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Comments
How so? I'm curious.
it's Awards Season again, and as usual (since 2 years ago) there are a bunch of really great-seeming movies in theaters that I can't see because movie tickets cost money and multiplexes don't play good movies
so i'm stuck reading reviews and overwrought thinkpieces and inside-baseball junk to simulate the experience of actually watching them
bleh
I've grown pretty leftist because my country is pretty right-wing, but giving it consideration, the endemic problems in the socialist model that stiffle free speech, civil rights and marginalizes opposition are too much for me to consider the system as useful as I had it pegged before. i.e.: I am less of a commie now.
Score for antisocialism!
Well, to be honest I probably wasn't being fair in labeling socialism as fundamentally antidemocratic, after all, Chávez' despotic tendencies long predate the development of bolivarian socialism. The thing is, the theoretically-maybe-perhaps possibility of a democratic socialism kinda feels unimportant when your country isn't the exception to socialism's track record.
And yeah, democracy is a truly beautiful thing (I should know) and anything that strays from its principles is way too dangerous.
That said, there's plenty of leftism to be had on the antisocialist side of things, as many Venezuelan oppositors can attest.
By the way, what's president Martinelli like? I only know that's he's been pestering Maduro due to debt issues and that's funny.
Martinelli has increased the debt, has created lots of public works, like the new and shiny metro system, and each and every one of his family members is involved with the corporations he makes deals with as president, all those public works are overpriced as fuck and he has dismantled democracy through sheer populist clientelism, and by having the majority of the Supreme Court between his fingers, and by buying congressmen to join his party so he could get a majority at the national assembly so he could make really iffy laws, one of which prohibits congressmen to change party during their periods or lose their seats. He has given money to the uninsure elderly, which was part of his VP governemnt plan, who then decided to become opposition while in office. He also gave stipends to lots of schoolchildren and small netbooks too. Because he had to buy people by nature. He also bought a newspaper so it has become his mouthpiece, had make raises to the minimum wage out of sheer populism, he also owner a supermarket and has connections in the food middleman chain and he himself is also a middleman so he benefits from having the living wage really high. Since in Panama inmediate re-elections are forbidden by law he chose the Putin route. So we got a guy with no personal charisma and no archievements be the next president so martinelli can keep having control.
Eeep. That's awful. Populist clientelism sucks. And he sounds like president Carlos Andrés Pérez during his first term, except right-wing and less democratic (which didn't stop him from damaging our democracy anyways).
Let's weep under all our third-worldism.
^^ For a while I searched for an analogy for what you say, because you make it sound like the guy's way of buying support does actually benefit the people. And you know what I came up with? This Martinelli guy behaves kinda like a feudal overlord re-investing his money back in his domain.
Guess what, wealth disparity is rampant in panama so investing back on the domain only means the poor shmuck who got a turkey for christmas in exchange for his vote is gonna keep being poor, re-investing in the domain my ass He is also implicated in many cases of "tollay illegal sale or transaction" but because the Attorney General is at his command, nobody does jack shit. And he is syphoning money out of the state with his overprices and even more Concentrating the power of the state in the executive branch is a bad idea, it goes counter to keeping the powers separate because otherwise we end up with a president who requests the US Embassy to help him keep illegal tabs on his opposition.
Oh, I'm not saying my feelings for a feudal overlord occasionally tossing some money around are particularly warm, mind you.
He is also involved with Valter Lavitola and Silvio Berlusconi. We were supposed to have some new prison made and quite interestingly the money for the deal was spent but no prisons were built at all. Martinelli's son is also involved in that one. And Those two italian gents were also involved in soliciting prostitutes. And the new buses he got us to replace the old and outdated buses we had were for a colombian conglomerate who is either actively malicious or just inept. Their supply of buses is way under the demand. Because making a monopoly is a good idea. Right?
i.e.: Maduro is an idiot. Martinelli is a proffesional crook.
Getting Berlusconi to cooperate on shady deals, now that's an instant classic. It's like a rock band going on a concert tour with Yngwie Malmsteen.
This, by the way, reminds me of my personal poster-boy for corruption: a guy who stole the money meant for a bribe.
Oh, Maduro is an idiot, but the PSUV is not lacking in professional crooks. For another instant classic, briefcases full of dollars.
So, yeah, I know how you feel. If you don't mind me asking, how old were you when this whole sipping away of democracy began? I was ten years old when this "revolution" started, so I'm just old enough to be aware of it happening from the very beginning.
Our dismantling of democracy started when Martinelli started buying congressmen which was like three years ago so I was 18 or 19. The clientelism however was a problem that since 1990 we've had, Martinelli simple saw it as a way to gain power.
Yep. The more you explain, the more it sounds like a right-wing version of Venezuela (in our case, our clientelism problem started in the 70s during the oil boom, see Carlos Andrés Pérez). Unfortunately, it can always get worse.
But on a positive note, there's this:
It's what keeps me hopeful.
"For the entirety of my adult life I've been seeing how your ideology develops (yes, it's your ideology). I've seen, very slowly, how its theory turns to practice, and with it, how the nation slowly withers away. Freedoms severed, civic values tarnished, public services degraded, and a very long etc. All in the name of what?"
Interestingly enough, if the last sentence is "In the name of neoliberalism" (and the your is a generalized target), it becomes my life story. Though it's less Canada and more so the IMF's dreadful track record that strains my belief in Hanlon's Razor. Still, Stephen Harper's been doing his damned best to erode our liberties with all the spying on environmentalists and shutting down scientific programs; all in the name of oil.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind pro-capitalist rhetoric so much if it wasn't so irritating to my scientific sensibilities. So much of it relies on unscrutinized axioms such as GDP and a vaguely defined "human nature". I don't know much about economics, but I know that you can't just assume a conclusion and then explain everything based on it, and that's why economic theory fails to predict the future or even explain the present.
I'm definitely not a fan of Marxism, though I do entertain anarchist ideas often. I call myself a socialist knowing that it's a term that means whatever anyone wants it to mean, like most political terms. Most of all, unlike Maggie Thatcher, I believe there is an alternative and that there has to be an alternative, since it's obvious capitalism isn't going to bring down global temperatures or put out fires in Bangladesh.
If it helps, when you don't have to read through esoteric stuff and instead get to read through stuff that virtually all economists agree on (e.g. how price controls cause scarcity) it becomes really easy to understand (sometimes obvious in hindsight) and without having to feel like you're being lied to, and still see why at least some fundamental aspects of planned economies are unfeasible. Beyond the basic stuff, I suppose the best us plebs can do is read less opinion articles and more textbooks.
I'm a bit ambivalent towards the IMF. Its track record leaves something to be desired, but you could make the case that the situations that call for it are already delicate in the first place, and hey, it helped President Caldera.
They actually caused a famine in Malawi by forcing the country to sell off its grain reserves and ending agricultural subsidies, which only ended when they essentially told the IMF to piss off. If an average employee screwed up that badly, they would have gotten sacked immediately.
I agree that planned economies were bunk, but I think a lot of confusion stems from people assuming that when I'm talking about socialism, I'm talking about planned economies when I'm really advocating for something along the lines of workers' self management. The Marxist and anarchist schools of thought are significantly different, but few people talk about, say, Yugoslavia in capitalism vs communism debates.
If I may join in, I have a question about what change would workers' self-management bring. Say, a factory run by workers, it would still have to buy raw materials and sell its products from and to some other folks.
^^ Oh, I'm not going to defend the IMF (although I guess I sorta did), just saying that even it has a better excuse and track record than communism.
Also, colour me interested about the Yugoslavia capitalism vs. communism thing.
^ I think it says something about the reds that I can't answer that from personal experience. The only thing I can say about it is that the few cooperatives that caught on aren't big and don't seem any different than any other company.
Edit: On a completely related note, I'm going to do what I should've done a long time ago and format this computer. I've never formatted anything before so I'm kinda nervous.
Yugoslavia was the non-aligned Communist country, and Tito was more liberal than other leaders. What I know is that the economy was reasonably prosperous under the localized workers' self management system and completely fell apart after market liberalization. Also, there are plenty of reclaimed businesses and factories in Argentina run by the workers.
Honestly, as I have not had much experience with workers' self management, I cannot say much absolutely. But I find the idea intriguing since enterprises would be operated for the benefit and interest of the employees rather than for, say, some overseas multinational. That sounds like a system that would mitigate labour rights abuses from lousy safety standards in Bangladesh to getting fired for being too hot. And it's interesting that proponents of economic freedom tend to prefer the current top-down management system.
I think one of the most successful cooperatively run companies is Mondragon from the Spanish Basque Country. As far as I know it works like any other on the outside. I agree that switching to this kind of system is likely to improve sweatshop conditions and these sorts of things.
^^ Ahh, that's interesting, I'm gonna have to look up on the Yugoslavia thing.
Are you sure about the Argentina thing, though? The similarity in rethoric and economic policies between our governments (and Peron's) makes me suspicious about what "reclaimed" means.
Nooooiiiim!
^^, ^ Ahh, yeah, I bet they'd be nice to have in places with terrible labour conditions
It means that they were pretty much abandoned by their owners, then the workers started running them, then the owners wanted to claim them back, then the workers protested and I don't know how it ended. There's plenty of cooperative businesses here, though, a lot of insurance companies choose that model, and I think it suits them, there's still managers and CEOs and the like, though.
About Capitalism vs Communism. I think it's kind of silly to say, socialism failed, it is shitty in all these countries, because there's a very limited sample pool, capitalism is shitty in most countries too, and in some cases, the shitty socialist regime is miles better than the shitty capitalist regime that came before it (See Cuba, and compare it to, say, Haiti). I don't like communism, though, because its very ideals go against that which makes us thrive, but capitalism is also dangerous, particularly since one of its biggest pros, accountability, is muddled by the existence of corporations.
Cuba!?
*shudders*
Edit so my post isn't just a visceral reaction: Cuba might be better than Haiti, but that's not saying much, and it was a really nice country during the 50s before socialism came in (although also dictatorial), and even after it it had the advantage of being maintained by the USSR during the Cold War and us now (and for the 14 or so years it wasn't, it wasn't pretty), plus all the other shit Fidel Castro did in other countries (including us, twice).
Seriously, it's, like, the stand-in country for how awful socialism is (or however you might want to call it).
It was an awful country to in the 50s, literally America's whorehouse, revolutions don't happen by accident. It's also been the subject of an embargo by the US since forever, and while I used Haiti as an example, the life expectancy in Cuba is higher than all of Central America's, it's on par with the US.
And yes, Cuba sucks, but that's exactly the point, it sucked even more with capitalism. Marx believed the revolution would happen in a country like England, and yet it first happened in Russia, why? Because capitalism failed the Russian people, the same way it did Cubans. I'm not defending communism even as a concept, let alone to what it has led in practice, but capitalism (specially when left unchecked) can end up with the same issues.
I wouldn't put the blame for Russian revolution squarely on capitalism. Russia barely had any, I'd say it was halfway feudal even by Marxist definition, and that's not to mention the war. And if I remember correctly what was the issue with Cuba, like half of the blame lies in the mishandling of the situation (or inflexibility) on the part of the USA. They were too fond of Batista to let him go, so Castro took a turn to the reds.
Incidentally, one of my friends spent some time in Colombia the last year. She says, effigies of Che Guevara are like everywhere. Her flatmate had a picture of him over the bed. When she told him that at the same time, massive protests forced a boutique chain to stop selling Che T-shirt, the poor dude couldn't wrap his mind around that.
But then it came to be the USSR's literal whorehouse. And the embargo is just an excuse, only the US follows it (and then only partially; fun fact, the US is one of Cuba's big exporters of food), certainly doesn't offset the advantage of being subsidized, and it's not like it didn't happen for a socialist reason in the first place (expropriation of US companies), really, it's more a scapegoat than anything. And that's before getting to the absolute lack of personal freedom (most notably, the freedom to leave).
That said, beyond Cuba I don't see where we disagree, capitalism is far from perfect and all that, it has failed before and it will fail some more, but we still agree it's much better than the alternative, don't we?
There's more to life than binaries, and the extent that you're willing to downplay exploitation under capitalism shows that you're stuck in "lesser evil" mode. Communism may not be a viable alternative, but capitalism/socialism is a spectrum and Scandinavian countries have found prosperity and welfare under hybrid systems. Heck, Norway is a social democratic country that puts our Conservative government to shame in fiscal management.
If it weren't for capitalism, Panama might have never obtained independance without bloodshed. But one thing to put in mind is that capitalism is not democracy. Pinochet and Batista are as much capitalist as any. Capitalism is not the most viable alternative, it's the alternative that was bundled with free press.