The government has routinely nationalized both foreign and domestic businesses and expensive infrastructure, and sets prices on goods. When this caused inflation and shortages they responded by nationalizing more businesses and setting more prices, and trying to enforce a false exchange rate. I'm not going to bother explaining how this is self defeating since everywhere this has been tried the same things happen, and if you can't figure it out it's because you don't want to.

There are plenty of places where buisnesses have been nationalised, from many arab states and norway's state-owned oil buisnesses to nationalised rail, post, and other services in many western countries.

I don't dispute that the country has been run badly but calling states that do these things communist makes almost every state communist.

There's nationalized in the sense of, only the government can control this resource, it is owned by the people. Good. Then the government builds it and spends money on it. If you have a good government you get a good resource for the people. If you have a bad government you get a mess.

The nationalization referred to in Venezuela, is someone invests their own resources in building something, legally with the approval of the government. After they have built it, the government comes with people with guns, and says, "this belongs to us now" and either the owners go away, or go to jail, or get shot. Is that what they do in Norway? Do you think smart, capable people with access to capital want to work in Venezuela? Or maybe all those people left and provide their services to other countries.

And by the way, this Venezuelan kind of nationalization sounds too me like the kind that Marx was advocating, it's real socialism too.

You are making strawman attacks against me. Nowhere did I claim that the situation isn't bad in Venuezala, or that I support the government. I am simply saying that calling it socialist for the actions it has taken is extremely similar to what western countries have done and continue to do.

For examples of already-existing companies being nationalised, see RBS in the UK, or Cardiff Airport in wales. After the 9/11 attacks in the US, all airport security firms were forcibly nationalised.

If you are claiming that the definition of socialist requires it to be done with guns instead of money, I don't know what to say. However be aware that if somebody did create an oil company in norway against the law then I imagine that some nice people from the government would have to come and ask them not to. If they refused despite that - they may actually have to make use of the state monopoly of violence.

Right, but to your original point. You said Venezuela is a capitalist country. Is Norway socialist because they used capital to acquire assets, and Venezuela capitalist because they used force to acquire assets?

I don't think most people here have a problem with a democratic country with socialist leanings, which maintain a largely market economy. People have a problem with populist leaders who promise to enrich the poor by forcefully taking the means of production away from "capitalist pigs" and using the wealthy and the West as a scapegoat for all their problems. No one complains about Sweden and Norway, but the propaganda that goes around in Latin America is the more violent kind. And I don't see how that doesn't fall under the umbrella of socialism.

It's very wrong from bufferoverflow's viewpoint.

From my viewpoint (I'm Norwegian), Venezuela doesn't look leftist at all. Chavez and Maduro look like just regular dimwit autocrats, they don't look like Einar Gerhardsen, Tage Erlander, Olof Palme or Poul Nyrup Rasmussen at all. Chavez/Maduro look more like those horribles the US tends to prop up around Latin America, except that their veneer of rhetoric uses unusual vocabulary.

Maduro is the kind of leftist who'll rather repay PVDSA debts than feed the poor.

But from bufferoverflow's viewpoint it's different. Maduro uses leftist vocabulary and fucks up, therefore.

> Chavez and Maduro are not leftist.

Are you serious? Do you know anything about the beloved "Bolivarian Revolution" and its policies?

I do, yes.

South America had had a lot of regimes that handed out state funds to this group and that. The Bolivarian Revolution has that. But to which group? From what I've read Mission Habitat housing has gone mostly to Chavez/Maduro voters, for example. Friends of the local party functionaries.

I suppose you might say that's still better than letting the rich and corrupt help themselves to public resources.

Venezuela has a totalitarian government who nationalized industries and implemented heavy price controls, putting those who don’t comply in jail (or to death by government militia).

I can’t imagine how this could even be compared to market economies such as Denmark or Sweden.

In America, the general view seems to be that any move from politicians to move towards economies like Denmark and Sweden are "socialist". Therefore they conflated to have no difference between Denmark and Venezuela and the USSR.

It's an extention of the absolutism in politics that has grown more and more, especially I think since 2008.

I'm not sure why you were downvoted, this isn't entirely incorrect per se.

In political dialog, too often "socialism" and "communism" are equated together in this country incorrectly. Venezuela and Sweden usually aren't directly compared together, but what happens is that failed authoritarian central-planned nations like Venezuela are often used as boogeymen against "socialism" in general, including socialist policies (like, say, a universal healthcare -- which is not socialist per se, but has some elements if there is large central planning) that have nothing to do with why Venezuela failed, and are implemented with some decent success in other countries.

Heck our own current president even used Venezuela as a boogeyman against "socialism" in general fairly recently. (https://www.newsweek.com/trump-was-laughed-world-leaders-dis...)

It nationalized oil - just like norway :)

As for price controls, this happens all the time in countries in the west, ranging from farming subsidies to taxes on sugary foods. Another example where this often happens is minimum price controls per unit of alcohol

Yes the government hasn't been great at human rights, but that doesn't make it socialist.

It’s nothing like Norway, no matter how many smiley faces you put over the citizens killed by the Venezuelan government.

Price controls are a socialist measure. Name a country that has impelemented Venezuela-style price control, where business owners either sell at government-defined prices of face imprisonment, and you’ll spot a socialist leader doing it “for the people”.

The UK. You cannot sell alchohol too cheaply. We have price controls per unit. There are literally thousands of such controls in most contries.

California. They control the price of electricity in the state.

And yes, these are laws. If you break them, you go to prison.

Are you being purposefully dense? I’m not talking about isolated price controls in a few products. I’m talking about generalized price controls that cause shortages and hunger. I’m talking about going to jail for trying to sell food above the price you bought it from a producer.

Do you honestly believe Norway, the UK and California are anything like that?

But I am objecting to the idea that doing these things makes a country communist. I will refer again to the generalised food price controls during wartime in the USA and beyond - were these countries communist at that time?

For another example of a country that has wide-ranging price controls on basic foodstuffs, look to the 2008 situation in mexico.

No, price controls are always counterproductive, but they don’t automatically make a country communist. I never said they did. In fact I never used the word communist in this discussion until now.

Venezuela is socialist because it combines destructive economic measures with collectivist ideology, takeover of institutions like the Supreme Court by Party supporters, violent government-backed militias, fraudulent elections, cult of personality, etc.

In summary, all the usual traits of a totalitarian left wing government.

> Venezuela is socialist because it combines destructive economic measures with collectivist ideology, takeover of institutions like the Supreme Court by Party supporters, violent government-backed militias, fraudulent elections, cult of personality, etc.

Except for the phrase “collectivist ideology”, none of that has anything to do with socialism at all.

In theory? Maybe. In the real world those traits have been present every time.

> In the real world those traits have been present every time.

No, they haven't. There's a whole lot of places that have had socialism will without any of them (and lots of non-socialist regimes with all of them.)

Those things are also present in lots of places that are not at all communist.

Correlation does not imply causation. It also doesn't mean they are literally the same thing.

Consider zimbabwe or libya or syria - they all have these things and I don't imagine you consider them all communist.

Well, Mugabe was a Marxist. Gaddafi's government was the "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya". I don't know if Assad has any ideology, but his party is the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and he has been supported by Venezuelan and Nicaraguan dictators, Algeria's National Liberation Front, South Africa's ANC, etc.

Every single one of the things that you just listed are present in a many parts of the developing world. Most of these places are not considered communist.

In fact I would say those things you said perfectly describe a country that is a Dictatorship - but there are lots of those that are not socialist.

I assumed that you thought they were communist because you disagreed with my original post which claimed that they were not.

The term “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not a coincidence.

You seem to be making the argument that all dictatorships are communist. I can assure you this is not true, and would be surprised if you cannot think of any examples of non-communist dictators.

I'm making the argument in the opposite direction. Communism and socialism end up as dictatorships, when not already bootstrapped as one.

There’s a difference between min price control and max price control.

That's why I gave two examples. One with a min control and one of a max price control.

FDR during WW2? What about the USA during the 70s, by that famous socialist named Nixon.

Venezuela has blacklisted people for a long time who belong to any opposition political party from holding jobs (and not just government ones). The brain drain they have experienced is insane. That's not really like Denmark or Sweden at all.

Indeed. But that fact alone makes them a terrible government, but not communist or socialist.

The Brazilian right wing government put in jail the candidate that is in the top of voting intentions for president. Brazil is a real dictatorship, Venezuela isn't, as their "political" prisoners were responsible for more than a hundred of deaths.

Can you please support all your claims with sources? I'm Brazilian and what you said is absolutely nonsense.

"(...) a Brazilian appeals court sentenced the former president to 12 years in prison for corruption – a polarizing and controversial verdict Lula supporters see as a politically motivated attempt to derail his campaign."

http://theconversation.com/brazilian-candidate-still-crushin...

A court of law sentencing someone after years of proper judgment procedures is very different from a dictatorship jailing an opposition candidate.

With the exception that there is no proof of the alleged crime and he is in jail before his recourse was judged, in another case his Habeas Corpus was accepted by a judge and illegally not executed by government workers. Also, he is illegally under solitary confinement and frequently, the Justice doesn't let even his lawyers have access to him. A true blue political prisoner.

Of course he has access to his lawyers. See this source in Portuguese https://www.cartacapital.com.br/politica/haddad-passa-a-ser-... The former São Paulo mayor, who is also a lawyer and form the same party as Lula, will have access to Lula (now his client) any day of the week.

> Brazil is a real dictatorship, Venezuela isn't

What's your evidence for this outrageous claim?

Venezuela has a legitimate elected president, Brazil ousted a honest one and put a corrupt in the seat through a coup d'etat. Not coincidentally, he is selling with a big discount all national companies and resources, what Maduro and Venezuela will never do.

> Venezuela has a legitimate elected president

You mean an illegitimate president: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_presidential_electi....

> Brazil ousted a honest one

You mean a corrupt one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Dilma_Rousseff#....

> through a coup d'etat

Through impeachment by a supermajority of the lower house and the upper house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Dilma_Rousseff#....

> what Maduro and Venezuela will never do

Yeah, he's too busy expropriating what's left of Venezuela's wealth for himself.

> as their "political" prisoners were responsible for more than a hundred of deaths

Where the fuck are you getting this from? Stop pulling lies out of your ass.

Personal attacks are a bannable offense on HN. So is using the site primarily for political battle. You've done these things so many times already—and so egregiously—that we've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. The rules are at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

> " had some left wing tendancies in government, but no more than say, denmark or sweden"

Thanks for making my day, that's the funniest thing I read today.

It would have been funnier if it weren't for the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan's fleeing the country to neighboring countries. And people needing to smuggle toilet paper. And inflation with more than 4 digits

I do not disagree; The situation is bad and a result of poor policy from the government

However, the definition of communist is not 'a poorly run country'.

They self-classify themselves as left-wing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez#Bolivarianism

They have also imposed several left-wing actions, like nationalization of oil companies (and your comparison is with Norway is again without merit as Chavez nationalized several industries - including oil - without significant compensation and put his incompetent cronies to run it, which means they don't produce as much as when they were privately run)

I imagine most people in Europe would consider their political position as left of the US. That doesn't make them communist.

So the argument that you are trying to make is that a state is communist when it nationalises industries (not only one industry) and those industries are not: Oil (Norway, Saudi arabia, UK) Aerospace (Canada, UK) Cement (Pakistan) Food (Zimbabwe, Croatia) Mining (Sweden)

The only company Venezuela has nationalized that does not fit one of these criteria is a glass producing company. To be honest if I looked hard enough, I could probably find an example of such an action in another country.

Isn't a 'capitalist country' one where the owners of capital compete in the marketplace to provide goods and services?

Maybe Denmark and Sweden have high taxes and price controls on a small percentage of goods, but the degree to which capital can freely compete is still far greater than in Venezuela.

For the most part, you are free to start companies and sell goods and services in Venuezala. There are exceptions to this, some of them ill-thought out, but none which cannot be also found in much of the west.