PART I
The decline of Chavezism

March 2014

At the beginning of 2014, the “Bolivarian Republic” was crossed by a new political crisis and a brutal economic bankruptcy. Venezuela was once again strangled by the IMF and the imperialist bankers. IMF orders: crash is here and the rulers have decided the ones to pay are the masses. Maduro is supported by the Army forces in order to attack the workers and people, while the right wing stands up to end his work.

 

For many weeks, the demonstration of the middle working class in the big cities, which were repressed by the police forces and the government gangs, with more than 10 deaths, hundreds wounded and arrested, shook Venezuela, where a political crisis was open.
Chavezism, Castroism and the entire left of the WSF denounced an “attempt of a fascist coup” against Maduro’s government and “the revolution”, led by a sector of MUD led by Leopoldo Lopez and Corina Machado.
This International campaign against the “fascist coup” is a big cheat to the exploited to hide that the one who is giving a huge attack to the working class and the worker masses in Venezuela and applying the IMF plan today is Maduro’s government which imperialism uses as a lemon, which need to be fully squeezed against the masses.
In November-December of 2013 a wave of worker fighting started in response to devaluation, inflation, high cost of living. Hundreds and hundreds of agreements are frozen in the Labor Ministry, which means to freeze for 4 years the wages in a country where inflation goes between 25 to 30% per year. This wave of strikes ended with the most brutal repression, with workers arrested, dismissals, and factories evicted, today under the supervision of the army.

Reformism and renegades of Trotskyism said that there was a “coup of the right wing against Maduro”. For some of them, there are conditions for it and for others there are still no conditions. But for all, Maduro is “inconsistent” to “fight against the right wing”. Everyone is looking to put the working class as a force of pressure so Maduro contains the right wing. For that reason, this left affirmed Maduro “capitulates” to the right. This is to poison the consciousness of the world working class and tie the hands of the Venezuelan proletariat so it does not fight for its demands. Paralyzing the proletariat forces, preventing it from breaking out with their current demands and fighting against Maduro’s attack and “Bolivarian” is to create the conditions so today the “right” wing stands up and even it prepares new attempted coups in the future.
They are enemies to call and organize a GENERAL STRIKE against the government attack and millionaires generals under the command of Cabello. “General Strike?” they will ask. “But this is kind to support López,” they will tell us. What does this mean? In order not to “support López,” the workers must passively accept being killed by hunger, repression and lose their conquests... but that’s the plan of Lopez and IMF, applied by Maduro today.
It is, from the left, to demand from the masses and from the working class that it is they who pay for the crisis, without quarrel and if not, there will be repression, physical attacks and Anti-strike Law, just as Chavezism does in its decline and bankruptcy. A handcuffed, repressed, dispersed working class, unable to face the brutal attack that the “Bolivarians” discharge on behalf of the IMF, is the shortest way to strengthen the “right” and for it to stand up.
We must be clear. Maduro supported by Capriles and Obama, after national and local elections in 2013, is the one leading the attack on workers and people. If we do not stop it on time, it means to create the conditions to take the Venezuelan proletariat to the worst of defeats.
As at the time of the regime Agreement of Punto Fijo in the late ‘80s, today it is discussed when and who will apply the “oil hike price” against the masses, to get 15,500 million dollars for the debt and interest required by IMF to take its usury. Reformism and the chatter of the “Bolivarian revolution” seek to numb the masses and tie their hands and then execute them with a historic tax hike.

 

As a “squeezed lemon”, Obama and Capriles supported the government of Maduro and the millionaire boli-bourgeoisie attacking the working class and the poor

 

The farce of the “Bolivarian revolution” was to expropriate the real worker’s and peasant’s revolution across the continent that broke out at the beginning of 21st century and once the Bolivarian succeeded, they changed Venezuela into a real “banana republic” to IMF. The recent meeting of CELAC in Havana, governments of ALBA, MERCOSUR and NAFTA, led by UN and IMF, was to strengthen Latin American governments to intensify the attack against the masses on account of the transnational companies, Wall Street and the imperialist powers.

So the entire Venezuelan situation is reduced to a single point: IMF wants to get money. The current discussion in the regime of the Bolivarian Constitution is what agent of finance capital guarantees to impose the attack until the end so IMF gets every dollar of a broken Venezuela.
It is posed if Maduro supported by Capriles does it, if he calls early elections because Capriles may end up losing prestige for supporting Maduro in his attack, if an agreement and all together impose the attack and Maduro finishes showing his real face in front of the masses, if Lopez supported in the middle class passes the attack since Maduro lost all his social base, etc..
They are variants of Wall Street and imperialism. It’s a speed race to see who defeats and smash the Venezuelan proletariat on behalf of IMF.

“Socialism of the 21st century” means 105 billion dollars of foreign debt to IMF and the imperialist vultures. In 2014 Maduro must pay 15,500 million dollars. For that reason, they imposed 20% of chronic unemployment, 60% inflation, devaluation to sack the workers’ wages and make triple the super profits of importers, rate hikes, and wage freezes, shortages of food and basic supplies for the masses, collapse of 30% of the oil productivity, factories militarization, repression and prison for workers and poor peasants who fight. The exploited should make queues for hours trying to get toilet paper or soap, while the boli-bourgeoisie, transformed into an “importing country”, make fabulous business with dollar associated with large food chains and cereal companies. They are the “inflation”! With the government control, they get dollar at 6.6 bs. and sell goods at 75 to 80 bs.
This is the boli-bourgeoisie which took 270 billion dollars to Wall Street and Miami, while PDVSA is broken.

In the Bolivarian Venezuela, as in any colonial country, the most important fraction of the bourgeoisie is imperialism. Banks, industries, imports... are under its control. The officer caste of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, main body of the bourgeois state, is the board of managing directors of imperialism in exchange for a share of the business.
The imperialist plunder on Venezuela has imposed on the masses the same conditions of misery and suffering that when Caracazo happened in 1989. The crash is here; Venezuela has hit underwater rocks of the global crisis. Maduro’s government must redouble its offensive against the masses by removing the fuel subsidy to ensure the payment of the debt to IMF and the super-profits of the transnational companies. That’s their role under the orders of Obama which uses him as a lemon that is squeezing all the juice.

For that reason, Maduro supported by Capriles, launched in 2013 and early 2014 a brutal attack on the working class and also against the ruined middle classes. With the proletariat under the thumb of Chavezism, thank to the treachery of their leadership, and the middle classes, ruined and desperate by devaluation, inflation and shortages, took to the streets calling for “security”, “freedom”, “new dollars”, looking for a reactionary way out to their bankruptcy.

With economic crash, the Maduro-Capriles Agreement is in crisis

Leopoldo Lopez and the old Venezuelan oligarchy lead the demonstration of the ruined middle class and pose as new political alternative to impose the attack on the masses

 

The Bolivarian bourgeoisie celebrated the pro-imperialist resolutions of the summit of CELAC in Habana where everyone applauded the capitalist restoration in Cuba, which configures the toughest counterrevolutionary coup to the proletariat and the masses of the continent. While this happened, a huge political crisis was opened in Venezuela. Since February 12, dozens of demonstrations in the main cities - student rallies only at the beginning, and with the days bigger and bigger ones - are shaking the country, facing the police and armed gangs government, with dead, wounded and arrested.

In this situation Leopoldo Lopez led the demonstrations. This is the expression that the Maduro-Capriles agreement was in crisis and no longer restrains the middle class and in turn imperialism prepares new political alternatives, since it thinks Maduro has “little juice” and it fears that he may not be able to impose the attack taking away the fuel subsidy. If the bourgeoisie does not close quickly these “divisions at the top”, it may end up opening the door to an eruption of the working class as the Caracazo.

The political crisis is in full development. Maduro asked Capriles to fulfill the agreement, to be responsible for the situation and remove the middle classes from the streets. From day one Capriles showed his willingness to keep the agreement but he cannot control the demonstrations.
Now Maduro shows the “white flag” and called for a dialogue of “Peace” with the “right” wing that they call “coupist” while he offers more repression and misery to the working class. No wonder Maduro proposes a hug with “Lopez” to try to close the political crisis with a new agreement that may contain this new opposition force, if Chávez hugged Uribe in Unasur, based on the slaughter of Colombian resistance. He also hugged Obama who called to vote for him and hugged the worms of Miami and Castro for the capitalist restoration in Cuba.

But, so far, the “opposition” to Lopez does not accept the proposal and demands that Maduro finishes attacking the masses. In this way he shows that he is a new political force who controls the ruined middle classes. The fact, despite the reformism wants to hide it, is that there is no contradiction between the existence of the right of “Lopez” and the regime of the Bolivarian Constitution. It is Maduro’s attack on the workers’ movement and the masses that has allowed the strengthening of a more right-wing puppet opposition. All these agents of Obama and IMF have supported the attack on the working class and have left it bound and greatly divided.
The more and more Chavezism attacks the working class and masses, the more and more it loses weight in the streets and the more the old Venezuelan oligarchy stands up. The cycle of Chavist bourgeoisie, who dribbles part of business with imperialism came to an end. Chavezism cannot call the working class to the streets to confront the “right” wing. The left who demands this to Maduro only deceives the workers and people. Maduro gave the working class an Anti-Strike Law, repression in every fight, militarization and a wage freeze. We must tell the truth to the workers. Stop lying! Maduro calling the working class to fight against Lopez and the old oligarchy would mean his suicide and the entire ruling class. Their plan is to apply a new “high oil prices” to get the funds to pay the debt to imperialism. Their plan is to super-exploit, even more, the Venezuelan working class so it pays for the crisis.
The proof of this is the Right got the streets leading the despair of the ruined middle classes. The oligarchy knows that if Maduro fails, being supported by the Bolivarian armed forces, they, with the reactionary middle classes against the labor movement, are the ones who can carry out Maduro’s attack up to the end.
In Venezuela a crash broke out. It is on the brink of default. It can only get loans for falling into debts. It can only sell out more and more sectors of the oil industry to the transnational companies to invest. Its only perspective is to attack the people with new increases of the price of oil, as the ruling class did in Caracazo. The “Bolivarian revolution” proved to be a rodeo, expropriating the worker and peasant revolution in Venezuela and Latin America, to finish tying with double chains the nation to IMF and Wall Street.
In order to fight for wages and decent work, against the shortages, the high cost of living and against IMF: the Venezuelan working class, breaking with the boli-bourgeoisie and getting into the fight for their demands, is the only one who can save the nation, leading all the oppressed classes.

Before the catastrophe imposed by subjecting the nation to imperialism which comes for everything and makes play all their agents to get its goals, the working class must respond.
Only their demand for an increase of wages, according to the cost of living, and for ending up with the famine and shortages, question the whole plan of IMF and capitalist gangs who get richer at expense of people’s hunger. Therefore, the emergence of the working class for their immediate demands contains an open struggle against imperialism and its domination over Venezuela. Thus, the working class must break with PSUV and Chavez’s bourgeoisie. And in this way the fallacy and deception of Capriles and Lopez must be unmasked, disputing the leadership of the ruined middle classes.
The question nowadays in the political crisis is which class and what class alliance gives a solution to Venezuela, which is completely submitted to imperialism. That is, if the solution is given by an alliance of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie and its Armed Forces smashing definitely the labor movement and the rest of the exploited, guaranteeing an electoral transition to a new government in 2015. There might be other reactionary alliances, supported by the ruined middle classes under the imperialist leadership. Or if the working class, as the leader of the impoverished middle class and the exploited, gives a way out expropriating imperialism and the native bourgeoisie and demolishing the bourgeois state with the proletarian revolution.
The task at the moment is to re-found the UNT without bureaucrats to break with the bourgeoisie and impose the GENERAL STRIKE! The working class is the only one who can give a favorable outcome for the ruined middle classes and the poor peasants. The proletariat must break with their demands for jobs, bread, against inflation and devaluation, for the freedom of prisoners and in the fight to defeat Maduro’s attack, smash the reaction of Lopez, break with IMF and Wall Street, expropriating the boli-bourgeoisie, the oligarchy of Capriles and Lopez and imperialist bankers.

A big tension between the classes is in the streets of Venezuela. A political crisis has been opened; none of the classes and sections of classes can live together in peace. Under the blows of the crash, the political crisis has hit the streets and that is where it will be solved.
The left currents of the world are divided. Some of them, from the WSF proclaim absolute loyalty to Maduro and that the working class must starve, eat every two days and lose all their conquests in order to support the “Bolivarian” government which harshly attacks every day.
The announcement of the existence of a coup in Venezuela today as in 2002 is to announce a storm so that they could impose the “rain” of Maduro stealing the wages, cost of living and its brutal attack on the working class. All the armed forces, the true power of the Bolivarian regime, have already decided that Maduro is the one to attack the masses up to the end. Demobilize the working class today is also to create the conditions for sectors of the armed forces to dare again to give a military coup, in case Maduro fails. The fear of being defeated as in 2002 will dissipate when the working class and the masses are not involved in this political crisis.
Other currents of the left who claim that the “working class must intervene independently”. How?, we ask... Would they make a new party? Would they go to election as FIT in Argentina and would they promise to solve such a catastrophe with laws? ... The crisis is here; the crash is here. If the proletariat does not burst in independently with their struggle demands with the method of the General Strike, no one can dispute the streets to Lopez and divide the ruined middle classes. For it, the working class must defeat the attack of Maduro who is the one leading the war of IMF and Wall Street against the working class and the oppressed nation.
Ultimately, the emergence of Lopez and the attack of Maduro are two ends of the same rope to strangle the proletariat and prevent it from leading the middle classes with a new Caracazo to defeat the attack which is already here and will deepen with the imposition of oil and high price of oil.
The Maduro-Capriles Agreement, a two-party regime of the Bolivarian Constitution that forced a brutal attack on the people in 2013 and beginning of 2014

Contrary to all the deception of the WSF, which exposed that the great enemy of the exploited were Capriles and MUD, the economic and social crisis showed that during 2013 there was a huge deal in the whole bourgeoisie, guaranteed by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces: the working class and the exploited must pay the ruin of the nation caused by imperialist plunder. The basis of this was the agreement of Chavez-Capriles who under the command of Obama, whom both called to vote, refloated a kind of two-party system -based on the Bolivarian Constitution- with a strong “opposition” to the masses. Chavez’s death had occurred at a time when important sectors of the proletariat began to break up with him, and the bourgeoisie used his death to close the political crisis. In this way, the Maduro-Capriles agreement was able to continue the plan of attack and it did.
Capriles, far from organizing a “coup”, as the whole world left affirms, pledged allegiance to the Bolivarian Constitution and was a key supporter of Maduro administration, because the latter controls the national unions, and is the only one who could make the exploited pay the bankruptcy of the nation. For imperialism, Maduro was a “lemon” with a lot of juice to squeeze.
This is what was clear in 2013. In the middle of a terrible crash that sank the nation, the government of the “Socialism of 21st Century” made the exploited ones ​​live a true hell. Inflation reached almost 60%, while the wages have been frozen for 4 years. There was a deepening of the shortages of food, toilet paper, rice, bread, etc. and of the speculation of the big commercial bourgeoisie. In Venezuela the exploited and the middle classes spend at least 3 or 4 hours per day going over supermarkets and warehouses for food. The Bolivar (Venezuelan currency) is worth less and less. The actual unemployment is increasing. In factories there are blackmail and suspension of workers by the bosses, as in happening in the assembly line factories, where about 100 thousand workers’ jobs are threatened.

 

October-November 2013: despite the treasons of the leadership, Venezuela’s working class fought back

 

The wave of workers’ struggles in October-November last year, whose highest peak was the heroic strike of SIDOR, was the chance for the proletariat to definitely break with Chavezism and arise as an independent class, with a program for the crisis to be paid by the imperialism and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, the ones that really provoked it. This was the path to break the middle classes, earn their most oppressed stripes and weld the workers and popular alliance.
Against this, the regime moved all its pieces. The bureaucracy of the national trade unions –with the collaboration of all the renegades of Trotskyism as Chirino in the UNT- submitted the proletariat to the decisions of the Chavist Labour Ministry and the ones who weren’t immediately disciplined were harshly repressed by Maduro and the FANB, with the complete agreement of the bourgeois opposition of Capriles, Lopez and Machado.
In the Civetchi Factory, 8 comrades were condemned to five years of prison because they wanted to organize their trade union. The strike of Mitsubishi ended up with the militarization of the factory. Ten of the oil workers’ leaders had the anti-strike law applied onto them for demanding the signature of the collective agreement and the wage updates. Today they are accused of terrorism and conspiracy.
The bourgeois charlatans that today tear their heart out speaking of “democracy”, as Lopez –who supported the 2002 coup d’état and Chavez guaranteed his impunity- and Machado, hid and supported this attack against the working class. They want democracy to take the power and have the oil yield! For the exploited, an armored regime!
The reformist leaderships of the working class stopped an independent and centralized fight and allowed the regime to strengthen and unleash the economical crisis over the masses. Today the division and dispersion of the workers ranks take prevalence, submitted to one or another bourgeois fraction. That is the way the bourgeoisie could unleash a true economical and social catastrophe over the exploited classes.
With the proletariat under the Bolivarian boot, the most ruined strips of the workers living by gifts and charities from the state, and with a bonapartist armor of the regime dedicating a millionaire budget to the Bolivarian repressive forces, Maduro have I mind to grab the last “box” to pay the IMF: the subsidy to the oil, that would mean a new round of attacks, with more devaluation and unbearable inflation and a doubled looting.
In the commemoration of the Chavez death anniversary, the government is deploying before the masses all the might of the Venezuelan Armed Forces that are not to attack the imperialism but to intimidate the working class for it to accept the adjustment that is ongoing and for the bourgeois fractions to discipline to attack all together the masses movements and be able to deliver what the IMF needs to carry from the pillaging of Venezuela.
As we stated before, it is clear that there is no remnant of the bourgeois nationalism features that the Chavezism had in his times to expropriate the revolution, where it used the working class demonstrations to haggle with the imperialism a part of the businesses. Maduro is already a direct agent of the transnational companies with the ones he must sign new and lucrative oil agreements to end delivering completely the nation.
The Chavist government couldn’t mobilize the proletariat to solve the crisis because it would irrupt with the General Strike for the bread and wage against the imperialism and the bankers. It would even endanger decisively the business of the boli-bourgeoisie itself and even more of the MUD and FANB.
The government of Maduro has become a government of “popular front under party forms”, with the UNT completely nationalized as an appendix of the PSUV but without any support of the workers masses.
Lopez knows that Maduro cannot mobilize the masses and that he can only rely on the military. And that is why López strengthens himself in the streets and calls not to abandon them. And from there he even disputes a section of the working class that has already broken and hates the government of inflation, the high cost of life and hunger.
The decadence of Venezuela and the situation of barbarism that has been imposed on the proletariat and the people are the price that the nation must pay to maintain the fabulous profits of the transnationals and the IMF, of the millionaire Boli-bourgeoisie, their generals and the oligarchy of Capriles and López. 400,000 bourgeois parasites, minority partners of the great imperialist capital, plunge into misery 28 million workers, peasants, small merchants and students!
Whoever wants to know where the oil rent and the Federal Reserve of all these years of “boom” are, look in the accounts of Wall Street, of the shareholders of Citibank, of HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, of Cargill, from the Mitsubishi, Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet! Let them see the Bolivarian officers and the leaders of “Socialism of the 21st century” as Rafael Ramírez, the president of PdVSA and super-minister of Maduro, one of the richest men in Venezuela! They are the real culprits of the ruin of the nation!

 

Where is Venezuela going?

 

The situation in Venezuela is marked by the imperialist world crisis that erupted in 2008. Wall Street parasites devoured $ 90 billion that human labor had not produced, and made the world pay that crisis so that it pays their parasitism and bad business. In the face of the revolutionary response of the exploited of the world, with its vanguard in North Africa and the Middle East -which reverberated throughout Europe and in the USA itself with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, imperialism regrouped all the reformist leaderships of the world proletariat to prevent the synchronization of the proletarian revolution and to surround the working class country by country in order to sustain a rotten system. The consummation of this task was expressed at the WSF meeting in Tunisia in 2013, which was attended by all to pay tribute to Chávez, support Obama and support the genocide of Al Assad on behalf of imperialism in Syria.
Today, Wall Street, Obama and the IMF, having brought the revolution out of the scene, have launched their counter-offensive and are making their imperialist competitors pay the world crisis, and fundamentally to the oppressed nations and peoples of the world. The IMF’s offensive in Venezuela to collect its US $ 105 billion is the expression of this world situation. That is why Venezuela has no way out: either it becomes a complete colony of the IMF thanks to the farce of the “Bolivarian revolution”, or the proletariat leads the exploited to defeat imperialism with the socialist revolution.
A new round of the global economic crisis is in progress. The tendency to the fall of the production in China and the search of the imperialist powers of new sources of cheap and slave labor, pushes to new processes of relocation of the transnationals. Yankee imperialism made the world pay for its crisis and through the IMF it has given credits in worthless bonds of its superbanks and of the super bubbles that they build for the world market. Now they want to collect what they lend, as it happens in all of Eastern Europe. There we are the Ukraine, convulsed with an external debt of more than US $ 70 billion with the IMF, which, like that of Venezuela, must pay this year.
If the US as the great usurer of the world and debtor at the same time, -together with Germany-, does not let the minor imperialist powers rest, such as Spain, Greece, Portugal, Italy, etc., which were in crisis because of the crash of 2008, will be a thousand times more implacable with semicolonial countries to charge usury. The political convulsions of Venezuela and Ukraine today express enormous tremors, whose epicenter is imperialism, making the world pay for the new blows of its crisis.
Maduro’s plan is to reach the 2015 elections having unloaded all the attack on the masses. If Maduro finally “has no more juice” left and the pact with Capriles could not resolve the political crisis, it cannot be ruled out that the “Bolivarian” Armed Forces, which are full of massacres of the Caracazo, coup plotters of 2002, assassins of the working class, take out a “pronouncement” and impose a transitional government of Cabello (President of the National Assembly and principal man of the officers of the Armed Forces) “until new elections”. Nor can we rule out that the officers, on behalf of imperialism, ends up taking Lopez out of jail if necessary and putting him in charge of the nation. The Armed Forces are “Bolivarian” as long as this scam serves them to keep their business. We insist, all these variants are at the service of Obama, the IMF and Wall Street.
The more Maduro advances in his plan of pro-imperialist attack, the more the social crisis deepens and the proletariat remains subject to the collaboration of classes with the government, the stronger the preparation of new reactionary variants of financial capital, which tomorrow they can be used by imperialism to give real coups, if it considers it necessary. It is the policy of popular front and class collaboration that prepares the way for the counterrevolution and new Bonapartist blows.
It is necessary to refound the UNT without collaborating union bureaucrats to break with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie. The old oligarchy of Lopez and Capriles stands up because Maduro, under the orders of the IMF, has subjected and brutally attacked the working class. To restore the workers’ and popular alliance, the working class must go out to fight for its demands, which are those of the entire exploited people and the oppressed nation.

 

Liga Comunista de Trabajadores
(Workers’ Communist League) /Venezuela