U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!
U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!
Maduro and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) are not capable of resolving the crisis of capitalism and defeating right populist and imperialist coups d’etats in the long run. Rightist reaction makes headway exactly and only where the crisis of working class leadership is not resolved in the workers’ favor. Maduro’s regime is a “left-Populist” model of bourgeois power, of the dictatorship of Capital, that seeks to maneuver between the imperialist blocs and ultimately fails, leaving the masses where they were before, subjugated to the dictates of global capital and as objects to be exploited in inter-imperialist geopolitics.
We have often said, and it has proven to be true, that the PSUV, the Chavez “United Socialist Party of Venezuela,” has always been a popular front, all by itself, in its class membership composition and its program. When state power is held by such a party, the result is no different than the more classical popular front version of a coalition of reformist workers parties with one or more parties of the bourgeoisie. When such regimes fail it is the masses who pay the price. That is, of course, unless the social vanguard is prepared to solve the crisis of proletarian leadership. This is the ideological struggle between Menshevism and Bolshevism in the modern context. The “socialists” take power and administer capitalism. Or the workers seize power!
We can already see how the struggle within the U.S. ruling class between Trumpsters and the neo-con layers of historical rightism has resulted in the appointment of Elliot Abrams as Special Envoy for Venezuela. This is the same Abrams, who under threat of felony prosecution took a plea deal and was convicted of withholding information from Congress in the Iran/Contra affair. He was an apologist for the Mozote massacre of over 500 in El Salvador and facilitator of any number of other such “fabulous achievements” for which he was charged but never tried. He is the capitalists’ equivalent of a mob enforcer, i.e., a persuader of enforcers. And he is now in charge of crushing the Venezuelan revolution.
Chavismo, an ideology based on a failed putchist’s rise to power as a “left-populist” was always incapable itself of freeing the country from the shackles of imperialism and establishing socialism. Relying on administration of the capitalist state, it never desired to or tried to build a revolutionary workers party capable of making the socialist revolution. Rather, it recreated the often tried and often failed ‘bloc of classes’ model in the name of an “anti-imperialist” 21st century Socialism. This “socialism” sought Win Win deals with like-minded “socialists” in China, where the bloc of four classes ideology has led to the resurgence of the capitalist mode of production with the “communist” party in power. Because of their faith in the “progressive” sectors of the bourgeoisie and in Chinese and Cuban socialism, the Chavistas prevented the popular assemblies from growing into revolutionary workers councils which armed the masses to establish direct democratic workers control of the economy and make the socialist revolution. Instead the Chavistas used their party to bloc with the “progressive” bourgeoisie–the “bolio-bourgeoisie” and this bloc tied the workers trapped in the Chavista party to their own capitalist state and blocked their road to power.
The Venezuelan Constituent National Assembly [ed. corrected from National Assembly] is not an institution that serves the working masses of Venezuela, but the capitalist government of Maduro AND property rights that defy the official land reform, which in any event actually guarantees the ownership rights of the latifundistas who can prove title dating to 1848, i.e., the biggest landowners! In total contrast we say the democratic organizations of the working class are the trade unions, the factory and workplace committees, worker and union self-defense guards, worker assemblies, workers councils and a revolutionary workers party and revolutionary workers’ International. We say expropriate the latifundistas and land to those who till it! For a Planned economy to employ and feed everyone!
Today in Latin America after decades of experiments in bourgeois “democracy,” sloganeering for another constituent assembly builds illusions in the failed forms of cross-class democracy. Our fight is for the formation of workers councils and a government of workers councils that takes all political power into the hands of the workers’ self-organized bodies. A constituent assembly, “revolutionary” or otherwise, is only a detour and an obstacle to the path to workers power. A cross-class assembly will only serve the reaction. We call for workers councils and an All-Venezuela Council of Workers’ deputies. These should be immediately recallable by the local bodies.
The history of Popular Fronts has in all cases and varieties been an interregnum permitting rightism to prepare its revenge upon the masses. Likewise, where all petty-bourgeois tendencies in the workers’ movement embrace a nationalist and minimalist program, worker revolutionists propel an internationalist perspective, an international party, an explicit transitional program and the permanent revolution, where all the democratic tasks are carried through to consummation and exceeded and outgrown by concretizing the socialism of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!”
To defeat the designs of imperialism, whether USA sanctions and intervention, Chinese debt servitude or Russian projects and influence, the task before the working class is not to defend the Maduro government against the right power grab but to defend Venezuela against all expropriators of the national wealth and the imperialist and proxy militaries assembled in the wings. Maduro will not and cannot defend you! Russian mercenaries are assembled to defend Maduro while Elliot Abrams and war hawks in Washington dust off contingency plans. The URGENT task for revolutionary workers is to break from Maduro and build a revolutionary workers party that fights for the power of workers councils and workers militias. A party which breaks the ranks of the armed forces from defense of the capitalist order and arms the workers and peasants to oppose imperialist intervention, proxy army invaders and rightist coup leaders. Socialism cannot be built in one country. A workers government in Venezuela would need to extend the socialist revolution to Latin America and all of South America and beyond.
The revolutionary cancellation of the debt to all imperialists will put a workers government in direct conflict with Chinese imperialism. China is owed $23 billion, a debt which takes half of Venezuelan oil revenue proceeds to sustain. For a rentier state with a one crop economy this debt to China is strangling the nation in the name of 21st century socialism. Chavez cut deals to provide underpriced oil to China in return for loans, which were lauded by the left as the foreign aid of a ”workers State” (International Communist League-ICL and other Robertsonites) or as anti-imperialist solidarity by the World Social Forum (WSF), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Workers World Party (WWP), etc. Only revolutionary cancellation of debts to imperialists will permit long-term solving of the food crisis when linked to an internationalist perspective of socialist federation of Latin America, a planned workers economy that unites the cities and the countryside.
US HANDS OFF VENEZUELA! NO IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION!
PROSECUTE ELLIOT ABRAMS FOR WAR CRIMES! DOWN WITH TRUMP!
FOR MASS ACTIONS AND STRIKES AGAINST US MILITARY ADVENTURES!
ABOLISH SOUTH COM, BRING ALL US TROOPS HOME NOW!
RUSSIAN MERCENARIES OUT NOW!
ONLY WORKERS POWER CAN GUARANTEE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS TO FREE SPEECH, ASSEMBLY AND PRESS! FREE ALL CLASS WAR POLITICAL PRISONERS!
NEITHER MADURO NOR GUIADO BUT A WORKERS’ & CAMPESINOS’ GOVERNMENT BASED ON WORKERS COUNCILS AND WORKERS MILITIAS!
FOR WORKERS DEFENSE OF VENEZUELA FROM IMPERIALISM!
FOR WORKERS ACTION AND SELF-DEFENSE COMMITTEES TO DEFEAT RIGHT-WING AND IMPERIALIST REACTION!
VENEZUELAN MILITARY RANK-AND-FILE SOLDIERS: ARREST YOUR OFFICERS AND ARM THE MASSES! LAND TO THOSE WHO WORK IT!
CANCEL THE FOREIGN DEBT AND NATIONALIZE THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS OF THE ECONOMY UNDER WORKERS CONTROL WITH NO COMPENSATION! FOR A RATIONAL, SOCIALIST PLANNED ECONOMY!
FOR A VENEZUELAN REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS PARTY AND A NEW REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS INTERNATIONAL BASED ON THE METHOD OF THE 1938 TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM!
FOR A SOCIALIST FEDERATION OF LATIN AMERICA!
