Chavez is da man

[Arrian]

Whatever - it's Venezuela's choice & Venezuela's problem.

Commies don't come to power if the other side is doing a good job. Seriously, the Right in Venenzuela ****ed up bigtime and is now paying the price. Let's just hope they don't go off the deep and end whack Chavez & start a civil war or install some general as a strongman.

-Arrian

[Dinner]

The sad thing is that 20 years from now when the average Venezuelan is worse off and scratching his head the commies & socialists will still be saying communism/socialism works. It just hasn't been implimented correctly!

If something is so difficult to impliment that every single person who's tried in the last 100 years has failed then maybe it's just to impractical to be useful.

[Arrian]

The sad thing, IMO, is that it seems very likely that neither side (Chavez, Chavez-opponents) really gives a rats ass about the average Venezuelan. This is true, to some degree, of most politicians, but it seems worse down there.

-Arrian

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The sad thing is that 20 years from now when the average Venezuelan is worse off and scratching his head the commies & socialists will still be saying communism/socialism works. It just hasn't been implimented correctly!

If something is so difficult to impliment that every single person who's tried in the last 100 years has failed then maybe it's just to impractical to be useful.

Chavez is not only socialism.

Chavez is a blend of populism, personification, and socialism. The first flaw of Socialism in the past century (violent rise to power) has been avoided, but the second flaw (personified power) hasn't. Chavezism terribly lacks political thought, in order to make the system viable without Chavez.

Right-wing populism would suffer from similar flaws, and risk getting to the same results. South America has already experienced it.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The sad thing is that 20 years from now when the average Venezuelan is worse off and scratching his head the commies & socialists will still be saying communism/socialism works. It just hasn't been implimented correctly!

If something is so difficult to impliment that every single person who's tried in the last 100 years has failed then maybe it's just to impractical to be useful.

wtf. Are you saying is has been?

[Agathon]

The sad thing, IMO, is that it seems very likely that neither side (Chavez, Chavez-opponents) really gives a rats ass about the average Venezuelan

Chavez does and that's the reason that the right are after him. The average Venezuelan is poor.

[Arrian]

If you actually believe that Chavez cares about the common man (except to the extent that any politician that needs votes does), then I think you are naive.

I did not attempt to say that he is exceptional in this regard.

It just seems to me that the political options in Latin America tend to be extremes: hard core right wing psuedo-fascists or left-wing "populist" cult-of-personality types. I figure Chavez is likely to be the latter.

If you want to think Chavez is a beacon of virtuous socialism, go ahead. I don't consider it likely, but hey, it's possible. My main hopes are these: 1) The opposition doesn't resort to killing him and/or starting a civil war; and 2) Chavez acts in a manner consistent with that of a committed democract.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

If you actually believe that Chavez cares about the common man (except to the extent that any politician that needs votes does), then I think you are naive.

Yes, I actually bothered reading about it and talked to some Venezuelans.

Chavez is a populist, but he's not some cynical fascist like Peron. He's been pretty scrupulous in observing democratic forms thus far. He's been responsible for some pretty hefty gains in literacy and health care. We shall see. If I were the average Venezuelan, I would vote for Chavez, since he's actually started doing something, whereas the racist scum who used to run the place didn't give a crap about ordinary people.

[Arrian]

I can match "done some reading" but I haven't talked to Venezuelans about it. Then again, since that's likely to be a small sample size, the results of polling a couple of individual Venezuelans might not really be very useful. If you happen to speak to people who like him, he may sound like the 2nd coming of Christ. If you talk to the son of some businessman, he's probably Satan incarnate. I'll go with the election results, personally. What was it, 58% pro? Sounds like he's reasonably popular. Let's see how it looks in a few years (if we're even paying attention then - in fact, if we are, it's likely things have gone wrong).

-Arrian

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Sikander
What progress was made that isn't explained by 17 years of peace in 1970 vs a breather in years of civil war?

Go ahead, do your explaining.

Originally posted by Sikander
How so?

I am not going into the details of that...

Originally posted by Sikander
But it beats starving to death, which is in part what drove so many people there.

Not so. Deaths due to starvation were very rare, due to the rationing policies.

Originally posted by Sikander
And for most it wasn't an easy journey. Not only was no one helping you emmigrate, there was considerable effort put into keeping people from doing so.

AFAIK, the local authorities turned a blind eye to this. Locally, the industrialisation was gaining momentum, and cheap labour was desperately needed.

Originally posted by Sikander
See above. Tens of millions starved to death during Mao's mismanagement of the economy.

Supposedly around 20 million people died during the Great Leap Forward, but scholars such as J.K. Fairbank dispute this.

Besides, even the US would face a world of hurt when saddled with a drought of such massive scale.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Chavez has presided over a near implosion of the Venuzuelan economy. I believe the economy is down nearly 33% since he took office.

With lots of help from the opposition.

Originally posted by Oerdin
Supposedly, it is because of he has nationalized the businesses of his political rivals and then handed them over to his cronies who have no education or know how in running large businesses.

If that were the case, how would you explain all these big companies doing lockouts?