I’m more talking about the mid level security officials who keep the regime afloat. The people that have positions of responsibility and power within the military, militias, secret police, etc.
If those people abandon the regime, then the regime becomes much more fragile.
I do believe that socialism as a term is rather schizophrenic in nature. As Marx used it it was necessary transition to communism, but we now stick it everywhere, even to pristine Nordics. They are social states - as opposed as in individualistic states (you know, like Murrica, me and my gun first) - , but not socialistic as in left to right in original politic speak. In Venezuela and I’d say most other “socialistic” cases they don’t even come close even to Marx idea (never read it first hand, to be honest), novadays it is just some boogymen left-right definition of chaotic authocratic regime that has lost its touch with reality. Just my 5c. Send it to the devil’s advocate.
For the most part, people on the right use ‘socialism’ as a scare tactic to make sure people do not subscribe to ‘social democracy’
Communism, socialism, social democracy & democratic socialism are different things.
Communism and socialism do not work economically, and they lead to dictatorships too.
Social democracy is capitalism with redistribution and regulation to take the harsh edges off. Progressive taxes, labor laws, environmental laws, universal health care, affordable college, affordable daycare etc.
Social democracy can work very well. That is why the right tries so hard to demonize it. Once people get a taste of it, they won’t want to give it up. Thats what happened with medicare, once people had it they won’t give it up.
I thought dictators led to dictatorships?
Not sure average people in Venezuela care too much about academic critiques of Marxist state socialism vs hard-core Communism right now. 
Sure they don’t. But political hacks don’t care about them. They care about trying to use them to push the idea that “socialism” is bad. And I use the quotes since that term has been completely changed in the US, to the point that social democrats like AOC and Sanders call themselves “socialists” and are considered far left.
That’s what happened with Venezuela too. People loved all the free shit Maduro was giving them, right up until the money ran out and they started killing zoo animals to stave off starvation.
Do you think Chavez / Maduro can fairly be described as “socialists”?
They are doing that due to economic mismanagement. Either way this is why democracy is important. Once Maduro fucked things up, he should’ve been voted out of office. The legislature and courts should’ve held him in check in a democracy.
Threaten to take away taxpayer funded education, social security or medicare. see how the American people react. Even the tea party would riot.
In America we have enough wealth for universal health care, free public college, subsidized daycare and an expansion of alternative energy. We just aren’t using the wealth properly.
We all know that conservatives love having a big tee-hee about “teh Venezuela, teh socialism”, but fail to mention that it’s a single-export economy whose fortunes rose and fell with petroleum prices, as tends to happen with countries that face resource windfalls.
Of course that’s not Venezuela’s only problem. They have also made extremely questionable investments including giving a half million dollars to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee. Wonder why the evil Venezuelan socialists are such good buddies of Trump?
LOL what kind of diseased mind does it take to think that “America should stay out of Latin America” equals “yay socialism”?
I mean, America makes a great show of promoting “democracy”, but when Latin Americans elect left-of-center governments, America supports death squads to overthrow and undermine them. It seems like a matter of basic ethics to stop fucking around in other people’s governments, but I guess Americans are offended by the very idea that other countries might choose different forms of government.
It’s less about promoting socialism than promoting the idea that America should stay in its own fucking lane when it comes to democratically elected governments, because America isn’t exactly a paragon of democratic ideals.
I think it has more to do with the labels.
Why didn’t the other single-export economies whose fortunes rise and fall with petroleum prices have to resort to eating their zoo animals?
Because they took steps to reduce their dependence on imported food. Because they have more domestic ownership of their mineral wealth, so there’s no pushback when they try to use their mineral wealth in their own national interests. Also Venezuela’s oil is more expensive for various reasons.
Compare with a command economy like Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family can simply say “we will now spend more of our revenue on developing food capacity, and you will die if you oppose us.” Or compare with a robust democracy like Norway, where you have an educated citizenry who are democratically empowered to make choices in their own national interest.
Venezuela was a tug-of-war between the people’s government and foreign owned oil companies who exported most of the profit. Chavez was attempting to force land reforms to ramp up national food production, but the private companies weren’t having it. While that fight was playing out, oil prices collapsed, and then they were screwed no matter which way it went.
Exclusive: Kremlin-linked contractors help guard Venezuela’s Maduro
Still a bit sketchy from limited sources but it appears that private military contractors from Wagner group deployed into Venezuela. Those are the same people that have carried out the plausible deniability tasks for Russia in Ukraine and Syria along with other places. They are generally believed to be under the supervision of the GRU. A named Cossack paramilitary source is claiming around 400 deployed. The unnamed sources put it lower.
Russia has been propping up Maduro’s government with a combination of loans and buying up the Venezuelan oil industry. Russia also flew nuclear capable strategic bombers to Venezuela and TASS floated coverage about the possibility of setting up an airbase for them. If Maduro gets forced out they stand to lose billions of investment and airbase access. It wouldn’t be entirely surprising if they were supporting Maduro with Wagner group mercenaries. There’s a lot of Russian money riding on Maduro retaining power.
Bad. If true, this is starting to look like Syria.
Was it Wagner guys that we blew up in Syria?
Wagner and others. The Syrian military was part of the task force. Without digging further than the wikipedia article there were two Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps linked militia groups on the receiving end of American firepower at Khasham as well.
It’s probably important to point out that there are other options the Russians have used alongside Wagner mercenaries in hybrid operations outside of Russia. There are various Cossack groups that are even recognized in law with authority to assist Russian police in public control internally. Various other paramilitary organizations can and do crop up that aren’t directly tied to Wagner. We’ve also seen Russian troops out of uniform or without insignia involved in places where they want to deny direct involvement. They’ve also fielded AAA (Advise, Assist, and Accompany) units where Russian leaders help local forces or paramilitaries. Wagner is one of the major players. It’s certainly not the only player in this space for Russia. This could be real and still not be Wagner.
Obscurity about just who the little green men actually are can help the deniability.
that is entirely nonsense. The Gulf states are effectively entirely dependent on imported food, they have no real choice, and the silly state backed schemes that have existed are uneconomic, environmental disasters in progress.
The avoidance of crisis has been thanks to rational economic management, domestic economies outside of oil that have not been subject to irrational economic policy à la Venezuela and further the economic policy since the 1980s that has sought to diversify their investment income sources in placing excess revenues into wealth funds that invest internationally to diversify the income and the risk for the state.
While the models are not the vision of the American free market liberatarian purists, they are very much the models of the market based if state guided capitalist investment and market development. They are in complete contradiction to the incoherent populist-Leftism of the Chavistas.
also nonsense.
Fiction.
Because it is heavy and heavily contaminated by heavy materials.
Plus of course the state oil company has not reinvested in the modernizations of its productive technology since the Chavez era changed it to a cash machine.
KSA is not a command economy.
It is a mixed economy where wasteful state employment enterprises exist alongside a private sector that lives off of rents from the state on the domestic economy but invests entirely rationally outside of the KSA domestic economy - the modern generation of the Saudi elite place their capital outside for the private returns.
It is pure fantasy to promote the idea KSA having not gone into economic crisis over “food capacity” - they import 80% of the consumption and that is not changed by the crazy uneconomic and environmental disasters (usage of the fossil waters for irrigation) of the state promoted domestic production has anything to do with anything.
KSA has not gone into crisis because the Economic ministry has a rational management of their excess profits and the sovereign fund investments have been placed internnationally in a mostly rational capitalistic investment program. Their balancing revenues plus a long-standing rational management of the state oil company keeping it walled off from the corruption - run as its own long-term empire in most ways - is what has kept them from economic crisis.
This is in complete contrast to the Venezuellan case.
this is Chavista fictions, completely economically illiterate.
The problem of the Venezuela was always a highly distorted internal market that suffered structurally from what we call The Dutch Disease, - and inf act the history of the Venezuelan oil industry shows this - and a lack of the coherent policy to set off the effects. It is certian the pre Chavista governments did not address well and indeed the domestic oligarchies impeded a rational economic reform that would have challenged the concetration of the wealth among the oligarchic families, but this has nothing to do with foreign oil companies evil machinations over “exporting most of the profit.”
There were certainly paths to more economic equality promoting economic reforms that also helped address the Dutch Disease that structurally has historically afflicted the oil/hydrocarbons economies - the data shows this across the various countries and economic policy models - but these were not the policies that the populist economically illiterate Chavista Left adopted.
The responsability of the economic collapse of the Venezuela is fully and 100 percent with the economically illiterate populism of the Chavistas.
One does not need to adopt the American liberatarian view of economics to see that. The fairy tales about evil foreign oil companies are the emotionally compelling narratives, but they are fictions as explanations of the domestic collapse.
I’m not saying that you are incorrect. Indeed you are correct, but your conclusion does not make it necessarily a desirable result.
Of course when people are given a benefit, say “affordable daycare” meaning that someone else is chipping in to pay a part of their daycare bill, they like that and don’t want to give it up.
If you give me $30k/yr to supplement my income, I like the program. I will continue to vote for the program. I will be disappointed if the program is discontinued.
The question for societies is not whether beneficiaries of free money like being given free money and continue to vote for it. That will always happen.