So here is my dilemma. We import all food and goods, too small for agriculture. Our main economy is built on financial services and tourism mostly. Our social safety net and most of our let’s say, liberal left leaning policies are being eroded as time goes by, which is not ideal, but is still better than nothing I guess.

However, since we trade our service based economy for essentially everything else, how does socialism help a nation so dependent on the world around it being capitalist to survive?

  • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Socialism is placing control of your country in the hands of organs of the working class, e.g. a socialist party, and by necessity using this control to oppress the capitalist class and thereby direct production for the needs of the people rather than the chaos of profit-driven production. So there are two ways to think about socialism and your country.

    The first is what socialism may do within your country, as in what would happen if your country was run by a socialist party, could organize production for people’s needs, oppress the capitakist class, etc. Looking at your country in isolation, this would mean you could take what you do produce and funnel the proceeds to what your people need. It sure sounds like having a large reserve of nonperishable food and vitamins would be a smart way to provide security for the people there and I bet there isn’t yet proper centrally coordinated stockpiles. In addition, you mention Caribbean countries so I assume it may be one. Caribbean countries also suffer from extreme weather, particularly hurricanes, and you could direct your state resources to building resistant housing and shelters, drainage strategies, power systems robust to storms, clean water robust to storms, etc. Socialist governments tend to focus on public infrastructure like this, things that help everyone and improve security and stability. They also tend to promote education and healthcare.

    But we should think beyond your country as well. As someone else mentioned, it is arguable that your country is not sovereign, and part of that is not having food sovereignty. If it is not possible for your country to be good sovereign due to a lack of land, you will only be able to have sovereignty as part of other countries’ interests. This might look like a confederation with neighboring countries or it might look like a country like China making it so that when the US inevitably tries to destroy any people-serving project you create (e.g. sanctioning you like it does Venezuela), you will have a trading partner and can therefore survive. It is mostly capitalism and its nation-states that itself undermines your autonomy. The more that other countries are run by socialists, the more you will be able to make decisions independent of Washington.

    Re: depending on capitalism, this same kind if scenario actually exists for all socialist countries. They exist within a capitalist world and interact with it on the basis of doing steps similar to capitalism in order to develop. Some, like China, even allow capitalism itself to explicitly exist for large segments of the country as part of a larger development strategy, where the plan is to reign it in on the regular, like it is a caged beast. But really, countries are nearly all dependent on trade and are not able to be sovereign through full self-sufficiency and the threat of US sanctions would be quite devastating just like it would be for your country. A given country might have food sovereignty, or something close to it, but US sanctions still hit it hard. So what I’m saying is that your country is not so different despite having some unique circumstances.

    Finally, you may be thinking of what it would mean to lose the financial services (presumably tax haven) income to your country. If you tried to assert sovereignty, the US would indeed probably pull the rug out from under you there. So this “industry” is not so much a boon for your economy so much as it makes you a dependency with a distorted economy that serves primarily to hide companies’ money rather than create goods or services. This makes your country vulnerable, not subsidized. This puts you in the same situation as colonies and neo-colonies that have been forced to build their whole countries around exporting just a few things, usually at a technological disadvantage (e.g. Venezuela exporting oil). And in those scenarios, socialists have recognized this as a vulnerability and tried to build out more of a real productive economy that makes them less vulnerable, even though the US / The British marked them for death. The exact way you would want to develop would depend on knowing much more about your country’s demographics and possible material bases and whether you would be able to align with e.g. Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, and China. That would be a project best suited to someone like yourself based on extensive research and familiarity with the needs of your island nation by doing the work of organizing and seeing first-hand what is needed, what is missing, what cottage industries could be improved and scaled, where schools are needed, etc etc.

    • SimmyOP
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      2 months ago

      Really informative. Thank you.