Just because the GDP is high, doesn’t mean the income and wellbeing of the people were high as well. It means that the country is rich through its productivity and economic growth, but it does not mean that the people living there are all rich. A country can be prosperous and wealthy, but the people might live in horrendous conditions. Even countries like Brazil which has a high GDP, people are facing huge inequalities and crippling conditions.
Again, 1950s Venezuela is led by a dictator while the majority of its people were in poverty. The country was practically used by western nations as a means of exploiting their resources for the sole purpose of enriching themselves, coming at the cost of neglecting the people who live and work for them.
Also, if you wanted to know which socialist experiment technically worked, then check out Chile under Salvador Allende. But before anyone asks, the reason why it barely lasted was because the government was overthrown, as America sanctioned and plotted a coup against the Allende government. They implemented Augusto Pinochet, who led a dictatorship that killed thousands.
I at least had the courtesy to learn what Socialism actually was, as I looked through manifestos, books, sources investigations, real world documents, and even reports from the CIA.
I’m not trying to convince you into being a socialist, I am simply just trying to present what actually happened and the history behind it.
This isn't true at all. Yes, I will admit that Nicolas Maduro is a corrupt politician, and I have a lot of complaints about him. He is a very incompetent person himself who didn't do much to save his country, and his actions aren't excusable. But the idea of Venezuela being the "richest nation until socialism ruined it" is far from the truth.
Venezuela was a resource heavy country and it got rich by EXPLOITING its own people and selling their oil to richer countries such as the United States. So while Venezuela was rich, their people lived in poverty as the country didn't care about them. And yes, it was ruled by dictators as well.
Until 1998, the country was ruled by a 2 party system that held a monopoly on the country's political system, and didn't care about its own people, only the rich and the money they made from selling oil to other countries. Combine that with the financial incompetence they had caused them to endure financial debt that caused them to adopt even worse policies that further made things expensive for the already poor people of Venezuela, which contributed to the rise of Hugo Chavez in 1998.
Hugo Chavez is actually not a terrible person, despite what many think of him, and kept winning landslide elections due to his immense popularity, despite claims of election fraud, which were proven false by many organizations, including the Carter foundation in the U.S.
He helped alleviate the national debt, used the country's oil industry to finance programs to help deal with widespread poverty, lack of education and literacy, and its crippling healthcare system, which was resolved by the following decade, helping a lot of people by the end.
But he has issues, his overreliance on the oil industry, (a symptom of Dutch's Disease), as well as his financial illiteracy caused the country's economy to decline and eventually collapse by the late 2010s. That I won't excuse, this was incompetence. But combining the sanctions and economic warfare by other western nations further crippled its economy, worsening it.
So while I do think Venezuela has its issues and is facing a corruption crisis (that has nothing to do with the economic system of socialism), an overreliance on the oil industry, and widespread sanctions by other nations, you must consider the context of how the country came to be. You may criticize the country as you like, but you got to consider the context and the past events that led to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro to gain power.
This is not exactly the case. Giving the workers the ownership of the means of production is the meaning of socialism. And while the state would optionally seize the means of production, the workers would mostly possess it.
The whole "ruling over them" part needs to be understood because Socialism is an 'Economic' idea, not a 'Political' idea, so anyone believing in it may have differing opinions on how the government may run. Even if this wasn't the case, many past Socialist nations fell to an authoritarian government due to frequent attacks from neighboring governments. Such as economic sanctions and embargos, economic warfare, civil wars, attempts to assassinate the head of state, attempts to overthrow the government, and so on. All of this breeds paranoia in the hands of not only its citizens, but the government itself, which in turn leads to the government implementing autocratic policies as a means of protecting their nation.
Had any of those neighboring countries never attacked socialist countries, it may have gotten to a different direction, but the world may never know.
I am a history buff. I learned a lot about socialism and how it works. I can assure you that it’s contrary to what you are assuming. I can tell you because I actually read and learned from the Communist Manifesto, as well as from other important socialist ideas.
Socialism isn’t forcing people to do exactly as they say, it’s giving people the ownership of the means of production through worker cooperatives and democracy, something that has been shown to be successful, such as the Mondragón Corporation in Spain.
