Introduction
It has been more than a week since I wrote the last article about Venezuela and it was about time to continue with the discussion about this important topic. It is necessary to not forget that these articles have the goal of comparing the failed socialists revolution in Venezuela with the measures that Karl Marx wrote on his well-known book titled “The Communist Manifesto”, and see if said measures were indeed applied or not.
I would like to refresh the reader’s memory and do a quick overview of the measures that were already discussed in the previous articles:
The first one says “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes” Source. This measure was half applied because even though private land was expropriated by the government in an abusive way, there is still land that is owned by private individuals.
“A heavy progressive or graduated income tax” Source. This measure is not only applied in Venezuela, but in virtually every country there is.
“Abolition of all rights of inheritance” Source. This measure wasn’t applied and Venezuelans can have inheritances without having any problems.
“Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels” Source. There was a short-lived government program called “Ubica tu casa” that planned to accomplish something similar to this. But the program was eventually closed and is no longer active. Nevertheless, there has been a lot of abuse towards property owners as we have already discussed in the previous articles.
“Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly” Source There is a kind of implicit centralization through an organism called Superintendence of the Institutions of the Banking Sector of Venezuela (SUDEBAN), which has a lot of control over the private banks. However, given the fact there are private banks this cannot be called a monopoly.
“Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State” Source Similarly to what I just mentioned about banks, the means of communication and the means of transport are owned by both private companies and by the government. In this sense, it can be called a half applied measure because even though the government directly participates in the market, it is not a monopoly.
As we can see, so far we have discussed several of Karl Marx’ measures, in total there are 10 different measures and today we will continue with this discussion.
Karl Marx measures
The next measure in the list says the following thing:
- Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan Source: this measure was applied in Venezuela because government-owned factories were increased due to all of the expropriations from private farmers and companies.
Some of the most well-known cases of the government taking control of big companies were when they decided to take control of a very big electricity company called “Electricidad de Caracas” which operated mainly in the capital of the country. This happened in February 2007 and 3 months later they took control of CANTV which is the biggest telecommunication company in the country. In short words, the government started to take control of entire industries in the year 2007.
Regarding the cultivation of wastelands and the implementation of a common plan, this was also applied. In 2017 a government sowing and harvesting plan called "Venezuela cultivates 2017" was created, and it fits perfectly with this description “...the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan”. As expected, this type of centralized and socialist plans don’t have the expected results, and the majority of the people continue to suffer from food scarcity mainly due to low local food production and high prices of imported food.
On a recent interview between the well known Venezuelan journalist Nelson Bocaranda and the president of the Confederation of Associations of Agricultural Producers of Venezuela (FEDEAGRO), it was informed that 66% of Venezuelans eat only 1 or 2 times a day. The video in Spanish where Bocaranda talks about this can be found here and it explains the dire situation that the majority of Venezuelans are currently facing thanks to socialism.
On the other hand, there are people that find it preferable and more economical to purchase food from other countries because the local prices are so high that even after including the shipping costs it ends up being cheaper. I personally know of 2 close people that have done this. The food that is purchased from abroad is mostly canned food and non-perishable food, and the people doing this are mostly individuals that have incomes directly with American dollars, which of course, is not common at all in this country.
It is not a surprise for any Venezuelan living in the country to find certain parts of the supermarket looking like this:
The result of the government taking control over industries has been a decrease in the quality of the service when it comes to electricity and telecommunications. Let’s not forget the national blackout that lasted several days in March 2019, and the fact that Venezuela currently has the slowest internet connectivity in South America.
When it comes to food production, the expropriations were a complete disaster, with the majority of the expropriated companies going bankrupt and the general food production in a dangerous decline.
Conclusion
In this article, I was able to continue discussing Venezuela’s collapse, and how some of the measures applied by the government are similar to those from Karl Marx’s book. In this case, the topic was mostly about food production and how it ended up collapsing due to the socialist model that was enforced in the country.
There are still a few measures that still need to be properly explored and discussed, but in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts about everything mentioned in this article.
Thanks for reading!
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