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.

  • burlemarx@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    27 days ago

    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.