this is Richard Wolffe from democracy at
work responding to another ask prof wolf
question that comes in from our patreon
community and today I want to deal with
the question sent in by Brandon Chavez
Brandon asks about Venezuela and the
relationship of bennet Venezuela to the
issue of socialism and its consequences
and he references an appearance by
Cornel West on the tucker carlson
program on fox news and how Tucker
immediately went to work with Cornell
equating socialism to Venezuela and its
problems this is a cheap shot this is
the kind of thing for which Fox News is
famous their job is to diminish and
demean socialism so they associate it
with everything negative they can think
of it's got all the subtlety of a 10-ton
truck and Cornell was very wise in
skirting around it and getting to other
issues Brandon however wants us to focus
in on this notion that socialism is
somehow equatable with or defined by or
exemplified by Venezuela okay so let me
deal with that first there are many
countries in the world that refer to
themselves or at least have large
numbers of people referring to them as
socialist and unless we all have some
definition of socialism that rules all
those folks out then we would have to
take them at their own estimation that
they live in socialist societies rather
than deal honestly with what they think
so let's start
most of Scandinavia will refer to itself
as a socialist society
large numbers of people 30 40 50
sometimes more percent of populations in
other European countries
likewise refer to themselves as
socialists now let me just pick one
because it shows you the absurdity of
Tucker Carlson Portugal a country I'm
sure most of you know has been governed
now for five or six or seven years by a
coalition of three parties the Socialist
Party of Portugal which is the major
partner until junior partners the
Communist Party of Portugal and the
Green Party of Portugal which defines
itself half at least as socialists so
there's no question that Portugal is by
at least the definition of what their
people vote for a socialist country does
it have the problems of Venezuela no
does it have anything like the problems
of Venezuela
no is it a society that most Americans
think of as more or less like ours with
the understandable differences yes so
Tucker Carlson could just as readily
have used Portugal as an example and had
he done so he would have discovered that
Portugal has enjoyed a better economic
recovery from the crash of 2008 than
most other countries in Europe that it's
unemployment rate is lower etc etc that
it has come through the coulded crisis
much better than the United States if
you wanted to attribute to socialism
good things you would pick Portugal but
Tucker Carlson doesn't want to do that
so you will find Portugal discussed on
his program all roughly never but he
will discuss Venezuela
how interesting it's as if I were to say
to you you know what capital
is it's Saudi Arabia who only recently
allowed women to drive cars who seems to
specialize in butchering appositional
journalists etc that would be the
equivalent of Tucker Carlson who would
be picking a very bad example equating
capitalism with that and it would then
take cooker called Tucker Carlson five
seconds to say well wait a minute why
didn't you equate capitalism with I
don't know Canada
stupid games designed I suppose to
persuade people who are not
well-educated or who are they have the
same bias that Tucker does and that's an
overlapping group in any case it's not
serious well I want to be serious for a
minute and talk about Venezuela are
there aspects of Venezuela that are
socialist
yes are there aspects of Venezuela that
I think most people would agree are not
socialist yes is what happens in
Venezuela exclusively the consequence of
the socialist parts or of the other
parts and the answer is it's a stupid
question what happens in Venezuela is a
function of all the different aspects of
Venezuelan society
well let's then look at a couple of
those Venezuela like so many countries
both in Latin America and in Asia and
Africa over the years that it was a
junior partner to a foreign colonial
society in the case of Venezuela the
United States yes yes I know then is
whele was not a formal part of the
united states empire but it was an
informal one take a look at Venezuelan
history for the last 200 years and you
will see exactly
what I mean one of the results of being
a colonial possession formal or informal
is that you become dependent on a
particular product yet the colonial
master country wants or needs to have
East Africa produces coffee because they
drink coffee no because they were part
of the British Empire which wanted them
to be a coffee producer and the United
States needed oil and Venezuela had oil
so Venezuela made money by producing oil
the Socialists who came in with who goes
such Chavez and now with mr. Maduro
inherited an economy debt-ridden and
dependent on oil in case you haven't
noticed over recent years the price of
oil has collapsed and that has badly
hurt the Venezuelan economy it has had
bad results for other oil-producing
economies Nigeria Russia and many others
part of the problems of Venezuela have
to do with its dependence bed look for
it on oil but that was not mr. Chavez is
doing and that was not mr. Maduro is
doing and that has absolutely nothing to
do with socialism well what is socialist
in Venezuela a commitment since Hugo
Chavez to enhance the position of the
poor to bring the poor the vast majority
of Venezuelans have always been poor one
of the results of the many decades of
non the socialist society in Venezuela
was to create the poverty that hobbles
that society just as it does literally
everywhere else in Latin America
no socialism produced that long
tradition of poverty the opposite
capitalism did that and so Shabbos and
Maduro
have tried to bring medical care to
bring food to bring education to the
mass of people had they done that in a
perfect way of course not
have they violated civil liberties and
over reliance on the military along the
way yes and that too is a very old
tradition in Latin America having
nothing to do with socialism as you can
see in so many of the other Latin
American countries right now enough said
the story of Venezuela is a complex
story high points low points bits of
socialism bits of capitalism woven
together in a tense relationship which
is true of most countries more or less