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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> Lack of a functional democracy is the problem, not socialism.

It's entirely possible to democratically decide to steal the means of production from the capitalists — and thus experience exactly these consequences.

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Nobody is saying socialism is inherently bad here. The Nordic model, for instance, still has a free market means of production. Socialist safety nets are fine.

Venezuela has for years had a full-on centrally planned economy with the state setting the prices for goods independent of their costs of production, all as a tool to continue winning electoral support from the poor. That is a very, very nasty aspect of a socialist system, which is avoided by successful socialist nations.

Edit: This was meant to be a reply to the parent comment.

I cant recall a single example of a functional democracy in a socialist government. Seems to be mutually exclusive outputs.

Venezuela elected Chavez in at least three internationally verified and observed elections (1998, 2000, 2006).

Having democrat elections is not the same of having a functional democracy.

Exactly what I pointed out, although it seems some didn't like my comment.

He was elected democratically, but then he behaved like a dictator. He was not aware of his ignorance in economics, and he had to support of the people. The results were disastrous.

>He was elected democratically, but then he behaved like a dictator.

He was elected democratically to behave like a dictator. Most dictatorships advertise quite clearly what they intend to do.

@eudox. Rigged elections.

Firstly, that's not how replies work. Secondly, no, they were not rigged elections. A couple of links:

https://www.cartercenter.org/documents/297.pdf

http://eeas.europa.eu/eueom/missions/2006/venezuela/index_en...

Of course democracy is not incompatible with Communism. How could it be when the people are enthusiastic supporters of Communism?

There have been countless statistical anomalies on all elections since 2004; like voting centers with 0 abstention and 100% votes pro-government on extremely remote locations without oversight from the opposition.

But please, continue lecturing me on my country's electoral and voting system.

>since 2004

That's after two Chavez elections. Then the people were voting for Communism well before the elections were rigged in an observable way

>The people were voting for Communism

Clearly, the world has always been filled with idiots full of resentment towards people that made better decisions and became more successful.

So there you go. That's how Communism is compatible with democracy. It burns the same fuel: the promise of mass political power.

"Of course democracy is not incompatible with Communism. How could it be when the people are enthusiastic supporters of Communism?"

There were/are enthusiastic supporters for some of the worst causes.[1]

Also, historically, comunism did not support occidental democracy systems.[2]

[1]http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/new-isis-islamic-state-daesh-a...

[2] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1918/xx/principles....

Uhhh... how about almost every Nordic country?

Then probably we are not referring to the same thing when we talk about socialism.

If you're using "socialism" as a bugaboo, probably not. It has a broad meaning, like "democracy", but it's not always a bad thing.

I was referring socialism as a society where state does not allow private property (at least to a major extent), and violates individual human rights in favor of collective ones.

You're confusing "socialism" with "communist". Socialist societies do not, as a rule, limit ownership of private property. Any that do are usually socialist and something else, like totalitarian or communist.

Likewise a socialist state does not necessarily limit individual freedoms. Communist regimes have, but they're also totalitarian, so which philosophy is to blame is sometimes hard to pin down.

Modern communist societies have also relaxed these restrictions significantly, though there were times when everything was forced communal.

It's entirely possible to have the same result via crony capitalism instead. The problem is too much power in the hands of too few people. It doesn't matter what label their government claims to fall under at this point.

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