PART II
CHÁVEZ AND THE IMPOSTURE OF THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION
The expropriation of the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses

 

March 20th, 2013

Again on the subject of Marxism and the native bourgeoisies

The passing away of Chavez has been followed and lamented by the entire bourgeois and imperialist press at an international level. The reason is the death of one of their key men who came to contain the huge revolutionary processes in Latin America that confronted imperialism in the first 10 years of the 21st century.
Early in 2000 up to 2005, the revolutionary processes in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Venezuela (in the latter it started in the ‘90s) put into question the imperialist domination in the region. The exploited aimed to fight for the throwing down of the bourgeois governments and regimes.
 It was the World Social Forum (WSF) constituted late in the ‘90s in São Paulo (Brazil), which centralized the forces of the remains of Stalinism, Social Democracy and the Castroites, first in Latin America, then in Europe and the US, and now expanding all over the world. The legitimacy given to it by the renegades of Trotskyism played a decisive role for this centrality to be settled of the reformist and treacherous leaderships of the world proletariat to support the bourgeoisie, control and deviate the revolutionary processes, and, as we see now, shield the capitalist system in bankruptcy against the hatred of the masses and the revolutionary processes.
 Chavez was one of the most outstanding leaderships of the WSF. In short, his last favor was the support to Obama for the last US elections. Together with Castro, he announced publicly that Obama was his candidate in USA. In that way he called the left wing of the US proletariat to vote Obama, in a moment that this proletariat was already breaking with him. 
The fact was that wide sections of the immigrant workers and the Latin and Black proletarians were reluctant to do so. Both Chavez and Castro -as we will see later- have been the best electors of Obamas’. 
This was one of their most outstanding “anti-imperialist deeds” and which exposed them; a true swindle to the anti-imperialist fight of the Latin American masses.
Chavez has contributed, together with all the governments expropriating revolutions, to reconstitute the institutions of domination of imperialism in the Americas, as a legacy of the past, as the OAS or the Inter American Treaty of Reciprocal Defense (TIAR) which had blown up in the beginning of the revolutionary processes in Latin America in the late ‘90s.
UNASUR, CELAC, the regional common markets (as Mercosur, ALBA, etc.) are economic and political institutions that centralize the actions of imperialism and the native bourgeoisie of the Latin American subcontinent. Bush’s FTA of yesterday, has appeared today under other names and tragically for the masses, the native bourgeoisies have guaranteed it, with them as junior partners in the sacking and giving in to imperialism of the oppressed nations of Latin America.
It is necessary to tear up the veil covering such a big deception and lies to the masses. In Venezuela more than 2,000 starving working class people were massacred in the state repression to “El Caracazo”, a mass uprising against the IMF. Up to now, the Venezuelan governments, Chavez’s ones included, have not done but paying, keeping and even increasing the external debt undertaken with the imperialist Banks and the MNCs. 
Those are the facts. No words can dissimulate that the bourgeois pseudo nationalism has empty hands for the masses, while it has expropriated the proletarian revolution.
The revisionist currents have again thrown tons of poison over the world working class, depicting Chavez as a “father” of the exploited, one that died sponsoring their anti-imperialist struggle; the truth is that he was a cadre of the bourgeoisie and imperialism at a world level, and they have had a significant loss with the passing away of their agent. 
This bourgeois regime that gives lip service to nationalism keeps already a debt of 26 billion dollars with the MNCs and the native bourgeois it says it has “expropriated”, as it has compensated them with payments of twice or thrice their real value. Chavez leaves a heavy mortgage on Venezuelan oil and aluminum that he put as collaterals for 40 billion dollars in debt with the MNCs and China.
How is it that “Chavez was anti-imperialist”? Thanks to him the bankers in Wall Street have fattened their super profits with the Venezuelan oil rent, shared with the “Bolibourgeoisie”. Numbers don’t lie. The imperialist Banks earned in Venezuela, in 2010 a 60% more than they had earned in 2009. In 2011 their profits were increased in a 70% with respect to the year before, and in 2012 the increase amounted a 98% more.
There are the profits of imperialism and its junior partners, the Boli-bourgeoisie, which are robbing and profiteering the oil rent belonging to the nation, and doing common businesses in Miami. Obama is the chief of their business… that’s why it was necessary for them to have the people in US voting him. 
Those numbers emerge in the same moment that the fees and fares’ increases appear, together with a devaluation of the Bolivar (Venezuelan currency) of 40% in a single stroke, an unbearable shortage of basic staples, which have turned besides too expensive, and millions of unemployed sinking in misery, living on the dole that is less than a charity, not covering the minimum necessities of a family.
The gains of the masses… the “Miracle” plans, the plans for teaching to read and write, etc., were not gifts from the government but minimal gains achieved by the masses as a byproduct of big and harsh revolutionary combats; these gains, however, do not solve the hunger or the misery of millions of exploited. Even to get those alms, the Venezuelan working class had to render thousands of its dead on the streets in order to defeat the different governments and regimes of the bourgeoisie in that semi-colony bled white by imperialism, namely Venezuela. 
Precisely because the working class could not seize the power, the masses see their misery increasing with the first signals of the world crisis and the deepening of the imperialist pilfering.
Chavez was seen off in a deep pain by most of the Venezuelan people… and that is the paradox, because just at the same time the fees and fares’ increases, the devaluation of the currency, the loss of the value of the wages and the shortages and price increases are worsening day after day.
Chavezism, with and without Chavez are preparing to repeat what they have done already: launching over the people such hard and implacable attacks, under the orders of the IMF, as those applied by Andres Perez and Caldera in the ‘90s.
Layers of the working class and the popular sectors were already completing their experience with the government; the latter began to be exposed as far from being a “friend” of the workers and the ordinary people: it had frozen through its Ministry of Labor the collective bargains for 3 or 4 years, sent thugs to attack violently the striking or protesting workers, or either directly the Bolivarian police repressed them savagely, as was the case with the metalworkers at SIDOR.
This experience with the government of Chavez that the working class had begun to live through has had a provisory interruption by Chavez’s decease.
The Chavist bourgeoisie clutched to an endless funeral for Chavez, naming his second as president in charge, closed ranks with the Armed Forces –which were given the custody of the memorial services- and together with Capriles’ “opposition” bourgeoisie is preparing elections for 30 days ahead.
Venezuelan exploiters, with a sure class instinct fear those who cry for the passing away of Chavez… the workers and ordinary people whom they manipulate.
They know that the present calm and despair are a false illusion. The capitalist class and imperialism distinguish with full clarity and are afraid of (amidst the feelings for Chavez’s decease and the political crisis it created for the exploiters) the workers and oppressed people that performed the heroic uprisings, as El Caracazo, and defeated in street combats the military coup de état in 2002, putting in jeopardy the unity of the Army.
Those “at the Top” close ranks. They prompt their institutions. They know that the economic crisis, the robbing by the bankers and imperialism, the pilfering of the “Boli-bourgeoisie” and all the capitalists in Venezuela, poses to them the necessity of attacking the masses, in the way of the infamous regime of Punto Fijo in the ‘90s. 
The deceived masses cry for the death of Chavez, and the ruling classes, pompously guised as “Chavists” and “Bolivarians” seek to refurbish their institutions to be able to attack those masses violently. 
This truth must be told to the Venezuelan, Latin American and World working classes. It is urgent to prepare and organize to counter the looming attack of the capitalists and the government of the “Bolivarian Revolution”, which is a true imposture, a caricature of revolution.

 

The spoils of Stalinism, the Castroites and the renegades to Trotskyism dress Chavez up with legitimacy and authority to pose as anti-imperialist and deceive the masses

A theoretical, programmatic and organizing struggle is now more than ever necessary against opportunism and revisionism. They poison the conscience of the workers, presenting them their enemies as friends. They support the den of bandits of the WSF. They tell the exploited that the murderers and slaveholders of the Chinese Communist Party –who went to Venezuela to cry for Chavez decease alongside Maduro- are the workers’ allies, though actually they are the enslavers of the Chinese workers for the sake of the MNCs.
Chavezism is a bourgeois nationalist phenomenon, every day less and less nationalist, and empty-handed, which in order to haggle with imperialism over its share in the businesses, as a junior partner, is obliged to threaten with the “proletarian menace”. However, to utilize the proletariat, it must control it with an iron hand, by statizing all the workers’ organizations. 
Thus act the bourgeois nationalist governments in the semi-colonial countries. The bourgeoisie has already understood, since the worker revolution of 1848 in France that it can never have the proletariat as an independently mobilizing ally. The bourgeoisie understood that yesterday when fighting against autocracy, and knows that it is still so, in its haggling over with imperialism.
This is so because in the oppressed nations the two fundamental classes of the society that clash and act in the productive process are the working class and imperialism, the latter controlling the core of finances and the branches of industry. The national bourgeoisies are basically weak as a sector of the ruling classes. 
The native bourgeoisie fears the proletariat and its independent actions, because if the proletariat advances toward the socialist revolution it will attack not only the interests of imperialism but also those of the own native bourgeoisie, which is associated and interconnected in thousands of businesses to the international imperialism.
The bourgeois nationalist phenomena don’t last for long. They are ephemeral. Either the proletarian revolution succeeds, or the native bourgeoisie together with imperialism will end strangling the proletariat. The reason is that the true mortal enemy of the bourgeoisie is the proletariat, not imperialism.
This “nationalist” phenomenon we saw in the past with Peron in Argentina, Nasser in Egypt, etc., during and in the aftermath of WWII. The native bourgeoisies take advantage of the momentous crises of imperialism in its domination of the planet, or they act as hijackers of the socialist revolution in their countries in order to better negotiate their slice of super profits snatched away from the working class.
We also saw this process with Qaddafi and the Al Assads in Middle East, who ended being the most important agents of imperialism in Libya and Syria. Similarly, Chavezism is walking quickly the same way in Venezuela, after getting rid of the proletarian revolution in that country, but also in Latin America, where the revolutionary processes in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, were deviated and strangles by the treacherous leaderships of the proletariat. Small surprise if those who yesterday cried endlessly for the death of Qaddafi are today among who cry the passing away of Chavez.
If Chavez were a socialist, so other bourgeois nationalist phenomena as Peron, Cardenas (Mexico) or Nasser were almost revolutionary socialists. It would be a true delirium. They expropriated (as every bourgeois “expropriation” they compensated the “expropriated” members of their same class) oil, the Suez Channel, the railways, etc. It was simply the case of native bourgeoisies that were disputing their share of the businesses. Though, as soon as the re distribution of the spheres of influence was arranged among the imperialist powers in the aftermath of the 2WW, all the national bourgeoisies ended by disciplining themselves to their new or old master, this time to the US.
And when these bourgeoisies had the least intent of a lukewarm resistance, out with them! Thus was the coup against Peron in Argentina in 1955. He fled quickly in a patrol boat along the River Plate to Paraguay. Peron left the massed unarmed protesting in the May Square so that they were massacred by the Armed Forces that performed the coup de etat.
He knew that had he armed the masses, they would not only advance over the imperialist propriety, but also over the native bourgeois -nationalist or not- one. That’s why others, as Allende in Chile, choose to shoot themselves rather to arm the masses when the coup comes… There the coup was headed by Pinochet, who was Allende’s Defense Minister, put there as a “nationalist and patriotic general” by the own Allende, the Chilean Communist Party and Fidel Castro that praised publicly the merits of the “peaceful way to socialism”.
If we compare the charlatanism and demagoguery of Chavez with the nationalist government of Allende, who went as far as to nationalize copper, Chavez and his leftist parrots would be the bourgeois nationalist government more to the right, empty-handed and belated in the entire History of Latin America.
Saying that Chavez is a “good bourgeois”, “he who gave concessions to the masses gratuitously” amounts to saying that Peron gave in mid-‘40s the single and united CGT (Central Union) to the Argentinean workers as well as the “Aguinaldo” (a 13th salary in the year), the paid holidays, sick-leaves and birth-leaves, the collective bargains for the unions, etc.! And whoever said that would be acting as a miserable agent of the bourgeoisie, because each one of those gains were conquered by the Argentinean working class with their indefatigable struggles in 15 years during the ‘340s when they conquered the unions by industry. Peron had to concede those gains if he wanted (as he did) prevent the advance of the struggle for the socialist revolution. 
And if Peron in the past and Chavez today have been obliged to concede the least gains to the masses it was always as a product of these masses heroic combats. The bourgeois nationalist governments have always conceded the gains on the condition that they appear as a free gift granted by the bourgeoisie. And this they could not do without the help of the embellishment of the bosses as good people and friends of the workers and people inoculated as a poison within a candy for the conscience of the masses by the treacherous leaderships of the proletariat.
We affirm that those thousand hundreds of exploited, today crying in despair for the passing away of Chavez, a bourgeois leader, were not carried to that situation either for Chavez’s charisma or because he was a friend of the people. They were carried to that situation and submitted to a policy of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie by the counterrevolutionary reformist worker organizations and leaderships, as for instance the Castros and their agents (who dressed Chavez in red, using the prestige of the Cuban Revolution), the spoils of the Communist Parties everywhere and the renegades to Trotskyism, which legitimized Chavez from the WSF and directly in the same Venezuelan Government. 
The strength of Chavezism did not come down from the sky or from the televised “Alo Presidente”. Neither were Nasser’s created by his oratory nor Peron’s by Evita and the lumpen base of the Peronist movement.
Chavez was Chavez because the Castroites, Stalinism and the renegades to Trotskyism presented him and imposed him to the masses as their great friend and ally. This is the truth.
The renegades to Trotskyism “resurrected Lazarus”, that is, Stalinism, the same that gave in the worker states in 1989 and together with the Castroites –highest example of Stalinism today- put Chavez in his post. In the same way they legitimized the Kirchners in Argentina, or Morales’ government in Bolivia (with his friend the vice-president Linera representative of French oil corporation Total) to care for the imperialist interests all across Latin America.
The courage of all these “anti-imperialist democrats” and this cowardly left showed in 2009 in the coup at Honduras that threw down the belated Bolivarian intent of “brave” wealthy rancher Zelaya who ended in Costa Rica in underwear at 4 a.m. It also showed when Chavez embraced murderous former Colombian president Uribe while the spilt blood of the fighters of the Colombian resistance was still warm over the Ecuadorian soil. “Business is business”, Chavez, Lula, Nestor Kirchner, etc., said then. The oil barrel at 120 dollars each allowed everybody to have his share in the feast.
Thus, all of them ended making a “great FTA” of Latin America, this time with new masks, i.e., OAS and FTAs with new guises, namely the UNASUR, the CELAC, with Cuba within ALBA, with the restoration of capitalism open in the island now offered as gift and subjects’ offering to Don Obama, with the permit to enter and get away freely for goods and persons in Cuba, so that the “gusanos” in Miami can come to recoup their lost businesses together with the Castro Bross in Havana.
We Trotskyists share the feeling and the suffering of the exploited, but we say: it is not ours. We neither sit up with the relatives of the defunct nor accompany the leaders of the bourgeoisie, dead or alive. We say the truth to the masses, even if it is hard and cruel. 
 We Trotskyists sit up with the lifeless bodies of our dead: the massacred ones in El Caracazo, the workers and poor peasants repressed and murdered by the counterrevolutionary forces of Chavezism. We do regret that Chavez is not alive, as the Venezuelan and world working class were already beginning to live through their experience with that bourgeois leader who had started to attack the working class and was to deepen that attack, surely equal or even worse than that his followers are preparing, even worse than the plans that Carlos Andres Perez and Rafael Caldera applied in the ‘90s under the guidance of the IMF. 
Wide sectors of the working class were starting to fight for their most elemental demands and were already clashing openly with the Chavist government and the Bolivarian regime. This process is still open. It is decisive to raise with clarity from the view of Marxism and the interests of the working class a position facing this conjuncture of the situation in Venezuela, in order to re-arm with the strategy of the (true) socialist revolution the proletariat in the Americas for the major combats that are in course and those in the works.
We revolutionary socialists have always been in the trenches of the class war that is opposite to that of Chavez’s and his lackeys. We fought alongside the heroic Libyan militias against Qaddafi, and today we fight in Syria against the assassin Bashar al Assad, both of whom ended, after a short period of anti-imperialist verbosity, the greatest agents of imperialism in the Maghreb and Middle East.
That’s why our condolences go to the martyrs and heroes of the Libyan revolution, with the massacred masses in Syria.
We are with the workers and exploited in Iran, who at every attempt to fight for their bread, against the shortages and expensiveness of living and the unemployment imposed by the ayatollahs, servants of German imperialism, have only received the most ferocious repression from the counterrevolutionary shock guards of Ahmadinejad (a Chavez’s friend) and the Iranian state, counterrevolutionary guards that are also attacking the heroic resistance in Iraq. How is it that Ahmadinejad is confronting imperialism? A pure parody! With their counterrevolutionary forces and parties in Iraq, Both the Ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad have in that country a true shock group against the masses, which has allowed the US to retire its troops orderly. That’s why Obama supported Chavez.
The Ayatollahs, together with their friends and associates of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, today from the government of that country manage all the telecom, construction, etc., businesses together with the imperialist powers. We do not applaud the murderous Ayatollahs or the Iranian government. We combat against and claim to be continuers of the heroic Iranian revolution that in the ‘80s imposed the shoras, i.e., the worker and rank and file soldier councils, which actually threw down Reza Palhevi Sha, leaving their thousand dead in their combat, and were afterwards massacred, by Rullollah Khomeini and his counterrevolutionary hordes. 
That’s why we, revolutionary socialists do not applaud or support Morales, that worker-and-peasant-beating, repressor and murderer, in Bolivia. Much less that servant of imperialism and the MNCs, Cristina Kirchner in Argentina that today has in jail or prosecuted more than 6500 worker and popular fighters, including some that today cry the passing away of Chavez.
We Trotskyists declare openly to be enemies –and are in the opposite barricade- of Obama, the “Bolivarian” governments, the Piñera and Humala of the FTA; we confront that parody, the so called “Bolivarian Revolution”, because we fight and go on combating for the victory of the international socialist revolution… We are opposite to all of them above mentioned, who together with the Castro Bross have taken an oath: “Nevermore a new Cuba in the Americas!!!”; we combat for expelling that treacherous Cuban new bourgeoisie emerged from the bureaucracy that has given in the island, we are against the capitalist restoration in Cuba, and for the success of the socialist revolution in Latin America and USA; because there, in the hands of the today super exploited US working class, the victory will be consolidated of all the exploited in the Americas.

 

The miserable role of the renegades to Trotskyism: hanging from the coattails of the bourgeoisie while raising the banners of Stalinism –the pseudo-theory of two-stage revolution and the support to the “progressive” bourgeoisie

The Venezuelan question has been up to today –and continues being- a true litmus test separating reformists from revolutionaries, that is, the WSF supported by all the spoils of Stalinism, legitimized by the renegades to Trotskyism on one hand, from the militants of the Fourth International on the other.
Whereas the declarations of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) of England, of the New Anti-capitalist Parties (NPA) in France and across Europe and those of the entire Latin American Left, we affirm that there is a common thread that runs across all of them. Everyone speaks of an alleged “dual character” of Chavezism. This is a clear policy of support to “the progressive bourgeois”, which is a legacy and continuation of Stalinism and its pseudo-theory of the existence of “progressive camps”. The communist Parties, for the sake of the “peaceful co-existence of the USSR with imperialism”, supported the “democratic” bourgeois camp against the “fascist” one; the “nationalist” bourgeois against “imperialism”. Thus they liquidated every class struggle against the exploiters and ended submitting the proletariat to the bourgeoisie and imperialism at a world level.
The renegades to Trotskyism repeat today, as parrots, this old formula that carried the world proletariat to huge defeats, even catastrophes. For the former, Chavezism is on one hand “progressive”, “revolutionary and socialist” to the extent that it “took the masses out of poverty” and “adopted anti-imperialist measures”. And on the other hand, they affirm that Chavez did not go up to the end in his fight for socialism, a question that is still pending; they think that the Chavezism, supported by the masses, or pushed ahead by them, is capable of achieving it. 
These people supported the bourgeoisies grouped in the UNASUR, the ALBA, the MERCOSUR; accompanied their meeting with a parallel “summit of the peoples”; and now all of them ended supporting these regional markets directed by the orders of the imperialist powers in the planet, which use them for carrying on juicy businesses with the Latin American bourgeoisies, while attacking violently the masses.
These are Menshevik positions, not only of supporting the “progressive bourgeois camps”; they are also continuity to Stalinism and its pseudo-theories as the two-stage revolution. For this pseudo-theory the native bourgeoisie can be an allied to the proletariat in the anti-imperialist struggle in a first stage, and the fight for socialism will come in a second stage. In the first stage the democratic-revolutionary tasks of the agrarian reform and the rupture with imperialism would be resolved. For the renegades to Trotskyism, Chavez would have been – and his movement continues being today- a fundamental ally in this political struggle against imperialism. Their program and policies were a resolute support to Chavez in his “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” “first stage”. All of them called the masses to vote and support him time and again.
The renegades to Trotskyism are a new batch of Mensheviks and continuity of Stalinism, both theoretically and programmatically. In Latin America, The Communist Parties during decades buried revolutions (as in the entire semi-colonial world) looking for “patriotic military” and “progressive bourgeois” in order to assemble a common anti-imperialist struggle and accomplish with them both a “democratic revolution” in a first stage, by defeating imperialism. This is a true fallacy, already paid with huge defeats by the world proletariat.
In this debate the origin is concentrated of revolutionary Marxism in the imperialist epoch; starting with the Chinese revolution, it generalized the Theory-program of Permanent Revolution to the whole planet; it poses that only the proletariat allied with the poor peasants, and seizing the power, can resolve the democratic revolutionary tasks in the semi-colonial and colonial countries (i.e., break with imperialism and carry on the agrarian reform), and for that it will have to combine those tasks with the socialist ones.
In the Chinese Revolution of 1927, Stalinism took Chiang Kai-shek (Chinese Chavez) even to the congresses of the 3rd International, and the Stalinism itself was part of the Kuomintang (the Chinese bourgeois nationalist party). The tragedy is that the Communist workers of the Chinese CP turned in 1927 into a million corpses used as fuel in the engines of the railways, under the order of the “progressive bourgeois” Chiang Kai-shek.
Stalinism of the ‘27 in China, openly breaking with Marxism and Bolshevism, was the predecessor and which wrote the libretto that the entire global reformist left repeats today. The Renegades to Trotskyism, become in followers of Stalinism, as left wing of the World Social Forum, are also mourning the death of Chavez.
In the attitude toward Chavezism, there is a divide between the theory-program of the Permanent Revolution and the pseudo-theory of the revolution by stages. The latter includes a political front with Chavez, where the working class and its left wing must “press on left, to then surpass him”, supporting his progressive measures and criticizing the negative ones. 
We affirm that, as Trotsky said, anyone who gives the slightest political support to a bourgeois Government, albeit the smallest nail on the little finger of his hand, reneges combating by its revolutionary overthrow. The Marxist apothegm in the fight against imperialism in a semi-colonial country is: we hit together, as in a military attack of imperialism we make unit of military action (e.g. Malvinas or Iraq) either with God or with the devil, but never give the slightest political support or wake up the slightest of illusions in the “goodness” of bourgeois nationalist government; because this means to be responsible for the whole of this Government, which is coming not to lead the victory of the anti-imperialist struggle, but to make her have an abortion. 
We affirm that only the working class, allied to poor farmers, leading the exploited of the oppressed nation, can entirely solve the democratic-revolutionary tasks of the oppressed countries.
The guiding principle before Chavezism from the motley crew of the renegades to Marxism is to lead the working class to a policy of class collaboration; to close for the workers and poor the road to socialist revolution. Moreover, the Castro brothers, under the orders of imperialism, used Chavezism and its “Bolivarian revolution” to submit the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, with its slogan “it is no longer possible a Cuba in Latin America, as already socialism is not even possible in Cuba”. That was the battle cry of the Castroites and Stalinism, where the Castro brothers put all the political clout of the Cuban revolution to ensure that Venezuela would not be a new Cuba. Thus they already did yesterday in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina, etc. That was the role of the Bolivarian revolution, aborting the road to socialist revolution throughout the Americas.
Celia Hart spoke of “Castro and Chavez”, “Cuba and Venezuela”, as “twin stars”, repeating, to falsify it, a metaphor of Trotsky’s in relation to fascism and Stalinism in the 1930s. Castro and Chavez were not Socialist twin stars, but, in plain language, it was the Castroites becoming in a “Bolibourgeoisie”. But for this he had to ensure the strangulation of the proletarian revolution in Latin America. 
Hu Jintao gave them the program: “market socialism”, i.e., the submission of the working class to the market, as the Castro brothers do today when restoring capitalism in Cuba. There is already an open economic crisis in Venezuela. There, inflation, recession, devaluation, the “IMF-recommended packet” against the Venezuelan workers, which today is applied as yesterday was by Rafael Caldera or Carlos Andrés Perez in the Fourth Republic –those plagues are the order of the day. There are 500,000 workers laid off by the Castro brothers in Cuba, the opening of foreign trade and the return of Miami “gusanos” to do big business with the Cuban “Bolivarian bourgeoisie”. That is the ALBA and the UNASUR celebrated by all the lefts. 
Alan Woods gave Chavez the Transitional Program to cover him well red. The LIT yesterday said we had to demand and pressure Chavez for him to go to socialism, although the former now says that stage of putting pressure on Chavez is already finished. So do the English SWP or the NPA today. The PTS of Argentina receives awards in Havana for its documentaries about the struggle of the working class in the ‘ 70s. It has red painted the dirty clothes to the Castro brothers. 
Their policies are venom against the consciousness of the workers. You would have to tell all the Renegades to Trotskyism and Marxism why they don’t go to see a bourgeois and press him so that he opens the wallet and gives them his money. They are kidding!... You do not press the bourgeoisie, you have to expropriate it. But, to get the slightest of the demands of the working class, it means harsh, violent and heroic class fighting!

 

The real anti-imperialist fighters in Venezuela are the exploited who set an insurrection in El Caracazo against the IMF and who in ‘96/’97 recovered the trade unions and worker organizations for fighting

Considering that Chavez was who led the anti-imperialist struggle of the Venezuelan masses, that he was the direct expression of these struggles though he did not carry them to the end, and that for him to do that you needed the pressure of the Socialists and the masses, is a betrayal to the proletariat. It amounts to beautify the Venezuelan national bourgeoisie that fears the masses and their combat much more than it hates imperialism, of which it is a partner and which ends always negotiating and reaching an agreement with imperialism against the masses. 
It is to disguise the murderers of the workers. It is telling the proletariat that there are “good” bourgeois who came to make concessions to humble people that cannot get them for themselves. It is to paint the world upside down. It is poisoning the consciousness of the masses. Again, this is to be a vile traitor.
This position has nothing to do with life, with Chavezism, or fundamentally with Marxism. Chavezism and bourgeois nationalism mean the expropriation of the struggle of the proletariat and the exploited in the oppressed nations of the Americas against imperialism; it is the negation of the perspective of their triumph. 
Let’s talk about clearly. Those who confronted imperialism; defeated the Fourth Republic and the Punto Fijo Pact; demolished the regime to its foundations weren’t Chavez or that murderous officer’s caste of the Venezuelan army, which massacred more than 2000 workers and peasants when they staged El Caracazo in 1989, in one of the largest historical massacres carried on by the exploiters against the exploited in a mass struggle. 
The Caracazo was one of the more phenomenal anti-imperialist struggles of the Latin American working class. This was an extraordinary feat against the choking of the peoples imposed by imperialism with external debt and the IMF to the oppressed nations of Latin America. This is what the lackeys of the bourgeoisie do not want anybody to say or publish. That›s the truth. 
The Caracazo was which death-wounded the Fourth Republic and its plan of attack to the masses. It was a true semi insurrection of the masses that collided violently in tough bouts of barricades in the streets against the military assassins under the orders of the IMF. 
Today, when we see in Libya and Syria how the army disintegrated and thousands of rank-and-file soldiers went over to the side of the people with their weapons in hand, if we compare that to the Caracazo yesterday and see the action of Chavez in the same, we can see how all the “pro-worker” and populist demagoguery of the “socialism of the 21st century” unmasks itself. In El Caracazo, Chávez and all killers of that breed of officers were among those who killed workers. His Bolivarian generals and colonels have all blood-stained hands from killing workers and exploited. None of the caste of officers moved their weapons to fight alongside the insurrected people. 
In the Caracazo, the class trenches were clear. The deception mounted by Chavezism years later and all its work so far consists of dissolving these boundaries of class and burying the exploited that fought it under the slab of the cemeteries. Chavez came with his coup in 1992 when the revolutionary tide had already passed, the masses had already been massacred, and a temporary reflux of the exploited was accentuated. 
They want the oppressed to forget their enemies and oppressors and pass them as allies. That is the Bolivarian movement: a handful of murderers of the people, led to the power to deceive the masses supported on the shoulder of all reformist currents and bureaucracies of the worker organizations in the Americas. 
El Caracazo was a phenomenal semi-insurrection of masses. For trade unionism and economicism, the fact that it was not a fight organized by the labor organizations, i.e. unions, deprives El Caracazo of the character of historical and revolutionary action of the exploited. This position ignores, as trade unionist vision, which is the beginning of any revolutionary process: an independent mass action, which confronts politically the bourgeois regime and the Government. It breaks every control of the bourgeois state and all its institutions and combats it openly, and the exploited start to distinguish their enemies. 
Its participants fertilize their ideas and their insurrectional action insofar as they see an exit, desperate for moments, for the pains of their existence. There is their elemental consciousness that even surpasses the limits of their organizations that must be overcome and often ignored in order for them to be able to enter combat.
As Lenin and Marx said, revolution is a great mass action which involves masses that have never gone to the streets in protest. “Poor Devils”, which were always abandoned to their fate by workers aristocracies and bureaucracies, are now going into combat. Even the concierges fight, according to Trotsky. And there lies the strength of this mass political struggle. That means the proletariat is not alone. Large sections of the masses come to the revolutionary torrent. Millions of exploited accompany it in combat, including sectors of the ruined middle classes are incorporated into the flood of fight. The trade unionist does not understand that this is expression of the strength of the working class; they are dragged into combat disenchanted masses that in their life have followed all bourgeois institutions and have never before entered the fight. They enter in combat millions of exploited that are not taken into account by trade unions and workers organizations led by the bureaucracy, which do not group over 5 or 10% of the working class.
In Venezuela, this has a huge meaning. There, in a monoproductor oil country, in the ‘ 90s the barrel of oil was worth barely $8. The outbreak of a mass political struggle was imminent, as widespread famine had spread within the population. 
82% of the population lived - and still does today - below the poverty line. 70% of the labour force is in a chronic unemployment. Millions of starving and semi-illiterate workers and peasants crowd in the hills of Caracas and all the big cities. A primitive informal economy had left, as does today, millions of unemployed workers to their fate. In the Caracazo it was the Trade Union Confederation (CTV) which played throughout a counter-revolutionary role leaving the employed working class separate from the unemployed. During the Caracazo, a revolutionary action, the CTV blew up through the air. 
El Caracazo, hunger, and the sudden tax increases got together, wielding them, the labor ranks. It was the whip of capital that pushed all sectors to a spontaneous revolutionary breakthrough. 
This is what the political struggle of the masses means, something that the economicist-sindicalist will never understand. In the political fight the phase of social peace is left behind. In the middle of the crack and the crisis the exploited no longer believe that by pressing on the bosses they can get something. It should be necessary to hit the Government and the regime for not dying of hunger. It is a high step if compared to economic and Trade Unionist fighting, but less than an insurrection organised with clear goals to snatch the power from the enemy. That is the strength and the weakness of any mass semi-insurreccion or spontaneous riot, and not its massiveness that breaks the isolation of the working class, which ultimately fails to centralize it and advance in a Soviet strategy, because the proletariat does not have a revolutionary direction at its head capable of establishing the Alliance of workers and peasant or working class-and-popular Alliance. 
 The Caracazo was a semi-insurreccion which had not a revolutionary party at its head and hence its main limitation, since its immediate result, which left mortally wounded the Punto Fijo Deal regime, failed to advance to put up bodies of double power, i.e., Soviet, comprising all the masses that joined the revolutionary combat, nor could it end splitting the army horizontally and transform its uprising in into a victorious insurrection. This facilitated the subsequent expropriation by the bourgeoisie of this phenomenal and historic battle of masses which was the first and most decisive historic bout of Latin American masses against the choking of the nation and the looting of imperialism with the biggest scam of the twentieth century that were the foreign debts of the countries of Latin America. 
The Caracazo took place at the time when the world proletariat was receding and the black night of capitalist restoration in the former worker States came. From there its “unconscious”, “fleeting” character... forgotten, but that despite this and despite everything it deprived of legitimacy the regime of the surrender and the misery of the Punto Fijo Pact and sealed its death. Although by international conditions, its result would be slow and gave time to the bourgeoisie to sort out, without a revolutionary crisis in the heights, which then Chavezism, as abortion of that process, could capitalize on. 
The Caracazo was the largest anti imperialist mass action of the Venezuelan working class and Chavezism was its denial. Its allies weren’t the generals that expropriated that fight but the processes that later and already entered the 21st century continued its work as the revolutionary anti imperialist uprisings of Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, etc. This is the truth, and the task of revolutionary Marxism is to run the veil of the trap and the lie that the proletarian treacherous leaderships scattered about the exploited so that they no longer trust their own forces and are subject to manipulation and deception, to the empty handed populism of the exploiting classes. 
 The Venezuelan Caracazo opened the historical period of rupture of social peace and opened a phase of civil war that is still latent in the conditions of Venezuela, Latin American conditions and worldwide. It’s because this time, since 2008 capitalism is which has received “its ‘ 89”, which leaves Chavez’s empty handed populism more and more exposed.
Trotsky said: “The truth is that the civil war is a particular stage of the class struggle, when it -breaking the framework of legality- reaches the plane of a public confrontation to some extent physical, of the forces in opposition. Conceived in this way civil war covers the spontaneous insurrections determined by local causes, bloody interventions of the counter-revolutionary hordes, the revolutionary general strikes, the insurrection for the seizure of power and the period of liquidation to the counter-revolutionary uprising attempts”. Just what Chavezism came to interrupt was that sequence; but that sequence is the victory of the proletarian revolution. For this reason, the Bolivarian revolution is nothing more than the abortion of that revolution. 
El Caracazo had its paradox; it opened a revolutionary situation in Venezuela that ended up giving the power to Chavez who came to abort the emergence of the Soviet power, and the horizontal breakdown of the army. In the success of that abortion, all treacherous leaderships of the world proletariat, regrouped and centralized all at the WSF put a stake their very existence. 
Trotsky defined the February revolution as follows, with this paradox. He said: “the bourgeoisie seized power behind the backs of the people. It didn’t have any support in the working classes. But with the power it got something as a second hand support: the Mensheviks and Socialist revolutiona es. Elevated to the top by the masses, they gave a vote of confidence to the bourgeoisie. If we were to examine this operation from the point of view of formal democracy, we would find ourselves facing something like elections of second degree, in which the Mensheviks and SR play the technical role of intermediate link, i.e., electors of the Kadets.” 
These are the Stalinists and the Castroites supported and legitimated by the renegades to Trotskyism: intermediate electors of Chavez, the Kirchners, Lula, Morales and... OBAMA.
Some years after the repressed Caracazo, it came a wave of worker struggles against the packet of Caldera in 1997. Caldera plan is defeated with marches in the streets, work stoppages, strikes and hard struggles. From 1996 to 1998 the working-class reassembled its forces. The ebbing after the massacre of El Caracazo is left behind. Latin American working class begins to fight offensive struggles. The Ecuadorian Revolution begins. A wave of strikes and struggles shakes Argentina. It is the awakening of the masses of Latin America. The Venezuelan proletariat retrieves its committees of factories and unions, and starts a proletarian boom with extremely harsh fights against the bureaucracy and the bosses. 
Though, the old organisations recovered and the new ones conquered then, are state-ized in 1998, since all the left currents that mounted on that struggle ended up supporting Chavez and handed him the control of the large fighting organizations that had been conquered. 
The Venezuelan working class was the vanguard, in the ‘90s, of the Latin American proletariat with a phenomenal mass political struggle, the abovementioned Caracazo, and the proletarian boom in 1996/1998 ended demolishing the regime of the Punto Fijo Pact and its parties. Thus, the terrified bourgeoisie went to look for this “nationalist” and “progressive” Colonel to deceive the masses, divert the revolutionary upsurge and shut off the way to the advancement of the socialist revolution in Venezuela, that had been opening in a decade of fighting.

 

From the emergence of Chavezism, expropriating the revolution, to Chavez’s surrender to the military coup of 2002

Every revolutionary situation develops “when those of above cannot and those at the bottom don’t want”. But, in the words of Lenin, a revolution begins when an independent mass action opens the way to the revolutionary struggle for power. That road had been opened early in the ‹90s in Venezuela and it was the treacherous leaderships of the masses at Latin American and international level that put on their shoulders Chavezism so it was able to abort the process.
The Venezuelan bourgeoisie trembles today thinking of a new Caracazo, that would be offensive, not defensive, due to the international conditions i.e., the brutal crisis of the world capitalist system. Therefore, everybody sent condolences on the death of Chavez and surrounded the Government of Maduro to prevent a political crisis in the heights from unfolding; terrorized at the thought of an intervention of the masses, the bourgeois shielded themselves with the Bolivarian armed forces and Capriles’ bourgeois opposition, which is also Bolivarian, wearing the same little booklet of the Constitution to stabilize the situation and prevent every crisis in the regime. 
Those who have entrenched holding Chavez feel terror and panic to the masses, who broke the contentions and beat them hard blows, not only in the Caracazo. They fear the current wave of working-class struggle against the attack of devaluation, inflation and an unbearable shortage of the living staples. They fear that a proletarian offensive as of the ‘96/’98 boom resurfaces which raises the prospect of the general strike and reunifies the ranks of the working class, reopening the road to socialist revolution. 
The ruling classes, even today, have fresh in their memories the defeat that the masses attained against the attempted coup, as we will see later, in 2002, in which Chavez surrendered cowardly before the bishopric and the caste of officers of the army, while the masses came down from the hills, surrounded the barracks and forced the same officers formerly Chavezist and then “putchist” to put him again in power. 
The armed forces, as a fundamental institution of the Venezuela bourgeois state, and their caste of officers played a key role becoming in occupation forces under the command of the IMF to massacre the Venezuelan people in the ‘90s. They played a decisive role in the coup attempt of 2002 to redistribute the oil income with a better share for imperialism. Today they close ranks around Maduro, Capriles and the Bolivarian Constitution, to prevent a political crisis from opening gaps through which the mass movement could enter again. 
There is one issue that unifies all currents ranging from pro Chavez supporters to the rrrrrrrrredest elements of the self claimed Marxist movement. They are enemies of having a policy to break the caste of the Pro-imperialist bourgeois army officers and organize its plebeian base and the children of the exploited in it together with the workers and the people. 
All sheath of the “Bolivarian revolution” is for sweetening the ferocious dictatorship of capital. The bands of armed men define what really the Punto Fijo Deal regime and the Bolivarian Republic have in common: the military party, the officers’ caste that so much yesterday as today has been watching to ensure the interests of the whole of the bourgeoisie and imperialism in Venezuela, beyond the specific differences, the form of the regime and the nature of the Government with which the bourgeoisie dominates. 
This continuity of the armed forces in the heart of the Venezuelan regime, and the full state-ization of the trade unions, guarantees a Bonapartist regime with elements of a “sui generis” character insofar as it haggles with imperialism some points of the share in the oil income, but, as was already stated, by rigidly controlling the masses.

 

With regard to the genesis and emergence of Chavezism

What we are talking about is the genesis of Chavezism, as expropiator of the revolution. The Carlos Andrés Pérez Government had implemented a packet of measures ordered by the IMF, after signing with the same a letter of intent on February 28, 1989.
After the Caracazo and the savage repression it came an ebbing, with the masses accumulating their hatred and sitting up with their dead. The army had been responsible for the massacre. It was the focus of the hatred of the masses. Therefore, by attacking the army and placing it as the greatest enemy of the exploited, not just the Punto Fijo regime was put in question but also the whole Venezuelan State and its murderous caste of officers. 
A sector of the caste of officers, of the most rancid bourgeoisie, perceived this issue. Not only the regime had been death-wounded, but also targeted the heart of the bourgeois state. And that was the largest nightmare of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, on 4 February 1992, a sector of the caste of officers headed by Chavez, stepped forward and tried to take a preventive coup, before a new onslaught of the masses was in the streets. This attempt was known as “the madrugonazo” (“the hit at dawn”). 
This crisis at the Tops encouraged a wave of protests, culminating in May 1996, when the Congress decided also striking out Andrés Pérez.
The regime and the Government were in crisis. Old former president Rafael Caldera takes charge of the presidency as the last of the Governments of the regime of the Punto Fijo Deal, supported by the Stalinists. Caldera was already campaigning about Chavez and “the putschists” being the real friends of the people. 
So the regime of the Punto Fijo Pact was melting down, and they began to create mechanisms for the caste of officers to safeguard the State, since it had massacred more than 2,000 exploited in 1989.
The Government of Caldera had a problem. The oil barrel was between 30 and 40 dollars in the mid-’ 90s. The government could just apply another packet, as Carlos Andrés Pérez. And it did so in 1996 with the increase in the domestic price of gasoline, the liberation of fees and fares of public services, a general increase in prices... in short, a classic IMF package, which the working class defeated again on the streets, as we have already said, with its wave of struggles of 1996 /’97. 
We describe this because you cannot falsify and deny historical facts. This shows as we have already said that the Venezuelan exploited masses were the vanguard of our continent in the fight against the looting of external debt and the IMF against the oppressed nations of Latin America. Long live the Venezuelan working class and exploited! They are the truly anti-imperialist forces! They were then followed by their brothers and sisters from Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, who started revolutionary processes. 
Inventing a legend of a “Chavist anti-imperialism” which would have been the promoter and creator of this fight in Venezuela and Latin America, it is not only falsifying history but continuing submitting the working class to their executioners, to the impostors, who expropriated every anti-imperialist and revolutionary struggle. The exploited had 2,000 dead in the streets. Not even one casualty was suffered by the exploiters and the Chavezist bourgeoisie.
The renegades to Trotskyism, the same as Stalinism, will enter History as the greatest counterfeiters of the revolutionary struggle of the masses. They are already a school of counterfeiters a propos Chavezism as Stalinism was around the Russian and international revolution. 
In 1998 Chavez takes the presidency. The bourgeoisie needs him. It was starting the revolutionary tide that defeated the pro-imperialist Government of Bucaram in Ecuador. The “twin” of Chavez, the notorious “Colonel Gutiérrez expropriated large working-class and peasant marches to Quito with anti-imperialist demagoguery; he was exposed after taking the presidency after he completed a year, with the workers and peasants expelling the entire Parliament and even chasing the Maoist representatives that supported him. 
Chavez arrives to power in Venezuela due to the panic that the bourgeoisie had about the masses opening a revolutionary process as in Ecuador. Imperialism and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie learned from their setbacks. They immediately called a constituent to appear to be them who defeated the Fourth Republic and the regime of the Punto Fijo Pact. We insist, to save the armed forces from the hatred of the masses they set up their “Bolivarian Republic”. They changed the form so that it kept the essence of the Venezuelan semi-colonial capitalist regime and its band of armed men remained intact. 
It is necessary to tell the truth. This constituent tried to re-establish the prestige of all institutions of the Venezuelan bourgeois state, changing some of them and their relationships in the Bolivarian Constitution, but saving the murderous caste of officers that repressed the Venezuelan people. 
Marxists ought not to confound the content of revolution with the content of reaction and counter-revolution. The Bolivarian revolution was the bailing-out of the murderous armed forces and semi-colonial bourgeois state, cornered by the revolutionary struggle of the masses. 
Over this detour, over that expropriation, the “Boliburguesía” arose which sought to rely on the momentum of the masses to negotiate their share of oil income to imperialism as junior partners, but on the condition of controlling them fiercely. They sought to bargain their businesses without attacking the interests of imperialism, as with oil at $ 100 per barrel they could have repaid the entire foreign debt, something that the IMF could not get in the ‘90s.
We insist, it is necessary to tell the masses the truth. What was the result of this abortion of the revolution? The masses filled Venezuela with blood and fighting for a decade. They could have taken power, solve their unheard sufferings and miseries, and ended up receiving alms from “miracle” plans, defective “missions” of literacy... and this was achieved not as charity from Chavez, but as a by-product of the revolutionary struggle of the masses. Venezuela was not a new Cuba; peaceful coexistence with imperialism propagandized by the Castroites was respected and upheld by all leaderships of the Latin American and world proletariat. We insist, not even the alms delivered to the masses, which keep the vast majority of them in extreme poverty was a gracious concession of the murderous Generals of the Venezuelan army or the anti-worker bourgeoisie in that country. They gave something not to lose everything. Filling Venezuela with working-class blood only to get empty shelves in the supermarkets, skyrocketing fees and fares and levels of unprecedented misery that today appear with clarity after so much quackery from the Chavezist and reformist. That’s the truth.
No concession was free, no alms given to the masses that today the bourgeoisie tries to pass as reforms was free. If not, why did not the bossed give them in 1989, 1992, 1996 in Venezuela? They only delivered IMF packages, beatings, and death.
 And now, once the global crisis initiated and penetrating in Venezuela, they, with the Boli-bourgeosie at their head front, apply the same starvation plans and paquetazos that Caldera and Carlos Andrés Pérez would applaud and which now Capriles sanctify (who is given the luxury of talk about “Red paquetazos”) and Obama... that receives in time and form - as it has always done - Venezuelan oil that is processed in refineries in the United States in the Gulf of Mexico coast. This route, and that phenomenal business of US imperialism in Venezuela, along with the maintenance of the armed forces of the bourgeois state is what unites such a powerful chain in History from Caldera to Chavez... A chain that will only be cut by the triumph of the socialist revolution in Venezuela and Latin America and mainly with the US working class taking the power.

 

The gestation of the Pro-imperialist coup of 2002: with the increase in the price of oil, imperialism wants to end the bargaining of the Venezuelan native bourgeoisie... Chavez surrendered, while the revolutionary masses and the working class defeated the coup

The “anti-imperialism” of Chavez was in short a barrel of oil to $100 that allowed him to repay the entire debt to the IMF, to save the interests of imperialism in the region with his “Summit of the americas”, the ALBA, the UNASUR, the MERCOSUR of the transnationals, and continue supplying a significant portion of the oil needed by the USA, of which is a great commercial and financial partner to Venezuela. 
Chavezism was part of a wave of expropriations of proletarian revolutions in Latin America, where Stalinism, Castroism, resurrected by the renegades of Trotskyism, put on their shoulders the Bolivarian bourgeoisie from Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil to manipulate the masses and divert the revolutionary processes. But in 2002 there was a crisis in Venezuela, a coup d’etat, as the barrel of oil went to 120-140 dollars, thanks to “bandit” Bush, who was feedong his fleet with Venezuelan oil to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. The Bolivarian bourgeoisie was already conducting much of that business. Other fractions of the bourgeoisie and imperialism were to shrink its share in the distribution of oil income. And they would not allow it.
It is one thing to bring Chavez to stop the revolution with oil at $40 a barrel, and another thing is doing that with the barrel to $140 and Chavez staying with most part of the booty. The coup was a “Chronicle of a death foretold”, and it came in 2002. 
What then did the “brave Commander” Chavez? He surrendered to the bishops and generals, without a single shot. As Marx said of Bolívar: the general of the flight... 
Again the masses came down from the hills. They surrounded the barracks. It began to break horizontally the army base. Rank and file soldiers began to go over to the popular side. The ghost of the Caracazo ran through Venezuela. Conditions to avenge the 2000 workers massacred in el Caracazo of 1989 were there. There was at the order of the day to destroy this murderous, officer’s caste, agent of imperialism... Chavez gave in to the army and the church and the masses wanted to release him from prison. The bourgeoisie that was at first celebrating, turned within 24 hours to be terrorized by the revolutionary action of the exploited. 
The same putschist generals and bosses were terrified that the masses comply with the mandate of the Caracazo and not a stone remained of that murderous bourgeois army and that from the huge political fight arose the soviets of workers, the “miserable” of the city and the countryside and the soldiers. So they went to the bishop palace for Chavez and put him back in power. 
That is the tragedy threatening the Venezuelan masses: “Marxists” pretending to pass as “anti-imperialist” the General of the withdrawal. For them the masses are nothing, although these masses were the true protagonists of the Venezuela revolted. 
The Trotskyists will put things in place. Either you are with the Caracazo, with the struggles of 1996-’98, with the anti-coup revolutionary uprising in 2002 to pave the way for the workers and the Socialist Revolution, settling accounts with the murderers of the Venezuelan people; or you are hanging to the coattails of the murderous Generals coated as “anti-imperialist” and “Bolivarian”, and supporting the juicy businesses of the imperialist bankers with the bolibourgeoisie. 
That treacherous “Bolivarian” left will in time pay accounts to the masses, when the struggle of the working class stops the package which today Maduro applies and Chavez would have applied perhaps with greater anti-worker boldness, i.e., devaluation, inflation, shortages, increase in gasoline, and more attacks and repression over the working class, as those launched by Rafael Caldera and Carlos Andrés Pérez, who governed by repressing and killing workers and poor peasants.
With the argument of “whoever attacks the State enterprises is a traitor to the Bolivarian revolution” they will attack the workers when they strike or protest. They are the same bourgeoisie and their generals who massacred in the Caracazo. With the world economic crisis now all of them will be Carlos Andrés Perez and Caldera, because Chavez, Maduro and Capriles are all agents of Obama covered under the cloak of the Bolivarian Constitution.
 But the 2002 coup was not a «national», Venezuelan coup. It was a counter-revolutionary response of imperialism to stop, at one point, the upwards advance of the revolutionary wave of the masses of the Americas, which had been shaking Argentina from its foundations, advancing in Bolivia and threatened to overcome the limits of Chavezism in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. 
The defeat of the coup meant that the Bolivarian bourgeoisie was called to deal with the masses, along with other expropriators, rogue sidings of imperialism, as the Kirchners in Argentina, Correa in Ecuador, etc. After paying lip service to anti-imperialism through many “anti-imperialist” flips and small concessions of alms, they ended up enslaving Latin American working-class and arming regional markets for imperialism, the transnational corporations, mining companies, oil companies and their businesses, in a shameless way that would make blush Bush and the agents of the FTAs of the 2005 / 2006 (such as Mexico, Chile and Peru). That is why everyone is now in the UNASUR, the CELAC, etc. 
Chavez had to pay for his freedom, cheerfully and disciplined. The embrace with Uribe, after which the latter massacred in Ecuadorian territory the top leadership of the FARC, calling to do business together was a currency of payment. Being the largest ally, at ALBA, to advance to the capitalist restoration in Cuba with the Castro brothers, he has received and continues still to receive the biggest applause from his imperialist partners.

 

The working class in Venezuela need to conquer a revolutionary program and an internationalist Trotskyist party which is the vanguard in the combat for founding anew the Fourth International in the Americas

Chavez has been a great leader of the bourgeoisie. He has received the condolences of US imperialism. It was a great elector of Obama next to Castro. When immigrant and colour workers did not want any more to vote again for Obama, they were transformed into the big Obama voters. Chavez and Fidel Castro turned en masse to disappointed colour and immigrant workers so they went to vote Obama. On Capitol Hill, Chavez will also have his mausoleum. 
Bankers in Wall Street, the big imperialist bourgeoisie and their Bolivarian partners of Miami need to be repaid Venezuelan foreign debt and demand their share of oil income. For this they require devaluation and carry most of the dollars for themselves. For the people it will be just more inflation, currency without backing, increases in the public services, etc. Capitalism is not a charity society, and less so when imperialism is in bankruptcy.
The margins of action for the native bourgeoisie of all Latin America are shrinking. The US working class is obliged to pay for the crisis of Wall Street and the direct agents of imperialism of the native bourgeoisie are also decide to have the proletariat of their countries pay for it.
If those imperialist powers that have emerged victorious from the world economic crash opened in 2008, such as Germany or the U.S., pushed to impose a Treaty of submission and allegiance to lesser imperialist powers such as Greece, Italy, Spain, etc... what will they not require from their colonies and semi-colonies? 
Already reformism increasingly less may pass the alms as victories and conquests, because the global crisis is already here. The package of Maduro and Capriles that has been launched and much more that they are preparing against the exploited of Venezuela, and which is being launched against the world working class, will show governments of Rafael Caldera and Carlos Andrés Pérez as the true twin stars of Chavez and all the pro imperialist left which supports his followers. 
Sooner rather than later the siege of the treacherous leaderships and their scams to the proletariat, will be broken by the masses. The “December 20” in Argentina and their cry “that everybody goes away and never returns!” will come again. Again the cry of “gringos, get out of here!” in Bolivia, the “out with the IMF!” of the Caracazo, the “expropriation of the copper and transnationals” of Chile. The One Million Men anti-war March will returns in the U.S. and hundreds of communes as in Oaxaca will rise up in the bloodied Mexico. 
Military bases in Honduras and Colombia will have the same fate as the military bases of murderous Kaddafi and Bashar al Assad, partners and friends of Chavez and the Bolivarian.
But at that time only the Trotskyists will have the possibility of talking to and looking at the proletariat in the eye. El Caracazo flags have come to rest in the hands of the only theory and program that can lead to victory: those of the Fourth International re-founded.
The anti-imperialist democratic-revolucionary tasks are still pending and unresolved in Venezuela. The break with imperialism must be consummated. Only the working class, leading the exploited masses, can conquer it.
 In spite of the a huge oil income, the exploited are hungry because most of the oil rent is taken by imperialism and the native bourgeoisie.
There will be no national independence in Venezuela UNLESS THERE ARE EXPROPRIATED THE BANKS WITHOUT COMPENSATION AND NACIONALIZED UNDER WORKERS CONTROL! FOR A SINGLE STATE BANK WHICH, TOGETHER WITH THE NATIONALIZATION OF FOREIGN TRADE, WILL MAKE THE NATION GET RID OF THE PARASITIC CAPITALISTS WITH THEIR COMMISSIONS, THEIR REAPING OF SUPER-PROFITS IN IMPORTS, THE THEFT OF DOLLARS FROM OIL INCOME AND ITS CIRCUIT TO THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL RESERVE AND THE BUSINESS IN MIAMI. 
There are plenty of funds for a strong plan of investments in nationalized companies. But to do so, we must start for non-payment or a bolivar of these expropriations (totaling $ 26 billion dollars) to those who exploited for decades the Venezuelan working class. 
Not a bolívar (Venezuelan currency) more for the payment of the foreign debt! Immediate disavowal of the 105 billion dollars of the fraudulent Venezuelan foreign debt, contracted by the lackeys of imperialism of the regime of the Punto Fijo Deal, which has been both paid promptly and augmented by the sacking of imperialism, performed this time together with the Bolibourgeoisie! 
For a plan of public works for the construction of millions of homes, to end with the black market and the handing out of alms to the exploited that have the black gold beneath their feet! For public health services and education, free and of quality for everyone!
Enough of wage freezes, high cost of living and inflation! For the liquidation of the chain of intermediation in the marketing of foodstuffs and consumer goods! Supply and price control committees! 
Denunciation of all PDVSA oil contracts with the imperialist oil companies! Full nationalization of Venezuelan oil under workers control!
If the exploited do not honor the fraudulent external debt and put the banks under worker control they will be able to resolve the drama of unemployment and job insecurity. 
Solving the chronic unemployment, which now stands at 21% / 22% of the labour force, is one of the big pending tasks alongside the breaking with imperialism. Neither the Punto Fijo Pact nor the Bolivarian Republic could resolve them, and no bourgeois regime will. Only a Government of the working class, expropriating the bourgeoisie and imperialism, on the basis of the demolition of this semi-colonial bourgeois state, may terminate with the scourge of unemployment of the Venezuelan masses. 
Enough of alms! Decent jobs for everybody! A shift more in all factories! For a Plan of public works under the control of the workers! 
It must be put in standing committees of unemployed, organized from the trade unions, factory committees and all the labor organizations!
The Venezuelan working class will not be able even to dream of defending its present conquests and get new if it does not take as one of its key demands the resolution of the chronic crisis of millions of unemployed, often used by the bourgeoisie against the workers, or maintained with handouts that are already not even enough to survive, as the “Miracles” plans.
Let’s get together all the worker ranks! 
For a National Congress of employed and unemployed workers from all over Venezuela, with delegates of the unemployed committees, one each 100% of all the labor movement, to raise a list of claims, of decent jobs for all, wage increases to conquer a minimum wage, for a sliding scale of wages according to the family shopping basket defined by the labor organizations!
 To move forward in a new offensive by their conquests, the working class should coordinate those who struggle. It should be standing committees and strike and claim pickets. 
Let’s break with any subordination to the Ministry of Labor and raise a single list of demands comprising all the exploited!
For self-defence committees against the gangs of hitmen, scabs and strike-breakers paid by the capitalists, and the repressive national guard of the Government of the Bolibourgeoisie! 
Down with the breed of officers assassin of their own people and organizer of coups de etat! For committees of soldiers! Full organization rights for rank and file soldiers! For a minimum wage, according to the cost of living and mobile during their military service! Delegates of soldiers along with trade unions, labor organizations and supply and price-control committees, and organizations of unemployed!
All the organizations that speak on behalf of the working class and their struggle must just now break with the bourgeoisie. The unique and effective breakthrough to conquer the independence of the Venezuelan working class is putting on its feet the true power of the exploited, the only one that can carry up to the end the conquest that Venezuela openly break with imperialism.
 This only can be achieved with a revolutionary Government of the working class and its allies the oppressed masses of the countryside and the city, supported by organizations of direct democracy and the armament of the masses. For a Republic that is neither that of the Punto Fijo Deal or Bolivarian! For a worker, Socialist, Venezuela without generals, capitalists and imperialist bankers!
For the Socialist United States of Central and South America! 
The continental policy of the “Bolivarian bourgeoisie” has been, in various forms, such as the UNASUR and regional blocs: keeping alive and well the imperialist plundering of the oppressed nations of South America, Central America and the Caribbean. 
No to the ALBA plan of the transnational corporations and the capitalist restoration in Cuba! No to the ALBA plan of the Pact of Chavezism with the murderous fascist regime of the US military bases in Colombia!
Down with the MERCOSUR of the transnationals and the NAFTA of the Andean countries and Mexico, which enslave our Nations to imperialism! 
A single Latin American Revolution will be that lead, defeating the bourgeois States, the Socialist Revolution, which will be Latin American and global, or it won’t be nothing!
The Bolivarians have their program: the unity with Obama, against the US workers and the oppressed peoples of the world. The program of the socialist revolution in Latin America, Central America and the Caribbean has its key ally to overcome the class enemy: the US working class, which yesterday rose against the war and for the rights of immigrants. The same working class that yesterday in Wisconsin called to “fight as in Egypt”, and indicated the world and Latin American working class what are the conditions for victory: expropriating that 1% of Wall Street parasites who condemn the world to misery and barbarism.
Let’s expropriate the 600 parasites who handle 240 cartels and MNCs that control the whole of the world economy! 
Against the Bolivarian revolution - a caricature of revolution-, we fighters of the Fourth International fight for the Socialist United States of North, Central and South America.
The Venezuelan and Latin American Trotskyists have a responsibility in History: setting accounts with this school of falsifiers who want to make the workers of that country believe that they are subjects of the bourgeoisie, incapable of liberating from oppression by themselves. It is necessary to tell them the truth: the great actors of the anti-imperialist struggle are the exploited fighting against all the capitalists in Venezuela 
Reformist leaderships want to picture even the worker gains as gifts of the capitalists, as if they were not a by-product of the heroism of the masses and their phenomenal struggles. 
That is the left of Obama and Wall Street, where the Bolibourgeoisie has deposited the reserves of oil income (in JP Morgan and Citibank). We must put an end to the left of Obama and their slander and lies against the masses.
Today more than ever the battle cry is “the liberation of the workers will be the work of the own workers!”El Caracazo lives, the socialist revolution in the Americas will succeed when the masses have at their head the fighters of the Fourth International. This is our historical obligation: helping the masses to get rid of the treacherous leaderships that at each step disorganize the masses’ struggle and submit the masses to their enemies. 
The Venezuelan, Latin American and US working class, have debts to collect against Chavezism: 250,000 massacred in Colombia, 60,000 in Mexico, Cuba handed out to imperialism. The working class of the Latin American countries, looted one thousand and one times in order to get functioning that country of the maquilas and the MNCs, have a lot of debts to be repaid. 
With Obama, Chavez and the Castros’ friend, thousands of immigrants have been expelled from the USA. Their children have been born there, in USA. While the parents are expelled, the children have been sent to orphanages by their thousand dozens. Thus is the way Obama and imperialism treat the workers and the immigrants. 
 That’s why our battle cry must be that of the Bolivian working class in its revolution of 2003/2005: “Gringos go home! Let’s smash the MNCs! Let’s treat them as they treat us! Let’s expropriate their banks and enterprises! So we will see if they go on attacking our children!” 
The US working class, living on food subsidies of 3 dollars a day, with millions of immigrants overexploited, does not deserve the government of that “blackened Bush” –Obama. The latter treats the working class as Bush did to the Iraqi, Afghani, etc. working classes and all the oppressed peoples under the yoke of the murderous US imperialists.
Justice will come in the hands of the socialist revolution, and not thanks to that caricature of revolution that is the Bolivarian revolution and its generals, experts in fleeing, as Marx said about Simon Bolivar, and we should say about the Bolivarian generals of today. 
As an expression of the breaking to the left of the working class of the Americas with the contention dikes imposed on it by the WSF and the reformist left, thousands of workers do not accept already and won’t in the near future the expropriation of their struggle in the hands of the treacherous leaderships and the native bourgeoisies. From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, the exploited have their class brothers and sisters in Venezuela with one of the most advanced anti-imperialist consciences in the Americas, conquered in anti-imperialist combats such as El Caracazo. 
We also have a support in the combat of the Cuban working class, which has not been yet defeated and maintains up to now its anti-imperialist conscience. In spite to the prostration imposed on it by the Castro brothers, the class enemies will need still a lot of counterrevolutionary activity to take the Cuban working class out of the scenes for a period. Nothing is closed yet. All these contradictions will find a denouement in the combats of the proletariat of the Americas and internationally. 
The experience of the Venezuelan masses with the hijackers of their anti-imperialist struggle is ongoing. The workers in Bolivia, who are already confronting the government of Morales, and the left wing of the US working class, that suffer the government of Obama –he who heads the counterrevolutionary offensives of the finance capital in the planet- are showing that the conditions are starting to mature for setting in place the Fourth International and the program of Trotskyism in order to get a way to the masses. 
A wave of revolutionary fighting in the Americas shook the world between 1996/2005 in the same fashion that have recently done the masses in North Africa and Middle East. 
The fight for founding anew the Fourth International for these huge tasks that we have ahead, is a decisive question. That is essential for advancing to found anew the Venezuelan Trotskyism. That will not be attained on the base of the Stalinist and Menshevik theory-program, but on the base of the theory-program of the Permanent revolution and the Transitional Program for the socialist revolution. 
Alan Woods, that sinister liquidator of Trotskyism, handed as a gift the Transitional Program to Chavez so to dress the latter as socialist. The Transitional Program must be recouped, because it it of the working class, of the exploited against the exploiters. 
The working class does not have the leadership it deserves. The struggles of the exploited need a Leninist, pro-insurrection, combating party in Venezuela. For that it is ineludible to set up an internationalist re-grouping of the healthy forces of the international Trotskyist movement and the revolutionary worker organizations. 
For a committee for the foundation anew of the Fourth International! 
Internationalist Trotskyism must stand up in Venezuela and show the conditions for victory to the heroic working class in that country!

 

International Leninist Trotskyisist Fraction
Liga Comunista de Trabajadores
(Workers’ Communist League) /Venezuela