Sept. 15, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
07:52
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| If you've debated politics on the internet, you may well have seen these gifs going around, trying to explain from the socialist and capitalist positions whether Venezuela is actually socialist or capitalist. | |
| I'm rather tired of seeing this debate play out between people who are talking past each other, and often are too deep into their ideology to understand the objections of the other person, so I'm going to try and explain it from both positions, and then we will come to a conclusion at the end. | |
| So we begin with the bad guy introducing Venezuela as a practical example of socialism as well as a failed capitalist state. | |
| Both of these statements are true, and I will explain why as we go along. | |
| The Ping Thing naturally denies this, which forces the bad guy to reconsider his position. | |
| Interestingly, they are actually arguing from the same point of view, that socialism is the monopolization of the means of production by the state, or the collective, on the journey towards communism. | |
| Neither of these statements is completely true. | |
| The capitalist perspective says, but the means of production have been seized, whereas the socialist perspective says, but private property and capital accumulation still dominates the economy. | |
| Both of these statements are referring directly to the end state of socialism, which Venezuela is not yet at. | |
| Private property and capital accumulation still do dominate the economy of Venezuela, for all the good it's doing them, but the means of production are also being seized. | |
| Two minutes on Google is more than enough time to find the sweeping breadth of the nationalizations under Chavez. | |
| The Venezuelan government either purchased control of or illegally appropriated large sections of the Venezuelan oil industry, with the Venezuelan government being ordered to pay Exxon $908 million in one case back in 2007. | |
| The Venezuelan Socialist Party did the same thing to the agricultural industry, forcing many companies to file for arbitration over the unlawful seizure of their private property. | |
| A similar occurrence happened to the finance industry, with the Venezuelan government apparently targeting political opponents. | |
| This pattern was repeated with heavy industry and gold, with Chavez ordering the takeover of operations of various foreign companies illegally. | |
| And similar actions have been taken for the power, transport and tourism industries, and this was only under Chavez. | |
| You can see the same pattern occurring under Maduro, with the most recent example being the unlawful seizure of a GM Motors plant in Venezuela, forcing GM to halt their operations and leave the country, and of course, filing for arbitration. | |
| From the socialist perspective, private property and capital accumulation do still dominate the economy, but the socialist party of Venezuela have been whittling this away over the years, to the point where Venezuela's economy is suffering. | |
| And from the capitalist perspective, the means of production almost have been seized, and there is certainly no guarantee of private property in Venezuela. | |
| When socialists say that Venezuela is not real socialism, what they mean is that Venezuela is not a completed form of socialism. | |
| Not that it is not being ruled by a socialist party implementing socialist policies in order to turn the country eventually into real socialism. | |
| When the capitalists says the means of production have been seized, what they really mean is there are no protection of private property rights. | |
| In fact, the state is the biggest danger to private property rights. | |
| So it is much more fair to call Venezuela a socialist country than a capitalist country. | |
| This is flatly denied by the ping thing on both counts, forcing the bad guy to reassess his position. | |
| And it's at this point that the socialist perspective becomes incorrect and the capitalist perspective becomes correct. | |
| When the capitalist perspective says the people elected a government to seize the means of production, this is true. | |
| When the socialist perspective says the people elected a government that defends the commodification of labor and the means of production, this is not true. | |
| They do not defend these things. | |
| In fact, the government is most responsible for taking these things away. | |
| The error that the socialist perspective has encountered is that the socialist government of Venezuela was not, at the time, a dictatorial government. | |
| It was elected within a democratic framework. | |
| It was not a revolutionary dictatorship that was installed to forcibly seize the means of production of the entire country. | |
| Basically, Venezuela is socialist in process rather than being the final product, whereas the capitalist argument is completely sound against Venezuela being considered a capitalist country, because there is fundamentally no protection of private property rights. | |
| The pink thing then rejects these definitions. | |
| From the capitalist perspective, it is rejected as being state capitalism, which is where the state owns the means of production and operates them as if they were private businesses. | |
| This is what Lenin described as one step towards socialism and communism. | |
| As the pink thing is representing a socialist in the capitalist perspective, this is hardly an objection. | |
| This is just one stage towards real socialism. | |
| So there is nothing to object to here. | |
| The only objection is that the job is not yet complete. | |
| From the socialist perspective, the pink thing represents capitalist, and it perceives a lack of protection of private property rights, and vast illegal nationalizations of private property and the lack of protection of private property rights. | |
| So naturally, to a capitalist, this looks like socialism, because this is in the process of becoming socialism. | |
| By this point, the bad guy is becoming naturally exasperated and whips out some definitions, which as far as I can tell are simply a dictionary definition of socialism and the Wikipedia definition of capitalism. | |
| And for our purposes, these definitions will do. | |
| They are not perfect. | |
| Undoubtedly, there will be many socialists who object to the simplicity of the description that any of the various economic and political theories advocating for collective ownership of the means of production. | |
| And a capitalist might object to the Wikipedia definition not placing emphasis on the need for private property for capitalism to function, but these definitions are good enough. | |
| At least for the purposes of this video. | |
| The bad guy then repeats his faulty arguments from both perspectives. | |
| The government has not yet seized all of the means of production, and the government is not defending the rights to private property. | |
| So it is not true socialism, and it is not capitalism. | |
| What it is, is a capitalist system being cannibalized from within by a socialist party to turn it into true socialism. | |
| And then we come back around to the beginning of the argument, with the capitalist claiming that this is socialism, and the socialist complaining that this is capitalism. | |
| The capitalist is far closer to being correct than the socialist. | |
| This is not a capitalist system. | |
| It is not a finished socialist system either. | |
| It is the death of a capitalist system being killed by socialism. | |
| The pink thing obviously rejects this in the capitalist view saying it's not real socialism, with the socialist perspective being the capitalist saying it's socialism. | |
| To a capitalist, it does look like socialism, but to a socialist, it's true that it's not real socialism, as in finished socialism. | |
| And that's the point of contention. | |
| And naturally, this is enraging for anyone trying to discuss this. |
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