Norway and Sweden are capitalist states with significant social programs. The government does not own the means of production and doesn't completely manage the economy - they just tax it; in fact they don't even tax corporations all that heavily.
Norway's doing something very similar to Venezuela as far as nationalized oil going to the public purse, and it's working out great for them.
When social-democratic countries screw up due to authoritarianism and corruption, it's 'because socialism'. When capitalist countries screw up the same way, and there have been a lot of them, it's because of the corruption.
I would think most people say socialism in this case because it was put up by many influential people as a proud of example of socialism back when times were good. It's the same thing when socialists point to failing capitalistic systems and say "capitalism".
It's the problem of people not wanting to properly discuss things and always fall back on blaming people based on labels.
>Norway's doing something very similar to Venezuela as far as nationalized oil going to the public purse, and it's working out great for them.
They did it in a completely different way, though, and the funds were managed and executed differently. Norway helped establish a company and essentially behave as shareholders, with their share revenues going into a fund that reinvests it in stock internationally. They deliberately do not depend on it to subsidize social programs entirely and only withdraw 3% per year.
Venezuela's leadership actively controlled the fund and used it to support wide-reaching social policies that could only be sustained with new revenues, pushing more oil production and making it a larger percentage of their economy which ultimately caused massive failure when the oil prices went down, they were producing at high capacity already and they couldn't get rid of the social programs.
So the difference is that Norway uses it carefully, while Venezuela uses it recklessly. It's not the idea that's the problem, it's the way it's applied.
It's also important to note that the definition of Socialism as being merely state ownership of most or all production and "complete management of the economy" is a vulgar definition, sometimes even expounded by Socialists themselves. On its own, this would simply be an economy with all the features of capitalism, including but not limited to:
* wage labour being the dominant mode of sustenance
* a class structure still visible (in fact, is seems as though such a "Socialist" mode of production would have even more well defined classes than our current mode)
* private property, but rather than being owned by capitalists it is owned by the state
So "workers owning" means of production is not adequate for Socialism. Rather, there must be some kind of shift in terms of how society functions in general. There should be no trade, as trade is a side-effect of the operation of the law of value and exchange value, a dialectical contradiction only found in capitalism. There should be no state, as the state is what exists to defend private property and prop up class interests. Production should be entirely for useful qualities. All productive power of society should be owned by workers (this is your "owning the means of production") either by representation of a government (which is not a state, the distinction is important) or via some other apparatus.
For these reasons I am extremely skeptical when people describe countries such as Venezuela, which operate as capitalists, owners of property, on a global scale as "Socialist". If it is Socialism then it is certainly no Marxian Socialism.
>> * private property, but rather than being owned by capitalists it is owned by the state
Wha? How is state-owned property considered private property?
Also, I would have said Venezuela was socialist because the socialists in my country said it was. And I'm fairly certain members of their ruling class described their country's government as socialist.
Private property is not determined by its owner, but rather its function. Ordinary people can own private property, such as land which is taxed or rented out, means of production upon which people are employed etc. It is a fact that the Venezuelan state owns private property, and also that they employ people in exchange for wages. This is no different at all to what Apple or GM does in the United States.
It is also possible for society in general to act as a capitalist. The way Marx and other Socialists use the term "private property" is perhaps different to its modern meaning. Proudhon writes,
>There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. “Possession,” says Duranton, “is a matter of fact, not of right.” Toullier: “Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.” The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor.
Most people would describe government owned property as public because all citizens are allowed to have a say in the management of the property, not just some of them. This doesn't mean day to day management, but its ultimate distribution. In your proprietor/possessor dichotomy, the citizenry is the proprietor - the government, the possessor.
Not a good comparison. Manager and Owner would be a better example than lover and husband.
> Most people would describe government owned property as public
Yes, because they are using a public/private dichotomy which makes a lot of sense distinguishing kinds of ownership within capitalism, but has nothing to do with the socialist use of the term, where “private property” is a central feature of capitalism, and it's alternative (when it concerns the means of production) is not something which exists in “pure” capitalism.
> because all citizens are allowed to have a say in the management of the property, not just some of them
And this is exactly why many schools of socialist thought see centralized state control, even in a democratic state, as generally private property; the particular workers whose labor is applied to the means of production have their control so diluted by other parties that the control is almost as completely alienated from them as in the case where they have no ownership.
>And this is exactly why many schools of socialist thought see centralized state control, even in a democratic state, as generally private property; the particular workers whose labor is applied to the means of production have their control so diluted by other parties that the control is almost as completely alienated from them as in the case where they have no ownership.
That's interesting to me, because a situation where the workers whose labor was applied to the means of production retain complete control seems like private property to me.
A situation where the control of property is held by an agent of the commons doesn't seem private precisely because the commons includes people that have no ownership from applied utility. Essentially, it's as if no-one's labor has been applied at all and in those cases the resources belong to the public.
> That's interesting to me, because a situation where the workers whose labor was applied to the means of production retain complete control seems like private property to me.
How? Within the socialist personal/social/private typology, not the capitalist public/private typology? The two are completely unrelated systems of categorization, which unfortunately share a name (but not the meaning denoted by the name.)
A democratically run company is still an owner of private property, the fact that citizens have a say is irrelevant to the idea that property is privately owned. This is evident in the case in which the State is an actor on the global stage and defends its private property from other nations; whether that be land or means of production.
>A democratically run company is still an owner of private property, the fact that citizens have a say is irrelevant to the idea that property is privately owned.
Yes, I agree - however, the fact that ALL citizens have a say is not irrelevant.
The case you're talking about is one where the State acts in its capacity as an agent of the citizenry, similar to how a manager can hire, fire or sign contracts within the bounds set by the owner or owners. It doesn't mean the manager owns any property, simply that he as an agent of ownership is currently in possession of it.
> A democratically run company is still an owner of private property,
In the capitalist public/private sense, yes; in the socialist personal/private/social sense, this is social not private property (specifically, cooperative social property.)
The sense of “private property” opposed by socialism is not at all the sense which is opposed to “public property”.
When I say "company" I mean such an organisation as which employs wage labour to further the accumulation of capital; such an organisation could not exist under a Socialist mode of production, at least in my understanding. This is because it is firstly not wholly the "property" of the workers in general, because accumulation of capital requires exploitation and value added through M-C-M'; a cooperative still sells produce, so in my view this makes it inadequate for Socialism. Perhaps something like mutualism would better describe such an arrangement at the scale of a society.
It is entirely possible for people to create a super-capitalist, an image reflecting bourgeois nature, within a cooperative establishment.
> How is state-owned property considered private property?
In Marxist theory, “private property” has a particular meaning: the means of production alienated from the particular workers whose labor is applied to them. In Marx’s specific theory, in the socialist stage of the Communist project, ownership by a state controlled by the proletariat makes such property no longer private not because it is owned by the state, but because the productive resources are controlled by the workers. But in the broader Marx-inspired movement and socialist using the same terminology (outside of Leninism and it's descendants, which not only accepts this but replaces democratic control with the direction of the vanguard), there is some controversy on this point, and many view state control as to removed from the immediate workers to eliminate the privation which is why socialists characterize such property as “private”.
So, yes, let's redefine the term to name something that has never existed and has no chance of ever existing. This way nobody can complain that "Socialism" is a failure. Great idea.
Just don't come pushing for socialist policies that try to enforce government's ownership of everything.
I am not redefining the term. The common understanding of "Socialism" is far divorced from what Marx and Engels were talking about, or even their predecessors such as Owen or Ricardo. The confusion over the term is evident, especially in the United States, in which several people, even in this thread, claim that capitalism with a social democratic model is "Socialism". It is in my opinion very important to maintain purity in terminology for risk of losing something greater by society deciding that certain ideas are "too Utopian" without speaking it.
I also encourage you to use the original definition of the term.
Marx in special outlined a pretty well defined procedure to create what he called "socialism". Russia followed it to the letter, and the Soviet Union was the consequence.
It is dishonest to keep claiming "socialism" is something different than what you get when you follow the procedures to get there. Yes, Marx promised something very different, but well, if you read his books you'll see he was way more of a politician than a scientist.
> Marx in special outlined a pretty well defined procedure to create what he called "socialism". Russia followed it to the letter
No, it didn't. I mean, the whole point of Leninism is “How do we skip past the requirement identified for Marx to have well-estsablished capitalism with proletarian class consciousness before proceeding to the socialist stage on the route to Communism?” Leninism abandons the essential context for which the Marxist program is designed. (And even then, the program wasn't particularly specific, unless you mean Marx and Engels program for the specific capitalist states of Europe in the mid-19th Century, which Russia was even more distant from then the generalized capitalist states of Marx’s theory.)
> It is dishonest to keep claiming "socialism" is something different than what you get when you follow the procedures to get there.
Marx is not the first or definitive socialist; socialism existed before and is broader than Marxist theories, so even if Russia and other Leninist states were an example of direct application of Marxist process, this would still be an example of mistaking a particular subset for the whole.
Judging Marxism by Leninist examples is like judging Christianity by Protestant Fundamentalism; judging socialism on the same basis is like judging Abrahamic monotheism by the Protestant Fundamentalism.
The proletariat is wage-laborers (those who rent labor to capitalist, rather than applying their labor to their own capital—as the petite bourgeoisie do—or renting others labor to apply to their capital—as the haut borgeoisie do), not exclusively manual laborers.
Rubbish. The status of being a proletarian has nothing to do with in what form the labour is expended. Neither Marx nor pre-Marxist Socialists make any specific mention of manual labour. But if you really want to go this way, a growing number of the student population in Europe are turning to manual labour (Uber and Deliveroo).
Proletarians are and since their emergence the vast majority of the working population.
Norway and Sweden (and several other European countries) are trying to balance the good parts of capitalism and socialism, while avoiding the bad parts of both, and providing more freedom than the worst manifestations of both.
The US is also a mixed economy with significant private and public sectors. The State is still capitalist because of the way it engages with the market, which is why I described Sweden and Norway that way.
It's a definitely a thing of degrees rather than binary. Nevertheless, the level of state intervention or control of the economy in Scandinavia is such that describing them as partially capitalist and partially socialist is accurate.
Sweden is extremely far from being a Socialist nation. Nearly all of their economy is private. They have a prosperous, highly functional market based economy, that has traditional protections for property rights and classic asset ownership.
Sweden has vast private wealth, including a very large number of millionaires. Or just take a look at the list of their billionaires.
Sweden's economic boom coincided with large reductions in the size of the state, including both regulation and taxation policies, not increases. They have a 22% corporate income tax rate along with a favorable operating environment that encourages entrepreneurship, which entails ownership of private property.
If you look across Sweden's economic engine, it's overwhelmingly private in nature, not state owned and operated. Their growth mostly didn't come from state enterprises, it came from domestic business formation and expansion. Land and housing is commonly privately owned, as in most market economies. Sweden overtly violates almost every tenet of Socialism.
There are very few things about Sweden that are in fact Socialistic at all (healthcare is a big one, which is heavily socialized for most of the planet). At this point they may be more Capitalist than America is, their economy has fewer economic regulations per dollar of GDP for example.
Yeah, I don't see the point of contention against your post. Sweden is largely a free economy with rather high personal taxes. Their energy sector (linked directly with Norway) is (as of recent) considerably freer than you can expect in most of the world. They have many great arms and aerospace manufacturers which operate more independently of the government than the defense industries in most places (which I guess is for historic reasons, owing to Sweden's long history of immense military action [including being willing to invade Russia with the intent of taking Moscow]).
Aside: I really take umbrage with Bernie describing Denmark as a socialist success story, when their success seems to be linked directly to liberalization.
The contention of course derives from Scandinavia broadly being the sole positive argument that modern Socialists have to rest upon as an example. If you take that bogus example out from under them by pointing out that Sweden is nowhere near being a Socialist nation (quite the opposite in fact, they're a booming private market economy with vast private wealth), their world-view implodes.
Here's the thing, though. In the US, things like universal healthcare, maternity leave, decent disability and unemployment benefits, consumer protection, all sorts of regulation, and many, many other good ideas, often get attacked with cries of "Socialism!". These are things that all of Europe has, and they work.
So either they are socialism and socialism works, or they're not socialism and socialism cannot be used as a reason to deny these to the US. You don't get to dismiss these as socialism and then claim Sweden is not socialist.
But this is the problem with labels like socialism and capitalism. They can be used with varying definitions to prop up bad arguments.
It depends on what you call socialism. If it means the government owning everything, then Sweden isn't socialist, but if it means that people get what they need, then Sweden is pretty socialist. There's little poverty, very generous maternity leave, unemployment and disability payment, etc.
Socialism is a big tent with many different branches[0]. They share the goal that they want more economic equality and less inequality, but disagree on how to get there. Marx was a big proponent of State Socialism with the state owning everything, but he had a number of very vocal opponents like Bakunin, who claimed Marx's ideas would lead to tyranny.
Social democracy is a more moderate form of socialism that tries to mix socialism, democracy and capitalism. Libertarian socialism or anarchism considers the state to be the source of inequality, and wants to accomplish equality without a state or with a very different kind of state.
That's because Norway and Sweden respect private property to some extent, even with Norway's wealth tax (and additional taxes on oil extraction). The oil companies are ultimately private in Norway.
There's no doing it right if your end game is basically communism; but if you have a clear purpose for some prejudicial taxes, and ultimately respect some form of property rights, then it can sometimes work out for many decades, as it has in Norway (though I would argue that Norway's system, as it is today, is unsustainable as well, but not in a Venezuela kind of way).
It's not such a big deal if you haven't built everything on extracting 100% of the net revenue of the oil industry. If your take were lower, it would not be as big a hit, and you could raise the take and split the difference. If your take is 100%, there's nowhere to go.
You stated in your original comment that is was a, "slight drop."
I actually agree with much of what you wrote, but let the argument stand on its own, please don't use non-factual content to (note: the Iranian oil coming back into the "open" market might have been related) overstate things.
Its even worse for Venezuela. Their oil is plentiful but not a very high grade which requires significantly more money to refine than say Saudi Arabia, Texas, or North Dakota. This means that in a low price environment they aren't taking a cut, they literally cannot make any profit. Further complicating the situation is their mismanagement and lack of technology purchases or even basic maintenance in the oil industry.
Venezuela also respects private property, just to a somewhat lesser extent than other countries. It's important to note that the state's protection of such property is to be expected in this case, in which it is the government which acts as a capitalist itself on the global scale and on the internal scale (such as by employing wage labour).
There are numerous examples of people and businesses which own private property and employ people in exchange for wages in Venezuela. The fact that such activity is highly taxed or limited is irrelevant to the point about private property being defended and respected. For it is private property which can ensure the cycle of M-C-M' which we see respected and the functioning of money as the general equivalent form of Value.
"Venezuela also respects private property, just to a somewhat lesser extent than other countries. "
Your flat out wrong. Easy example: The government nationalized a GM vehicle factory within the country and then a few weeks later GM officially withdrew.
Does that sound like Venezuela respects private property to you? A nationalization like that would never happen in Western Europe
Naming an example of a seizure of private property does little to show against the idea that the State respects and protects private property. I do not deny that is has seized private property, however private property in many cases continues unimpeded and protected by the police and the State in general (and yes, it is possible for the State to own private property too).
It is possible to name examples of other countries seizing property or stealing from innocent people. Neither of these examples disprove the idea that these states respect and defend private property, or that they respect and defend personal property. The US has seized the personal property of many people. Does this mean that the US police do not act to punish people who steal?
Sorry, but any example of a government seizing private property is not a government that respects and protects private property. That is a fiction often pushed by the government to convince the people they have private property rights. If your government can seize your property without due process and/or just compensation, then you do not have private property rights.
In the US the police routinely steal private property for their own purposes with little or no due process. Just because they arrest thieves who happen to not be police doesn't mean they respect and protect your property rights. One could say they are protecting their own ability to seize your private property.
I am firmly in the belief that the American people have not had strong property rights for a very long time.
You are correct. For this reason, if the bar for "Socialism" is "seizing property" then the US also qualifies for "Socialism". Few would call the US "Socialist". For this reason, I do not think that the main point being argued (that Venezuela is Socialist because it does not "respect private property) holds in this case.
I would agree, but I would say Venezuela was considered socialist because everyone I know of that I trust to know such things said it was a good example of socialism in action. Not because of seizing property, but because they said they were. Now we're getting the usual "it wasn't REAL socialism" as always. Granted, the socialism was being used to hide corruption (as happens with any system) but it was socialist none-the-less.
Although in this case it's financial institutions on the verge on bankruptcy, and they were nationalised to save them, with the goal of eventually privatising them again.
Nationalisation versus privatisation is a complex subject, and I think there are things that absolutely should be nationalised. Essential infrastructure where no real competition is possible, for example. Like railroads or mail. I suppose it can make sense for the countries oil reserves. But the important part is that whichever way you move on that scale, you do it in a responsible way and ensure that a fair price is paid for them.
It is a complex subject and I agree that in case of monopoly (natural or not) and in case of strategic sector we should make an honest evaluation of what serve best the Nation and the People. Also, if you nationalize it shouldn't mean that you don't compensate fairly the private owner.
The US also had limited price controls under Nixon. It too was extremely damaging and foolish when the US or France took such intervention measures, which you can see from the broader context / economic climate results: US economic disaster in the 1970s and French economic stagnation for decades.
>The fact that such activity is highly taxed or limited is irrelevant to the point about private property being defended and respected.
I don't think that's what people are thinking of when they say something like Venezuela doesn't respect private property. They are thinking of the seizure of ranches and companies so they can be redistributed.
> The fact that such activity is highly taxed or limited is irrelevant to the point about private property being defended and respected.
I'd agree with that, but with the exception of wealth (and possibly property) taxes. I might accept that real property must be rented from the state to accomplish certain goals, but I'm not so sure other property can be. In reality, if the rates are low enough, even a wealth tax is not a mortal threat to property, but it is still questionable (which is why it seems some Norwegian parties are looking to ditch it). Last time I said this, I was dragged into a bickering match, but: wealth taxes have many of the properties of rents, which sets them far apart from income, consumption, and excise taxes.
Transactional taxes (income, consumption, excise, even inheritance [though I oppose this one for double taxation reasons]) pose no threat to property rights, they just ultimately change the true price of goods and services. Property and wealth taxes pose a threat to property rights, since they threaten the property directly.
But that's not what people are talking about here anyway, they're talking about literal seizures of private property.
Theoretically. The actuality of it is very different though. Their oil is difficult for them to acquire and its processing costs are much higher than competitors such as Iraq or Saudi Arabia (or US shale). Their Orinoco Belt oil sands - which holds most of their reserve - would be challenging for the US or Canada to maximize the value of; they basically stand no chance at utilizing it without much higher levels of domestic development/capability (or without fully outsourcing its development).
The Orinoco Belt is composed of extra heavy crude or heavy crude, not oil sands, which is where shale comes from. While not having the same profitability as light crude, it is still better than shale.
One of the big impact of the cost of Venezuelan crude is its high content of sulfur, which makes refining more expensive, but to this day, Venezuela is one of the few countries where even with a low barrel price, the activity is profitable, or at least it should be.
But when you have a state company that has quadrupled its payroll, paying for all kinds of social services in the country, corruption, all while also diverting funds from investment, you make the operation run at a loss.
The oil sands in Canada is having a problem keeping investors with the low price and high cost of refinement. Venezuela is in a similar position where refining is concerned.
Sweden has never had significant oil production. In fact, it hasn't produced any oil for 20 years. So I don't think its really a valid comparison with Venezuela (although Norway is).
