200
My Venezuelan friends say Maduro is a dictator (crazypeople.online)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
157 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Where do we get the idea that Maduro is an authoritarian dictator? We get it from what our governments say, our corporate media say, and our NGOs (which are funded by our governments & corporations) say. These are the very same governments & corporations that want to vassalize Venezuela and pillage its resources. They are—all day, every day—working to manufacture our consent, or if not consent then at least acquiescence.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    his party rules by supreme power and decree.

    Again, how do you know this, and why are you so certain that this is a fair characterization? Have you read or listened to Maduro’s speeches or read Chavismo literature? Did you ask working class Venezuelans they consider these “decrees” to be extra-legal are or whether they are popular among them? Or did it come from Five Eyes sources, their telling of events?

    the problem with dictators is they’re usually fascists.

    In the modern era, dictators dictate with the consent of the bourgeoisie. And yes, that is fascism. In stark contrast, the Maduro government is a thorn in the side of both the indigenous bourgeoisie and the foreign imperialist bourgeoisie.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    load more comments (1 reply)
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [+] 16 points 11 months ago* (5 children)
    [removed by mod]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Authoritarian is when you don’t capitulate to the imperial core’s will, and the less you capitulate the more authoritarian you are. If you’re genuinely democratic then you need a color revolution for sure, because the demos doesn’t want to be vassalized by imperialists.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Your position is there has never been a benevolent leader? Power corrupts universally and equally? That’s nuts, quite frankly.

    It’s absurd to suggest that Trump and Maduro are equivalent. They’re not equal in a single way, even if you believe they’re both bad.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    “Calling out Trump” is clearly a rhetorical tactic to distract from your incorrect assessment of Maduro. It should be noted that you’re aligned with Trump when you say that, and it should give you pause.

    You don’t seem to remember your own comment. You used the most extreme straw man, adorned with sarcasm, to asses Maduro…there was no reality in your reply.

    Meh, the fact that you think you’re talking to liberals is pretty amusing. Why defend an argument when you can attack the messenger, right? 

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    The results are usually bad when you don’t kowtow to the imperial core, but they’re also likely to be even worse for the majority of people if you do. That’s why monopoly capitalism has to be fought, if we ever want better outcomes to even be possible.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Some of the economic problems were self created because many leftists have zero formal economic backgrounds

    That may well be, but at the same time, most economists in the world have a garbage education in neoclassical economics and carry neoliberal brain worms.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [+] 4 points 11 months ago* (2 children)
    [removed by mod]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    We had a middle class when taxes on the wealthy were 50-90 percent. Unless we bring that back, the ‘economy’ is bullshit.

    If you were white and male it was a good deal for one generation. That was an anomalous moment in world history that will never come again. The US was the only major power in the world that didn’t have its productive capacity blown to smithereens in WWII, unions were comparatively strong, and the USSR posed a serious ideological threat to capitalism which caused the bourgeoisie to give (temporary) concessions.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    Yes. I’m not disagreeing with you; I’m just highlighting what a unique moment it was, because most people think that was “normal,” and that we can get back to it, but we never can.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    You also have no evidence of “debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty,” or “undermining labor movements.”

    Their evidence is that the TV told them this many times over years, enough times that it’s true.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago

    Venezuelan communes and participatory democracy is flourishing. In addition, massive social programs have been implemented, focusing on housing, food security, and poverty eradication

    I think this really needs to be stressed. Venezuela is a country building Socialism. Maduro and the PSUV is in power because of a genuinely incredible mass movement of communes, neighborhood committees, and other organs of grassroots democracy. This is qualitatively different from say, any of the Gulf oil monarchies

    I highly recommend the books Building The Commune: Radical Democracy in Venezuela, and Commune or Nothing: Venezuela's Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project, for a look at these aspects of Venezuelan politics, because it's often papered over in discussions about the country.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Man i remember when I was a "damn, the US and it's enemies are both evil" guy. I thought i was done thinking about the world

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago

    And we thought we were so enlightened. This is the last layer of the imperial core propaganda onion: that the “other side” is no better, which leads to apathy and disengagement.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [+] 22 points 11 months ago (3 children)
    [removed by mod]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 19 points 11 months ago

    NATO expansion:

     
    NATO in general:

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (21 children)

    Invading / starting a war is not the same thing as imperialism.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 21 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago*

    You’re talking about simple conquest. By that definition any offensive side in a war is imperialist, which is nonsensical as that means nearly every war in human history involved at least one “imperialist” power.

    Imperialism is system of establishing and maintaining hegemony over large areas for the benefit of an elite (capital in modern times, patricians in ancient times, etc) within a metropole (probably too simple of a definition but it works). The Romans were an empire not just because they had an emperor and not because they conquered lands, but because they controlled lands from Spain to Syria and wealth flowed from those lands into Rome.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    The Soviet Union expanded their power over Germany via military means. WW2 was simply an inter-imperialist war.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago

    It was an inter-imperialist war except on the eastern front, where it was a war to destroy communism. The capitalist Allies and the USSR were an alliance of convenience, which is why the West made the USSR its enemy the moment the war ended.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    The Marxist definition of imperialism is more specific than just "big country invade small country".

    In, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin lays out five aspects of what makes Imperialism:

    1. the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;

    2. the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;

    3. the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;

    4. the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and

    5. the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.

    The question of "Is Russia Imperialist" isn't a moral one, it's a technical one. So if Russia were do to something that we all agree is morally reprehensible, that's a separate concern from whether Russia is imperialist.

    The technicality revolves around whether Russia has developed an oligarchy of Financial Capital, such that its invasion of Ukraine or other flexes of its influence, perpetuates the export of Russian finance capital around the world.

    As it stands now, I don't think that's currently the case, but with Marxism being a dialectal philosophy, I do wonder if this war will accelerate that merging of Bank and industrial capital that Lenin discusses. It's a Bourgeois states, and there's financial capital in there somewhere that absolutely has an interest in forming a Russian imperialism.

    So when people say "Russia isn't Imperialist", this is what's being referred to. You can take it or leave it, but it's worth getting into the weeds a bit, so we aren't all talking passed each other

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago

    Marxist does not get to exclusively define what imperialism is

    Marxism isn't the only analytical lens out there, no. But the people you're arguing with are working with that definition, which is why I took the time to clarify. Thank you for appreciating my effort post though lol

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

    "A more standard definition" than the one that's been in use for over a hundred years and accurately describes the dynamic in question? The definition liberals use is both new and entirely vibes-based. It is useless for anything but bringing geopolitical conversations to a screeching halt with murky equivocations. The Marxist definition exists to clarify, while the liberal definition exists to obscure. It's the "socialism is when the government does stuff" of international relations.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    Imperialism is quite literally the highest stage of capitalism. The way liberals use it is just as a synonym for "aggressive". What definition do you propose that doesn't make like, the D-Day landings imperialist? Downvote isn't mine, btw

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    For sure, but there are a few problems with that definition. The first is that it doesn't apply to the Russian intervention in Ukraine that started this conversation, which is neither unprovoked nor being done to expand Russian territory.

    The second is that it only includes atate actions meant to take territory in an official capacity, while many imperialist actions have been carried out under the auspices of private companies like Haliburton, Dole, the United Fruit Company, and the Dutch East India Company.

    The third is that we already have the term Expansionist, which is perfectly fine and general enough for both capitalist and non-capitalist actions, while Imperialism describes a specific dynamic that arises from specifically capitalist causes.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Then it's not part of the definition? That's like saying the definition of "apple" is "a fruit from a tree, especially a fruit with simple uniform flesh and a thin skin" and then when I say this orange is not an apple you say "I said especially so it doesn't really count"

    So your definition is now simply military invasion.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • load more comments (2 replies)
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [+] 37 points 11 months ago (28 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 28 child comments
    •
  • [–] 33 points 11 months ago (23 children)

    👆If you don’t suppress the inevitable imperial-supported bourgeois counterinsurgencies, your socialist project will go the way of Allende’s Chile.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 23 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 22 points 11 months ago* (11 children)

    Point me to one single socialist revolution that wasn't immediately attacked by capital. Just one. You can't.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 11 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Lol you said nothing of the sort and now you're running away shouting random reddit bullshit for cover (what strawman? That doesnt even make sense) because you're acutely aware but too proud to admit that your dumb Marvel-brained bullshit has no basis in reality. Who's freedom? Who's justice? You haven't put five seconds of thought into this and you're talking to people who have considered it for years or decades. You're adorable.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
    • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Just and free while being secure: "authoritarian"

    Unjust and unfree while being insecure and overrun by bears: Libertarian

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago

    Venezuela has had US antagonistic covert ops operating in country since at least 2007. That's almost 2 decades of needing to find the US spies and their allies to prevent sabotage, coups, false flags, etc.

    That's just the military aspect. They've also been under worsening sanctions for almost as long, which has been driven by the US strategy to starve the masses so that they revolt. This processes causes increased desperation among the people, which increases crime rates.

    All of these things require the use of authority and as they get worse require more invasive and obvious uses of authority. It's hard enough to find spies, it's even harder to find spies and neutaize them without ripping the US off as to how you're finding them, going even further and finding spies without ever being wrong is nigh impossible.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago

    ❤️Through the power of love ❤️

    What are your real-world examples—bourgeois “democracies”? If it’s so easy, why hasn’t it happened?

    The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

    The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.

    The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism — not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience — could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not.

    Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency — which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack.

    One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (2 replies)
    • load more comments (3 replies)
    • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    Russia isn’t imperialist, it has no colonies nor neocolonies

    Yeah, tell that to Crimea, the Donbas

    Are you kidding me? The people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia, to protect them from Ukraine, which had been killing them since 2014.

    China is a kinder imperialist, but they are using largely the same playbook that the west used in Africa, including debt-trap diplomacy, undermining local sovereignty and regulation, and undermining labor movements.

    The Atlantic, 2021: The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth

    What is China doing to undermine local sovereignty or labor movements in Africa?

    The current real estate crisis

    What “current” real estate crisis? The Chinese state intentionally popped the real estate bubble over a year ago, making the capitalists eat their losses.

    Compare that to Obama, who bailed out the private banks at the expense of people with home mortgages, banks that knowingly wrote those bad mortgages. Michael Hudson, 2023: Why the Bank Crisis isn’t Over

    The financial sector is the core of Democratic Party support, and the party leadership is loyal to its supporters. As President Obama told the bankers who worried that he might follow through on his campaign promises to write down mortgage debts to realistic market valuations in order to enable exploited junk-mortgage clients to remain in their homes, “I’m the only one between you [the bankers visiting the White House] and the mob with the pitchforks,” that is, his characterization of voters who believed his “hope and change” patter talk.

    “ghost cities” are a pretty obvious example.

    Reuters, 2015: The myth of China’s ghost cities

    Wherever you’re getting your information from, it’s dogshit.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    load more comments (2 replies)