Italian, Spanish

In Venezuela, the proletarian masses (especially) have already been taking to the streets for weeks.

On the bright side, they are fed up, albeit with democratic slogans, with being taken for a ride by those who - from the time of Chavez to Maduro - use the name of socialism to disguise that Bolivarism was nothing more than, under the make-up of a democratic institutional structure complete with parliament and opposition, the (more or less) state form of oppressing workers and managing the ownership of factories, businesses and banks, where there was little or no room for dissent.

The downside is that, in the absence of a truly revolutionary organization, these thousands of exploited people will become a mass of maneuvering by one part of the bourgeoisie - the part that looks to the U.S. and capitalism under the guise of free enterprise and no longer state but private ownership of the means of production - against the other part. The Chavez’ and later Maduro’s regime has been able to enjoy a phase of relative growth financed through oil revenues and partnerships with the countries of the imperialist bloc opposing NATO, the Moscow-Beijing-Tehran triangle.

The result was the development of a welfare state that - at least in the early days - guaranteed some access to the health, welfare and education systems, and reduced extreme poverty. The in itself, however, did not have much effect on the power relations between capital (state and private) and labor. The relations of domination of the former over the latter remained as before, as labor was crushed by the destitution unleashed with the coming and going of oil prices in particular. Indeed, the entire Venezuelan economy depended on the black gold, on which it was fixated and had proved incapable of diversifying exports and the economy in general. The economic crisis was inevitably followed by the crisis of Chavismo, straddling the time between the death of the leader who gave it its name and the arrival of Maduro.

After the electoral victory of the opposition to Maduro, his response was to fill the Venezuelan judiciary with men close to him and then to create an assembly consisting exclusively of Bolivaristas. The country later in 2019 also went through the phase of the clash between Maduro and Guaidó - the leading man of the side that looked to the White House - until the present day to the post-election phase of 2024.

In the course of this, the Machado-Uritia tandem opposition, in which the former has been the real soul of the coalition but the latter was the candidate due to Maduro's judicial maneuvers to oust Machado from the contest, Venezuelan society has faced currency devaluation, rising inflation, dramatic shortages of medicines in pharmacies and goods in supermarkets, frequent recourse to blackouts in urban centers in order to save energy, and the more than 8 million emigrants who represent the largest exodus in history in such a short time.

Despite Maduro having tried everything, including of course playing the nationalist card for the purpose of smoothing the hair of the senior ranks of the armed forces in claiming Guyana’s Essequibo region for Caracas, and despite attempting to re-establish economic relations with the much-hated Yankees to whom, he realized, if he wants to survive, he needs to sell his oil - and they for their own needs, to buy it - things have gotten out of hand. The country is split between those who dispute the victorious outcome of the outgoing president and those who support its authenticity. Both sides are warring to support two different forms of exploitation of the proletariat and dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, albeit disguised in different ways.

Whichever front wins, Venezuelan workers still lose, because whether or not the form changes, the reality of sacrifices, blood and sweat will always remain for them. The only hope for the Venezuelan proletariat is to beware of the consensus makers, demagogues in the pay of this or that bourgeois parish who may argue about everything, but about one thing they do not argue at all: capitalism cannot be touched.

The appeal we make to both individuals and the scattered vanguards within those boundaries, in addition to that of creating a revolutionary party, an indispensable political weapon, is to give confidence to the exploited that an alternative society to capitalism is still possible, that in this society the machines on which they will work or the transportation they will use will not be the property of the state but of all, i.e., of the community which, once the inequalities i.e. classes, are eliminated, will also do without the state - which will be thrown into the landfill - alongside the leaders of Bolivarism that have so far deceived them, because the latter is separated from communism by an abysmal distance.

La Vespa Rossa

Friday, August 9th, 2024

PS The French GRI comrades have also produced an article on Venezuela, in which, in the same vein, it goes without saying, they cite additional data: leftcom.org