Reply To: Venezuela
These so called journalists which are only mouthpiece of the ruling class, they write without double checking history or reading any books. Hugo Chavez government is not the first one, and the only one in Latin America who has nationalized means of production, Cardenas and Peron did it before Chavez it was done in a much larger scale and they were running a capitalist economy. In Argentina they nationalized all the means of transportation including the raildroad system, and the means of communication, and the seaports, the national educations and medical services were implemented to be run by the state.
In Mexico they nationalized the oil industy and all the landowners were expropiated, and they initiated a land reforms, all the electrical companies and railroad systems were nationalized, and they created public corporations, both goverments and measures were opposed by the USA despite the fact that both were capitalists governments which means that capitalists also enter into contradictions within themselves, and it has nothing to do with socialism.
Chavez did not nationalized private homes of the workers, they nationalized properties that were owned by rich peoples closer to the beaches area in order to promote tourism, the same thing was done by the Gulf & Western in the Caribbeans where they expropiated many private owners to build hotels and private beaches.
The Gulf and Western was the old Puerto Rican Sugar Company which kept workers living under inhumane conditions living worst than animals, and killed many workers unions leaders, leftists and workers.
Agriculture has not totally being nationalized in Venezuela like it was done in Mexico, only a few companies were nationalized and they went into bankruptcy because capitalist can not be run without producing profits, and Venezuela still depends on the imprtation of foods that is the reason why merchants were able to create a food scarcity in the supermarkets. In Argentina many workers took over failed corporations and they had to run them as private corporations, like in Bolivia communes are run like private enterprises and they are called socialist enterprises
In Puerto Rico most beaches are owned by private corporations and by the hotel and tourist industries, and fishermen were displaced, and the USA army and the hotel industry have taken over the islands of Culebra and Vieques to use them as a millitary base and most of the member of the population are dying from cancer and the sea life is mutating . That is what they call free capitalism, they can fool the fools, and peoples who are reading comics books and playing video games