Even self-professed Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders refused to address the current crisis in Venezuela during his presidential campaign, partly because he would have to account for the fact his policy prescriptions are being practiced in the Latin American nation.This is how Bernie's America would've looked !

Thank God Venezuela is not on our border, otherwise, millions would be pouring into the USA and all the snowflakes would be demanding we take care of them. A liberal has never seen a non white person they would not accept into this country.

Venezuela can go under for all I am concerned. It was their own policies that did them in, let them suffer the consequences! Somehow though, according to liberals, their collapse will be blamed on the USA, like all the worlds problems are.

Wait. CNN reports? You guys sh!t on that as a source every day and now it's fine?

I've been to Venezuela several times. To use a Trump term...GREAT people! The "socialist" problem is, as usual, that it is a country run by a dictator. That kind of socialism cannot work! I was delayed in the airport in Caracas once because there was an assassination attempt on the Dic ( pun intended)... unfortunately, it missed. It is not the fault of socialism that the millions in oil revenue is "absorbed" by the dictator and little of it gets to the people or the country's needs. Democratic Socialism is the only way it can work, otherwise it is just a tool to try to convince the people that they have a government FOR them. As in the U.S.S.R, Cuba, Mao's China, etc. it is really not "Socialism".

Good luck, my friends in Venezuela!

Way to dodge your blatant hypocrisy. When any of the rest of us use CNN for facts you just piss on it.

(Wrong thread. Sorry)

Venezuela isn't properly socialist, except to American Fundamentalists who don't understand what socialism's definition is.

Socialism is a bottom-up socioeconomic structure that empowers the working to direct industry and social policy. It's about normal people collectively making big decisions for the benefit of the many, instead of the powerful and wealthy making decisions for the benefit of the few.

It is the natural destination of a neocapitalist democracy, simply because in a neocapitalist democracy, the many's needs are often not met. Give the many political power, and the many will make choices that benefit the many: that's what socialism is.

It's about making human need, not greed, the basis for trading in society. It's about changing ideas of commodity into human right. It's about creating an economy that benefits everybody -- smart and dumb, disabled and able, woman and man, black and white -- rather than just a small percentage.

Venezuela is a prime example of a country who attempted socialism while surrounded by countries that practice either horrid oligarchic autocracy or a sham capitalist democracy.

When you vest power over public infrastructure in public hands, you create a society that negotiates and directs its interests in the most communal and agreeable fashion. Presently, most developed countries have a representative democracy where there is a great level of hereditary power and wealth which means each new political establishment often remains the same as the former or so similar as to make very negligible difference for the common person. In a truly socialist society, you have a form of democracy where the common people directly influence the progress of the country: not just politically and superficially, but economically and culturally too.

Real power over economic policy eludes the average Venezuelan just as much as it eludes the average American or Brit. When was the last time a public vote was held on tax expenditure, or the ownership of what is referred to as "public infrastructure": things like railways, roads, heritage buildings, water treatment facilties, schools?

Never, is when. Why? Because "public infrastructure" is just a fancy term that capitalists use to refer to things they utilize and profit from without ever owning responsibility of maintenance, upkeep and price-control. This is why in Britain, some people are spending a week's wages on their rail-travel for the month. It's the same reason why some people's water and heating systems get turned off in the middle of winter, and why some people can't afford electricity for a full week, and why four years of education now costs the average graduate close to fifty thousand pounds.

Socialism could answer these problems and answer them well, simply because it politically demands the consensus of the masses on issues of social importance. There is a reason that the right hate the idea of socialism, and it's because the right are made up most influentially of rich businesspeople and other cretins who stand to lose out by giving power to the common man. What normal, working-class person in any country, if given the opportunity, would vote for his children to be saddled with £50k in debt just to acquire a basic tertiary education? What working class person in any country, if given the opportunity, would vote for himself to spend 25% of his income on travel to-and-from his place of work? Nobody with any sense would, and yet it is the case. And it is the case because of the decisions of the political elite.

All shortcomings in society which can be addressed by a transferrance of wealth or power, are a result of deliberate political choices which fail to meet the needs of a group or demographic. Poverty is a political choice. Expensive rail travel is a political choice. The commodification of basic food and clean water, are political choices. The price of education, is a political choice. And all these shortcomings may be addressed and rectified if only those political choices fell into the public domain, rather than the elite domain.

If you held a vote in the US tomorrow, asking the question: "should university education be given to people under 21 for free", universities across the country would be admitting students without needing credit card information, tomorrow.

Socialism is the enemy of the rich and powerful, and the friend of the common man. If a society or government ceases to grant power to the ordinary working person, and concentrates its power in a single man, woman, or small collection of people, then it is not socialism. Venezuela is a corruption of socialism, because it ignores its most important tenet: the greatest powers or vestiges of power in a society -- which are currently wealth and legal control -- must be communal, not central.