"CARACAS, Venezuela — The international effort to rush food and medicine into this collapsing socialist state was rapidly transforming Thursday into a high-stakes standoff between President Nicolás Maduro and the U.S.-backed opposition, essentially holding hostage lifesaving shipments of humanitarian aid at the border."
"Maduro has defiantly vowed to block more than $60 million worth of assistance organized by the opposition and provisioned by the United States, Colombia, Canada and other countries. Even as seven truckloads of aid from the United States began arriving at warehouses in the key border crossing of Cucuta, Colombia, Maduro loyalists pledged to use force if necessary to keep it out."
"Elliott Abrams, the State Department special envoy to Venezuela, said at a Thursday news conference that, while determined to deliver the aid to the Venezuelan people, the United States and other opposition supporters would not do so by “force.”
It is said that 87% of the Venezuelan people now live in poverty, are food insecure, and are lacking the most basic medical care. Yet the government continues to double down about letting any international assistance in.
"The Maduro government has long argued that the humanitarian crisis here has been manufactured by its enemies and the foreign press, and has long declined international assistance. And the opposition-coordinated aid is unlikely to put a major dent in the nation’s suffering."
"The Maduro government has long argued that the humanitarian crisis here has been manufactured by its enemies and the foreign press, and has long declined international assistance. And the opposition-coordinated aid is unlikely to put a major dent in the nation’s suffering."
"...Yet many Venezuelans on Thursday appeared angered by the government’s refusal to allow it in. Viviana Colmenares, a 26-year-old coffee seller and mother of six, sat in a two-room hut in one of the capital’s worst slums. Two of her children — ages 6 and 7, and both stricken with hepatitis — were languishing on mattresses on the floor."
"Colmenares said she had sought treatment for the children at various hospitals but was turned away because there were no available beds. She also could not afford the antibiotics to treat them. Dwindling government rations, meanwhile, have caused her family to subsist on two meals a day of rice and plantains."
“The important thing is to help the kids, for them to have their medicine,” she said. Once a backer of the socialist ideals of Chávez and Maduro, she now rejects them. “The aid has been there for days now; they are not letting it in!”
"The Vatican says Pope Francis is willing to see if Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido would agree to Vatican intervention to help relaunch talks with embattled President Nicholas Maduro to try to end the country’s political standoff."
"Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti issued a statement Thursday after Francis told reporters that he would consider Maduro’s request for Vatican involvement but that the “preliminary condition” for any external mediation was that both sides requested it."
Interesting that the first story calls Venezuela a "failed socialist state." The problem there actually seems to be that it's a corrupt kleptocracy, and you don't have to be socialist to be that.
ReplyDeleteYemen is a failed state, in part thanks to the capitalist supporters of the corrupt kleptocracy that keeps bombing it. And because Venezuela has a safety valve in Ecuador, its people are not as badly off as the Yemenis.
You can't say much for Afghanistan, which we have spent 18 years trying to turn into a capitalist bastion in the heart of corrupt tribalism. And, while nobody was looking, the Trump administration supported terminating the United Nations anti-corruption commission (which the U.S. was instrumental in creating) in Guatemala, which is pretty much a failed capitalist state without oil:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/05/trump-republican-lawmakers-weaken-u-n-anti-corruption-commission-guatemala-jimmy-morales-white-house-putin/
I wonder about throwing around "socialism" so casually. Are we going to have a lot of that through 2020?
Speaking of failing corrupt kleptocracies, the United States has fallen 5 points on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index since 2016. We now rank just below France but ahead of the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay (thank goodness!) on the Berlin-based NGO's annual analysis of corruption. OK, so that is one NGO. But Freedom House, based in the United States, also is rating our freedom (as it measures freedom) as falling in the effort to make America great again.
Oh, well. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, Socialist, Socialist, Socialist. Do I detect a trend?
It would be nice if the Vatican could do something about Venezuela, but Maduro would be in a spot not dissimilar to where Mussolini was when his world was turned upside down. Not a nice place to be, and presumably Maduro will do all he can to avoid hanging upside down in a gas station.
Tom, yeah, I noticed the mention of the "failed socialist state", too. I don't think this particular journalist is trying to make a point about that being the cause of their ills, he seems more focused on the human suffering caused by Maduro's intransigence. Which is mind boggling. Rather than let humanitarian aid come in, he lets food and medicine sit in the harbor and on the dock while people are in danger of death. Because of, I don't know, some kind of pride thing. Of course it would also mean admitting how badly he screwed thing up, but everybody knows that anyway.
DeleteIf Maduro would just acknowledge reality and find a nice cushy exile somewhere, he wouldn't be in danger of Mussolini fate.
I don't know what role the US should play. I think we are right to avoid a show if force, that would end badly.
About the word "socialism" being used as a political cuss word, it's a cheap knee-jerk. Because the ones using it never define what they mean. Sometimes they are conflating Marxism and socialism. Do they mean Cuba and North Korea, or Denmark and Germany? In reality most non-failed states take leaves from both the capitalist and socialist playbooks, including the US.
DeleteTom and Katherine, if I look up "failed socialist state" in the dictionary, I expect that entry to be illustrated with a map of Venezuela. Do you disagree?
DeleteJim, no, I don't disagree. I am not defending socialism as a system per se. As I pointed out I think you need things from both "column C" and "column S". Pretty much Venezuela fits the "failed socialist state" shoe.
DeleteThe only purely socialist entities which are successful that know of are communities of vowed religious, which are very much intentional. A nun I had in grade school used to joke that her community fit the strict definition of communist.
I really hope that the Vatican can be helpful in helping them resolve the crisis. Can the UN do anything? I'm not even sure if Venezuela is a signatory to any relevant agreements.
DeleteSocialism without robust democracy will fail. Capitalism, on the other hand, seems to be doing very well in the land of one child policy and the Tienanmen Square massacre. Social democracy seems to be doing well in Denmark and Sweden. Venezuela was too dependent on oil and I'd like to know how much economic warfare was wielded against them. To take it to an extreme, if we nuked Venezuela, could we say it failed solely due to an economic system.
DeleteJim, No, I think you would see Cuba as the illustration. In Venezuela's case, socialism was the bumper sticker, but grabbing the oil money and sending it to countries with sketchy bank regulations was the business model, at least from the moment Hugo Chavez realized he could do it.
DeleteYou are talking about on-line dictionaries, of course, because old-fashioned print dictionaries, which have real editors instead of algorithms, probably use the former Soviet Union as their e.g.
I think Stanley makes a good point. I see Venezuela more as a failed authoritarian state more than a failed socialist state. Most states that impose repression and force on people explode or wither.
ReplyDeleteRe: whether the failed state is because of socialism or authoritarianism: Orwell, in "1984", had Big Brother as a descendant of an originally-more-idealistic Brotherhood.
ReplyDeleteIn Venezuela, Maduro has been a disaster, but Chavez, who was elected as as populist, sowed the seeds by nationalizing the oil industry and other industries. Populism and economics usually don't mix very well. Bad ideas can be politically potent. We see some of this with Trump and his trade wars. We may see more of it if he decides that the situation at the southern border is an "emergency" and invokes emergency measures.
From what I've seen of the Green New Deal, it has some really bad policy ideas in it. But incredibly, a half-dozen or so Democratic presidential hopefuls have endorsed it. This flirtation with socialism really concerns me; I actually think it's even more dangerous to the country and the world than Trump. I consider socialism to be discredited by people's lived experience during our lifetimes. The Poles in my parish can tell some stories.
About Trump declaring an emergency and having the army build the wall, I'm not so sure but what that might do less harm than shutting down the government again.
DeleteI don't know enough about the Green New Deal. It seems like there are both some good and bad ideas in the mix. There needs to be a lot more discussion of particulars before they make it a campaign plank.
When we're talking about "socialism", do we mean FDR type New Deal ideas, even Eisenhower ideas, or are we talking Soviet style nationalization of industries? Big difference.
Capitalism exists in Sweden and Denmark. They don't have centralized state control. Not sure how they handle utilities. I would say some things are amenable to state control like water and energy utilities. Cars and cell phones and toys, I'd leave to the capitalists. I'm not sure you even have to nationalize drug production to reduce the fleecing of the American public. Just reduce the length of the patents. I'd also like to see the promotion of worker ownership of businesses as with Mondragon. It's communal without being authoritarian or state-controlled. We need some innovation and imagination.
DeleteJim Pauwels wrote, "... if I look up "failed socialist state" in the dictionary, I expect that entry to be illustrated with a map of Venezuela. Do you disagree?"
ReplyDeleteYes, I disagree. I'm no expert on these issues, but decades of living in Latin America have taught me that it's much more complicated than that. "Failed socialist state," sometimes used interchangeably with "failed Marxist state," is the kind of sweeping rejection which, according to the frequent (mis)reresentations of him, one might have expected from John Paul II. But it turns out that, in fact, he saw these things very differently, as was made clear in Jonathan Kwitny's Commonweal piece, "Neither Capitalist Nor Marxist: Karol Wojtyla's Social Ethics." Here are a few paragraphs from that piece. They help to show how complicated this is. Kwitny wrote:
"[John Paul] endorsed the Marxist notions of a working class and a class struggle... In a chapter on Marxism, [he] saw beyond the system that tyrannized his own life and into the issues that would later present themselves to him as pope. He wrote, 'The relentless materialism in Marxism contradicts Catholicism, [which] sees man as spirit and matter in one, [and which] proclaims the superiority of the spirit...'
"But, he added, 'the goal of these thoughts is not to criticize Marxism entirely.' He explicitly embraced Marx's essential theory that 'the economic factor...explains, rather substantially, the different facts of human history.... Criticism of capitalism, the system of exploitation of human beings and human work, is the unquestionable 'part of the truth' embodied in Marxism.'
"In 1993, John Paul II would provoke mocking headlines when he criticized Poland and other post-Communist countries for accepting pure market economics from the West and thus abandoning the "grain of truth" in Marxism. Although many thought the pope was reversing himself, he was in fact using almost the same words he had used forty years before in class lectures and in his book, and had been using ever since.
"Wojtyla separated Marx's analysis of economic exploitation, which he largely accepted, from Marx's solutions, which he rejected. 'The Catholic social ethic,' he wrote in 1953, 'agrees that in many cases a struggle is the way to accomplish the common good. Today...a class struggle...is the undeniable responsibility of the proletariat.' Not only is class-conscious revolution compatible with Christianity, he argued; it is sometimes necessary to Christianity. What is incompatible is Marxism's subjugation of the individual human spirit to a grand economic design after the revolution." https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/sites/default/files/imce/30047/Kwitny_Oct97.pdf
Summing up: I'd say "failed socialist state" is not the best way to describe the situation in Venezuela.
Gene - those are interesting and challenging (and perhaps arguable!) assertions by Wojtyla.
DeleteIn the case of Venezuela, Chavez nationalized the petroleum industry (which is to say, he used the police power of the state to steal oilfields and associated assets from big oil companies) and used the windfall from its profits to finance social programs. That strategy seems right out of the 20th century socialist playbook.
When the price of petroleum fell, there no longer was enough money to finance the social programs.
For several years now, if reports are to be believed, the human suffering has been substantial, and not just among the poor in Venezuela. Not enough food, not enough medical care, not enough basic services like clean water, high inflation. One report I saw recently stated that in 2016, inflation was in triple digits; now, it's supposedly over a million percent(!) per year.
Chavez's successor, Madura, seems to be a kleptocrat. That's not in the official playbook, but it's another well-worn path for 20th century socialist experiments.
I don't know a lot about pre-Chavez Venezuela, except I am given to understand that it was a high-inequality society. No doubt, that bred the resentments and injustices that led to the Chavez revolution. But the Chavez revolution has not proven to be a doorway to long-term prosperity and justice. It is a dead end. That, it seems to me, is the overarching lesson of 20th century socialism - it doesn't work. It doesn't deliver the goods.
I am sure that very few people want to go back to whatever prevailed prior to Chavez; nor could they if they did wish to. I think they have to try something new. My suggestion would be: a system that allows human freedom and creativity to flourish, while preventing the oligarchs - both the old and the new - from consolidating ownership of all the assets. They can call it the free market like we do in the US, or democratic socialism like they do in Europe. They're not really too different from one another; the difference is in degrees, not in kind, istm.
The "family unit" is often preferred as the basis and model of society. If so, it's a socialist unit, if healthy. Some members, namely children receive room and board and care without bringing in a single kwatloo. In addition, I remember older friends saying how, when they were old enough to work as teenagers, they turned their earnings over to mom. Maybe one of the problems infecting the family is hyperindividualism from the general society. I wish we could build socialism from the ground up. Can parishes become more socialistic like the early Christian communities? Katherine has mentioned the socialism of religious communities. If good enough for celibate, why not the restuvus? Of course, tough for Americans.
ReplyDeleteApropos of "failed socialist states":
ReplyDeleteWhen I read about Venezuela, my mind turns to Czechoslovakia in the 80s--perhaps mistakenly. It was a failed "Marxist" state with an underground opposition that from '68 to '89 kept up a protest against the idiocy of its government (cf. Vaclav Havel, "Letters to Olga").
Unlike Venezuela, Czech.. was not rolling in oil dough and as far as I know the corruption was not economic per se, but governmental, intellectual, and cultural, though the top dogs probably did better economically than everyone else.
Yet it is possible that Venezuela and the now named Czech Republic (Slovakia left) have a common problem. Those who did well under the "failing whatever" do well under a new government because they have resources, have friends in high places, and have a lot to lose if they lose. The Czech Republic is a democracy, but from afar it does not look like a strong one. I expect Venezuela will have the same problem, but perhaps more pronounced because of the oil.
That doesn't mean the opposition shouldn't go forward, only that the issues Chavez used to hold power will be issues with any new government, including Chavistas who become "Guidanoists."
But back to my comparison: The massive uprising of ordinary citizens in Czech...and Venezuela gives the opposition a certain moral clout that should be taken seriously as a form of democratic voting. We just shouldn't expect that after the revolution, things will go smoothly or justly.
Re: those who did well under the old government did well under the new: sounds a lot like the Russian experience, too.
DeleteE.J. Dionne weighs in on "failed" socialism.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-war-on-socialism-will-fail/2019/02/10/b6fe3a6a-2be4-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html?utm_term=.b7e462f3950b&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1
I love E.J. Dionne. He says all the things I think, but better and without my anger.
DeleteRaber does, too. Dionne is on NPR every Friday evening with David Brooks, and Raber always seems to be in a more hopeful mood when he hears him. Usually less yelling at TV news later on.
DeleteYes, doesn't everyone love E.J.? He is lovable and hopeful.. I have accused him (to his face) of being a "feliceopath," i.e., a pathologically optimist person. He agrees to the optimistic (why not?); not sure he agrees that it is a pathology...though he laughs when I say it. At least we could say he is one among few optimists.
DeleteI think his appeal is that he takes a reasonable time and usually predicates his comments with a reminder of what the Demoratic Party has always stood for, which helps you articulate, "Oh, yeah, that's why I'm walking around in this state of pissed-off confusion."
DeleteHe's like Mr. Rogers for Democrats.
Maybe a bit more vinegary than Mr. Rogers. I say that because we watched "Won't You Be My Neighbor," on PBS the other night. What a different world!! Brought tears to my eyes.
DeleteI guess I missed the attacks on his sweetness from comedians, on his "you are fine the way you are" from conservatives, and the anti-gay protest at his funeral!! What a country@$%@!!!
Look forward to seeing the documentary.
DeleteI used to play Fred Rogers's testimony before Sen. Pastore's committee as an exercise in argumentative analysis. Students never failed to enjoy it. I had many who grew up in dysfunctional families who told me Mr. Rogers was the stabilizing force in their lives. I like how he talks to Sen. Pastore the same way he talked to preschoolers.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA
That you tube is my movie for tonight..
DeleteIn one of the Justice Ginsburg movies she talks about her first case before the Supreme Court...as an advocate, not a judge. "I explained things to them like they were a kindergarten class." She won!
Jim Pauwels:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "Gene - those are interesting and challenging (and perhaps arguable!) assertions by Wojtyla." Which ones do you find arguable?
"failed socialist state" is a facile way to label the political history of Venezuela and bypass the need to learn about it.
ReplyDeleteAny attempt at complexity of thought -- rejecting parts but not all of Marxist theory-- seems doomed in the age of Trump.
Brava! There is a collective attention disorder that has always been a feature of American discourse, but it seems worse now.
DeleteMy son, who actually has ADD, enjoys talking to people on the fringe (flat earthers, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, creationists, etc.) who come in the coffee shop. He's a "people person," but notes that even the friendliest questions about their beliefs tends to enrage them. He has a lot of hypotheses about the inability of True Believers to risk rejection from their groups by engaging in discussions (or actual arguments) with outsiders.
In the early '80s I was head-hunted for a job in Venezuela. The head-hunter described a country very much like what Chris Patten found in Hong Kong when he became the last British governor: The people wanted more services and lower taxes -- and that was possible! The trick in Hong Kong was finance. In Venezuela it was oil revenues. Has anyone noticed that oil-rich countries tend toward autocracy, dictatorship or sleazy families with huge wage and wealth gaps and not a whole lot of individual freedom?
ReplyDeleteThanks largely to fracking, the United States is an oil-rich country in which the fracked have fewer rights than the frackers.
Hello everyone - I am surprised on occasion to say things that I take as self-evident that, unbeknownst to me, touch a nerve around here (or at our predecessor mother ship). It seems the phrase "failed socialist state" is another example.
ReplyDeleteI consider that it's on the order of so-obvious-its-barely-worth-debating that Venezuela is (a) a state that (b) became socialist and (c) failed (and is continuing to fail). Despite my so-obvious-etc. views, I provided a fairly lengthy recap in support of that view. I don't know why anyone here has a stake in defending the Chavez/Maduro (failed/failing) experiment, but if anyone does, I think it's their turn to make their case.
Gene - I guess what I think is arguable from Wojtyla is the idea of class struggle, a term which I believe Marx and many of his followers and descendants interpreted as class warfare, and not in an analogous sense. This topic is actually pertinent to the Gospel reading this Sunday, in which Luke has Jesus proclaiming "Blessed are the poor / Woe to the rich". I'm preaching, so I'll be writing and saying something about it this weekend (not completely sure what yet), but as per usual I'll post the text here sometime on Sunday or thereabouts and then you can have at me. :-)
Jim, I don't think anybody here would defend Chavez/Maduro. The objection was to the Trumpian one-word explanation for everything being attached to what Trump's chums in Saudi Arabia are going to look like when their derricks run to rust.
DeleteRegardless of what we call Venezuela, the suffering of those who are without food and medical care is the immediate problem. The international community needs to keep pushing (short of military intervention) for the government to allow humanitarian aid to come in.
ReplyDeleteYeah, why can't they do an air drop? I guess that runs the risk of invading sovereign air space, but worked in Berlin. Or could we work through (gasp!) Cuba to deliver the goods?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJim Pauwels:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "I consider that it's on the order of so-obvious-its-barely-worth-debating that Venezuela is (a) a state that (b) became socialist and (c) failed."
No, Jim, it's not "so obvious" that Venezuela "became socialist." Socialist? What about Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway? They aren't "failed states," and if they heard someone claim that Venezuela failed because it "became socialist," they'd surely say, "Please. Don't blame Venezuela's problems on a system that has worked so well for us and that they, in fact, are not using. They have no right to call their system 'socialist,' and when they insist on doing so, they give true socialism -- the kind we practice, successfully -- a bad name it doesn't deserve."
You also said,
"I guess what I think is arguable from Wojtyla is the idea of class struggle, a term which I believe Marx and many of his followers and descendants interpreted as class warfare..."
But Jim, that's not how Wojtyla interpreted it, and that's the whole point. You can't "argue" with him for taking a position which, in fact, he never took; you can't attribute to him an interpretation which you (and I) reject, and which he never held. In fact, he's not advocating war; on the contrary, he's very much against it. Kwitny's article makes that clear:
"[Wojtyla] wrote: 'War is evil. It should be avoided even as a last resort to restore justice between countries, because it may result in even greater evil and injustice than it combats.' His statement on war went significantly beyond other current Catholic teaching, which allowed war if all else failed. Although many anti-Communists would later try to co-opt Wojtyla into their military policies, he condemned war unequivocally in 1953, even as a means to correct injustice, because he believed it tended only to create new injustice."
That's how it looks to me. How does it look to you?
Gene - I was writing about Venezuela. But since you mentioned them, I don't think those Northern European countries you named are socialist. Do you? If so, why?
DeleteThe group that published this paper tries to measure the countries of the world by their degree of economic freedom, using something like 42 different variables. Free market capitalist countries like the US score near the top; socialist countries score near the bottom. The European countries you named are in the top quartile, with the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries that have the reputation of being bastions of the free market.
I guessed that Venezuela would be in the lower half; I was startled to see that it ranked dead last this particular year (2015).
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/efw/efw2017/efw-2017-chapter-1.pdf
Jim Pauwels:
ReplyDeleteAdding to my previous comment: You wrote, "I am surprised on occasion to say things that I take as self-evident that, unbeknownst to me, touch a nerve around here..." In my opinion, "touch a nerve" has an edge which I don't find helpful. It says, "Geez, I touched a nerve," as opposed to saying, more simply and humbly, "It looks like things that I 'take as self-evident' are, in the opinion of others, not so self-evident." True, that's a very plain way of putting it, but in my opinion it's more even-handed.
And then there was your characterization of those who, like me, disagree with what you "take as self-evident." What could explain that disagreement? According to you, it's that those people have a stake in defending Chavez and Maduro. But I have no such stake, and so, to put it mildly, I was not pleased to see myself thus portrayed. As was very clear, my comment was not in the slightest about defending Chavez and Maduro. It was about something else entirely.
Peace, Gene. I'm happy to learn that you have no reason to wish to defend havez and Maduro. If you disagree that Venezuela is a failed socialist you should explain why.
DeleteJim, I am a bit surprised that you rely on the Cato outfit, which tends to start from its funders' conclusions and then reason to them. The gold standard for that kind of rating, fwiw, is Freedom House:
Deletehttps://freedomhouse.org/report/countries-world-freedom-2019
I guess I can't understand your insistence on calling Venezuela a socialist state when socialism is supposed to provide everybody what they need, and Venezuela is providing nothing to most people and more than they need to el presidente and his generals. That is a kleptocracy under any standard definition. I mean I can call myself a school bus, but that won't get any kids to school.
Tom, thanks for that link to Freedom House. It seems to be somewhat of a different beast: whereas the Cato report tries to measure economic freedom, the Freedom House seems to measure civil rights (e.g. freedom of the press). Taken together, they would seem to provide a fuller picture of overall freedom in a given society.
DeleteI am not "in the bag" for the Cato Institute, but as that report describes its approach and methodology, it seems to utilize as many objective measures as it could lay its hands on. It does concede that there is some subjectivity and reliance on opinion surveys in the mix as well.