I was proud of libcom a few years back when some posters (i can't remember names) pointed out, with good economic analysis, that chavez was a phantom, in the teeth of alot of leftist adulation. i didn't have their level of statistical competence but i knew a statist with a personality cult when i saw one.
and now:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/americas/venezuelans-ransack-stores-as-hunger-stalks-crumbling-nation.html
this is what happens when you claim that socialism can be based in the market.
I think it's pretty clear
I think it's pretty clear that the 20th century and into the 21st has been marred by 'nationalist-socialist development states'. The trick is that the political-economy of development is a Gordian knot that the saber of socialism in one country is not really fit to cut. How do development-socialists address land reform, emerging relations of petty production in agriculture? How do they address a country's economy being linked almost entirely to the export of one or a few resources, and relying on food imports?
Arguably in the best of situation, with political actors holding the clearest of revolutionary politics, it's still an insurmountable problem. Most likely because so much of it is not a matter of individual choice, or even political choice on the level of the national proletariat.
If that's the case, it does reach the level of severe tragedy (for the Venezuelan workers). It also does a major discredit to the idea of oil-rent socialism. The idea was basically to draw money for state investment by taking advantage of high oil prices. Some argue that they were trying to diversify the economy. But it's clear that a big part of 'the working class taking power' (socialism) involves having reasonable control over food supplies. This they did not have. This comes as a result of a failure to take seriously the need for internationalism. With oil prices low, Venezuela is on the brink.
petey wrote: this is what
petey
... This is what happens when socialism refuse to be based in the market.
If oilprices is to be blamed for Venezuelas crisis then obviously other countries would be in trouble too. No the real problem of Venezuela lies in corruption and anti market politics such as fixed pricing due to ignorance towards demand and supply. Obviously conducting such disastrous politics the economy can only go one way and its down into the abyss.
That doesn't make sense on
That doesn't make sense on several levels.
1) oil plays a central and almost singular role in Venezuelan economy
2) other economies ARE hurting
3) what in God's name do you even mean by 'supply and demand'? You have said nothing with that phrase. Supply and demand of what? Why?
Pennoid wrote: That doesn't
Pennoid
1) If you look at Venezuelas GDP it divides into
How is oil gonna be the most singular role when service and agriculture already covers 64,5%?
https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/country-data/venezuela-gdp-country-report
2) True and other economies are booming like Indias. If there is no demand for oil, you can produces something else instead and its no problem because there will be a demand somewhere. And if you should refuse to produce something else and just wanna produce the same one thing and if it should fail, then you are the problem not the idea of the market.
3) Supply is what is being produced, demand is what is being wanted and from that everything flows. It goes for everything that has a demand and is legal/accepted by the community.
Anyway can you explain me if Venezuela had not entered the market, and instead gave away their oil to foreign entities or refused to share it and just stored it, how would that have benefited Venezuela and the people? How would that ever have contributed to anything for the oil workers and the social sector?
????? GDP has naff all to do
????? GDP has naff all to do with the importance of oil to the Venezuelan economy, hint Oil is exported so has nothing to do with Domestic product. I.e. within a country, you've just listed the employment and domestic market.
http://www.worldstopexports.com/venezuelas-top-10-exports/
Oil: US$34.3 billion (90.6% of total exports)
Gems, precious metals: $922.1 million (2.4%)
Organic chemicals: $583.4 million (1.5%)
Iron and steel: $419.3 million (1.1%)
Ores, slag, ash: $375.6 million (1%)
Aluminum: $261.8 million (0.7%)
Inorganic chemicals: $223.6 million (0.6%)
Fertilizers: $146.3 million (0.4%)
Fish: $81.8 million (0.2%)
Electronic equipment: $53 million (0.1%)
Like most "market experts" your incredibly poor on even the basics.
Reddebrek wrote: ????? GDP
Reddebrek
I know what i have listed lol, you dont have to tell me. Export is not an accurate measure of the economic activity since the economic activity is greater than what is exported.
Don't you get that for an
Don't you get that for an economy like Venezuela or almost any developing country, it is absolutely necessary to get hold of foreign exchange in order to not pay insane costs for imports. And typically developing economies have to import quite a bit, especially tech but sometimes also energy and food. This is pretty basic stuff.
Gulai Polye wrote: Reddebrek
Gulai Polye
Yes and neither is GDP, or GNP or any of the other measures for economic activity on their own. And in all of them in totality because they can't account for informal trade and payments and or illegal trade and payments. Again you're a novice when it comes to economics, you haven't even grasped the very basics.
You argued that oil was not important to Venezuela because services make up the majority of GDP. How do you know those services aren't tied to revenue brought in by oil exports? The money to finance services has to come from somewhere and I've just shown you that Venezuela's exports make up over 90% of all of it's exports, and yet you're still smugly trying to deny that Oil is an important factor in the Venezuelan economy. Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say about economics?
It's a little more complex.
It's a little more complex. What would put under the rubric of 'services'? Would it include government expenditure? Since the source that you chose cites the CIA fact book lets see how they define services
Government activities like this one: PVDSA is the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company. It has activities in exploration, production, refining and exporting oil, as well as exploration and production of natural gas. Since its founding on 1 January 1976 with the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry, PDVSA has dominated the oil industry of Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
Now, that's how *they* account for economic activities and it's in line with mainstream economic thinking. It's interesting because for main-stream economists value is created whenever there is exchange of a good or service no matter the sector no matter what the activity. The classicals (Smith, Ricardo, Marx) would have balked at this notion.
Gulai Polye wrote: petey
Gulai Polye
Pennoid is correct. Nigeria is in deep shit; Angola, too, and Russia hasn't been doing too well, has it? Somebody else might point out that Saudi Arabia has reached into the international debt markets for the first time in.............and that it is arranging an IPO for a portion of Aramco.
How about Brazil? Can we try Brazil? Hurting? Yeah, just a tad. Bolivia will be next, and sooner than you think. Iran got its sanctions removed just in time to enter the room when the band was playing "The Party's Over." Iraq? Ummh....production costs in Iraq are about $1/barrel-- on a par with Saudi Arabia, but you don't think the civil war there has anything to do with the distressed state of the economy.
Meanwhile, oil plays such an outsize role because the the tremendous concentration of capital in the sector; because of the fact that oil provided almost all of the country's hard currency earnings with which it pays for........imports, and its international debt.
Like Greece, the Bolivarian "revolutonaries" in Venezuela have decided its better to starve the people then not pay the international debt. Wonderful. Tells you what the future of Venezuela looks like-- Greece, dancing to Cumbia.
Chavez's "socialism" was nothing other than the repeat of the oft-repeated and always failing strategy of "sowing the oil" to create a dynamic economy. Didn't work then, doesn't work now. Oil production is very much like a tourist-driven economy. The economic footprint of the industry is so huge, that the level of support it requires exhausts the rest of the economy, actually works against development.
I'm not sympathetic to the
I'm not sympathetic to the Bolivaran strategy; its failure is clear. But repudiation of international debt would appear to require an extensive amount of international co-ordination to secure the economy from collapse, no?
Of course, the inevitable repudiation of international debt; giving the finger to the international bourgeoisie (and more) should be in the program of any 'socialist' political party worth a damn, *from day one* and that it ought to position itself in tandem with socialist movements for an international seizure of power.
Pennoid, Do you want to
Pennoid, Do you want to answer these questions?
"Anyway can you explain me if Venezuela had not entered the market, and instead gave away their oil to foreign entities or refused to share it and just stored it, how would that have benefited Venezuela and the people? How would that ever have contributed to anything for the oil workers and the social sector"?
I can have a go, if you'd
I can have a go, if you'd like.
Basically, you can't have socialism in one country. Nationalized industries still operate on the global capitalist market - that supply and demand you're so fond of... So, of course, in the absence of a internationalist socialist movement coming to power, the strategies you outlined above aren't going to work.
Again, pretty basic stuff on both mainstream economics and anarchist theory.