“Vuvuzela Stinky, Socialism Bad”

This is one of the funniest one-liners reactionaries use to attack socialism and fool workers into opposing it. People assume that Venezuela was doing really well under “laissez-faire” capitalism and only got bad when “socialists” took power and enacted welfare policies; they say Venezuela turned “socialist” after the “United Socialist Party of Venezuela” took power by election in 2010. Conservative capitalists in particular use Venezuela’s experience as a supposed example of how bad socialism is supposed to be. They are wrong, for Venezuela is not an example of socialism, and its “failure” is neither due to socialism nor the system it has, but US imperialism’s strangling and exploitation of the country.

First, we already defined socialism numerous times. There is no need to restate the definition of socialism except in this line: socialism is the transition from capitalism to communism. If the working class does not smash the capitalist state and organize its own state, there can be no socialism. Based on this, Venezuela is not socialist because the capitalist state from before the 2010 election was never smashed. Instead, the ruling “socialist” party has maintained the dictatorship of the comprador bourgeoisie, and it has only changed the specific members of the comprador capitalist class in power. That is why Venezuela suppresses its communist party, and that is why it lets the US, Russia, and other imperialist states exploit it. No socialist state could do that, so even if Venezuela nationalized all enterprises, it would only be state-capitalist at most.

The state was never smashed in Venezuela. The bourgeois bureaucracy-capitalist state was only “taken over” by Chavez and his party. They were able to do so because Chavez was an officer and had strong support in the military, and because of support among the people who led him to election victory within the parliamentary system. But they did not take property from the bourgeoisie. They did not smash the state apparatus. They did not abolish capitalism. They did not socialize the means of production. They did not smash the fascist groups or the organizations of US-imperialism within the country. All this is background for the great economic crises in today’s Venezuela. They do not have the tools needed to solve the crises that the country experiences, because it is still a capitalist country. The class character of the state is the same as before the Chavez-government: it is bureaucracy-capitalist, just like the rest of the countries in Latin America and the third world for that matter. [Source]

Next, Venezuela has not done much in terms of its economy, even to make it more “social-democratic”. The capitalist relations of production remained more or less the same, and the imperialist extraction of superprofits from the country remains an issue:

Imperialism allows itself to act in a presumptive and shameless form against a formally independent country through its condition of single hegemonic superpower and self-appointed world gendarme; because it is the principal imperialism that imposes its semi-colonial rule over Venezuela as well as the other countries of Latin America… [T]he current regime… as representatives of the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie of its country… has increasingly submitted the country to the economic rule of Yankee imperialism through its principal and practically only exportation product, oil, while associating to its direct foreign investment and increasing its financial dependence from Wall Street. However they further opened the country to the penetration of other imperialist powers, did not break with Yankee imperialism, then trying to ride two horses. Increasing the imperialist contend for the exploitation of the country and turning Venezuela an increasingly sharpened inter-imperialist contend arena. [Source]

Even US imperialist media admitted the lack of economic change that followed the “socialist” takeover:

Yet creating a socialist economy is one of Chavez’s most elusive goals — a stark example of the disconnect between the president’s rhetoric and the reality on the ground. In fact, the private sector still controls two-thirds of Venezuela’s economy — the same as when Chavez was elected in 1998, according to estimates by the Central Bank. [Source]

On top of all that, as was mentioned throughout this text, imperialism has weakened Venezuela’s economy. This is due to capitalism, not socialism; Venezuela’s reliance on oil exports to imperialist countries made it a semi-colony, and oil prices falling along with other issues of the international capitalist-imperialist economy only hurt it even more. A socialist Venezuela would certainly be more self-sufficient, focused on planned production and not so much profitability, and able to withstand imperialist attacks. Most of all, American imperialists sanction Venezuela because the comprador capitalists in power lean more to Russian and Chinese imperialism; the sanctions and other economic pressures America applies to the country hurt the Venezuelan people and their economic conditions. An article written by revisionists that actually support Russian and Chinese imperialism exposes the role US imperialism has played in attacking Venezuela (though we partly dislike it because it fails to show how all imperialists of the world plunder Venezuela and other third world nations):

The vast majority of Western Media have concluded that Maduro and his socialist policies are to blame for Venezuela’s Political and Economic turmoil. Corporately owned Western outlets, such as the Washington Post, blame nationalization of industry and irresponsible government spending for Venezuela’s economic collapse. This narrative often fails to include any information about the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela or their effect on the Venezuelan citizenry. These sanctions, which began under Bush in 2005,  have only increased under both the Obama and Trump administrations; the Congressional Research Service reports 144 different sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela(FAS). The timing of these sanctions seems to coincide with the Venezuelan economic slowdowns that have led to the current humanitarian crisis. …

Citgo is the only US Company which remains in Venezuela, and it is forced to make large payments to the Venezuelan State in order to remain. This could be the motivation behind the strong sanctions which the US has imposed on Venezuela since Chavez was elected. As Venezuelan oil sovereignty has increased so have the sanctions from the United States. The conflict between the two countries peaked in 2018 when Juan Guaido and the US backed opposition party attempted a coup on the Maduro. The United States has now escalated their position from imposing economic sanctions to outright refusing to recognize Maduro as the sitting President.

The United States Government has become closely linked to private oil companies within the country. This has led the United States to impose economic warfare on Venezuela in the form of sanctions, mostly on Venezuelan oil. In addition, the US has maximized global oil production in countries such as Saudi Arabia, which keeps private profits high and the price per barrel of oil low. This economic warfare has become more visible during the Trump administration, whose members speak openly about meeting with oil executives to kneecap the Venezuelan economy. [Source]

Thus, Venezuela is not socialist, it is not even state-capitalist, and its economic issues are caused by capitalist boom-and-bust cycles and imperialist attacks. If Venezuela was genuinely socialist, it would be way more successful, just as previous genuine socialist states were.