This is, at first sight, and then throughout, an article of clichés.

It fails to surprise me that Peter Hitchens {a man not to be confused with his better known and far more intelligent but equally controversial brother under any circumstances} recently wrote a piece on Chavez that consisted of the crude hack-job which has proven ubiquitous on the right. His wielding of the machete is more elegant than most but still presents moments of jaw-dropping idiocy, for instance:

Revenge is already being prepared. Chavez is now demanding that the universities drop their entrance examinations so that he can pack them with young half-educated supporters who can elbow aside Geraldine and her liberty-loving friends.

he alleges, as if there is no other reason at all for such a policy being brought into place in a developing country. He does have some valid points, chiefly the worrying treatment of anti-Chavez protesters by the police. But to connect these instantly with the man himself seems unwise given that in our own nation there was an innocent man gunned down for boarding an underground train. By raising this I intend not to indicate that there are no grounds for Hitchens raising the point but rather that overly brutal policing is seemingly ubiquitous through the world {as also demonstrated by the tendency of American police to use pepper spray upon peaceful protesters until this was outlawed by court} rather than something which is a feature of any “autocracy”.

Indeed the liberal usage of the word “autocratic” is another hackneyed feature of his criticism. As ever though, evidence is thin on the ground. Hitchens, like all in his position, attempts to raise the removal of a programme highly critical of Chavez from terrestrial airwaves. Given the support that the aforesaid channel gave a violent coup staged by militant rightist forces to depose Chavez and then no coverage to the simply immense protests in the wake and in absolute action to this move I should perhaps make another comparison to Britain, this one a conjecture of fantasy. If Channel 4 had, as I personally suspect it might, given full and vocal support to a Marxist coup against Gordon Brown and then had pretended that no dissent in the country over the issue had occurred would Hitchens really imagine Brown to be acting out of bounds if he forced it to function solely as a satellite, cable and digital channel from then onwards?

Indeed, if anything it is remarkable that the network was permitted to remain on publically accessible airwaves from 2002 until over half a decade later.

Unfortunately the unoriginality is seemingly fathomless, entirely in disregard of the faded nature of over-used cards never worth much to start with. He accuses Chavez of

Plotting what was effectively a coup on the constitution

yet if it truly was one Chavez surely has learnt from past experience {both while he was planning them and when victim}. This time around rather than making a military effort to seize control he staged a referendum. Truly dastardly, isn’t it? Now if Hitchens considers the Venezuelan people to be inadequate judges of the conditions their nation faces then he should say so, but as it is he has used a highly intellectually dishonest tactic by associated the forced seizure of power to an attempt by a democratically elected president to obtain a democratic mandate upon the conditions under which Venezuela would function as a democracy.

There is an argument against this, one which does not rely upon distortion and spin. Instead Peter writes in a fashion that he is aware his American audience will respond to with a vigorous knee-jerk {despite the fact that it is highly likely a substantial number of the readers supported Bush’s attempts to amend the American one over gay marriage in what would have amounted to a far less democratic manner, had he had the 2/3s of both houses of Congress required}. What makes his failure especially galling is that in the country he tends to operate there is no written constitution at all. If he truly considers a constitution to be worthwhile and worth adhering to rigidly and making no efforts to amend I consider it peculiar that I have no recollection of him writing an article advocating we create a written document outlining the rights inalienable to us as Queen’s subjects.

Indeed the powers of Parliament are entirely unrestrained owing to the potency of Parliamentary Sovereignty, which states that no government in power may make laws incapable of being over-ridden by those that follow. Given that the executive has a vigorous grasp over self-interest {the quantity of MPs willing to oppose important bills that will lose them their current jobs in government or/and deny them any chance at future positions is not negligible but generally insubstantial} and the First Past the Post electoral system tends to ensure that there are no minority governments in parliament we are effectively left with an executive capable of doing as it pleases, with Blair only prevented from exerting his will over the country once in his ten year tenure. By no means does this mean that Hitchens’ definition of autocracy is rationally bankrupt, but I would suggest that he start raging about the shoddy state of our means of government a little more at home given how abhorrent he appears to find democratic governments having excessive power abroad.

Presumably Peter Hitchens’ concern for the liberty of the Venezuelan people and longing to protect them from themselves is greater than for his own countryman.

His intellectually insubstantial rant is in places unintentionally hilarious:

If there were any justice, Chavez would long ago have been forced from office by bankruptcy. His economic management is wasteful and sloppy and involves a great deal of expensive largesse to the poor in return for their votes,

In my piece on Pragmatic Socialism I suggested that the simple fact that it works justifies its usage where perhaps some more intellectual considerations of it do not. I think that upon some levels Hitchens accepts that Venezuela has made great progress but unfortunately he has shied away from this. He rails that it is unjust for somebody who performs the largesse of offering the basic facilities such as a solid education and healthcare along with less than extreme redistribution of wealth remain in office. This is perhaps acceptable on some ideological levels but the reality of the matter is that Chavez remains immensely and nearly overwhelmingly popular amongst the impoverished masses that make up the vast majority of Venezuela.

This is for the simple reason that he, for the first time, was a man pursuing their interests. He, for the first time, helped.

Of course, this should come with a cost. According to the doctrine of the New Right the state’s intervention into the private sector’s affairs ought to cause calamity. There is no way that it is conceivable that statist policies could improve the economic situation of a nation and even by the inadequate basis of GDP per capita {which, of course, fails to asses how much each person is worth and assumes that everyone is of equal value and thus deserves and equal amount of cash} it will bring more woe overall as the state strangles business and this throttling results in the economy falling to pieces.

Alas, for Hitchens at least, “the proportion of Venezuela’s GDP in the private sector has actually increased.”

Compounding his error Hitchens references the state of Venezuela’s

And here is the usual trite contrast, long common in the Third World and rapidly spreading to the First World—gross wealth on display next to rancid squalor. Yes, there really are hovels a few hundred feet from a freeway crammed with new SUV’s. How obvious. How stupid.

In the aforelinked article by Johann Hari it is exposed exactly how foolish this point being raised is. In South America it would be a struggle to find a government that has done more to bridge this gap than that of Chavez. The damage done by this dichotomy of wealthy and poor has been reduced considerably and how exactly the lazy claim of Chavez being “The Next Fidel” {which, to Hitchen’s defence, was a headline and thus he may well not have written} is reconciled with his claims here is beyond me. For any earnest socialist intending to “Revive socialist Marxism” would not have done so in the fashion chosen by Chavez. Firstly they would have began by executing the wealthy once they seized power, or at least enslaving them, and secondly they would certainly have seized power rather than it being politely given them by the people of Venezuela acting in a democratic fashion through what Marx considered “A committee for the organisation of the bourgeoisie”. Reformist Marxists moved away from such talk while Revolutionary Marxists most certainly did not.

Which rather brings us to our next point:

Many believe he wanted to ignore the result—he is widely accused of constant, highly scientific ballot-rigging of the kind that is very hard to prove—and was only dissuaded from doing so by a phone call from his friend Fidel Castro.

The emphasise for “Many believe” was my addition, for this form of statement permeates Hitchens’ essay. In Wikipedian terms this pattern of writing is referred to as “Weasel Words” and I consider Hitchens to be a man who would do well writing a few articles for Wikinews and seeing how they were received. Effectively he uses this phrase and its variants to avoid explaining exactly who he is talking about.

Furthermore his allegations concerning vote-rigging fall foul of what his brother Christopher considers amongst “The elementary rules of logic”, to wit: “that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” I am tempted to invoke this, but would also point out that the testament of various independent election observers {every one that has observed, in fact} combined with the fact that when it came to the referendum Chavez lost suggest against such a claim.

If he is intelligent enough to make things “Very hard to prove” he surely should be capable of making sure it works.

Venezuela ought to be an advanced and free country under the rule of law. It has plenty of educated, articulate people. It has wealth. It has most of the constituents of a serious civil society, including strong public opinion.

To conclude Hitchens is educated and articulate. He has wealth. He observes the problems facing Venezuela to which there are no short-cut solutions. But in his failure to realise that Chavez could not have established himself without the popular approval and repeated mandates given to him by the vast majority of Venezuelans he also fails to make any proper assessment of the man. Constantly seeking out negatives and seeking a totalitarian iron fist where none exists he transforms the narrative of a man offering the poor a slice of the national wealth that no other would give to them into one of a vicious autocrat scheming his way into office.

Doubtless this article was highly pleasing to its readers, who wanted their suspicions of a leftist loved by his people and doing much to help them besmirched as thoroughly as possible in order to avoid their preconceptions being challenged. I have little suspicion that it failed at this but these predictable, tiresome smears do nothing to tarnish the true success of Chavez.

Nepal is on course to give their formerly revolutionary Maoist Party a considerable majority in their first elections after the end of their absolute monarchy. This causes some problems for everyone in the west since America still has them officially listed as terrorists and the Gurkas might be dissolved as a military force in service of Britain. Nepalese conservatives were doubtless dismayed as well, given that the top of the policy agenda is now the destruction of the monarchy.

Their leader has stated quite clearly that he intends to evade autocracy and use multi-party politics, which calls into question exactly how Maoist they really are but is certainly welcome. It is expected that they shall want a powerful presidential executive, however, so I remain wary.

Still, as outcomes go it is certainly amongst the best that could have been hoped for. The abandonment of military means has clearly benefitted the former army and they could have caused major problems had they refused to participate. As it is Nepal stands a strong chance of progress, just so long as their governance is as competant as it is radical.

Given that I have begun my newly filled profile with a pair of philosophies that I came up with off of the top of my head I consider it appropriate that I define terms and in this series this is exactly what I intend to do. Firstly I shall deal with, as this title suggests, “Pragmatic Socialism”.

On the blog of Catholic wench The Anchoress there is an entire, well filled, category entitled “Socialism doesn’t work”. This struck me as strange and has stayed with me ever since, primarily for the reason that most such phrases do: the obvious lack of validity.

Indeed the only reason that I have been able to embrace socialism is for reasons of the empirical rather than mere ideology. I have no real affection for Marx {his failure to predict the massive ascension of the middle classes and its implications makes him a poor profit} and struggle to consider the rich to be the uniform scum that often inspires ire amongst movement socialists. The only real reason for me accepting socialism is that where it is present it seems to be beneficial to those living under it so long as it is applied correctly.

Indeed my main objection with its present primary challenger, neo-liberalism, is that under it human are sacrificed upon the alter of ideology. They are more concerned with the freedom of markets than sentient beings, an order of priority that I find most unsettling. It seems clear to me that anyone arguing in proposal of “Trickle down economics” or systems similar are effectively staging a denial of reality. The proposal is that if markets are freed then the world will improve for all but it seems obvious to anyone that merely observes the facts that such benefits are only brought as a consequence of exploitation. Some make benefit and the economies improve but there are invariably those who suffer and will not be assisted.

There is a limit to any form of pragmatism. Without an ideal to work from what exactly you opt to do with reality is solely instructed by the outcome which you desire and this is invariably based upon some ideal or other. The reason that I use the term is that I consider socialism to offer results that simply can not be matched in countries that spurn it. Witness the social harmony of the Scandinavians, the vast amounts of death prevented by the nationalisation of Venezuelan oil, the folly of delaying similar treatment to Northern Rock. In these cases, and copious others, there was an alternative but it was not one that was rational, so long as you value human life and happiness. Pragmatic socialism is a term which means nothing more than accepting this as reality and adjusting the policy which you advocate accordingly.

To an extent a pragmatically socialist tendency is present within almost ever British politician: the Conservative Party has accepted an inherently socialist institution, the NHS, and has no plans to abolish it, nor will they in the foreseeable future. In fact they suggest raising its funding and have run firmly on the slogan “Stop Gordon’s NHS tax cuts” in order to attempt to save it. The Liberal Democrats have spurned classical liberalism in doing much the same and are now reliant upon social liberalism to justify what is effectively a concession that socialist policy was correct. In other countries the alternatives make the failings of our system seem next to negligible: when left in the charge of private individuals healthcare reaches those that can afford it rather than those who need it, teenagers die when treatment was both available and advocated by all doctors, those who have a history of cancer and thus are most in need of care of all are denied insurance for that very reason, the rich man striking the poor child in his car is treated firstly and racial riots result. To suggest that this is a superior model to embrace instead of engaging in vigorous reforms of the existing system is to wave aside the tangible in favour of the idealogical imperative.

It is notable that the only reason America does not have levels of AIDS death prevalence comparable to those of Africa is due to a project launched by the UN to distribute retro-virals to all in need. When I confronted an HIV positive defender of privatised healthcare over the issue he used this in defence of the system without failing to recognise the irony of invoking an instance of international socialism, which obtained its funds entirely through taxes upon the contributors.

Here, socialism works.

Neo-liberalism has indeed made great benefits to the economies of the states where it is introduced. However to argue that this makes an open and shut case is to simply disregard reality, once again for the sake of ideological convenience. Firstly the suffering caused to other countries via the exploitation by the globalised market is simply immense. There is certainly an incentive for sweatshop workers to labour for absurdly long hours for a pittance provided by their circumstance but this does not constitute justification for the ruthless exploitation that they have endured, nor does it render the suffering that such working conditions causes them a phantom. The damage done to areas where production jobs has been overstated but remains considerable, thus both on the domestic and international levels such policies cause a considerable degree of harm.

Secondly the error made is to imagine that a towering economy results in a happy populace. It does not and it is clear that neo-liberals have mistaken the anvil for the blacksmith. The reason that economies are valuable is not inherent but in the joy that they bring, yet it seems that the powerhouse economy of England has resulted in people far less happy than the much fiscally weaker Netherlands. So precisely what benefit is created by such policies? Economy to figures, certainly, to the wealthy elite, or at least those not working themselves into an early grave for pure futility. But not to the most, not to the majority. And certainly not ethically. The cheap clothes are from those enduring forced overtime, the cheap chickens and eggs from tight cages. Suffering permeates these conditions and unease reigns. I am not under the impression that ethical qualms leave “Consumers” quaking with remorse, simply that their joy is originated in pain, irrespective of whether they realise and consider this or not.

In a much remarked upon perversion of all that is sane city boys rigged the system to pay less in tax than their cleaners, as if some form of repugnant Randian fantasy had been spat out into reality and come to life.

This creates resentment within society and various varieties of disorder follow. Neo-liberalism brings no joy and only once you accept a free market as an inherent good can this be accepted. The fantasy of free will is often cited by conservatives but, as so often with arguments against socialism, it is based upon false preconceptions, in this instance the notion that people have control over the decisions that they make. In reality choices are formed by who people inherently are and what environment they have lived and developed in, neither of which they have any semblance of control over. Yet somehow the mystical force of true autonomy, for which there is no real evidence for the existence of, is seen as to invalidate the role of the state. This falsehood aside it is clear to those that work from the evidence that socialism improves the rates of crime where it is applied properly, as demonstrated by the distinction between the crime rate of America or Britain as compared to Denmark or Finland.

Unemployment is another issue of note but here, at least, our government made the correct noises. The “New Deal” for the unemployed took glow from Roosevelt, who was amongst most successful progressives of the 20^th century, to try and alter the basic consequences of the present system. It did not receive funding, unlike a vast number of “Private Finance Initiatives”, a euphemism that effectively amounts to the government handing over vast slabs of taxpayer cash to create a hybrid of state and business that works together as well as an Everclear/fairy liquid cocktail. They could, of course, have given the unemployed jobs in the roles that they “Needed” the private sectors help with and paid their wages and training with the money that they would have saved once organisations arranged to maximise profit were removed from the equation but that would have not conformed to the ideology that had partly swallowed, partly birthed. Never mind that it would have made sense.

This aversion towards rational solutions has led to a wariness of the state that resulted in a raising of Hayek over Hegel. Despite the former’s strong allegations of association with reason it has become blatantly apparent that pure liberalism of this sort will not serve as a solution to the problems that confront the vulnerable. It is true that the number of unemployed present within society are too great and must be reduced by merely slicing the conditions under which those suffering from such conditions, as suggested by the Tories, does precisely nothing to create more jobs. This is the primary cause of the problem: those that seek jobs largely either have none available to them as a consequence of scarcity or else lack the credentials required. Without the state’s assistance neither of these are likely to alter.

The second cause of people lacking employ brings us to the point where every western politician save Ron Paul is a pragmatic socialist: education. That the state will have a role in teaching the young is now a crushingly overwhelming consensus that is effectively unchallenged in mainstream politics. It is true that classical liberals such as Mill considered learning to be of immense value but the system as it stands entails the government providing an education equally funded across the country. Amongst the major flaws is that of the religious being permitted to run fiefdoms within the service, bringing the counter-active force of selection into play and preventing a truly comprehensive system existing.

There are here immense reforms that must be made but it is clear that the only way to rationally approach the problem presented is with the state in provision of the service, at least to the firm majority of children. Where American states have attempted to alter this basic rubric with “Vouchers” they have empowered the companies attempting to profit through education and merely subsidised the rich, leaving the poor scrabbling for the cheapest on offer. This system simply seems to be observed to be dismissed as an alternative.

Once again, socialism works. Socialism is all that works.

In this way we can consider collective solutions to the problems confronting our species, those blights of ignorance, disease and raw boredom, can be addressed adequately with socialism and socialism alone. Only in attachment to the methods rather than the ends, a perverse focus if ever there was one, which has resulted in the “Free Market” being considered an ideal in itself rather than a bridge to joy, can have led to the continued attachment to it. Conservatives rely upon irrational attachment to tradition and their urge to protect the familiar has led them to accept the suffering as an inevitable part of society in much the same way that they accept the absurdity of a monarch. I am under no illusions that all pain can be eliminated but it is clear that in both many developing nations, as demonstrated by the benefit given to the Venezuelan people from distribution of the nation’s wealth amongst the people, or in those that have already developed, as demonstrated by the far superior standard of living within within the Scandinavian exceptions to inhabitants of national neo-liberal projects, great progress can be made and a vast amount of unnecessary agony prevented.

Despite many appalling and unacceptable practices this seems true even in the more autocratic of socialist nations: despite an American embargo Cuba retains a state capable of providing a superior standard of living than the United States. The primary reason that this distinction is apparent between these nations and others, such as Zimbabwe, is that their tyranny is coupled with a far superior system of provision for the people.

This does not justify the foul misdeeds of such regimes but it demonstrates further the successes of socialism, which if purged of such totalitarian elements obviously provides durable and tangible benefits for those who encounter it. The point of this is that all of the basic woes that have plagued humanity are resolved well by socialism and in its application no other has accomplished as much. The form which seems to function best is a fusion of markets and management which prevails in the Nordic states but it is notable that even the French seem happy enough, despite their flailing economy. Socialism has also improved the state of Spain and seems to be doing so throughout the tide of nations throughout South America that have embraced leftist populism. Inequality is rife throughout most nations that have not and inequality is simply code for unnecessary suffering. Unless there is to be seen a higher value than maximum global happiness, and there is little rational support for there being one, this demonstrates that socialism is the most reasonable policy to advance.

Purely because it works.

After seeing the headline of a “Brings Back Nationalisation” on the front-page of the times the hard leftist in me could only marvel at the glee provided by the day’s news, for not only was its favourite policy revived to save the nation but an outright Communist is narrow second in the presendential race in Cyprus.

Narrow as in 33.51% to 33.29%.

I have no idea precisely how Cypric politics means this is likely to translate when the vote given to the {now ousted} president are given again and perhaps I should have done my research and found out before I posted.

But still, its something to keep an eye on.