It’s entirely true that the economy isn’t everything. Our measures of GDP don’t include inequality or the value of a mother’s smile. They do include things like food supply, health care and the standard of living which are, even if not everything, pretty important things.
Meaning that we can indeed judge socioeconomic systems by their effects on GDP, even if we shouldn’t do so exclusively. At which point, Venezuela’s socialism is worse than Franco’s fascism:
Do note that the Bolivarian socialists didn’t actually have to fight a war to gain power either. That is, their economic policies are worse than both fascism and a civil war.
Socialism, not even once folks.
A good chunk of the Syrian contraction is probably posturing ponces imposing economic sanctions which have never had the desired effect but serve mainly to signal that something is being done, no matter how evil and ineffectual. Iraq went through the same thing which achieved precisely nothing except to starve the oppressed populace into even greater misery.