Marxism working as predicted...

[Seth]

Venezuelan farmers ordered to hand over produce to state
As Venezuela's food shortages worsen, the president of the country's Food Industry Chamber has said that authorities ordered producers of milk, pasta, oil, rice, sugar and flour to supply their products to the state stores
Venezuelan farmers ordered to hand over produce to state
People queue up outside a supermarket in Caracas earlier this year Photo: AFP
Harriet Alexander

By Harriet Alexander

6:32PM BST 21 Jul 2015

Venezuela's embattled government has taken the drastic step of forcing food producers to sell their produce to the state, in a bid to counter the ever-worsening shortages.

Farmers and manufacturers who produce milk, pasta, oil, rice, sugar and flour have been told to supply between 30 per cent and 100 per cent of their products to the state stores. Shortages, rationing and queues outside supermarkets have become a way of life for Venezuelans, as their isolated country battles against rigid currency controls and a shortage of US dollars – making it difficult for Venezuelans to find imported goods.

Pablo Baraybar, president of the Venezuelan Food Industry Chamber, said that the order was illogical, and damaging to Venezuelan consumers.

"Taking products from the supermarkets and shops to hand them over to the state network doesn't help in any way," he said. "And problems like speculating will only get worse, because the foods will be concentrated precisely in the areas where the resellers go.

He pointed to statistics showing that two thirds of hoarders – or "bachaqueros", giant ants, as they are nicknamed in Venezuela – buy their goods from the three state-owned chains, to resell at a profit.

"Consumers will be forced to spend more time in queues, given that the goods will be available in fewer stores."

The state owns 7,245 stores, compared to more than 113,000 in private hands. Mr Baraybar said that many of the private shops were in densely-populated areas, meaning that people will now be forced to make longer journeys to the state stores.

Seven charts showing why Venezuela's economy is a basket case

The Chamber has asked the government for a meeting to discuss the plan, which they say they were not informed of.

"This does absolutely nothing to help with the shortages," he said, adding that the solution was for the government to increase national production.

In March, Venezuelans were so worried about food shortages and dimininshing stocks of basic goods, fingerprint scanners were installed in supermarkets in an attempt to crack down on hoarding.

Venezuela’s official rate of inflation hit 64 per cent last year – the highest in the world. The government hides the scale of shortages, but angry consumers regularly post photos of empty shelves on social media.

[Strontium Dog]

Just to put it into perspective, this is the country with the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Marxism doesn't even work when it's given the biggest winning lottery ticket in history.

[laklak]

They have no one to blame but themselves, though no doubt they'll blame the Big, Bad Norteamericanos. Personally I've have voted for damn near anyone else after a few years of wiping my ass with my hand. But at least they're all in it together, right? Forward, Comrades!

[JimC]

Fair enough, Seth.

But don't try extending this to how those "marxist" Scandinavian countries are going to collapse any day now...

[Seth]

Fair enough, Seth.

But don't try extending this to how those "marxist" Scandinavian countries are going to collapse any day now...

They run on the same basic economic and political principles and so they will fail too, eventually, when the OPM runs out, just like it did in Venezuela.

[JimC]

Fair enough, Seth.

But don't try extending this to how those "marxist" Scandinavian countries are going to collapse any day now...

They run on the same basic economic and political principles and so they will fail too, eventually, when the OPM runs out, just like it did in Venezuela.

What utter nonsense. Venezuela is running a tired old model of state control of virtually everything, which both you and I would recognise as at least a version of marxism, and doomed to fail. Couple that with corruption, inefficient bureaucrats and general third world infrastructure, and they have major problems.

The Scandinavian countries have a mixed economy with a very robust private sector; the lack of incentive and innovation characteristic of true marxist economies is not a feature of their systems.

[mistermack]

Fair enough, Seth.

Not fair enough at all. It's pure bollocks. Without the link to where the article is from.
Just another of Seth's crappy copy and paste posts from some right-wing rag.

What it ignores is that Venezuela is under economic attack from the US, and has been for more than ten years.
I'm sure it's full of corruption too, but to put it all down to socialism is just more Seth bollocks.

Socialist China is doing nicely, thank you, and will very soon push the USA into number two spot in world economics.
Schools in Africa are now teaching Chinese as the first foreign language, not English,

Criticism of China Owning U.S. Debt

To put China's ownership of U.S. debt in perspective, its holding of $1.2 trillion is even larger than the amount owned by American households.

U.S. citizens hold only about $959 billion in U.S. debt, according to the Federal Reserve.

Other large foreign holders of U.S. debt include Japan, which owns $912 billion; the United Kingdom, which owns $347 billion; Brazil, which holds $211 billion; Taiwan, which holds $153 billion; and Hong Kong, which owns $122 billion.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatt ... na-Own.htm
Venezuela not the only country in a mess.

Me, I don't owe anybody anything. How come capitalist America, after 230 years of independence and freewheeling capitalism, is in hock at all ?

[JimC]

mistermack wrote:

..."Socialist China"...

That's about as accurate as Seth's "Marxist Obama"...

They are currently a corrupt oligarchy working hand in glove with a home-grown coterie of the world's most rapacious capitalists...

[Seth]

Fair enough, Seth.

But don't try extending this to how those "marxist" Scandinavian countries are going to collapse any day now...

They run on the same basic economic and political principles and so they will fail too, eventually, when the OPM runs out, just like it did in Venezuela.

What utter nonsense. Venezuela is running a tired old model of state control of virtually everything, which both you and I would recognise as at least a version of marxism, and doomed to fail. Couple that with corruption, inefficient bureaucrats and general third world infrastructure, and they have major problems.

The Scandinavian countries have a mixed economy with a very robust private sector; the lack of incentive and innovation characteristic of true marxist economies is not a feature of their systems.

It will be when the OPM runs out. The critical failing of socialism, which is as Marx put it merely an intermediate step towards communism, is the root belief that the collective is more important than the individual and therefore all individuals are, at the core, mere cogs in the vast machinery of socialism who matter not at all insofar as policy making and enforcement are concerned. A natural component of this political concept is that just as all persons belong to the state, all property belongs to the state as well, and therefore the state may seize and dispose of any or all property it wishes to at any time and the individual has no right or power to prevent this...because they are nothing more than tools for use and disposal of the state.

This is fundamentally true in every socialist society on earth, including the socialist paradises you mention.

The problem occurs when the workers discover that the benefits they believe they deserve from the state as members of the collective, according to Marxist dogma, may be obtained without input of labor because such benefits accrue to them by right as members of the collective. What happens is that they cease working to produce wealth, turning instead to the absolute minimum amount of labor required to receive their "equal share" of the wealth of the collective. Soon, nobody's producing any actual wealth and people are working less and less as they see their benefits cut because nobody's inputting any more labor than they have to because there is no reward in doing so, since they get the same stuff whether they work or not.

We see this in places like Amsterdam and the UK in the idle dole-taking dependent class who do no work at all but cost society at least as much, and often more than a productive class member costs in terms of public benefits. In short they are economic drains on the system and soon enough, as in Venezuela, so many of them become dependent and refuse to work that nothing is being produced to meet basic needs, and that is when the government does what Venezuela's government is doing: it begins seizing the fruits of individual productive-class laborers without compensation in order to stave of rioting and rebellion.

And so the farmers, whose crops have been stolen from them, wisely refuse to plant more crops for next year and go on the dole like everyone else, as they should since it rewards them not at all to work harder than everyone else to produce food.

The only recourse for the state is to force them to work, which is pure unadulterated enslavement as practiced by Stalin and Mao, and death and starvation are the result.

Your utopias still exist because, and only because they have a), large natural resource reserves that can be exploited and sold on the free market; and b) remaining OPM created by the productive class that has not been sucked out of that class completely yet. But as soon as it is, those productive class members will simply stop producing or they will flee the taxation that ruins them for somewhere more amenable to capitalistic profit. As I've said time and again, money flows away from taxation like water flows downhill.

So, when all the natural resources have been extracted or can no longer be extracted for lack of technology, training and infrastructure, as in Venezuela, and all the productive class have either stopped working or have fled the country for greener pastures, your utopian states will crumble just like Venezuela. It's as inevitable as gravity.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

The critical failing of socialism, which is as Marx put it merely an intermediate step towards communism, is the root belief that the collective is more important than the individual and therefore all individuals are, at the core, mere cogs in the vast machinery of socialism who matter not at all insofar as policy making and enforcement are concerned. A natural component of this political concept is that just as all persons belong to the state, all property belongs to the state as well, and therefore the state may seize and dispose of any or all property it wishes to at any time and the individual has no right or power to prevent this...because they are nothing more than tools for use and disposal of the state.

In general, I wouldn't disagree with you here, at least as a description of the issues created when past political movements attempted to impose a complete, totalitarian version of socialism. They failed, and are now on the ash heap of history, and to the extent that Venezuela is attempting aspects of that program, they too will fail.

However, what is absurd is your attempt to ascribe such absolutist collectivism to countries such as Sweden or Norway, or for that matter the majority of modern, western societies such as Australia, NZ or the UK. They may have features you do not like in governments, in that they run educational and health care institutions on a state basis (with many a private enterprise competitor). However, they have a flourishing private sector, not in any danger of collapse, and it is only Norway that has the added benefit of oil revenues (very wisely invested for the future, in a truly capitalist manner, in the form of ownership of shares and properties...) Your assertion that they face immanent collapse (more than any other countries) has no rational support whatsoever.

[Hermit]

Just another of Seth's crappy copy and paste posts from some right-wing rag.

In this case originally published by The Telegraph (UK).

It amuses me how the lolbertardian keeps ripping off the work of others without as much as an acknowledgement of his sources, while his sig indicates his mindfulness of his own copyright.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There's a comma missing in the title, after working.

[mistermack]

mistermack wrote:

..."Socialist China"...

That's about as accurate as Seth's "Marxist Obama"...

They are currently a corrupt oligarchy working hand in glove with a home-grown coterie of the world's most rapacious capitalists...

Seth thinks Obama is Socialist. That makes China Marxist in Seth's threads.

I actually agree, there are hardly any real socialist countries on Earth these days. Maybe none at all. It's not a model that works. But bits of it are good.

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

The critical failing of socialism, which is as Marx put it merely an intermediate step towards communism, is the root belief that the collective is more important than the individual and therefore all individuals are, at the core, mere cogs in the vast machinery of socialism who matter not at all insofar as policy making and enforcement are concerned. A natural component of this political concept is that just as all persons belong to the state, all property belongs to the state as well, and therefore the state may seize and dispose of any or all property it wishes to at any time and the individual has no right or power to prevent this...because they are nothing more than tools for use and disposal of the state.

In general, I wouldn't disagree with you here, at least as a description of the issues created when past political movements attempted to impose a complete, totalitarian version of socialism. They failed, and are now on the ash heap of history, and to the extent that Venezuela is attempting aspects of that program, they too will fail.

However, what is absurd is your attempt to ascribe such absolutist collectivism to countries such as Sweden or Norway, or for that matter the majority of modern, western societies such as Australia, NZ or the UK. They may have features you do not like in governments, in that they run educational and health care institutions on a state basis (with many a private enterprise competitor). However, they have a flourishing private sector, not in any danger of collapse, and it is only Norway that has the added benefit of oil revenues (very wisely invested for the future, in a truly capitalist manner, in the form of ownership of shares and properties...) Your assertion that they face immanent collapse (more than any other countries) has no rational support whatsoever.

I didn't say collapse was imminent, though it is in some cases, I said it is inevitable, and it is.

Socialism is a creeping cancer that metastasizes slowly at first but with increasing speed till it kills the host. It takes root because it sounds like a good idea, particularly to the poor and those who feel disenfranchised by income inequality. The fundamental concept of socialism is class envy and warfare. It requires an enemy to rally the proles against, and that enemy is always "the rich", which is cast as a privileged class that, in the false zero-sum calculus of socialism's second principle, says that the wealthy only get that way by stealing from others, rather than the essential truth of capitalism which is that wealth is not a limited pool that takes from on to benefit another but rather wealth is unlimited and may be generated and acquired by anyone who has the skill and drive to do so.

As socialism grows the political and social urge to make everyone "equal" in order to be "fair" leads to attacks upon and the eventual destruction of the productive wealth-generating members of the society who are cast as evil because they have more than others and refuse to "share" their "good fortune" with everyone else...none of whom worked as hard to create the wealth.

Inevitably, as the producers are hammered down into proletarian "equality", they simply stop producing any more than anyone else, which is always the absolute minimum of work that will "entitle" them to the government benefits they "deserve".

And that's how socialism always devolves into poverty, misery, starvation and death. Always. Every single time, sooner or later, because it must do so as a function of basic human nature.

[Seth]

mistermack wrote:

..."Socialist China"...

That's about as accurate as Seth's "Marxist Obama"...

They are currently a corrupt oligarchy working hand in glove with a home-grown coterie of the world's most rapacious capitalists...

Seth thinks Obama is Socialist.

Obama is not a socialist, he is a lifetime hard-core Marxist. He was raised and educated by Marxists. His friends are Marxists. His ideology is Marxism, and he plays a Progressive to the world in order to fool the useful idiots of Marxism into thinking he's not a Marxist, but he is.