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Pensées sur le Vénézuela

L’historique de l’instabilité politique au Vénézuela remonte à bien avant l’ère du président actuel, Nicolas Maduro. En effet, le Vénézuela a historiquement eu une industrie pétrolière productive, qui fut nationalisée dans les années 1970. La critique principale du mode économique du pays, et ce, depuis le début du 20 e siècle, fut son manque de diversification, dans sa dépendance sur le pétrole. (Ce phénomène sera décrit plus loin dans le texte, lorsque la maladie hollandaise sera discutée.) (Smith, 2020). Les années 1990 ont été particulièrement mouvementées, avec deux tentatives de coup d’état en 1992 par Hugo Chavez et ses collaborateurs, motivées notamment par la détérioration des conditions socioéconomiques (Mora et. Al, 2021). En 1998, Hugo Chavez, alors président du parti socialiste unifié du Vénézuela, un parti anticapitaliste et anti-impérialiste, est élu président du Vénézuela, avec le soutien d’une coalition de gauche, dont le parti communiste du Vénézuela (PCV), le mouv...
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Addressing Social-Democracy VS Marxism

    First, let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way, you can’t compare Marxism and Social Democracy, one is a materialist analysis of history focused on class struggle, and a critique of political economy - by marxism people usually meant socialism or communism, and social democracy is a ‘mixed economy. Social democracies are meant to mitigate inequalities created by capitalism, by using a system of progressive taxation and social benefits. Sure social democracies have improved material conditions for the working class when compared to free-market capitalism, the NHS is a good example of this. Though even after accounting for imperialism and exploitation of the global south that they heavily rely on, there are significant problems that remain with social democracies.      Secondly , the mechanisms in capitalist economies have a tendency to generate gross inequalities of income, wealth and opportunities. Since most of the wealth is generational, you ...
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Debunking “Anarcho-Capitalism”

     This is a critique of anarcho-capitalism and Libertarianism as ideologies and ways of organizing societies. How applying them would create a very dysfunctional society, and why I am strongly opposed to them. How it is inherently exploitative and appropriates people’s labour, its coercive nature, and how its proponents have a very poor, surface-level comprehension of socio-economic issues. I concede that any ideology has its flaws, however, anarcho-capitalism is simply a contradiction. A free market like that is not that great at all - and on top of that, not realistic - and would not be beneficial to the common good. Now, I acknowledge the marginally more efficient allocation of the production factors that comes with a free market as opposed to removing markets or heavily regulating them and the pseudo-sovereignty the consumers gain. However, there are many problems with that kind of economic system, which I will go over in this paper.  NAP & Profit Motive...
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A Critique of Capitalism

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  Capitalism sucks . But why? a (video) essay by Charles-Olivier Rivard The world we currently live in is dominated by a ‘social’ and economic system based on ‘competitive’ markets, private ownership of the means of production, and wage-labor. Capitalism. We keep getting told by its proponents that this system of so-called free markets breeds freedom, innovation, happiness, democracy and efficient allocation of resources, right as we observe incredible surges in wealth inequality and poverty, as well as a seemingly unsolvable and rapidly incoming climate crisis. Some even go as far as to argue that state intervention is the root cause of those problems, and that a laissez-faire, neoliberal economy would be much better for everyone. An ‘invisible hand’ guiding the markets. However, many are the reasons for which Capitalism is a horrible economic system, so let’s take some time to actually critique it. TABLE OF CONTENTS QUALITY OF PRODUCTS 2 INNOVATION 3 EFFICIENCY 4 IMPACTS ON...
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