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In reply to the discussion: Now Venezuela is running out of toilet paper [View all]joshcryer
(62,276 posts)I disagree with some of the more knee jerk posts about Chavez (calling him a dictator, etc, etc), but those are a few posters. By and large I see more adulation for Chavismo on DU than criticism. This is why I post in the Latin American forum because I am informed and I am knowledgeable about Latin America and it's not worth it to argue with DU at large over stuff they clearly know nothing about.
I am a socialist. Chavismo is not socialist in any reasonable definition of the word. It resembles feudalism to a great extent and its aspirations toward socialism led it to be less redistributive and less poverty reductive than Chile and Brazil (social democracies) while making a whole new class of Venezuelans, the boligarchs, which in my mind is no different from neoliberalism.
There is a great tradition of socialists being critical of other "socialists." We saw this to a great extent during the Soviet era (with socialists like Emma Goldman). If we cannot be critical of those who call themselves socialists then we are lost. This entire discussion forum is based on criticizing the US administration, and rightly so. But we only care about criticism, it seems, when it's some other states abroad who pretend to be socialist.