Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ue_ | Hacker News Reader

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In my view it is a sign more of the fact that Venezuela thought it could depend so much on oil that it failed to diversify rather than a failure of its mode of planning, though that's not without criticism, one would have hoped they learned from the disaster of the USSR's Five Year Plan.

Price controls aren't really a Socialist policy - the Socialist policy in this case would be the gradual change from the production of commodities to the production only of use-values, lacking their exchange value dimension. If price controls are a Socialist policy, then it doesn't take much for Socialism to come about - but that's clearly not what Socialists are talking about when they talk about Socialist policy. Marx, for one, wasn't in favour of price controls to my knowledge. Nor were the other Socialist economists and theorists. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea from other than the oft-repeated myth that Socialism is merely when the government "does stuff".

Venezuela's socialist policies made the entire economy dependent on the wisdom of the state. When the state erred, it meant a much more systemic collapse than would otherwise have happened. If the private sector had been allowed to retain a significant role in the economy, the economy would have had more decorrelated economic forces, which would have made a systemic collapse less likely.

>>I'm not sure where you're getting the idea from other than the oft-repeated myth that Socialism is merely when the government "does stuff".

When Venezuela's economic ministers say things like "the law of supply and demand is a lie" to justify price controls, I assume it's motivated by their socialist ideology, and blame the policy on that ideology.

>When Venezuela's economic ministers say things like "the law of supply and demand is a lie" to justify price controls

They can't be very good Socialists then; Marx was a supporter of the law of supply and demand, and its functioning is extremely obvious to anyone familiar with the idea of markets, even without training. Marx didn't deny it nor did his contemporaries or predecessors.

>I assume it's motivated by their socialist ideology, and blame the policy on that ideology.

The North Korean statesmen have made disparaging remarks about democracy, but they claim to be democratic. Yet we would both agree not to blame democracy for what is happening in North Korea. Is there any evidence that Venezuela is actually implementing Socialist policy any more than the DPRK is implementing democratic policy?

correct, Socialism according to Marx is not 'the government does stuff'. 'the government does stuff', when the private sector is replaced by government functions, is really State Capitalism (because the state controls the means of production, not the workers). In fact, it was Stalin that declared 'when the state is in charge, we got socialism'. It confused everybody but it's wrong.

Curiously enough, Chavez had similar things to say about state capitalism:

>>“It is impossible, within the framework of the capitalist system, to solve the grave problems of poverty of the majority of the world’s population,” the Venezuelan leader said. “We must transcend capitalism. But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union. We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project, and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything."

Socialism is always one execution away from utopia.

And did he achieve this stated goal? no... so you can't pretend like he did achieve it, and then somehow the failed outcome proves that the goal is itself invalid.

I don't think that what politicians claim is a sound method to understand the definition of something, especially when we _do_ have the definition already (again, what Marx described).

Just because Chavez made claim X, that doesn't mean that the original definition is somehow altered.

And remember, your original claim was that price controls are socialist, which still doesn't make sense; pivoting to something Chavez said doesn't correct this.

I am no fan of what Venezuela or Chavez is doing, and I don't support their policies.

If you want an example of something that is more faithful to what Marx described, take a look at the Mondragon Corporation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation which is a competitive worker cooperative based in Spain. Notice that this has nothing to do with the government.

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