Venezuela opposition banned from running in 2018 election - Page 8 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14917296
Sivad wrote:You don't have to give in and that's definitely not what I'm suggesting. What we have to do is achieve socialism through democracy, that's the only way it works. A minority can't impose socialism on a majority, that's gulagism. Maduro has at best 25% of the electorate supporting him and he's trying to radically alter Venezuelan society. That can only result in civil war or gulag state and neither are preferable to the status quo.




I have learned from the past, that's why I'm so opposed to these collectivist peasant revolts. Ignorant peasants can't hold down socialism, you need the support of an educated middle class for that.


Lol. Peasants that are ignorant? I wonder how much you care about eradicating ignorants? Lol. If I believed how you believe I would be in total denial about my origins. And about my history and who we are as a nation. I don't think people don't learn Sivad. Educated middle class need to realize that they have a duty to educate the ones below for sure. If they refuse to do so? I won't cry for their lack of action and they losing to the 'ignorant peasants'.

Can I ask you a question Sivad? Do you think I am an ignorant peasant? With no education? Lol. I would sincerely like your opinion?

Because as far as I know that is the group I come from. Except my mother decided to study and learn despite how many racists thought she was an ignorant peasant who was unworthy of an education.

Lol. Sivad. You are not pro poor people. You are a class conscious man. Your opinions about Venezuela.....? I have my doubts. :D
#14917361
Tainari88 wrote:Lol. Peasants that are ignorant?


Yeah, peasants are ignorant. Are you really disputing that?

Can I ask you a question Sivad? Do you think I am an ignorant peasant? With no education? Lol. I would sincerely like your opinion?


You seem like a nice, well-meaning person, but youdon't seem to have a very good grasp of the basic political realities of Venezuela.

Because as far as I know that is the group I come from.


So you should know first hand that they're generally ignorant, backwards people. I come from a bunch of ignorant urban proles. They have some good qualities but political acumen isn't among them.

Lol. Sivad. You are not pro poor people. You are a class conscious man.


I'm not pro poor people, I'm not pro any class of people. I'm pro the common good.
#14917405
Meanwhile, on the civic front, many have argued that Chavez's hold on state institutions stifled free speech and silenced his opponents. The last time Gallup polled Venezuelans on free speech, only 40 percent said they felt safe and respected making political comments in public. Fifteen percent said they or a relative had been denied an opportunity on political grounds -- the highest rate among the Latin American countries polled.
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#14917443
Sivad wrote:You don't have to give in and that's definitely not what I'm suggesting. What we have to do is achieve socialism through democracy, that's the only way it works. A minority can't impose socialism on a majority, that's gulagism. Maduro has at best 25% of the electorate supporting him and he's trying to radically alter Venezuelan society. That can only result in civil war or gulag state and neither are preferable to the status quo.

As Karl Marx once said, "Democracy is the royal road to socialism". And Maduro does have democratic support - he won the elections fair and square, at least as convincingly as Trump won the US elections.

I have learned from the past, that's why I'm so opposed to these collectivist peasant revolts. Ignorant peasants can't hold down socialism, you need the support of an educated middle class for that.

I always knew you were a vanguardist at heart, Sivad. ;)

Seriously though, if only the educated middle-classes are capable of leading the people into the socialist paradise, then what sort of 'socialism' will they end up with? Martin Luther King once said that the problem with America is that there is socialism for the rich but capitalism for the poor. The financial crisis of 2008 and the 'solutions' which were adopted to resolve it shows how right he was. You seem to want the poor and the uneducated to remain in their 'place', while their 'natural superiors' tell them what is best for them. No, the liberation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself - it is only by the praxis of successful revolution that the working class can transform itself into a ruling class, a class capable of taking its destiny into its own hands.
#14917453
Potemkin wrote:As Karl Marx once said, "Democracy is the royal road to socialism". And Maduro does have democratic support - he won the elections fair and square


He won an election fair and square, the rest were rigged. And if you look at how he's governing, it's not through democratic consensus and rule of law. He has seized the power of the state by undemocratic means and that's the definition of revolutionary socialism. I don't think revolutionary socialism is inherently unjust, it's just that once a society starts down the road of authoritarianism it always ends in a gulag. Social democracy is the only route to a stable successful socialist society.

I always knew you were a vanguardist at heart, Sivad. ;)


For liberty and democracy I am. The reason Western capitalist democracies are so stable is that the vanguard is the educated upper classes. People with an understanding of history and a good capacity for forethought. If Chavez's peasants had that they would of insisted that he invest the oil boom revenue in infrastructure and a domestic industrial base, diversified the economy and built up some capital reserves.


You seem to want the poor and the uneducated to remain in their 'place', while their 'natural superiors' tell them what is best for them.


In a democratic society all they have to do is vote their interests, that's it. The only time revolution is called for is when the state cease to be democratic, and the only thing revolution is good for is establishing/restoring democracy and rule of law.

No, the liberation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself - it is only by the praxis of successful revolution that the working class can transform itself into a ruling class, a class capable of taking its destiny into its own hands.


How's that working out for them? :knife:
#14917570
@Sivad you have no idea how imperialism works against socialism. Especially in Latin America. There are huge capitalistic interests in our region of the world. We are the cash cow of the USA and other countries. Letting the 'working class' do a damn thing is met with brutality, violence, and every unethical tactic known to capitalism and the armies it controls. What do you think the School of the Americas is about?

To think your way of doing things is going to be unmessed with? Pipe dreams. Unrealistic for sure. You talk about realism? Socialists are realists. The CIA and their cronies will sweep in and start killing people they don't agree with. You should have read the transcript of Chavez thinking about....'this is it. We are looking at going down. Sacrificing it all. I don't think we are going to make it out of here." That is the common scenario for any elected socialist sitting on either a resource or in a zone where there the capitalists want control.

The Butchers are the capitalists. They will do whatever they need to do to keep control of the region. And democracy and socialism and middle class and educated people? They won't be respected. It is war Sivad. Unfortunately the value system of the capitalists and their backers is money, resources and power over anything else. They don't care about socialism. Never have. It is the problem. Once socialism can be implemented and poor people can have a reliable service like health, dental, free and high quality education for their children for free from K-12 to university, clean streets, affordable housing, and an improved quality of life and inexpensive or free utilities based on taxing or pooling the profits of the state into servicing all the needs of the lower classes? None of them want to go back to privately held system, and the exclusion of the many. Got to prevent that at all costs if you are a capitalistic thinker from the upper crust.

All this belief in that rules are going to work Sivad, in circumstances that are historically proven to fail.

Chavez was not some clownish tin pot dictator. He was not that at all. But do I expect the English speaking media empires to portray who he is accurately_ No I don't. If you are Latin American and educated and do know your own culture well and you have life experience in both worlds and understand them well_ It is easy to know.....the lies the right and the capitalistic investors and their friends and partners in crime, are critical to success. They are fighting a war of image and perceived fears against some stereotypical version of what is happening. It is a smoke screen. Got to get the public to say stupidly, "Another Latino ex drug king pin with delusions of grandeur and socialism sucks. Soviet Union. America is bringing liberty, etc." A bunch of outright lies of the worst sort. But people believe them. Just like they believe in crap that has no evidence behind it. Are they going to read Chavez' road to power_ No. Lol. why should they_ they got the lies to believe in.

You know what pisses me off badly Sivad_People who don't even bother to study the history of a country. Its politics, its culture and its long interactions with its citizens. Yet somehow think they know what is going on. They rarely do. And what is laughable is I have found through direct experience that the average Latin American 'peasant' and working class person is a lot harder to hoodwink that the average worker or peasant in the USA. Who believe in bullshit about being superior and being part of a nation that got to its power seat through its own merits only and not by sucking the blood out of many other nations and markets. And they fail to see how many things they have in common socioeconomically with the many in Latin America. All they see is a bunch of lies and believe in a bunch of lies cooked up by slick, and manipulative propaganda machines. The USA has a great propaganda machine. But the damage it creates with Latin American efforts at telling the world what they are about as a member of global society is a study in criminal pathological distortions on the part of the private media in the USA.

What is ironic, is the USA has a cartoonish administration right now. That is worse than any recent tin pot dictator in Latin America. But they don't see it....blind to their own faults. Because they are above any flaws. That is arrogant. And very imperial. It makes me laugh. We call that one, "Predicando la moral en calzoncillos" "Preaching morality in your underwear". :D
Last edited by Tainari88 on 24 May 2018 13:50, edited 1 time in total.
#14917573
Sivad wrote:He won an election fair and square, the rest were rigged. And if you look at how he's governing, it's not through democratic consensus and rule of law. He has seized the power of the state by undemocratic means and that's the definition of revolutionary socialism. I don't think revolutionary socialism is inherently unjust, it's just that once a society starts down the road of authoritarianism it always ends in a gulag. Social democracy is the only route to a stable successful socialist society.



For liberty and democracy I am. The reason Western capitalist democracies are so stable is that the vanguard is the educated upper classes. People with an understanding of history and a good capacity for forethought. If Chavez's peasants had that they would of insisted that he invest the oil boom revenue in infrastructure and a domestic industrial base, diversified the economy and built up some capital reserves.




In a democratic society all they have to do is vote their interests, that's it. The only time revolution is called for is when the state cease to be democratic, and the only thing revolution is good for is establishing/restoring democracy and rule of law.



How's that working out for them? :knife:


You are a man of very little faith in working class minds and people. I am not. Never have been. I have a lot of evidence in my own life, my family's life and my home culture's experiences that say strongly that the working class are great. The working class are not some dumb oxen who have nothing to do but obey and are ignorant and incapable of anything. It is quite the contrary Sivad. Working class people have to be the most pragmatic of all if they have to survive in this system that is highly prejudicial against them. If you are on a tight budget and your survival depends on you being able to manage a tight budget, a crushing bureaucracy, a system of taxation that is against the ones with the least_ You better find a way of solving the problems and surviving...or sink.

The ones who are used to having it all and having unlimited resources and who are born and raised in privilege_ They are the ones who when they lose their power and their ability to control situations respond very badly....and unjustly and with a lack of intelligence. If they were truly intelligent they would have realized that the real power in the world resides in the many acting together....based on a shared and common experience. And not the few living rarefied lives thinking they have a right to determine if democracy is allowed or not due to their own greed.

Don't you see that Sivad. Sorry my question mark isn't working for some reason.
#14917904
Pants-of-dog wrote:@Sivad

Please define “gulagist”.

Thank you.


gu·lag·ist

noun: gulagist; plural noun: gulagists

1. a person who advocates or practices gulagism.
synonyms: totalitarian collectivist, oligarchical collectivist, red fascist, authoritarian antidemocratic shithead
#14917925
Sivad wrote:gu·lag·ist

noun: gulagist; plural noun: gulagists

1. a person who advocates or practices gulagism.
synonyms: totalitarian collectivist, oligarchical collectivist, red fascist, authoritarian antidemocratic shithead


So, is Pinochet a gulagist? He was not collectivist, but he did have gulags.

What about the US? Same thing?

Do you actually have to have gulags in order to be gulagist?
#14917931
Sivad wrote:A socialist system will never work with true believers in the vanguard. You have to maintain a rigorous skepticism of state power to keep government in check and these ideological ninnies suspend all critical faculties wherever socialism is concerned. They act as apologists for the state rather than watchdogs for the public. They're just not good citizenship material for a socialist society. Ideological socialists are detrimental to socialism, that's the irony

Seems almost inevitable. Socialism is not going to predominantly attract people who are wary or critical of state power. As far as I can tell left libertarians are an extremely rare breed.

I agree that social democracy is your best and probably only realistic option if you care about democracy and civil liberties.
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