oh look, the good old "that wasnt true socialism/communism" argument
all countries adapting these ideas have come down the same road, thats a fact and apologist talk wont change that

this ideology will always crash in reality, its against human nature not to mention basic mathematics and common sense

socialism does fulfull one promise though, everyone in these place is equal
equally poor and miserable

And just because people are doing well in Norway doesn't mean the slaves overseas who produced the products they purchased are doing well.

So I agree, this would be a worthless discussion. Because people like him don't care about violence and oppression as long as it is out of sight.

The United States supports Saudi Arabia because it is in the strategic interests of the United States to support Saudi Arabia.

Blaming capitalism is a complete non sequitur.

Heavy regulation of the private sector, currency controls, price caps, state control over PDVSA, these are the major factors behind Venezuela's economic decline. Socialists internationally often support similar policy proposals (e.g. nationalization, price controls), and have historically supported Chavez and his movement, hence the obvious connection.

most capitalists aren't willing to admit that capitalism is where "most people are successful" because success is measured against the bottom 10%. in an equal society it's not just hard to be "successful" because of taxes, its also because there are relatively no poor to compare one's self to. im america we see a doctor making 500k as fair, because of how much more he does than a factor worker making 45k. but when everyone makes the same your success doesn't really drop as much as people unsuccess disappears.

overall its a pretty fruitless semantic mudsling fest, but there are a few strains worth exploring. rare tho.

Lets try a different angle then: over the past decades, capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions of people in China, India, South East Asia and South America out of dire poverty and into a "middle class" lifestyle. Do you think a similar amount of people in these regions could have done the same if these countries had not adopted capitalist policies and had instead remained socialist or tribal? The success found in parts of these societies - is it due to capitalism, or to something else?

Capitalism is a necessary developmental stage in orthodox Marxism. It it to be promoted and helped, in fact. You are asking me about a transitional stage, or lack thereof really, which shows me you think I hold beliefs that I don’t hold. There is also a lot of confusion about what we call capitalism.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Nov 26 2018 08:40pm

Fair point about me misunderstanding your beliefs.

But sorry, it still sounds a lot like "even if capitalism appears to be working, it still is only fuel to the eventual and inevitable R-R-R-R-Revolution".

comprehensive reading skills: 0/10

I'll gladly engage in a conversation with you about this topic, but please try to read my post entirely instead of reading the first 3 words and then predicting the remainder of it based on your preconceptions.

i did that and your cute liitle attempt to protect socialism still wont go away

your claim that exponentially more people are victims of "corrupt capitalism" is ridiculous without sufficient proof
even it is true it is to be expected since the large majority of countries are not socialist, captain obvious

and our free economies have literally nothing to do socialism/communism and there are no best bits to take out
the idea of a welfare state to some extent is older than these ideologies and we have figured out that a state like that can only be paid for with a capitalist economy

its not the first time you try defend your precious socialism

The two bolded lines are a perfect summary of your mindset. Me potentially criticizing capitalism gets your knickers in a twist so badly, to the point where you bash on me for my ridiculous claims while simultaneous pointing out that my claims are obviously correct. If you're so pre-occupied with the urge to criticize me for now swallowing capitalism like you do, at least make up your mind about what you will criticize me for before you post.

I never said anything about which ideology is more likely to lead to corruption relatively speaking. In fact, I am pretty convinced that if you were to study it you wouldn't find much of a difference. One thing that probably leads to correlation is the fact that communism has been used as an excuse for several power hungry groups of rebels in the past. Lenin, for instance, wasn't necessarily a supporter of any particular ideology; he just needed an excuse to start a revolution that would lift himself into power.



Back to what I said earlier: your comprehensive reading is atrocious. I am as opposed to communism as I am against capitalism, and that's something I repeat again and again. The bigger issue in this thread is corruption of governments, which is why I brought up that socialism per se is not really Venezuela's problem.