What are the limits of mental gymnastics?

Apparently there are no limits to what a neocommunist mind can do in order to distort, trash and destroy the idea of free market capitalism. The most recent example comes courtesy of chavecista interior and justice minister Tarek el Aisammi, who stated yesterday on the government's TV station (VTV) that our police and jail system models were developed from a capitalist point of view.

What is the basis for such an outrageous statement? Nothing more than the chavecista own constitution, which states in its article 272

The State guarantees a penitentiary system such as to ensure the rehabilitation of inmates* and respect for their human rights. (...) [it] will be ruled by decentralized administration by state or municipal governments; they may be subject to privatization arrangements. (...) The State (...) shall encourage the creation of an autonomous penitentiary institution with personnel of an exclusively technical nature.

And this, according to el Aisammi represents a vestige of what it was pretended to be implemented with the penitentiary system.

Now, it is comprehensible that a neocommunist working for the Venezuelan government cannot stop and think once he or she reads the word "privatization", for such a person there's no more possible discussion . If it said "privatization" it must represent the evil and savage capitalism.

Bu you don't have to fall on the same trap. To say "privatization" is not automatically to say "capitalism".

For "capitalism" means, in a few words, limited or no interference of the state in private affairs. Therefore, "privatization" is only one side of the capitalist system's coin. Privatization only means to put in private hands functions that were previously in state's hands. But it is not nearly enough, since the state can (and often does) continue interfering with business, once these are private, for instance, banning the entry of new participants in a given market, as they did in the early '90 with the privatization of the telecom company CANTV.

In any case, the above discussion is merely academic, since in Venezuela there has never been anything even remotely resembling true free market capitalism, not in the judicial system, nor anywhere else. Police forces are owned by the state, jails are owned and opertaed by the state and judges are state bureaucrats. One would have to be suffering from acute Delirium tremens in order to believe that such a system is an expression of capitalism.

If you're interested in this issue I refer you to a previous article of mine (in spanish) from 2006 when I delineated how could an entirely private justice system could potentially work. If you don't read Spanish, then you might be better off reading Anthony Gregory's Law-Enforcement Socialism (the underlying ideas are basically the same). After reading any of these pieces you can perhaps better understand why I say that in Venezuela you cannot associate what has happened in the judicial system with capitalism.

 Venezuela, Politics