Vuvuzela is a classic talking point for libs and right wingers alike as a failed socialist state. What's your take on the truth of the situation?
For reference, my take is he is not a particularly great leader and his government has problems with corruption (just as many developed and undeveloped states do) but he is much preferred over whichever leader the U.S would like to install.
In terms of adherence to socialism and good leadership skills, I would say Bolivar was the great, Chavez was good, and Maduro is just about adequate in spite of the sanctions he's faced.
I'm also trying to learn more about the topic, so any resources and differing opinions are of course welcome. I am by no means an expert.
I'm just going around the globe trying to unlock each nations history from scratch and get a nice holistic view. These are my earliest takes on the topic of Venezuela.
Thanks.
Maduro is a sucdem and should change his name to Miduro, but also critical support against NATO imperialism.
Maduro's helping to keep the country together. Him and the rest of the PSUV are fine. Worst I know to say about him is that he's probably involved with drug trafficking cartels. There was a big news story a while ago where his nephews were caught smuggling cocaine into Haiti to eventually sell in the US.
But despite that, I doubt he feels good about it. Venezuela has to make money somehow and the legal, non-shady avenues of their trade keep getting sanctioned. So Maduro and Venezuelan officials are taking advantage of an unfortunate reality, which is that a whole lot of cocaine comes into Venezuela through Colombia and elsewhere. I remember there were rumblings a year ago where the PSUV wanted to officially regulate and tax the cocaine trade.
In terms of Maduro's personal ideology though, I think he's the real deal. He seems to have Chavez's ideology down and he knows how the imperialism sausage is made. He's fine, but Venezuela's socialism has to come from a mass movement at this point, which thankfully does seem to be the case.
The question to ask is always "If this party or leader (Maduro and his party in this case) was removed from power - by being arrested, or assassinated, or what have you - who would most realistically rush in to fill the power vacuum?" Because it's always easy to be like, oh, yeah, I hate this leader and wish that a communist party took over and led them to the dictatorship of the proletariat, but that's not on the menu much of the time. In Russia for example, Putin and his party's magical removal wouldn't lead to the communist party over there taking over, and even if it did, from what I've seen of it, it doesn't seem especially radical. Same in Iran.
I don't know enough about Venezuela to be able to confidently assert who would rush in, and Venezuela is different from a lot of the countries people do this to because there actually is a communist party of some strength there, but there's at least a very good chance that his replacement would be a reactionary US-friendly comprador, and in comparison to that, Maduro's doing a bang-up job.
In absolute terms, I would say: not great, not terrible. He's a lot easier to support (critically or otherwise) than some of the other leaders we critically support, but not as easy as Cuba or China or the DPRK.
Good take. This is what I was hoping for. I like that line of questioning. It's a good defuser in the same vein as 'look at the conditions before communism' rather than comparing them to the states that imperialised them.
