So, you want to point to Chomsky opinions about Venezuela and this is the best link you can find?
Chomsky supported initially Chavez, (who, by the way, and not as your link insinuate, was democratically elected), because his government initially improved the conditions of the most humble people in the country. People that lived in misery in one of the most resources rich countries in the world, elected what was then, a new hope.
As frequently happen, the new elite was incompetent, and get corrupted fast. Consequently, Chomsky criticized them.
Here there is video of Chomsky criticizing the Venezuela government:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maHgtLp21Iw
And, for completion sake, here there is a video of the government of Venezuela criticizing Chomsky's criticism of them (in Spanish only, sorry):
That doesn't just happen "frequently", it has happened in 100% of socialist countries after the "revolution". The "critics" then get silenced or killed, unless they happen to (ironically) be sitting in a comfortable chair in an imperialist capitalist country such as the USA, like Chomsky.
You'd think that with this track record, a smart guy like Chomsky would begin to see that there must be something fundamentally wrong with socialist political theory. Yet, he keeps retreating into the "No True Scotsman" fallacy whenever the next socialist experiment fails.
Now riddle me this. Name me one failed socialist country that failed (as I believe all will) without massive Western intervention to ruin their economy. We're kinda pricks, aren't we?
Venezuela's situation main blame should go, in my opinion, to the people in charge in Venezuela. My impression, is that they really don't know what they are doing. Never liked Chavez, but compared to the current one, the guy was a genius.
Other countries have showed that you can work discretely and apply politics that help the vast majority of the population instead of a few elites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Correa#General_Balance_...
We tried to steal the Bolivian elections that got Morales in power. By then the American brand was so tarnished the ambassador got run out of the country.
So most of the blames does go to Chavez. But can we please pretend we're anything other than pricks?
The world used to be much much worse. The world is getting better and better. Statistically speaking. We literally live in a golden age. For a good portion it seriously seriously sucks. But that ratio is getting lower and lower yes? 500 million people raised out of poverty in china alone over the past 30 years. That's gotta count for something, doesn't it?
Read Chomsky, he'll give you references (from the likes of the declassified CIA documents, ect)
For example
Russian Civil War. That's well before they "ruled half the world's economy". Btw, the side we picked were real pricks. The only ones who could make the Bolsheviks the better alternative.
Greek civil war. Here we started sweeping away the commies (who actually liberated Greece) while we stil at war with the Nazis.
Cuba, nasty embargo. Numerous terrorist act committed by our proxies. The point here is to demonstrate to L. America the punishment of going red.
Cambodia. Bombed them to the stone age destroying all their capital. We were so through, people predicted that millions would die even if the Khmer Rouge hadn't (the predictions, btw, predate the Khmer Rouge taking power).
Cambodian side note: by the 1980s we were siding with the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam. Politics and bed fellows and all of that.
Vietnam. We dumped so much Agent Orange that they can't grow non-poisonous produce if they tried. We destroyed all their industrial capital.
N. Korea. We bombed them so throughly that we ran out of civilian* targets. We bombed them for things we hung Nazis for (irrigation damns). Needless to say they had no capital.
Read more Chomsky for more fun (and references) !
* Did you really mean economy or landmass, or population? I don't think the combined socialist countries, at their height in the late 70s, got close to third the world economy, nevermind half. To be clear, i don't expect socialism to work. I just don't get why we bomb those who try it.
Now, wherever you start, a functioning economic system should be able to lift even a destroyed country up eventually. Just look at what Germany accomplished after WW1 (too bad they went for another war with what they gained).
What about all the Eastern European countries that abandoned socialism without a single bullet fired? What about all the former African socialist countries that few people ever talk about?
> Did you really mean economy or landmass, or population?
I'm talking about roughly half the world (people). I may be off with that figure, but suffice it to say it should be big enough to work autonomously.
How did we intervene in the USSR, the largest county in the world, to destabilize it. And how could we, given socialism is so efficient and they had all the massive resources they'd ever need, right?
If you care about the welfare of people is fair to ask why a minority live like kings when the vast majority live in misery in a resource rich country. And, I think, is fair to ask for changes and try to support those changes even if you know that probably you will get disappointed finally or you will get mixed results.
The true is that, unsurprisingly, and independently of how you call those policies, spending resources in the poor improve the life of the poor.
The fact that some autocratic countries also employ capitalism doesn't change that. Capitalism doesn't magically cure corruption, it's merely a superior economic system. Poverty isn't a function of wealth inequality, it's function of economic development. In a socialist system, the poor may be less poor in relative terms, but they're more poor in absolute terms, because socialist economics eventually fail.
Pure capitalism has never existed neither, so we have a spectrum of possibilities. I would argue that the better system is the one that improve the lives or the people and, that should be the measure.
Even if capitalism was the definitive answer, that doesn't mean that we should stop criticizing it.
If you have a system where, in the middle of the most advanced age of humanity, most of the people have not even the most basic needs covered, like was (and it's) the case of Venezuela, some criticism is needed.
I'm not going to argue that socialism is a good system, I agree with you that we have not good examples, but that doesn't automatically, leave us with a system where all resources have to be allocated by the market. In fact, if something has been proved for now, is that is a very bad idea.
So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.
No socialist state that called itself a socialist state has been a success. None. Zero. There are democratic countries that may at some point have "social democrats" or even "socialists" in power. These countries may have passed some laws that are "socialist" in spirit, but virtually all of those countries employ a capitalist free enterprise market. Then you have countries like China that call itself communist and still employ capitalism.
Yet, socialist thinkers are pre-occupied with the perceived evils of capitalism (and finding means to abolish it), even though it has outperformed any socialist economic model thus far conceived. Capitalism is blamed for practically every ill, including the failure of socialism itself.
> So, when you criticism socialism, remember that a lot of countries in the world redistribute resources in a not market way very successfully. Call that whatever you want.
Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do.
>>"Like which? I'm not going to call any form of redistribution "socialism", like some people like to do."
I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".
In your opinion, what is this mix composed of?
Anyway, I think we are discussing about semantics.
China is still very much communist in every way but economically. I don't mind calling them communist, it's just that if we're talking about an economic system and I'm looking for success story of socialism, you can't bring up China. Ever since China abandoned planned economy and employed capitalism, its economy has grown by leaps and bounds.
> I suppose you agree that there are not pure capitalist states. What we see in the world is normally called "mixed economy".
Whatever you want to call it, does "more socialism" or "more capitalism" correlate strongly with wealth? What about individual freedom?
It seems to me that critics of the government in non-democratic countries are the ones in danger, while the ones in democracies aren't, even in socialist democracies (eg, Scandinavia).
If you don't consider these countries socialist that's ok, but the danger government critics are in within non-socialist dictatorships is something worth considering.
Apparently, anything that fails eventually is not socialist. Hence, "No True Scotsman".
> If you don't consider these countries socialist that's ok, but the danger government critics are in within non-socialist dictatorships is something worth considering.
I don't consider these countries socialist. They're not "socialist democracies" (no such thing exists as far as I can see). They're commonly called "social democracies", but that's because the word "social" is political capital. The word "socialist" on the other hand is rather toxic, so most of the mainstream left parties call themselves "social democratic". They may have a bit of "socialist" policy, but not much more so than e.g. the US. Their economic system is fundamentally capitalist.