This is a very illuminating analysis of the devolution of Venezuela, albeit with a cautionary note. Obviously what has happened in the People's Republic of Hugo is not at all applicable to the United States—except in the most general and hence the most useless of terms. America is too large and too diverse to stomp the odious Hugo into the ground.
I engaged in a fairly long Twitter debate today over the legacy of Altiero Spinelli whom the European Parliament building in Brussels is named after and who once served as a member of the European Parliament among many notable achievements. Spinelli while not well known outside of Europe is perhaps most famous for the Ventotene Manifesto written in 1941 while Spinelli was imprisoned on the island of Ventotene by Mussolini's fascist government. The Ventotene Manifesto while not as real known as the UN Charter or the Atlantic Charter probably has to be considered one of the key foundational documents of the post 1945 order. The other thing you should know about Spinelli was that he was a self described Italian Communist(not "just" a socialist) yet one that did break with Stalin and Stalinism in 1937.
Now most of the history I have read of Spinelli is quite strong in showing that Spinelli after 1945 or really even 1937 while perhaps even calling himself a "Communist" was not as a political matter a Communist as the term was understood East of the Iron Curtain nor in Castro's Cuba(Spinelli's version of Communism was something that did have a certain following in France and Italy). Yet if we are talking about words like Socialism and Communism and whether or not they should be even used it all I do think one must broach Spinelli's legacy.
A couple of more things to note is that Spinelli was not at all seen as a "real" Communist or even a "real" Socialist in the UK by the likes of Tony Benn, Michael Foot, and Arthur Scargill. I don't know if he even had much to say about them in reverse but as a matter of political philosophy my impression is Spinelli despised what Arthur Scargill stood for. The real issue is Spinelli of course was a European Federalist while Tony Benn and Michael Foot were certainly not.
Anyways here is a link below to the Ventotene Manifesto if you are not familiar with it.
El Caracazo was the first (?) indicator that there were profound problems in Venezuelan society. The litany of disasters that followed hinges on those problems being left to fester for so long, perhaps even with unconcern so long as they didn’t inconvenience PLU. I guess it is a cautionary tale when it comes to that.
Wrt growing support for socialism - for a lot of people that is about social programs, no matter how inaccurately they’re using the word. Making an argument against State control of the economy in response is semantically sound (and normally I applaud this) but it doesn’t address the issue of social programs, why have them, which ones, for whom, etc.
It will probably take multiple comments on my part to highlight what I think are some of key points of the Venezuela story. One is that Venezuela always had strong elements of socialism. For example all the way back to the 1960s gasoline was sold and subsidized to local Venezuela consumers at prices far below markets. Not only that this below market pricing of gasoline was viewed as almost a universal birthright by Venezuelan consumers not just then but even right up to the present day. To further expound upon the point in the 1970s it was common in "consuming" nations like the UK and US to control(but not subsidize) the price of gasoline too. In fact I would say only a few countries like Germany and Switzerland remained truly market based in the 1970s.
This is a very illuminating analysis of the devolution of Venezuela, albeit with a cautionary note. Obviously what has happened in the People's Republic of Hugo is not at all applicable to the United States—except in the most general and hence the most useless of terms. America is too large and too diverse to stomp the odious Hugo into the ground.
I engaged in a fairly long Twitter debate today over the legacy of Altiero Spinelli whom the European Parliament building in Brussels is named after and who once served as a member of the European Parliament among many notable achievements. Spinelli while not well known outside of Europe is perhaps most famous for the Ventotene Manifesto written in 1941 while Spinelli was imprisoned on the island of Ventotene by Mussolini's fascist government. The Ventotene Manifesto while not as real known as the UN Charter or the Atlantic Charter probably has to be considered one of the key foundational documents of the post 1945 order. The other thing you should know about Spinelli was that he was a self described Italian Communist(not "just" a socialist) yet one that did break with Stalin and Stalinism in 1937.
Now most of the history I have read of Spinelli is quite strong in showing that Spinelli after 1945 or really even 1937 while perhaps even calling himself a "Communist" was not as a political matter a Communist as the term was understood East of the Iron Curtain nor in Castro's Cuba(Spinelli's version of Communism was something that did have a certain following in France and Italy). Yet if we are talking about words like Socialism and Communism and whether or not they should be even used it all I do think one must broach Spinelli's legacy.
A couple of more things to note is that Spinelli was not at all seen as a "real" Communist or even a "real" Socialist in the UK by the likes of Tony Benn, Michael Foot, and Arthur Scargill. I don't know if he even had much to say about them in reverse but as a matter of political philosophy my impression is Spinelli despised what Arthur Scargill stood for. The real issue is Spinelli of course was a European Federalist while Tony Benn and Michael Foot were certainly not.
Anyways here is a link below to the Ventotene Manifesto if you are not familiar with it.
https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1997/10/13/316aa96c-e7ff-4b9e-b43a-958e96afbecc/publishable_en.pdf
El Caracazo was the first (?) indicator that there were profound problems in Venezuelan society. The litany of disasters that followed hinges on those problems being left to fester for so long, perhaps even with unconcern so long as they didn’t inconvenience PLU. I guess it is a cautionary tale when it comes to that.
Wrt growing support for socialism - for a lot of people that is about social programs, no matter how inaccurately they’re using the word. Making an argument against State control of the economy in response is semantically sound (and normally I applaud this) but it doesn’t address the issue of social programs, why have them, which ones, for whom, etc.
It will probably take multiple comments on my part to highlight what I think are some of key points of the Venezuela story. One is that Venezuela always had strong elements of socialism. For example all the way back to the 1960s gasoline was sold and subsidized to local Venezuela consumers at prices far below markets. Not only that this below market pricing of gasoline was viewed as almost a universal birthright by Venezuelan consumers not just then but even right up to the present day. To further expound upon the point in the 1970s it was common in "consuming" nations like the UK and US to control(but not subsidize) the price of gasoline too. In fact I would say only a few countries like Germany and Switzerland remained truly market based in the 1970s.