Only a 6 minute video and he managed to fit in:
- Chavez and Maduro betraying the revolution and not building socialism,
- Maduro outlawing “the actual communists”,
- Venezuela supposedly never took any serious steps to diversify its economy from oil,
- Russian and Chinese imperialism,
- Some big bourgeoisie are “puppets of China and Russia”,
- Russian imperialism in Ukraine,
- China debt-trapping Venezuela.
His conclusion: “we should not advocate for return of Maduro to power”.
He also managed to confuse the separate events of the US striking the fishing boats and the US pirating the oil tankers arriving at “these boats were supposedly transporting drugs while many were in reality obviously oil tankers going to Cuba” as if he didn’t pay any attention before and did some last-minute research before making the video.
My biggest criticism was the whole
He doesn’t address the steps they took and show why they were not “serious” to him, he just claims they aren’t.
Not only did Chavez nationalize many industries, but he established communal councils throughout the country. These communal councils receive funds from the state enterprises and the right to decide how to distribute them into the community. They are also armed.
This significantly extends proletarian power because it means that Venezuela’s government is not just the party but an enormous network of armed communal councils throughout the country that directly have material interests in supporting the government and the state-owned enterprises because they directly receive financial support from the government.
That is something people often miss in the propaganda that paints Venezuela as if it was entirely ran by Maduro personally. If you topple the president, PSUV will just elect a new president. If you topple PSUV, then now you will still have to deal with the sea of communal councils throughout the whole country that are all armed and aligned with Chavismo.
Maduro also did a good job in consolidating power on the national level as well, something Chavez did not accomplish before he died and is where Allende failed. Allende also expanded grassroots participation with his industrial belts, but did not consolidate power on the national level so he was constantly fighting with the other parties and eventually overthrown. The fact Maduro got through maybe the most difficult step we would expect from a reformist approach is very impressive.
I am sure there are economic criticisms we can make of them like the economy not being great and not being diverse enough, but given they are under brutal sanctions it is hard to really expect much. The claim that not achieving wealth or diversity is proof a country is not socialist is also the same argument Maoists use against Cuba, but it’s just a bad argument because diversifying is hard without a lot of money and external investments which sanctioned countries don’t have access to.
Venezuela did diversify. For example, its communes developed agricultural cooperatives in order to achieve food self-sufficiency. However more complex industries like pharmaceuticals, green energy, automobiles, etc can’t be built overnight. We are not talking about 19th century standards of industry, 21st century industry is infinitely more complex. Venezuela didn’t have an opportunity to absorb Western tech like China did.
What a great comment! Thank you for investigating Venezuela and for describing the enormous achievements of the Venezuelan gov’t.
But of course, if you do achieve wealth and diversity, it’s because you betrayed the Revolution and became capitalist. It’s Parenti’s unfalsifiable orthodoxy, but applied in reverse.