemism, considering how often he slaps it on seemingly unrelated things.

[Rugged Collectivist]

'Horrible economic policy' means economic policies that largely ignores the interests of capital causing capital flight. It is a bourgeois state that doesn't rule in the interests of capital, which is termed "economic mismanagement" in mainstream terminology. This includes price controls and maximum prices to ensure affordability of consumer goods for the common people, but the result is that capitalists scale back production to remain profitable, and therefore shortages of goods. It's almost trying to create a for-needs economy within the framework of profit maximisation, and that's bound to fail.

This should be the nail to the coffin of reformism and gradualism.

Why would scaling back production maintain profitability when confronted with price controls? It can't drive up the price of the product, so I assume the goal is to decrease production costs?

[tuwix]

I don't see where any Leninist methods are being applied by the Venezuelan government.

Because you never lived in any Leninist country. I did and experienced such methods and such obvious effects.

[Fourth Internationalist]

Because you never lived in any Leninist country. I did and experienced such methods and such obvious effects.

The fact that you lived in a Stalinist country doesn't prove the use of Leninist methods by the Venezuelan government.

[tuwix]

^^I don't know if my country when I lived then was Stalinist. But it was definitely Leninist. And stupid state interventions in economy were started by Lenin not Stalin... And in Venezuela, there are just stupid state interventions in economy.

[Fourth Internationalist]

^^I don't know if my country when I lived then was Stalinist. But it was definitely Leninist. And stupid state interventions in economy were started by Lenin not Stalin... And in Venezuela, there are just stupid state interventions in economy.

The statified capitalism that spread to much of Eastern Europe after World War 2 grew from the Soviet degenerated workers' state which originated with the political and then social counterrevolutions under the Stalinist beaurocracy after Lenin had died. That is why I would call it Stalinist rather than Leninist. Even if one disagrees with that and wants to connect Lenin to the statified capitalist regimes, there is still no link between Lenin and modern Venezuela.

[tuwix]

^^The "degenerated workers' state as you call it (term invented by Trotsky indeed) started to be degenerated during Lenin's rules. And the fact is that Stalin spread Leninism to much Central and Eastern Europe, but Stalinism was strongly criticized and put in oblivion during times of Khrushchev and Brehzniev. Stalinism was ideology abandoned and denied after his death. But Lenin was worshiped and works of him had a status of holy bible in such state. Then I don't think that Poland's political system in 80s could be called a Stalinism. But undoubtedly it was originated by Lenin's revolution in 1917. IMHO it was Leninism very much...

[Dire Helix]

And stupid state interventions in economy were started by Lenin not Stalin...
Oh no, the scum. You don't mean perchance Lenin's decree on the nationalization of banks and enterprises?

And by this logic you should've loved the People's Republic of Poland(or at any rate hated it less). In contrast to the USSR, it had largely non-collectivized agriculture with more leeway allowed to small and middle producers in the manufacturing sector than under NEP. A market socialist's wet dream second only to Yugoslavia - NEP not as a means, but as the end. Or is it still too much intervention for your taste?

Also, "I lived and therefore I know" is a pretty lazy argument.

[Fourth Internationalist]

^^The "degenerated workers' state as you call it (term invented by Trotsky indeed) started to be degenerated during Lenin's rules. And the fact is that Stalin spread Leninism to much Central and Eastern Europe, but Stalinism was strongly criticized and put in oblivion during times of Khrushchev and Brehzniev. Stalinism was ideology abandoned and denied after his death. But Lenin was worshiped and works of him had a status of holy bible in such state. Then I don't think that Poland's political system in 80s could be called a Stalinism. But undoubtedly it was originated by Lenin's revolution in 1917. IMHO it was Leninism very much...

Lenin himself recognized the bureaucratic distortions in the Soviet regime of his days and warned about the danger it posed. However, programmic betrayal of Marxism and of the working class began under the new Stalinist bureaucracy. This included, for example, the introduction of the policy of "socialism in one country"--which is nothing more than the betrayal of the international proletariat. This was the Soviet Thermidor, in Trotsky's terms. By the eve of the second world war, the last remnants of the proletarian state were destroyed. This system of statified capitalism, which was later spread to other countries, has been called Stalinism for a long time now because of the fact that it grew out of the bureaucracy that he headed. It does not simply refer to the rule of Stalin. Much of the anti-Stalinist left, not just Trotskyists and other Leninists, use the term this way.

To quote the preface of a book called The Life and Death of Stalinism (http://lrp-cofi.org/book/index.html):
“Stalinism” means, first, the social system of state property and bureaucratic rule that originated with Stalin’s counterrevolution and expanded after World War II to East Europe, China and elsewhere. It is not just the strong-man dictatorship that flourished during Stalin’s lifetime. “Stalinism” also refers to political movements and ideologies that defend the Stalinist system.

This type of capitalist system was forcefully and bureaucratically spread to countries in Eastern Europe after World War 2, decades after Lenin's death and also many years before Stalin died. Even though, after he died, Stalin was renounced, the system that developed and was bureaucratically spread under his rule remained in place.

Now, I ask again, even if we disagree on all of that, what does all of it have to do with the Venezuelan government? The link between Lenin and Poland of the 1980's is already being stretched enough, but how on Earth is any of it even at all related to the 2010's Venezuela?

[tuwix]

^^ Maybe Lenin had recognized bureaucratic distortions but did nothing to prevent it indeed.

But how stupid economic decisions in terms of monetary policy are related to Venezuela you can read in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_early_Soviet_Russia . Venezuela fortunately didn't go so far in this terms. But the path is very similar.

[Fourth Internationalist]

^^ Maybe Lenin had recognized bureaucratic distortions but did nothing to prevent it indeed.

But how stupid economic decisions in terms of monetary policy are related to Venezuela you can read in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_early_Soviet_Russia . Venezuela fortunately didn't go so far in this terms. But the path is very similar.

He tried, but died before much could be done.

So a "Leninist method" is any piece of economic policy that results in any economic effect you think is somewhat similar to any other economic effect that also occured in the Soviet Union or any other similar countries throughout their entire histories?

[tuwix]

To prove the point, I can say yes.

But generally I refer a term Leninism/Leninist to countries when that ideology has influence. Poland had definitely Leninist influence. You can call it Stalinist influence, but Stalinism disappeared from world denied as deadly ideology. But IMHO even Stalinism was a form of Leninism. BTW, Cuba by Soviet instructors had Leninist influence. And Cuban advices how to manage economy as 'socialist' given to Venezuela have definitely Russian origin. Not of tsars, not of Putin, but Leninist one.

[Citizen]

(^^^ None of this is related to Venezuela.)

Venezuela's problem, really, is it's still a liberal democratic capitalist country, a bourgeois state. It has a renovated constitution, an incumbent socialist government (trying to wage revolution), but it still has to respect private property. For instance, this toilet paper issue. It's not like Venezuela is devoid of toilet paper. People aren't waiting at the docks for the latest shipment of U.N. toilet paper rolls to sail in. Toilet paper comes through the supply chain of the market. The government in 2013 "seized" a toilet paper factory -- for a few days, in order to make inspections and collect inventory documentation. The factory is still the property of the Manpa S.A. company. In fact, more than 70% of the Venezuelan economy is under private ownership.

And the companies in Venezuela have in fact been found hoarding tons of essential household goods (instead of selling them at the legally-capped prices), as well as astro-turfing the violent opposition "movement". Not to mention the continuous attack on the government in the Venezuelan media. Yet despite these concerted efforts at undermining the Bolivarian government, Venezuela reduced its pre-Chavez unemployment rate of 14% to now ~7% (it's lowest was 5.5% in 2014) -- not to mention inflation in Venezuela was very high in the 1990s (~120% in 1997, ~20% in 2007).

I think it seems clear that Venezuela's problem is its opposition, and its lack of revolutionary policies -- rather than their abundance. However, whatever solutions we might propose, Venezuela's government came and has stayed in power through elections -- which makes sudden seizure of industries a bit more difficult, if people are not all onboard with the program, when the national media is predominantly private, when opposition parties run administrations of a number of states. Unfortunately, opposition leaders and businessmen are now talking about how Venezuela needs to take on new loans from the IMF and World Bank to solve its economic "crisis". If they win, which they can, that will be pretty bad for Venezuela.

[Sibotic]

Venezuela's doing alright, you have to distinguish between a 'failing economy' and 'people don't get to have fun.' Venezuela just survived and pretty much liquidated a protest against the government, that was surely more of a threat than people's questionable hygiene, which doesn't say much which concerns the stability of the state.

[Ricemilk]

"People don't get to have fun" is, to be fair, a callous way to talk about toilet paper and insulin. Maybe you can survive without the comfort or 'fun' of modern hygiene and certain injections, but people are clearly suffering in the real-world Venezuela, where nobody bothered to perform eugenics before electing demsoc/socdem in by a sliver. We can acknowledge reality without accepting the bourgeois media line against socialism; clearly Maduro faces powerful and obstinant bad-faith opposition, as did Chavez. Many of the problems in this thread would seem to be solvable by expropriation and socialization of the means of production, but the government clearly can't or won't offer that option, for whatever combination of reasons.

[Red Banana]

Venezuela's doing alright, you have to distinguish between a 'failing economy' and 'people don't get to have fun.' Venezuela just survived and pretty much liquidated a protest against the government, that was surely more of a threat than people's questionable hygiene, which doesn't say much which concerns the stability of the state.

I think this has been mentioned before, but creating false shortages of basic necessities has been the strategy used by opponents of Maduro to create the kinds of protest movements that threaten the stability of the Venezuelan government.

https://www.rt.com/news/golinger-documents-venezuela-destabilization-299/

Believe it or not access to things like toilet paper and electricity are really important to the average person, although they may seem trivial to you.

[Tim Cornelis]

I agree mostly with the recent posts, but there's too much of an insinuation that it is a deliberate campaign to undermine the Bolivarian administration by capitalists. The simple truth is is that the government's policies undermine profit margins, which undermines capital, but not in a way that it addresses the social relationships in which capital is embedded which would enable it to overcome it. Indeed, this is the problem of the bourgeois state, which is structurally constrained to facilitate the reproduction and expansion of capital. If capital can't be profitable, it falters.

As for elections, which someone mentioned. On december 6 the Bolivarian experiment will end, 13 left. People, their consciousness embedded in bourgeois ideology, have begun to realise that a bourgeois state needs to defend bourgeois interests -- although not in so many words. The right-wing is polling at over 40% of the votes, the left-wing at over 20%. The only way the left-wing will stay in power is through a coup, annulling election results, widespread fraud, or any such trick. It is not a very positive prospect, as for all their flaws, the Bolivarian government has set up social programmes which are vital for and to the poor. People will get toilet paper, but they will be deprived of free access to healthcare, public workshops, and other such projects. Venezuela is deeply polarised, so who knows what will happen? Civil unrest, coming into an escalating spiral of violence, is certainly a large possibility.

[Aslan]

Currently Venezuela has a high amount of emigrants leaving to places like the United States. Providing a great way for right-wingers around the world to dismiss socialism. What they fail to notice is that Chavismo has almost nothing to do with socialism in the marxist way of interpreting it. Chauvismo to me seems to be quite underwhelming in a ideological standpoint. Left-wing populism and nationalism is more of a hindrance to revolution. Promises of a ''direct democracy'' are hypocritical since Chavismos are participating in Venezuela's parliament. Hugo Chavez was a charlatan disguised as the next international. And evidence that the left needs to have a centralized organization.

[Sibotic]

Believe it or not access to things like toilet paper and electricity are really important to the average person, although they may seem trivial to you.
In this context, while electricity might be important to Lenin, we are discussing a state, which is substantially more secure than it has been recently, rather than effectively whether people are having much less fun or not. What's important to the average person is likely to be politically unimportant, and this is generally true. I didn't even say that the Venezuelan people were failing because I found their needs and interests objectionable (and apparently not 'necessities' for most of history or in any real sense now but that's another issue), while apparently this is supposed to be a valid inference about something far more important, namely a state.

Like, if people wanted to discuss, 'why is Venezuela not providing certain goods to whoever lives in Venezuela,' then alright, but this is about whether or not 'Venezuela is failing,' which is apparently a perfectly merited phrase when talking about a serious issue like the stability of the state because to do otherwise would be 'callous,' and we must not 'follow the media line against' such places, which is where such phrases come from. In any case I think there's a certain level where talk about Venezuela's population from either side generally involves a degree of 'callousness' concerning a vast swathe of them of one form or another. But obviously one's real objection here to Venezuela is that Venezuelans can't make it without the sight of the sea.

Your other point was potentially more valid, but quite marginal as this isn't a Venezuelan opposition forum. That people planned such things in protests doesn't imply that they were successful, of course, their other plans involved US intervention. More relevant is that the opposition movement, even when it was at its height, did not manage to destabilise the state completely, due in part to punishment and discipline by the state which quelled such - perhaps fairly shallow but not as much as suggested - movements against the Venezuelan state to a degree, and in that sense Venezuela is still quite alright. 'Venezuela just made it through political turbulence but it's supposed to be failing because of some people not having toilet paper' (and states like North Korea have survived worse) is still a fairly straightforward point which has little to do with most of this.

Like if the problem were with something other than 'the toilet paper,' which is all that seems to be discussed here, then Venezuela wouldn't be said to be 'failing' because for example politically it is not failing relative to the opposition in any particularly striking manner.

[Tim Cornelis]

When people say 'Venezuela' or 'Germany' or any country, they generally implicitly refer to the national capital of that country, or the economy. Venezuelan capital is failing, because the Venezuelan government has attempted to prioritise human needs over profits, undermining the process of capital. As for failing politically, relative to the opposition, the fact that they are 13 days away from being wiped away in a landslide electoral victory of the opposition, that isn't very true.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/2015_Venezuelan_parliamentary_polls.png

In the most recent polls, not visualised in this graph, the results were:

MUD: 55% - 63.2% - 47% - 56% - 41.8%

PSUV: 34% - 28.2% - 20% - 39% - 22.1%

This should be the final nail in the coffin of reformism.

[RedKobra]

I agree mostly with the recent posts, but there's too much of an insinuation that it is a deliberate campaign to undermine the Bolivarian administration by capitalists. The simple truth is is that the government's policies undermine profit margins, which undermines capital, but not in a way that it addresses the social relationships in which capital is embedded which would enable it to overcome it. Indeed, this is the problem of the bourgeois state, which is structurally constrained to facilitate the reproduction and expansion of capital. If capital can't be profitable, it falters.

As for elections, which someone mentioned. On december 6 the Bolivarian experiment will end, 13 left. People, their consciousness embedded in bourgeois ideology, have begun to realise that a bourgeois state needs to defend bourgeois interests -- although not in so many words. The right-wing is polling at over 40% of the votes, the left-wing at over 20%. The only way the left-wing will stay in power is through a coup, annulling election results, widespread fraud, or any such trick. It is not a very positive prospect, as for all their flaws, the Bolivarian government has set up social programmes which are vital for and to the poor. People will get toilet paper, but they will be deprived of free access to healthcare, public workshops, and other such projects. Venezuela is deeply polarised, so who knows what will happen? Civil unrest, coming into an escalating spiral of violence, is certainly a large possibility.

As usual, Tim is bang on.

[Burzhuin]

Actually the situation in Venezuela looks like Chili in 1973. I hope I am mistaken.

[Antiochus]

To be completely fair, while the Chavistas will lose this elections almost certainly, it won't be by the wide margin those polls proclaim. Keep in mind that polling in Venezuela is notoriously biased. At most the results will be something like: 47-53 or in that region.

In the 2013 election for example, the polling suggested a huge landslide victory for Maduro but the result was a fairly close election. Like idk if these polling agencies purposely do this because just by statistics alone the margin of error for a sample size bigger than 1000 should be no more than 3.1%.

[Emmett Till]

To be completely fair, while the Chavistas will lose this elections almost certainly, it won't be by the wide margin those polls proclaim. Keep in mind that polling in Venezuela is notoriously biased. At most the results will be something like: 47-53 or in that region.

In the 2013 election for example, the polling suggested a huge landslide victory for Maduro but the result was a fairly close election. Like idk if these polling agencies purposely do this because just by statistics alone the margin of error for a sample size bigger than 1000 should be no more than 3.1%.

So the Chavistas are going down? Unsurprising.

When you get right down to it, there was never anything socialist about the Chavez regime. Chavez was a coup prone military officer who, when he got himself elected, followed a populist policy made possible by oil revenues, rather like Q'addafi though less brutal. All the social measures of Chavez were paid for by selling oil to, guess who?, Uncle Sam. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan ran to a considerable degree on Venezuelan oil.

And now the price of oil is going down and the US is buying its oil elsewhere.

Of course, Maduro will be tempted to follow Chavez's example and stage a military coup to stay in power. Have his populist measures given him enough support in the lower classes that he can pull this off? Such a Maduro regime would probably look a lot like Q'addafi's, and would probably have the same fate.

[Emmett Till]

The statified capitalism that spread to much of Eastern Europe after World War 2 grew from the Soviet degenerated workers' state which originated with the political and then social counterrevolutions under the Stalinist beaurocracy after Lenin had died. That is why I would call it Stalinist rather than Leninist. Even if one disagrees with that and wants to connect Lenin to the statified capitalist regimes, there is still no link between Lenin and modern Venezuela.

If you want to be technical, you could call Poland "Khrushchevist." Chavez was a military officer, not a coal miner promoted beyond his competence level--like Khrushchev and like the Polish leader whose blunders generated Solidarnosc.

Poland wasn't capitalist, whether statified or not. In fact, the largest element of capitalism in Peoples' Poland wasn't at the state level but in the countryside, where the kulaks reigned supreme.

The Polish bureaucrats did everything they possibly could to discredit "reform" communism a la Khrushchev and Gomulka. That has a lot to do why you ended up with a workers rebellion for outright capitalism under the guidance of the Catholic Church, which the Gomulkas and Giereks had done everything possible to conciliate and strengthen.

[Antiochus]

If Maduro attempts an actual coup after the elections which he will most likely lose, the U.S will intervene militarily. I am almost certain of that. The one line of defense for the Chavistas against U.S aggression has been that they have followed a 'democratic' process and that they have had support from the bulk of the population, but if they lose and stage a coup, that will no longer fly (obviously).

It might not even come to that however, it is likely large sections of the military will rebel at that point.

[HevMet]

I've heard the real problem is Venezuela is to tied to oil, and hasn't diversified its economy, thus regardless of its priorities, the massive drop in the price of worldwide oil is causing many of these problems. Again, what I've heard, I don't know if it's true or not.

[Antiochus]

It seems that the opposition scored a crushing victory in the parliamentary elections, securing nearly (final results haven't been released yet) 2/3 of all the seats; granting them a near super majority.

This translates to them being able to dismiss supreme court justices; enact laws and potentially impeach Maduro (who is ridiculously unpopular as it is).

[Comrade Jacob]

Because you never lived in any Leninist country. I did and experienced such methods and such obvious effects.

"You weren't there man! I saw stuff man! You weren't there!!!!!"

Isn't it funny you are using the same argument as anti-communists by saying "I lived there, I didn't like it, you shouldn't like it"/"Try living in a communist-country and see how long you last".

[Ocean Seal]

Number 1. It's not socialist.
Number 2. There's no such thing as 'socialistic'.
Neither of those are an adequate explanation. Venezuela failed because Maduro couldn't get the capitalists to participate in his social experiment. Could he have outright seized the means of production. Was consciousness at that point what external problems would that have caused for Venezuela? Idk if Venezuela is failing, but clearly there are some fairly significant problems in their economy.

[Emmett Till]

Neither of those are an adequate explanation. Venezuela failed because Maduro couldn't get the capitalists to participate in his social experiment. Could he have outright seized the means of production. Was consciousness at that point what external problems would that have caused for Venezuela? Idk if Venezuela is failing, but clearly there are some fairly significant problems in their economy.

Actually,. the oppos have a majority on Congress, but are not even close to the 2/3rds majority that would allow them to impeach Maduro etc. Unless they can get various obscure other parties in the legislature to line up with them.

So what you'll see is Venezuela without much muss or fuss turning into something not much different than other Latin American countries, like Nicaragua, where the ex-Sandinistas are in charge, or El Salvador, where the once awfully radical FMLN guerillas were in charge at one point. Eh. No big deal.

Venezuela's "socialistic" measures were always predicated on high prices for petroleum enabling Chavez to throw bread and circuses Julius Caesar style to the poor, paid for by the US government buying oil to fuel imperial adventures in the Middle East, which Chavez naturally would claim to oppose.

When the price of oil dropped after Chavez died, naturally the facade would drop, and that's what's happening now.

Whether Maduro stays in office or ends up having to resign probably does not mean much for the working people of Venezuela, in practice. The way for the working people to preserve the concessions Chavez/Maduro made to them can only be by independent struggle against Venezuelan capitalism, which Maduro, in or out of office, is going to thoroughly reconcile himself with in the Sandinista/FMLN fashion.

[Antiochus]

They could get a 2/3 majority though. SO far the opposition has gotten 99 seats, the PSUV has gotten 46; 22 seats left uncounted so far. Given the results of the other 145 seats, it wouldn't be implausible that the opposition gets 111 (2/3).

[Comrade Jacob]

They could get a 2/3 majority though. SO far the opposition has gotten 99 seats, the PSUV has gotten 46; 22 seats left uncounted so far. Given the results of the other 145 seats, it wouldn't be implausible that the opposition gets 111 (2/3).

Let's hope the 22 other seats are PSUV or the Communist Party.