PART III
PERMANENT REVOLUTION
VS. STAGED REVOLUTION
Discussions with the pro-Bolivarian left
April 17th, 2013
Venezuela after Chávez’s death
“Democracy” Vs. “Fascism”?
Or workers and socialist revolution
vs. higher imperialist plunder?
Comrades of El Topo Obrero
We are preparing a statement on Venezuela and the latest developments.
Your position seems principled, but we believe that there is a characterization error about the fascist coup that you see in Capriles’ action, and of course this has programmatic consequences. To our knowledge, you do not take into account the following considerations:
Venezuela, as Trotsky said about Spain, has hit the underwater rocks of the global economic crisis. All kinds of margin and all possibility of bourgeois nationalism flirting with the masses to negotiate their share of national income with imperialism is over.
For the bourgeoisie and imperialism, the death of Chávez has been a very hard blow, as we have already stated in our statements about it. This was the best government to, with some legitimacy, attack the masses, as was already happening with devaluations, high cost of living, submission to imperialism, payment of external debt, etc.
The electoral result is nothing more than the expression that Chavezism begins to be a squeezed lemon. It is a powerful bourgeois faction in Venezuela, which will defend its business, as Capriles would, against the masses.
Capriles is the bourgeois fraction that has recognized the Bolivarian Constitution, and its struggle to achieve power is through it. This bourgeois fraction has found, unexpectedly, in fact, with 50% of the votes. It fights for his position in business, after 14 years of not being able to manage them.
We are facing a huge political crisis at the heights, since every government that emerges will be a weak government to attack the masses. For that reason, the ideal electoral result was the previous one: the one that gave a two-party regime of the strong Bolivarian constitution of Capriles-Chávez, and with a strong government to attack the masses, as was Chávez himself, who had won the elections with a margin of more than 9%.
The current electoral result is an expression of the Chavezism crisis, but above all of the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, since all the left conceals that they were all lackeys of Chavez, Castro, Stalinism, all supported by the renegades of the Trotskyism of the continent, and that they were stuck to a government that has launched a brutal attack on the working class and the people. On their shoulders they support a fraction of billionaires, such as the boli-bourgeoisie, as agents of Obama as Capriles today, and who, like all bourgeois governments, continue to centralize the bourgeoisie’s attack against the masses.
As we will see later, in Venezuela today we are not in the face of a Bonapartist coup as in 2002 against Chávez, since today most of the armed forces have opted for the assumption of Maduro.
Capriles is not organizing a fascist coup, because that would be suicidal for the entire bourgeoisie. It would light the flame of revolution. He has sought and will seek, for now, to take over the government, legitimized by the Bolivarian Constitution. His pressure struggle in the streets today - which he has quickly decided - is for that.
Meanwhile, Maduro has taken great care, beyond all bragging, that the masses do not intervene against Capriles. They know they play with fire. One more point in the opening of the gaps in inter-bourgeois clashes can mean a route for the entry of the masses.
The US position is that a legitimate government emerges. For now, his policy is not to push a Bonapartist coup like the one in 2002, nor a fascist putsch. We are facing a fight of two factions that abide by the Bolivarian constitution, that fight hard for business, but that seek an agreement because they know that if they appeal to the masses openly, they can break into the political crisis at the height demolishing all the institutions of power in Venezuela. The masses want bread. Those above dispute business, and for this the control of the state.
The socialist revolution is not a central factor in Venezuela for the bourgeoisie to play the last regime of this before the revolution, which is fascism, and neither of the two fractions intends to carry, in this clash, serious consequences. The armed forces have already been defined by the assumption of Maduro and by leaving Capriles enormously strengthened so that, in the event that the government burns or weakens, there will be a bourgeois replacement. Ultimately, the true owner of the Bolivarian revolution that is that murderous officer caste of the Venezuelan army, who yesterday massacred the Caracazo, put Chávez in jail and when the masses defeated the coup attempt in 2002, they called him again to power to share with them all the business of the Chavezite bourgeoisie. Moreover, Cabello, the head of the Venezuelan armed forces is one of the biggest millionaires in Venezuela. The caste of officers of the armed forces stands as an arbitrator in this dispute... within the Bolivarian constitution.
We have already seen Maduro opposing all action of the masses in the streets, and Capriles, before the prairie burns down, get them out of the scene quickly, so that it is the middle class that protests only with pots and cans.
The basis of the agreement they prepare, we think, is based on the fact that Capriles will maintain a policy of pressure and blackmail, but to get into the regime with backroom agreements, or with the possibility of reaching the government in the immediate future. There is something that unifies the two bourgeois factions, which is that they both fear that the masses struggle and take to the streets.
Maduro is the bourgeois nationalism that can no longer be. Capriles is the direct representative of the imperialist banking, which does not want to be left out of business in the coming years, and has taken the banner of the Bolivarian revolution to achieve it. We do not see imperialism risking, by now, with a fascist attempted coup.
It would be a suicidal policy, because it would be about to provoke a big response from the masses, including a rupture of the Maduro base with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, which would take to the streets, we insist, despite and against the Chavist bourgeoisie. It would accelerate the breakup of the masses with Maduro. It would be the bourgeoisie using all its agents, when it needs them to attack the masses. It would mean removing Capriles, the “democratic opponent” of the Bolivarian constitution, and putting him as a fascist agent. That is an error of appreciation.
This is very important. In Bolivia, for example, there was a fascist uprising by the Media Luna in 2006/2007, which had the big oil companies behind and the Santa Cruz oligarchy, which was supported by methods of civil war, supported by the middle classes, against the proletariat. The popular front had thrown buckets of water on the fire of the revolution and lulled the masses. Fascism rose at a time when Morales’ Constituent Assembly was functioning. The agreement imposed by the OAS was that the constituent did not vote for the expropriation of any land greater than 5000 hectares (the oligarchy does not have any property higher than 5000 hectares in Bolivia). The OAS and the US imposed a pact on the constituent between the two bourgeois factions, which today coexist in peace, attacking the masses together and supporting the popular front government of Morales, supported by the policy of class collaboration of the leadership of the COB.
In Venezuela, we see that, what is at issue is to achieve some kind of agreement that guarantees to imperialism that the Maduro government will openly attack the masses, imposing new devaluations, and giving imperialism the money that has to give them. But, to do so, it must remain as legitimate as possible. Therefore, they asked him to count the votes. The fraction of Maduro does not accept, and proposes another type of agreement: municipal elections, and as part of them, the recall referendum in 2 years.
We are facing a negotiation of two bourgeois fractions on the ledge. The two, Bolivarian, and the two Obama agents.
The working class is the one who pays and will pay for the economic crisis and the business of all the bourgeois factions and imperialism in Venezuela. The Bolivarian regime is now a bastardized reissue of the Punto Fijo Regime, and its governments will be nothing more than repetitions of Andres Perez and other lackeys of imperialism. The working class will thus pay for the betrayal of their leaders, who at international level supported Chávez and bourgeois nationalism. Today, he rises as a direct agent of imperialism and attacks the masses, to which he says: “Capriles, the “fascist “, or support me, I will impose, with the socialism of the 21st century, a new devaluation of 80%, I will reduce all the expenses of the state in services, and I will rigorously pay the external debt to the Yankees, so forget about any investment in the nationalized industry”. “Either Capriles, the bourgeois reaction, or me, with the little bird in the head talking to Chávez.” With imperialism playing a very careful role only in propaganda for the counting of votes, the officer caste has decided that they still have to get a lot of juice from the lemon squeezed out of chavismo, attacking the masses.
When there is a struggle of bourgeois fields, for Marxists it is a very serious mistake to be in one of them in the political field. We mustn’t place ourselves in a front with Chavezism against Capriles, since the proletariat must raise, as a flag, first anti-imperialist demands to unmask that the two bourgeois factions are lackeys of Obama and the transnationals.
But, in any case, in Venezuela we are not facing a struggle of bourgeois fields in the military field. We are not facing a Bonapartist coup, which would lead us to defend democratic liberties against a weakest Bonapartist regime.
We are facing an inter-bourgeois dispute. We are facing two factions that come from elections and do not recognize their triumphs within the Bolivarian constitution itself, and with a government, such as the Chavist one, which has been promoting a brutal attack on the masses, while Capriles, benefited by an excellent election, demands entering now in business.
Of course, for imperialism the best government it would need would be Capriles’, because of the social base he manipulates and controls. But one thing is to want and another thing is to be able to do it. If he goes a millimeter beyond the relationship of forces the giant who rose in the Caracazo and in 2002 when they tried to give a military coup can awaken.
The Marxists, then, have to fight in the first place for the proletariat to take out all the anti-imperialist babble and its chatter to the Chavist bourgeoisie, which comes from calling for Obama to vote in the US, from handing over the Colombian resistance and Cuba to imperialism.
Out the OAS and Obama, the UNASUR, the transnationals and their bankers of Venezuela and throughout Latin America! Out the ALBA that gives Cuba to the “gusanos” of Miami! The attack is suffered by the masses. Workers pay the crisis with devaluation, inflation and high cost of living.
We must stop the attack of the capitalists and the Chavez government, today under the leadership of Maduro, who for some time has been imposing a “red packet” of hunger and misery against the masses! Capriles is preparing to do it in a government of national unity with Maduro, with a pact behind the scenes with him and the armed forces, or working as an alternative when the lemon juice squeezed out of chavezism runs out.
We must stop the attack of the capitalists! We must end with inflation, the high cost of living and unemployment! To achieve this, we must conquer the mobile scale of wages and hours of work. We must expropriate imperialism, its bankers, the capitalist bourgeoisie and bourgeois millionaire of Venezuela, which is the Chavist bourgeoisie! All of them are allied to imperialism in their business. That is why we must impose workers’ control in all branches of industry and expropriate bankers without payment and ignore any illegitimate debt to imperialism.
The verse of “Socialism of the 21st century” reaches the end, and unmasks itself, with the masses paying the crisis; rare “socialism” with which only the bourgeoisie and imperialism have benefited; and Capriles, who was not born from a cabbage but from the unrestricted respect for private property by Chavezism. The “revolution in peace and democracy” only left fat pockets to the entire bourgeoisie -Chavist and non-chavista-, the bankers and imperialism, and with hunger, misery, unemployment and high cost of living to the exploited. The verse of the “Bolivarian revolution” and the criminal lie of “socialism by peaceful means” is finished. Because what will come, if the proletariat does not intervene, will be the bonapartisation of Maduro’s government and its armor against the masses, hugs - like the one of Chávez and Uribe yesterday - today between Capriles and Maduro after fireworks, or, if the working class does not react in time, in the future fascist or putschist attempts.
The “verbal attacks” of Maduro to the bourgeoisie are lies to deceive the workers and the people, when in reality they are two bourgeois factions that today are confronted by business and to achieve legitimacy to attack the masses. Bolivarian super-millionaires have nothing to envy, in their fortunes and exploitation of the working class, the oligarchs of Capriles.
Meanwhile, the officer caste of the armed forces today holds Maduro provisionally, and insists that Capriles remain strong, very strong, but in opposition. This was negotiated after five hours of scrutiny with a late result.
This caste of bourgeois officers, reactionary to the core and coup-participant of 2002, the biggest beneficiary of the business of the “boli-bourgeoisie” after the coup, is the one that will also bless, without any doubt, in a public pact or behind the scenes -under the mantle of the UNASUR?- the Bolivarian regime between Maduro attacking the masses and Capriles preparing itself as an alternative of power.
The entire imperialist press announces this provisional agreement. Capriles knows he cannot play with fire, which is not the time for a fascist attempt. Fascism, we insist, is the last resort of the bourgeoisie, after the popular front wasted all the forces of the masses and their fighting energies. That was the Bolivian scenario, as we said. But even then, we could see in Bolivia that this fascist attempt was a pressure in extremis, since if it went one step further from the four provinces of the Media Luna, and tried to reach the Altiplano, it could meet with a revolutionary rebellion of the proletariat crushing it, which surely dislocated also the government of the popular front, the armed forces ... and the Bolivarian bourgeoisie.
Imperialism today has other institutions to continue attacking the masses, as we saw. In the first place, Maduro must end up disorganizing and demoralizing the masses, if he decides to stay and does not decide to agree with Capriles today. It must, like a squeezed lemon, apply the worst of attacks against them. If you do not decide to count the votes, more squeezed lemon should be.
For that reason, the pressure of Capriles is “in extremis”. Maduro must guarantee to hand out Cuba, bound hand and foot to the Yankees and the “gusanos” in Miami. It will have to export the “attack to the Venezuelan” and sustain it, as a faithful lackey of imperialism, in the entire American continent, together with the Kirchners, the Lulas, the Dilmas, the Piñeras and the other scourge of the native bourgeoisies.
But this must be covered with the greatest possible legitimacy. If it is not with the masses in the streets, or with a vote count. Who will give that legitimacy and authority for Maduro to assume this Friday? The officer caste and the armed forces, which have already dictated that Maduro won. Meanwhile, all bourgeois factions make Capriles fully strengthen. That is a triumph of the entire bourgeois regime as a whole, regardless of whether the electoral result shows who the boss in business in Venezuela is, and that leads to a political crisis at the height.
There is no vote count. The problem is resolved in the upcoming municipal elections, including a recall referendum. This is posed by Maduro, supported by the bourgeois officers of the armed forces.
A relatively weak electoral government emerges, but its strength comes from the bayonets on which it will lean to attack the masses, always having a strengthened Capriles at their side, in case this plan fails.
That is why the policy of the reformist left, which defends Maduro against Capriles, is totally cynical, as if Maduro did not come to apply an attack against the masses equal or superior to that of Capriles.
OR DOES ANYBODY BELIEVE THAT THE AIRCRAFT OF THE ARMED FORCES THAT CAME OUT TODAY ARE TO BOMB THE CAPRIL BUNKER, OR TO BOMBARD EVERY GOVERNMENT THAT WANTS TO IMPOSE A FARE INCREASE AND A DEVALUATION TO STEAL THE SALARY IN VENEZUELA? COME ON! THE AIRCRAFT OVERFLYING CARACAS IS TO IMPOSE THAT THE MASSES ARE AT THEIR HOMES. IT IS TO ENSURE THAT THE DESPAIR OF AGGRESSIVE FRACTIONS OF BUSINESS DOES NOT IGNITE THE FIRE AND PASS OUT OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF FORCES. AND IT IS A WARNING TO THE MASSES THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF MADURO WILL HAVE THE WHIP TO APPLY THE WORST OF THE ATTACKS AGAINST THEM.
Maduro said: “I have the people (at their homes) and the armed forces, therefore I proclaim myself”. “I have the cannons to shoot at the working class’ head if you try to rise against the attack that I’m about to fulfill”.
If the workers dare to take PDVSA, Sidor, with the anti-strike law they will have the “national, popular and democratic” armed forces with the tanks in the companies, attacking the workers.
Maduro says “I share out the business, because I’m going to crush the masses if they rise”. That is the legitimacy that Maduro has to proclaim himself today. And it’s not precisely the difference of a vote. The bourgeoisie knows very well that it is about what regime and government rules to attack the masses. By now, and only by now, it is the government of Maduro.
So, why is imperialism going to take the risk to a fascist attempted coup now, if the workers’ and the masses revolution are not on the scene? If Maduro is going to apply the same plan of attack against the masses that Capriles. Why are you going to launch a fascist attack or a military coup? That’s science fiction, it’s pure image, it’s giving in to bourgeois charlatans. The Bolivarian bourgeoisie has hours and hours of cheap palaver. The world is full of leftists who never get tired of buying it and selling it as poison to the masses.
At that point, you have a serious confusion, which even no longer correspond with the facts. In every bourgeois reactionary action there are dead and not for that reason there is fascist attempted coup. We must openly fight the counterrevolutionary bourgeois reaction of Capriles, but first of all, if we want to mobilize the masses, we must fight against the cowardice and cynicism of Maduro’s bourgeois faction, which has not called the masses to do any type of action against the supposed “fascism” or “coup”, as characterized by Maduro. If the working class does not break with Maduro and overcomes the limits of the “Bolivarian revolution”, it will never be able to crush Capriles. The fact is that Maduro has the workers locked up in their homes and the workers’ movement under their discipline.
Both fractions are using the masses to discuss their businesses. But the limit is to sustain the regime and conquer the strongest government possible to attack the working class and the exploited.
If we take a look at the positions of the entire left of the World Social Forum today and its servants, the renegades of Trotskyism, they seem trapeze artists doing pirouettes in the air in a great circus. For years, they called for 10 million votes for Chávez, as Chirino did with the UNT years ago. They were observers of all the Latin American left to those elections. They went to receive prizes to Havana. They demanded, as the LIT did for years, that Chavez make socialism, creating illusions in the masses that he could do it.
After years, any sensible politician could observe that Chavezism quickly changed sides, after strangulating the revolutionary processes and, agreeing as a direct agent of imperialism, began an attack on the masses on his behalf.
The reformist left tried to juggle. They did a triple somersault on the trapeze. They were balancing on the tightrope ... and they called to pompously make a left front for the elections in Venezuela and obtained 3,000 votes with Chirino, 3,000 votes.
Can these people explain not only why they got 3,000 votes, but why was it Capriles who won hundreds of thousands of workers votes, making the situation in Venezuela even more reactionary? This is the leadership crisis.
Before Chavezism ends up being a lemon squeezed out of imperialism to punish the masses, all the renegades of Trotskyism are already squeezed lemons, very squeezed. Why were the workers who broke with Chavezism today going to join those who gathered 10 million votes for Chávez and those who said that the peaceful way to socialism could be made?
How did Capriles attract these votes? Here the trapeze artist becomes a magician and hides in a dark box. And the act continues, but the masses pay for it.
Capriles, in a cynical and demagogic way, said what the reformist left is silent about, and so this counterrevolutionary oligarch could deceive the masses: “You have never worked, Maduro, you are an idler”, “they come to speak against the bourgeoisie, the richest man in Venezuela is Ramírez (president of PDVSA), the friend of Chávez and Maduro, one of the biggest well-connected in this country. “
Let’s talk clearly. The reformist leftists spent years embellishing the Chavez bourgeoisie and held the largest millionaires in Venezuela. Why is the hungry working class of Venezuela that breaks with Chavismo today going to go with them? they are a worn, almost illegible photocopy of Chavism.
That is the Venezuelan tragedy: the subjection of the working class to its executioners, to the expropriators of its revolution, as Chavez did with the heroic combats of the masses of the Caracazo. Likewise, because of the treachery of the proletariat’s leadership, layers of workers, disillusioned with Chavezism, today went to vote for Capriles, who consider him as the only one who faces him. Then they will speak of the “low level of consciousness of the masses”, of their “crisis of subjectivity”.
Let’s tell the truth. Capriles increased its electoral support because the reformist left supported Chavezism in Venezuela and internationally, openly becoming an anti-worker government for years. Strips of workers who broke up with him, went to vote for Capriles, who appeared as the “Bolivarian” who faced him. This is the question that no Chavist can answer.
That “rich kid” of the Venezuelan oligarchy, who is Capriles, today could channel the vote of sectors of the ruined middle classes, and even of the labor aristocracy and desperate layers of the exploited masses, as we said, because the reformist left was subordinated to Chávez. This was no more than a worn and liliputian photocopy of chavism, it was ridiculous. That’s why they got 3,000 votes. Because Chirino and those who speak of a “left front” in Venezuela are the ones who called to gather 10 million votes to Chávez.
They took all the workers’ struggles to put pressure on the Chavist Labor Ministry to pass judgment on the workers. Not a single award in favor of the workers was taken by the Chavists in that Ministry of Labor of the capitalists.
They kept, for years, talking about the “anti-imperialist character” of the Chávez government. They never faced Chavez’s surrender to imperialism with the Venezuelan external debt, and concealed that he shared the oil rent with the big imperialist banks.
They never told the ruined middle classes that the working class, taking the banks and expropriating them without payment, was the only one who could give the cheap credit and the tractor to the small peasant and bankrupt merchant.
Stalinists and renegades of Trotskyism were silent that the real help given by Chávez was neither to Cuba nor to Argentina, as has Maduro, the scoundrel, who put all the dollars of the external debt to imperialism in hard cash, that even Andrés Pérez could not pay.
There are still opportunist currents that want to sell “Venezuelan socialism” with millions of hungry people in that country, with 27% inflation, ...
If there was fresh money in cheap oil for Cuba it is so that it works, the transnationals can go and keep the island; so that the luxury hotels of the transnationals do not lack light and the nickel companies can operate, where the children of Castroism, become a new bourgeoisie, are associated with the French transnationals.
With Argentina there were common business in the agroindustry, in shipyards, where the Bolivarian bourgeoisie of the Kirchners and the Chávezs made fabulous business.
That obfuscates Capriles, the “rich child”, because they want those business. That’s why they fight.
The reformist leaders want to make the world proletariat believe that the second Latin American independence was conquered with Chavism. What there is in Venezuela and Latin America are governments of the native bourgeoisies, so lackey of imperialism, that “Mister Bush” today envies Obama for the FTA he has conquered under the banner of UNASUR.
In this the CSR and the FLTI are totally in agreement, and we will surely give this fight in common.
This is the truth. The lackeys of the World Social Forum accused the heroic revolutionary masses of Libya and Syria of being “agents of NATO”. For this reason, they supported the Chavez government of men like Rafael Ramírez in Venezuela (the president of PDVSA and the richest man in that country). That is why they were with Khadafy in Libya and with Assad in Syria, that is, the greatest super-millionaires of the Arab Maghreb and the Middle East, no less lackeys of imperialism and Zionism than all the Arab bourgeoisies.
After they demoralized the masses and attacked them violently, doing the “dirty work”, as Maduro is doing in Venezuela today, imperialism will surely come to keep everything. That’s exactly what imperialism is about, to keep everything, using all its agents.
The native bourgeoisies? The “progressive” generals? They have quickly allied with imperialism, because they are terrified of the mobilized masses, because they will attack the property not only of imperialism but also of theirs.
In Venezuela, besides fighting for the expulsion of imperialism, undoubtedly all Marxist policies must openly call for the crisis to be paid by the capitalists, for the fact that imperialism must be expropriated and broken with, we must ignore the ALBA, FTA and MERCOSUR. We have to expropriate the bourgeoisie. This task is not going to be done by Maduro, who is already negotiating and has agreed with Capriles, when together they called to vote for Obama and to respect the property and the imperialist bankers in Venezuela, as established by the Bolivarian Constitution.
As you rightly suggest, we have to fight for true socialism, which is the one that expropriates the capitalists. We believe that against Capriles and Maduro we have to set up a program for the working class to break free, opening the way to set up revolutionary mass organizations to take power.
THE MAJORITY OF VENEZUELA –we, revolutionaries, must affirm - IS THE WORKING CLASS, WITH ITS HUGE INDUSTRIAL ARMY OF RESERVE OF UNEMPLOYED, WHICH MUST BE PLACED TO PRODUCE WITH A NATIONAL PUBLIC WORKS PLAN, EXPROPRATING THE BANKERS AND NOT RECOGNIZING THE ILLEGITIMATE EXTERNAL DEBT.
The real majority is not the representative governments of this scam that is the “Bolivarian revolution”. It is not the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, neither Maduro’s nor Capriles’, managers of the board of directors commanded by Obama. The real majority are the workers and the people who are the ones who produce wealth and suffer from hunger in this country. We must regroup the majority of Venezuela, put them on their feet, conquer a BIG NATIONAL CONGRESS OF EMPLOYED AND UNEMPLOYED WORKERS, WITH GRASSROOT DELEGATES, OF PEOPLE, OF POOR PEASANTS, OF SUPPORT COMMITTEES. THAT IS THE MAJORITY OF VENEZUELA.
Capriles threatens with reactionary actions on the streets, and Maduro calls for a government that will attack the masses. Sectors of Chavezism threaten with “workers control”, if the bourgeois action continues to advance. Maduro threatens to “radicalize” his position against the bourgeoisie. Why does not he do it? They know that if they mobilize the masses, they will also revolt in the companies of Maduro, Capriles and the entire Bolivarian bourgeoisie. All of them will attack the masses if they revolt, as yesterday in the Caracazo.
The caste of counterrevolutionary officers of the Venezuelan armed forces are those that were killed yesterday in the Caracazo, and that will repress the people when the latter revolts, with laws and decrees emanating from the Bolivarian parliament.
We have to face the reaction and Capriles! We have to expropriate the bourgeoisie, imperialism and bankers! We must stop the attack of devaluation and scarcity of the life of Maduro and the bourgeois factions that are in power, supported by the bayonets of the armed forces, against the working class! We must stop new counterrevolutionary attacks against the people!
The working class cannot remain tied to any bourgeois fraction, because they are all its executioners. They fight for their business, not for our salary, or for our work. They fight to see who commands the attack to snatch our conquests. Quickly they will agree, and all together will face our struggles.
Enough is enough! Let the crisis be paid by the capitalists ... all the capitalists! We must expropriate imperialism and the bourgeoisie ... the entire bourgeoisie!
We must conquer decent work for all, with a salary that covers the family basket! Neither the bourgeoisie of Capriles nor Maduro will be willing to give us the slightest of concessions without we snatch them from our struggle.
We must occupy all the factories, oil companies and banks of Venezuela! That is the way to impose workers control.
Workers have already fallen for the disputes of these bourgeois factions. We cannot put blood in the service of the bourgeois factions that dispute business. Let’s fight for self-defense committees and workers’ militia! The “Bolivarian” armed forces sooner or later will agree with Obama and Capriles to attack the people. All capitalists attack the workers and the people with their plans of hunger and misery.
Yesterday Chávez was embracing the fascist Uribe to hand over the Colombian resistance, and Obama to hand over the socialist Cuba to imperialism and the worms of Miami. Today they will not hesitate to embrace all together to drown the people in blood, to impose the adjustment plans, inflation, unemployment, which all the bourgeois fractions allied to imperialism against the working class must apply.
The soldiers and the reservists must elect delegates and put their arms and rifles at the service of the majority of Venezuela, those who do not get to eat ten days a month, those who can no longer travel by public transport, those who are consumed by the high cost of living in a country where the oil rent would reach and exceed to buy cheap food and guarantee health and education.
WE MUST BE OBTAINED 10 MILLION VOTES OF WORKERS, OCCUPIED AND UNEMPLOYED, FROM PRICE CONTROL COMMITTEES AND FACTORY COMMITTEES, FROM SECTORS OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES RUINED FROM THE FIELD AND THE CITY, REPRESENTED BY DELEGATES OF ALL THE MASSES IN FIGHT. THESE ARE THE MAJORITY. IT IS THE ONLY POWER THAT DESERVES TO STAND IN VENEZUELA.
THE LIBERATION OF THE WORKERS WILL BE THE TASK OF THE WORKERS THEMSELVES.
Maduro denounces Capriles (a total lackey of imperialism, we affirm) who wants to make a “new Libya and Syria” against him... Maduro wants to be like Khadafy and Assad, big shareholders of the imperialist transnationals, as they were and they are, of the Hewlett Packard, the British Petroleum, the Olivetti and the Italian ENI. That is the prize that the Bolivarians have and will have for attacking the masses.
Capriles, like the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, has nothing to envy in his fortune and in his society with imperialism to the Khadafy of yesterday and assassins of Assad like today.
In this attack against the masses, to no doubt, the Maduro government will have the support of Capriles, Obama and the Bolivarian armed forces.
The task of setting up a revolutionary party in Venezuela and of freeing the revolutionary masses from imperialism is a task of the entire international socialist revolutionary movement. All the treacherous world left has put Chavezism on their shoulders to strangle the socialist revolution in the American continent. It is an international task to defeat the treacherous leaderships that sustain Obama, which lead the masses to defeats and the dead end of the “peaceful way to socialism” like today in Venezuela, in Greece with Syriza, and yesterday in Chile with a blood bath, and that promise “democratic revolutions in peace,” as proclaimed in the Arab Maghreb and the Middle East, while today what is coming is the counterrevolution that massacres, in one of the greatest genocides in history, the masses in Syria, with very hard counterrevolutionary attacks in Egypt and Tunisia, the expropriation of the revolution in Libya and the French imperialist invasion in Mali.
The fourth internationalists must unmask that cynical party of the Bolivarians who try to appear as anti-imperialists. They pretend to be brave in front of imperialism, with their finger up, saying “May Venezuela be respected”, when they only talk about respecting their business, because they know how to respect imperialism, its business and its interests very well. And they are cared for and respected, taking care of their banks and respecting the external debt, that is, robbing the oppressed nation.
They respect imperialism so much, that they gave Cuba to the worms of Miami, and they support the government of Uribe-Santos, employees of the 5 largest imperialist bases of the American continent in Colombia.
The words are over. Decisive clashes between classes approach. A counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism has begun at the international level, to divert and crush the proletarian revolution and make the masses take its entire crisis. These resist. Here and there treacherous leaderships siege their battles, betray their struggles.
Imperialism seeks to stabilize a Bolivarian bourgeois government, which applies the plan of imperialism in the region, stabilizing Central America, handing over Cuba and guaranteeing UNASUR as the new NAFTA and attacking the Venezuelan masses. This is a task that Chavezism has already assumed as its own. Meanwhile, a strengthened Capriles awaits his opportunity to manage these businesses.
Capriles’ is the best government to implement the plans of imperialism, due to the reactionary forces he controls. That would be ideal for the Yankees, as long as Maduro is the one who defeats and crushes the masses. That is the truth of Venezuela today. That is why the reactionary officer caste of the “Bolivarian” army has said “first Maduro, then Capriles”.
That is why we, the revolutionary socialists, say: Dissolution of the officer caste! Council of soldiers! Out with imperialism and the OAS, UNASUR and the counterrevolutionary pact of the Chavists with the fascist government of Santos, representative of the Yankee bases in Latin America!
Neither Maduro, who takes power, nor Capriles, who will support him to attack the masses! All will agree, after the oath as president of Maduro, to divide the business and continue handing over Venezuela to imperialism, through the bankers and all the bourgeois factions associated with him.
The power of the majority of Venezuela must be upheld: the oppressed, the unemployed, the starving. We must demand that the UNT and the trade unions break with the bourgeoisie and the Chavez labor ministries. We must coordinate those who fight. We have to arm the workers and the people. So we will face the attack of Maduro today and the counterrevolutionary attempts of Capriles and the armed forces.
Unquestionably, if the masses enter the battle for wages, work, dignity and against hunger, Capriles and Maduro will be in the same class barricade firing against the masses. After all, they are two soldiers of Obama, one of infantry and another of artillery, but of the same army.
The revolutionary socialists would not hesitate a minute, before any fascist, Bonapartist or attempted coup, which would not come only to get Maduro out but to crush the masses in a counterrevolutionary way, to lead the fight for the military defeat of that counterrevolutionary coup. But, nothing more distant for the masses than to arm themselves today against a nonexistent coup, and to be disarmed before the coup and the brutal attack that Maduro prepares, sustained by Capriles and the murderous officer caste of the Venezuelan army.
We do not march with the planes that fly over Caracas, nor with the helicopter gunships of the Venezuelan armed forces. They do not come to attack Capriles. They come to defend it, like the whole Venezuelan bourgeoisie, against the irruption of the working class against hunger and misery as in the Caracazo.
The bourgeoisie, in its clash for business that has opened a huge political crisis, has been located on a ledge. Chavez is no longer there. There is no legitimate government. There is no government with legitimacy to distribute business. The conscience and anti-imperialist sentiment of the Venezuelan masses is intact. Their hunger and their misery that push them to fight are already here.
A process of rupture with Chavezism has begun. We cannot leave it in the hands of the oligarchic and reactionary Capriles, who brings only demagogy and palaver to dispute the power and business of the Chavist bourgeoisie. Much less can the working class remain subject to Maduro, who is the one who comes to apply all the attacks of imperialism today.
Calling up the power organizations of the working class and the exploited, to take into their hands the struggle for socialism, which is to expropriate the bourgeoisie, break with imperialism and unite with the Latin American and world working class, is a task that has been left in the hands of the only revolutionary class of society, which is the working class and its brothers from the impoverished people of the city and the countryside, and of the entire American continent.
The allies of the Venezuelan working class are not in the “progressive generals” murderers of the Caracazo, nor in the “anti-imperialist” bourgeoisie of Maduro. Their allies are the workers and peasants of the continent, who fight against the Bolivarian governments as they do against the governments of the NAFTA.
Its allies are the working class of the United States and the Cuban working class, which today sees losing its revolutionary conquests with 500,000 dismissed on the island. His allies were neither Khadafy nor the assassin Assad, who massacred the masses of North Africa and the Middle East on behalf of imperialism and supported the counterrevolutionary forces of Zionism, supported by Maduro’s friends, the greatest assassins and security guards of transnational corporations in China, the Communist Party of Chinese mandarins.
Imperialism knows what it is about. Yesterday it saw Chávez surrender in the military coup before the bishop of Caracas, like a coward, while the masses took to the streets against the coup, restoring Chávez in power. This is how the Bolivarian bourgeoisie paid the masses: with greater devotion to imperialism and greater misery.
The coup leaders are on the street, released and amnestied by Chavez. The bourgeoisie enjoys very good health in the “socialism of the 21st century”. Capriles emerges from the bowels of that regime and that same bourgeoisie, coward and despicable with imperialism, but brave to repress the masses.
The Bolivarian bourgeoisie disputes its business at the edge of the cornice. The underwater rocks of the global economic crisis have hit the hull of the Bolivarian vessel. The exploited classes of Venezuela, which are crammed in the lower staterooms of the ship, are already covered up to the head by hunger, inflation and the high cost of living.
Neither Maduro nor Capriles will save the masses. They will make them pay the whole crisis.
The World Social Forum was held in Tunis, weeks ago. There, a tribute was paid to Chávez. Those who hold the assassin Assad massacred the masses of Syria, on behalf of imperialism, came together. Those who went to support the bourgeois government of Tunisia, so that the masses do not do justice with their pickets and organizations fighting against the fascist Salafist bands that attack the workers’ organizations at large.
They came together in Tunisia to support the murderous generals of the Egyptian army, who are already massacring more workers and peasants in that country than Mubarak massacred. There they came together to proclaim, after saving the bourgeoisie and imperialism of a worldwide revolutionary rise of masses, to tell the latter to distribute the wealth, and to make the masses believe that he will do it.
Do not give in to the siren songs. Maduro does not come to “distribute the wealth” of the super-rich Bolivarian bourgeoisie. It comes to take out the last juice of blood to the Venezuelan working class.
Let’s talk clearly. The way to defeat and crush Capriles is to reorganize the ranks of the working class, to break the discipline with Maduro and defend himself against his harsh attacks.
It is time for the working class to weigh decisively in national political life, and to do it again, as it did yesterday in the Caracazo, to bring order to the disorder of the famine and the bourgeois plunder and imperialism in Venezuela.
We insist, in each factory and establishment, the power of the exploited must be upheld. A company committee must be set up in each factory and establishment. A national congress of the UNT, with one base delegate per 100 workers from all over Venezuela. It is necessary to put in standing in each neighborhood of the exploited a committee of unemployed to demand decent work for all; supply boards and price control in each neighborhood. A committee of soldiers in each barracks.
The power of the exploited must be upheld. They fight for business; our fight is for bread. The imperialist bankers must be expropriated without payment. For that, we have to break with the bourgeoisie. Neither Maduro, nor Capriles. We must uphold and centralize the power of the exploited.
Yes, it is time for the hungry of the Caracazo to put order in Venezuela. The Bolivarian revolution imposed the order of the exploiters to guarantee their profits and continue submitting the people with crumbs and alms.
The struggle for socialism is the struggle for a socialist Venezuela, without generals or capitalists.
The Bolivarian constitution is a scam, which gives freedom to Capriles and Obama, to bankers and plunderers of Venezuela, and capitalist parasites to amass fortunes by exploiting the working class, administering the state and taxes of the people, while guaranteeing all payers of the external debt to the Yankees.
The Bolivarian constitution has not given the working class the freedom or the right to have a decent wage, a decent job, or to educate and live with dignity. The exploiters will not surrender their property, their wealth and the larceny of the Venezuelan nation by “peaceful means” and winning elections.
There is the result: the most reactionary forces of Venezuela emerging from the bowels of Chavezism, with that oligarch of Capriles, and the murderous officers of the Caracazo.
The world reformist left must stop lying. The true Bolivarian homeland is the murderous officers, coup plotters and oligarchs like Capriles, associated with the new Chavist millionaire bourgeoisie.
We have to break with them. Thus the working class will avoid new devaluatory attacks to the salary and more misery, creating independent organizations of its power, to face all counterrevolutionary attempt of the bourgeoisie and the imperialism to impose its hunger plans.
We, the Trotskyists of the Fourth International, can talk. Because we tirelessly raise the Marxist apothegm of the one who gives even the fingernail of a little finger to a bourgeois government refuses to fight later for its overthrow. And he will cry because then a Bonapartist or fascist coup will overthrow him.
The Latin American and world left has given it more than the fingernail. It has given its soul and body to Chavez and the WSF to strangle the socialist revolution in Venezuela and internationally.
Stalinism, the renegades of Trotskyism and the forces grouped under the banner of the World Social Forum have proclaimed that “a new Cuba that expropriates the bourgeoisie is no longer possible in Latin America.” That of Chávez, Maduro ... with Capriles and the bankers. Here it has become clear that this is the “socialism of the 21st century”, a new verse of “the peaceful way to socialism” that in the ‘70s in Chile ended with a bloodbath.
The Trotskyists and the Fourth International fought in the trenches against Obama and the Bolivarian bourgeoisies that defend the property of the capitalists, the regional markets of the transnationals and the plundering of all the oppressed peoples of the continent.
With the Fourth International, which we must refound, we fight to set up a “sensitive nerve” from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, which when touched on any of its points, can vibrate and react at the same time. That is, a “sensitive nerve” that unites, in a great struggle against the exploiters, all the exploited of the continent.
Against UNASUR, MERCOSUR, ALBA, we fight for the Socialist United States of North, Central and South America.
In this Venezuelan political crisis there is already the verdict of the discussion on the issue of Chavezism that has been debated hard within the world working class. The political crisis of bourgeois rule today in Venezuela has been uncovered by the situation of enormous volatility and weakness of the regime of domination before the death of Chávez. It has already become clear that the great guarantor of bourgeois and imperialist stability in Venezuela was given by his government. It has been demonstrated that the best government that imperialism possessed to implement the attack, which is already under way, against the Venezuelan working class, was that of Chávez, with 57% of the votes, which emerged as a strong and legitimate government for attacking the masses, while Capriles remained as a strong bourgeois opposition forward, as an alternative.
The two-party system has entered into crisis and forced the armed forces to define the transition. It is Maduro who attacks the masses, and Capriles, with his enormous power and legitimacy, is preparing to take the post or to set up a government of national unity when the class struggle so requires.
The sweetie wrap, the veil of the Bolivarian revolution has fallen. Defending this government of Maduro are the airplanes of the armed forces of the massacre of the Caracazo and coup of 2002. What military coup or fascist putsch are they talking about, when everyone’s policy is “beware that the masses break in”? The official caste has emerged as the true arbiter of the bourgeois fractions that are fighting for business in Venezuela.
The Bolivarian regime has shown its true Bonapartist face, taking Chávez’s corpse to the barracks, saying that the armed forces are the guarantors of everyone’s business. That is what the bourgeois state is about: a band of armed men who defend the owners of the means of production.
The Bolivarians have already imposed anti-strike laws. According to them, it is a terrorist who strikes a state company. They are going to be the armed forces of Cabello, which did not touch Capriles or the gorilla bourgeoisie, which will attack without hesitation and militarize the workers’ strikes.
The IV International needs to stand up. It will be the only possibility that a program of the working class, for its liberation, will weigh in the battles of the world proletariat.
The proletariat will conquer the best conditions then to face fascism, which will be nourished by the imperialist bourgeois forces that support the Bolivarian constitution, which will emerge in the near future, if today it is able to put its power organisms on its feet to face the attack of hunger, misery and surrender that will come from the government of Maduro, supported by the military and with the agreement of Capriles and his reactionary forces.
Comrades, if we had the characterization of you that we are facing a fascist coup, we would have a program in political logic like the one you are holding today. Yesterday we criticized the definition that Chavez had started an anti-imperialist struggle, when he came with the army generals to expropriate the anti-imperialist struggle of the Caracazo.
Today, our debate is focused on the fact that you see imperialism organizing a fascist coup against a bourgeois nationalist government like Maduro, which does not defend itself and refuses to arm the masses. That is not the reality today. Perhaps this contribution will serve as a tool of struggle or to criticize our position if we are wrong.
As always, the debate among Marxists clarifies and educates the world proletariat. We have no question of prestige. If we are wrong and you convince us, we will say it.
Revolutionary greetings,
Carlos Munzer
April 24th, 2013
The fight against capriles-maduro-obama pact
Comrades of El Topo Obrero
We have already read RG’s note sent as a first quick response to the letter on April 17.
Your letter was quickly forwarded to all the FLTI groups. From now on we will be waiting for your document to deepen the debate, beyond the positions taken by the FLTI that is devoted to the tasks of preparation of the IV Congress of our current.
The Venezuelan question, as well as those of Syria and Cuba, as well as the Greek events, are essential acid tests in the preparation of the Congress. These are points where the reaction and the world imperialist counter-revolution have been concentrated for, supported in the treacherous leaderships, dispersing the revolutionary processes initiated against the capitalist crack from 2008. In China, the friends of Maduro and Chavezism, the Communist Party of Chinese entrepreneurs, intimate partners of Maduro and Chavez, are slaughtering tens of thousands of workers and peasants. More than 250,000 worker uprisings and revolts have been crushed to blood and fire by the Chinese “Chavezites,” friends of Castro and the MNCs in the Pacific.
The Venezuelan question must be approached from an internationalist vision of revolution and counterrevolution
This controversy and brotherly discussion, must not lead us to forget that the 2013 WSF has just been accomplished, where more than 5,000 organizations around the world paid homage to Chavez, while supporting one of the cruelest genocides in modern history, in Syria, by the notorious killer Al-Assad and his men.
The latter is now aided by Ahmadinejad from Iran and more than 30,000 paid mercenaries of the Iranian Republican Guard, who have become into the core of Al-Assad’s murderous army.
We need to place this reflection and the events in Venezuela from this point of view, since we are discussing the so called “socialism of the 21st century”, “market socialism”... which is the capitalist restoration in Cuba, the abortion of the road to socialist revolution a.k.a. “peaceful road to socialism” as trumpeted the world left all across Greece with Syriza as their herald.
To situate us in this debate from an international point of view for defining the question of Chavezism and events in our country we must start understanding that we are facing anti-worker, bourgeois forces and treacherous leaderships determined that there must never be a new Cuba in the Americas. These are part of an international process of concentration of counter-revolutionary forces, which have regrouped to break up the revolutionary struggles of the world proletariat.
We are facing the biggest enemies of the Socialist Revolution. Not to mention that they are partisans of Obama… or does anyone believe that Castro and Chavezism are for organizing wide layers of the black and Chicano working class which are breaking with Obama, in order to fight for the socialist revolution in the United States? Much less in the United States! That’s why the Castro Bross and the Chavezes supported Obama there.
In the United States 45 millions of workers, most of them unemployed and helpless live upon U$ S 3 per day given them by Obama’s charity.
We could say that they are Venezuelan Chavezite “Missions” in the United States.
Obama boasts that he saves the poor from starving through those alms… then why don’t he and the Wall Street bankers who earn fortunes from looting the oppressed peoples, live with 120 dollars per month in the United States as their friends Castro and Chavez propose to the American working class?
At the WSF in Tunisia met weeks ago, all treacherous leaderships were concentrated to disperse and encircle one after the other all the revolutionary processes which, like in Southern and Northern Africa, in Latin America and Europe threatened to open a new revolutionary period worldwide. For now, by concentrating their forces they have saved Wall Street and its 1% of parasites in bankruptcy and dispersed the revolutionary processes.
Any debate on the developments in Venezuela, which does not see how these international conditions refract in our country, will not be able to achieve an accurate diagnosis of the situation and much less conquer the conditions for the victory of the proletariat.
On the character of the current political crisis in Venezuela and the program of the revolutionaries
In fact, in Venezuela we are seeing one of the largest expropriations of the anti-imperialist struggle of the masses in the Americas. Chavezism and Castroism, with their “Bolivarian revolution” have exported the strangulation of the revolutionary processes in our Americas. Meanwhile, they legitimate from the WSF the most deadly counter-revolutionary action of this century which is the massacre in Syria.
We believe that rescuing -as the FLTI has done- the fact that the true anti-imperialist fight was that of the masses in the Caracazo in 1989 and the struggles that followed it, while Chavezism is the abortion of this combat, is a huge contribution to any revolutionary workers current which really fights for the seizure of power by the proletariat.
We have carefully read RG’s quick note. It lays black-on-white differences that really exist. It is in our disposition to contribute to the debate.
This is why we want to make some clarifications on that note, at a first glance:
In your note you consider that “in (the FLTI’s) letter-document on the national situation of Venezuela you (the FLTI, N. Ed) state that we (El Topo Obrero, N. Ed) consider that the bourgeois opposition to Chavezism was developing a coup d’etat. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s not what we say because we do not believe it.”
We will try to answer this question. It was you who in your statement of April 17, posed that Capriles and Lopez are who direct the fascist gangs. Not only the MUD.
What the FLTI did first of all is explaining to you a problem of method in Marxism, which is as follows: there is no doubt that Capriles has counter-revolutionary forces. But not every counter-revolutionary force is fascist. Fascism is a precise definition in Marxism in relation to a regime of bourgeois domination in a particular process in the class struggle.
The armed forces and the Chavezite military guard have repressed at close range workers and recently murdered a peasant leader. There’s also a focus of counter-revolutionary forces against the working class.
The Popular Front, as we saw it in Spain, did not cease killing in the rear the best of the working class in the Spanish revolution.
The counter-revolutionary forces of Capriles and some pro-fascist bands from his social base did not have the objective of staging a coup d’état or promoting a fascist putsch… at least for now. It wasn’t Capriles policy or that of the upper middle class in Venezuela. What was in question is whether or not they acknowledged the almost-draw in the election, as a triumph of Maduro as the National Electoral Council had reported.
What is this question of method that the FLTI raised in its document? It is to determine if there is a common definition with you about what is fascism, i.e. the last bourgeois Government prior to the proletarian revolution. That is, the last alternative of the bourgeoisie, playing for “all or nothing” to prevent the triumph of the workers revolution. It is essential to define then if this is correct or not.
Secondly, for us, we anticipate, what there was in Venezuela at the end of the elections was a political crisis that was closed by an agreement Capriles-Maduro-Obama because their panic was precisely that in response to the fascist gangs triggering on the edge of the mobilization summoned by Capriles against Maduro, the masses could react not only squashing the fascists but also occupying the center of national politics. That quickly pushed the agreement Capriles-Obama-Maduro.
The outcome of the election is the worst thing that could have happened to the Bolivarian regime.
It did not get a strong Government, like that of Chavez, and meanwhile a Government much more weakened arises (Maduro’s), just when an ambitious bourgeois opposition appears avid of new business, one that stayed out of them to a large extent or had to share them with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie which amassed fortunes during these years.
All the facts realize this and your first statement does not. Your statement raises a scenario of a clash of bourgeois camps, from the beginning to the end, as we will see below. Not only you do not pronounce against the real political crisis, i.e. the assumption of Maduro or not, but just denounce and call to have a program of action around the attack of fascist gangs.
It does not denounce or fight against the agreement which was already emerging at the start of the political crisis between Capriles-Maduro-Obama.
Undoubtedly, as the FLTI insists in its document, we Marxists advocate in the case of a coup d’etat, a higher regime (a “democratic bourgeois” one) against a lower regime (either “Bonapartism” or “fascism”). But as Trotsky said in Spain we defend “democracy” with the method of the proletarian revolution. But this was not what happened in Venezuela coup unlike when in the military coup the etat on 11A, as it is acknowledged in the same letter by RG.
We didn’t invent anything on your positions. You are those who pose in your statement that Capriles and Lopez fascist gangs are killing people as in the military coup on 11A. You said that.
Every reader, when reading your letter would say “there is a fascist coup led by Capriles, who is killing people as in the 2002 coup for Madero not to take charge of the presidency”. How do you call this you yourself wrote? This did not happen in Venezuela in this political crisis. Much less it was Capriles’ plan to organize a fascist putsch to ignore the outcome of the election.
The MUD has fascist bands; well, it is essential to crush them before, during and after their actions on the events of the Venezuelan political crisis, with the worker militias before those fascist bands are developed. The worker militia is indispensable and the workers should arm themselves with the weapons of the fascists, among other means, to defend themselves, as you raise in your document also against the Chavezite National Guard, against the Bolivarian police of Tarek which left two killed workers, of Petrocasa and the vicious repression suffered by workers of Sanitarios Maracay and Sidor, among others.
Now, you continue asking about where we got the idea that you said a coup d’Etat was being developed. You are actually saying something more than that. You say “Capriles and Leopoldo López’s fascist gangs attack and murder as on the 11A and they are merely threatened by lip service or forgiven their aggression” (our bolds).
You are describing an attempt of fascist putsch directed by Capriles, the MUD and its fascist gangs, so Maduro did not assume and that it would have begun to attack and murder as in the military coup against Chavez, the 11A. That’s what you say there.
The facts show that this was not true.
As we will see later your entire program in the declaration of April 17 is based on a united front tactic to confront fascism. For this reason, the FLTI said that yours was an error of characterization which had programmatic implications.
The key question posed to you by the FLTI is that the central policy of the bosses and imperialism was backing Maduro, while strengthening Capriles, imposing a factual (and also “legal”) pact under the counter to prevent the deepening of the gaps in the heights and the masses’ taking advantage of it.
So the central denounce should have been: down with the agreement of Maduro and Capriles under the direction of Obama and with the guarantee of the caste of officers of the Bolivarian army that showed their teeth to ensure that the masses do not intervene! (and that their fascist dogs returned to the corral because they could ignite the fuse of a new Caracazo!)
The fight against the Covenant Capriles-Maduro is what guaranteed creating the conditions to crush the fascist bands of the MUD... and stop the offensive, increasingly more aggressive against the workers, of the Chavezite National Guard. Maduro called the masses to stay quiet at home AND IT WAS THUS BECAUSE HE WAS NEGOTIATING WITH CAPRILES.
That’s why the fight was and continues being: we must expropriate both the bourgeoisie and imperialism, which finance preventively fascist gangs but centrally back Maduro, prepare Capriles to attack the masses, with the bayonets of the generals, and of course with the blessing of Obama and the Vatican!
Maduro and Capriles, both candidates of Obama, will make a pact against the working class and the masses. The Bolivarian bourgeoisie still guarantees the counterrevolutionary pacts with imperialism and the governments of the FTA
Please read your statement of April 17 and you will see that the section of the program that emerges from the title “only working people will save the people” is articulated around the labor front tactics to crush fascism and not around defeating the Pact Capriles-Maduro-Obama sustained in the caste of officers of the most millionaire army of Venezuela.
In that moment and still at the present time the central institution that attacks the masses is the agreement Maduro-Capriles. This is an agreement based on setting up a kind of bipartisanship Bolivarian-style, to prevent the bourgeois opposition having to perform a military coup before coming to power.
This is an agreement of equal size and scope of the agreement Castro-Maduro to give in Cuba to imperialism; of the same caliber of the agreement(of Chavez, N. T. ) with Santos and Uribe to deliver the Colombian resistance. AND THOSE ARE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY AGREEMENTS IN WHICH THE WORKERS PUT THE BLOOD AND THE CAPITALISTS GATHER THEIR PROFITS.
We insist, in relation to this you do not respond in your statement, your policy is “everybody against fascism”, and from there you attack Maduro that contains the masses and even attacks them. It is a principled program, but it didn’t correspond to the reality of the political crisis.
This Bolivarian policy imperialism does not want to remove for now, since it guaranteed him to expropriate the revolutionary processes in key countries of the Americas.
The masses already defeated even a couple of putschist adventures in Venezuela in 2002-2003. This fight was part of a revolutionary offensive in Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, etc.
Today, all Governments of the FTA and the Bolivarian ones are together in UNASUR -for now and just for now, as such is the imperialist policy.
If US imperialism ends absorbing Cuba, if Morales and the Kirchner and the Capriles-Maduro Pact are able to defeat the Latin American working class, if Stalinism, the Bolivarians and the Renegades of Trotskyism continue subduing the American working class to Obama as they have done up to now, the sable rattling of the generals will regain stage, after the imperialist using of these native bourgeoisie’s governments like squeezed lemons.
This is because imperialism, sooner rather than later, will want to stay with the entire businesses here.
At any point in your document, we again insist, you say that Maduro will agree with Capriles, because that is the policy of imperialism. But that is what happened.
The actions of Capriles and the semi-fascist or vigilante forces that cover under his wing, had the aim of ensuring that Maduro would be arising as weak as possible. Capriles cancelled rapidly all reactionary mobilizations in the streets, so that Maduro could assume the most strongly necessary to attack the people and download all the global crisis hitting Venezuela on the shoulders of the masses.
That’s why we answered the following:
“Maduro represents a bourgeois nationalism that can no longer be. Capriles is the direct representative of the imperialist banksters, which do not want to stay out of the business in the coming years, and has taken the banner of the Bolivarian revolution to succeed. We do not see imperialism putting its stakes, for now, to a fascist attempt. It would be a suicidal policy, because it would be about to provoke a strong response from the masses, including a rupture of Maduro’s base with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, which would go out to the streets, we insist, despite and against the Chavezist bourgeoisie. It would accelerate the rupture of the masses with Maduro. It would be like the bourgeoisie playing its agents all at a time, in a moment when it needs them to attack the masses. It would mean removing Capriles from his role of “democratic opposition” of the Bolivarian Constitution, and putting him as a fascist agent. That is an error of appreciation.”
Now, are you in accordance with this or not? Because this is what actually happened, and not what you posed in your letter when the political crisis opened and Capriles disavowed, for a moment, the outcome of the election. There were not so many alternatives, either a fascist putsch or coup d ‘ état materialized or it was necessary to fight against Maduro-Capriles’ agreement.
You talk about fascist bands... What about the caste of officers of the Bolivarian army that is which actually tipped the scales in favor of Maduro? The truth is that you did not it in your document of April 17.
And Maduro… had he to assume or not? In your document you do not set position in this regard, when that issue was discussed everywhere in Venezuela. We insist, in our view, there was a clash between two factions of the bourgeoisie which are dispute which of them is going to attack the most the masses in the midst of the economic crisis that Venezuela is in and who will handle the Bolivarian Republic business at the next stage.
In the middle of the political crisis and denouncing the oncoming pact the FLTI stated in its program:
“THE VAST MAJORITY OF VENEZUELA- the revolutionaries must affirm- WE ARE THE WORKING CLASS WITH THEIR HUGE RESERVE INDUSTRIAL ARMY OF UNEMPLOYED WORKERS WHO MUST BE PLACED TO PRODUCE BY A PLAN OF NATIONAL PUBLIC WORKS EXPROPRIATING BANKERS AND DISREGARDING THE UNLAWFUL FOREIGN DEBT.
The true majority are not those governments that are representative of that fake “bolivarian revolution”. The majority isn’t the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, or Maduro, or Capriles, all of them agents of the board commanded by Obama. The true majority are the workers and people that produce the wealth and suffer hunger in that country. It is necessary to group the majority of Venezuela, to raise them up, to conquer A GREAT NATIONAL CONGRESS OF EMPLOYED AND UNEMPLOYED WORKERS WITH RANK AND FILE DELEGATES, INHABITANTS, POOR PEASANTS, SUPPLY COMMITTEES. THAT’S THE MAJORITY OF VENEZUELA.”
The statement of the FLTI says nothing about not to confront the counterrevolutionary gangs of MUD with worker militias. But the FLTI articulates the program around the fight against the agreement-pact Capriles-Maduro, sustained by the Bolivarian armed forces and Obama.
After affirming that all of them will attack the rebelled masses like in the Caracazo, the FLTI calls for fighting saying the following:
“Confront the reaction and Capriles! Expropriate the bourgeoisie, imperialism and bankers! Stop the attack of devaluation and high cost of living of Maduro and the bourgeois factions in power sustained by the armed forces’ bayonets against the working class! Stop the new counterrevolutionary attacks against the people!
The working class can no longer be tied to any bourgeois faction because all of them are their executioners. They fight each other for their business not for our salaries, not for our jobs. They fight each other to resolve who command the attack to snatch our gains. Quickly they will agree and altogether will confront our struggles.”
Then, the FLTI takes the threat launched by sectors of Chavezism calling on masses to apply the workers’ control on the bourgeoisie and denouncing the murder of workers on the part of the counterrevolutionary gangs (excuse us, but we include the quote to avoid confusions). Of course, it is not the same program in comparison with yours that is based on a tactic of worker united front against fascism commanded by Capriles and López. The FLTI affirmed:
“Occupy all the factories, oil companies, and Banks in Venezuela! That´s the road to impose the worker control.
Workers already died due to these disputes between such bourgeois factions. We cannot put our blood at the service of the bourgeois factions disputing the business. For self-defense committees and worker militias! The “Bolivarian” Armed Forces sooner or later will agree a pact with Obama and Capriles to attack the people. All the capitalists must attack workers and people by their plans of hunger and misery.”
It draws the attention the lack of it in your document since it doesn’t state that the working class cannot put their body, blood and life to defend the Bolivarian bourgeoisie and their business. It is also a huge tragedy, workers dying under the counterrevolutionary mobs defending Maduro and the biggest millionaires of Venezuela. It must be said!
Facing this open political crisis there appears two different programs, for us, you are mistaken and got impressed before a fact of reality and lost a view of the whole events and did not adjust the program correctly. The collaboration to you of the FLTI is about it.
It is why because you have a national view as regards Chavezism and don’t see the necessary role they still play to sustain the imperialism’s interests in Latin America, sell out Cuba, legitimate the action of Obama in the left-wing of the US working class and by their “anti-imperialist authority” to sustain the counterrevolutionary actions of Al Assad in Syria. Thus, even in the moments of “major confrontation” between Capriles and Maduro that will not last more than a day, the FLTI was able to see they were going to make an agreement.
Chavezism is still necessary in Venezuela and at continental level. They like castrism and the Iranian bourgeoisie are together with Russia and China, the guarantors of the bloc, the fence of the Syrian bloodstained by the killer Al Assad. For this, Maduro asked and demanded that in spite of having only one vote of difference in favour, he will assume. The forces of Chavezism are based on the counterrevolutionary role they play strangling the proletarian revolution from the WSF, to strangle the international socialist revolution. On that question they are masters, they learnt how to expropriate the Caracazo sustained by the renegades of Trotskyism and Stalinism…for that reason, “only by a vote of difference in favour” he keeps the control of the Venezuelan government.
As we have already seen above, our document is to state that such clash, such political crisis was straight to an agreement at the heights for masses not to rise up.
Are Capriles and Maduro the same? As it is stated in your last concern posed. Who studies the document of the FLTI will see it is not stated that we must say Capriles to put under control the MUD. We have been already explicit by quoting the document of the FLTI to prove that’s not the case.
What the FLTI does affirm -and from the LCT we have agreement- is that to build the worker militia it is necessary to break with Maduro who prevents fighting and he continues concentrating the government of Venezuela and administering the power and business of all the bourgeoisie.
For Lenin the bourgeois government is a chief board of all the ruling classes and who concentrates the attack to strike against masses and impose the worst hunger and miserable plans. Maduro never abandoned the command of the bourgeois government since Chavez death, before and during and after the elections.
It is necessary to break with bourgeoisie. Even, the tactic of worker united front is about it for every responsible Marxist to confront seriously fascism, even incipient in Venezuela after the defeat imposed on the military coup in 2002.
We insist on it, Maduro and Capriles are the same as long as both of them recognize the Bolivarian Constitution. They are the same as long as whoever assumes will apply the same attack over masses under the command of the imperialism, as long as all of them will pay imperialism for the foreign debt. The are the same as long as they look the other way, arm or support the Al Assad’s massacre in Syria; as long as both support the imperialist pillage in Latin America and hug together with the fascist government of Uribe-Santos; as long as both are in agreement to keep the CELAC and UNASUR, a den of thieves, of Obama’s lackeys; as long as they both called masses to vote for Obama.
Are they identical? No. while Capriles will apply it by leaning himself on the middle class, with the labour aristocracy and some lumpen sector throwing it against the masses. Chavezism is carrying out it and will apply it by manipulating masses and even openly attacking their own social base. Unless there is anyone who believes that Chavezism will surpass the world economic crisis already settled in Venezuela by touching the interests of the big bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Thus, we affirm that the bourgeoisie had a great lost with Chávez since he was the most legitimized to apply such attack against workers.
In the previous polemic on the death of Chávez, a reflection came out on your document on this question. In such document you stated that Chávez started during a period the anti imperialist fight of the Venezuelan masses. Then, you told orally to the FLTI that it had been an involuntary mistake in your document. Justly, we reminded you that masses were who gave the anti-imperialist fight in the Caracazo leaving their dead in the struggle against the IMF and then, began a hard combat of self-organization in 1996/7 expropriated by Chavezism. It was in that way to prevent the initiated fight in the Caracazo from not getting combined with the taking of power on the part of the proletariat, only possibility the oppressed peoples’ anti imperialist demands can be solved.
In that way we have defined, we feel it was in common, that Chavezism was the abortion of the antiimperialist fight of masses because it was who closed the road to the socialist revolution. On it we will be in agreement, justly for that reason, the “Socialism of the 21C” is a vile lie and bourgeois demagoguery as it was Perón who spoke about National Socialism or as it was the case of Al Assad speaking about the Socialist Republic of Syria.
Did the so-called “Missions” of Chavezism give progress to the exploited masses? The Trotskyists affirm that they are alms that the bourgeois state was forced to give up to prevent the advance of the proletarian revolution and to be able to nationalize the workers’ organizations
On the question of the “Misiones”, we want to pronounce on it since we don’t agree with the statement of RG.
You affirm: “The Misiones have contributed to, despite the fact that vast sectors of the class have the collective agreement frozen, cause a substantial improvement not only in the quality of life of the poorest layers of our people and other not so impoverished but also it has improved the family income increasing the level of family income that 15 years ago hardly was enough to eat…Perrarina (food for dogs TN) in some cases.”
Against this position you pose, we affirm the following:
The Misiones are the Institutions of alms that the bourgeois State was obliged to give to prevent the road to the proletariat’s revolution at the expense of state-zing and corrupting all the mass organizations for them not to be independent from the bourgeois State and all his institutions. In any case, the victory is not the “Misiones” of the bourgeois State and the PSUV but the partial conquests got by the exploited as a sub-product of great revolutionary fights.
We have studied that in Argentina, for example, peronism say they gave the 8 hours labour shift, the paid holidays and the Christmas bonus to the working class about the middle of the ‘40s. It is a bourgeois fake ( To compare what the peronist bourgeoisie was obliged to give masses as conquests with the miserable alms Chavezism gives, it would make any bourgeois peronist blush; any bourgeois peronist that surely we could meet in the streets of Caracas doing profitable business with the bolivarians). Those are the partial conquests the Argentine working class almost already lost in a vast majority for not taking power and that the bourgeoisie was obliged to give due to the great working class’ struggles.
For the petty-bourgeois politicians it would seem the Argentinean working class was on holidays from the ‘30s to ’45. When in reality, it was one of the periods of revolutionary upheaval and huge struggles of the working class with which they conquered the CGT, the unions for branches, etc.
Here you are saying that the partial concessions and alms of Chavezism are a product of a charitable bourgeoisie who massacred more than 2000 workers during the most important revolutionary and anti-imperialist upheaval in Latin America at the end of the ‘80s, that is, the Caracazo.
The “Misiones” are a source of control of the bourgeois State on the mass movement. With them they make pass the ultra-partial conquests the bourgeois State was obliged to give as alms of a kind and paternalistic bourgeoisie.
With them, the political cadres of the PSUV get rich as middlemen, they are who go to every demonstration and even applaud the bird of Maduro…it is bourgeois alms that submit the most exploited masses to the State.
They are institutions of the bourgeois State.
There are “Misiones” that are as a kind of internal NGOs, of the health, food, literacy, socialist culture, that is, many “Misiones” whose cost doesn’t mean more than the 5% in subsidies of the Venezuelan oil income. To say that it was useful for the starving and deprived masses of Venezuela is minimally to embellish the super profits and millionaire theft of the Bolivarian bourgeoisies and the plundering of the IMF. Moreover, the salary of the workers of the “Misiones” who are not chavist cadres, as medical staff and nurse in doctor’s offices dealing with casual patients is a misery. Besides, the big business of health is made with the big clinics and private health insurance companies putting state workers of Venezuela. It is not fair for the Cuban working class to embellish these “Misiones” either.
The “Cuban doctors” of that Misiones of course, are very-well paid, the castro proto-bourgeoisie receives huge commissions for moving their health system totally corroded to the ALBA’s countries. Think about it: there are 500.000 dismissed Cuban workers while with their “medical Misiones” in the ALBA countries the Cuban proto-bourgeoisie shares out the budgets of the States in association with the Bolivarian bourgeoisies.
Let’s think together on the tragedy of the revolution in Centro America and the Caribbean. 500.000 Cuban workers have been dismissed or placed as casual workers selling bouillon cubes in streets of La Habana or cutting hair at their home door. Those are the castrist “Misiones” to keep under control the Cuban unemployed workers dismissed like dogs by the Stalinist scourge transformed into new bourgeoisie.
For workers and People there are doctor´s offices almost empty in the neighborhoods with a doctor and a stethoscope and the high quality health is for the Capriles’ people. You and we know it.
105.000 billion in concept of external debt have been paid to imperialism, it is more than enough money for decent work for all, high quality education and health services, public works plan and high quality housing for all the exploited people. Let’s not even talk about paying a progressive tax on large fortunes of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie that could pay education to a university graduate career to all illiterate people that a “Misiones” hardly teaches to read and write. This is what a Marxist has to tell the masses.
What Comrade RG has written undoubtedly has been made in a rush, we would like him to think it again.
Even if you believe what you affirm in your appointment, you should say that with the rampant annual inflation of 27-30% and recurring devaluations, these gains are lost and the cost of living becomes unbearable and shortages chronic. When we saw the note you’ve written it looks like the exploited masses have solved the problem of poverty in Venezuela and that they are not intended to be the same or worse than before. For not only the salary is frozen but also grants, indeed, are not paid anymore, as you have denounced.
Otherwise, you are stating that there may be perennial gains in the framework of capitalism, and not that the whole conquest, even the slightest is lost if the working class does not take power. That is what is happening and is going to go much deeper with the global economic crisis, which has hit, like submarine rocks, the hull of Bolivarian ship.
Chavez was not the one who graciously gave concessions to the masses to “raise their standard of living” with his “Misiones”. In any case, these alms, which are not decent and are a million miles away from the needs of the masses, are a byproduct of the revolutionary struggle of them, the Caracazo among others, where the bourgeoisie was forced to give something to not lose everything. And they were presented as conquests granted by the bourgeois state, thanks to the policy of the masses’ reformist leaderships. With this perverse policy, the bourgeoisie gives a miserable partial concession to the exploited people as if it were a conquest granted by the exploiters. But as Trotsky would say, at this time of crisis, reformism can pass less every time as conquests, the alms and gifts of the bourgeoisie.
They do that so the state can control the masses tightly. Why? Because sometimes, this native bourgeoisie should use the masses to negotiate and blackmail the imperialism. But Chavezism is now far from this bourgeois mechanic and increasingly is becoming direct agent of imperialism, as the FLTI said in the earlier paper.
This is what Bonapartism “sui generis” is in semi-colonial countries. The native bourgeoisie negotiates its share of national income, as a junior partner of imperialism, but always, always ends.
The “missions” are a small, petty cash of minor employees of the Bolivarian bourgeoisie. Among other things to keep the masses controlled preventing another Caracazo. They are forced to subsist only by subordinating them to the bourgeois politicians. They threaten with the blackmail to go back to perrarina’s times (dog food, eaten by the masses at the end of `80). Meanwhile they make lucrative business, for example, with the bourgeoisie of Polar Group.
For you, the “Misiones” are the solution for millions of unemployed. If so, the socialism of the 21 C,has something of socialism. Now we understand why it does not matter in your program, the unit employed and unemployed workers, as it is evident in your statement of April 17. There you do not raise, next to the sliding scale of wages, the sliding scale of working hours so all the unemployed can work and stop living on alms. Do you consider that 50% of the labor force (Overpopulation Consolidated- not relative-that Marx speaks about in Chapter XXIII of Capital) living in informal employment and self-employed state handouts without independent organization to defend them are not part of the working class and are well taken care by the “Misiones”of Chavez? Since when revolutionary Marxists defend the alms collected by the working class as a revolutionary product of great deeds, and they forget that you have to end the informal employment and chronic unemployment, because this situation strengthens the bourgeoisie (having a huge army industrial reserve) to keep frozen collective agreements?
Without doubt the unions have left the unemployed to their fate (it means to the Misiones and alms of chavezism) and focus on fighting for their collective labor agreement they did not realize that justly the huge industrial army of reserve is social base of the bourgeois forces that have expropriated the revolution and will deep the attack against masses as a whole; and thus, the existence of a chronic unemployment only makes more and more difficult the fight for collective contracts and other vindications.
The working class is divided; the employed worker can live through, survive while the unemployed workers have to eat every day without a job.
Many times, this breach between employed and unemployed workers gets deep enormously and weakens all the forces of the working class as a whole.
It is what all the unions’ bureaucratic leaders deny.
We, Trotskyists have the key to conquer the unity of the working class: our Transitional Program.
The fight to set up factories committees and unemployed workers’ committees, for the sliding scale of salaries and working hours, is justly the only road to conquer the political independence of the working class from the bourgeoisie and the State, and it is what all the left keeps in silent. A decisive appeal of the unions and worker organizations crying out: No more Bolivarian alms, one more labor shift in all the factories with a salary according to the family basic needs, decent job for all, no payment of the foreign debt and expropriation of the bankers, for conquering a plan of public works and decent housing for all!
This appeal would strengthen totally the unions and mainly, the unity of the working class for the crisis to be paid by the capitalists, and Venezuelan bankers and of the world.
This is the most “economic” road for the working class to break with Chavezism and conquer an alternative to fight for the socialist revolution.
It isn’t by chance that Chirino and all the left currents that adulate him “forget” it.
The Transitional Program vindicates the right to work and a decent existence for all; in the chapter on “the sliding scale of wages and labor hours” insists that to the increasing high cost of living it is necessary to oppose the sliding scale of wages, that is, the automatic increase of salaries according to the high in prices of the consumer goods. Of course, this politic is of neither the union bureaucracy, nor Chirino, in particular, that lead everything to the judgments that last years in the chavist Labor Ministry.
We must tell the Venezuelan working class the truth as well to the millions of unemployed workers many times named “casual workers” raising a program: No more alms and misery of the Misiones of the millionaire Bolivarian bourgeoisie! The Transitional Program states: “THE RIGHT OF EMPLOYMENT IS THE ONLY SERIOUS RIGHT LEFT TO THE WORKER IN A SOCIETY BASED ON EXPLOITATION. THIS RIGHT TODAY IS BEING SHORN FROM HIM AT EVERY STEP. AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT, STRUCTURAL AS WELL AS CONJUNCTURAL, THE TIME IS RIPE TO ADVANCE ALONG WITH THE SLOGAN OF PUBLIC WORKS, THE SLOGAN OF A SLIDING SCALE OF WORKING HOURS. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices.”
This concept is summarized in the Transitional Program in the following way: “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCEPT ANY OTHER PROGRAM FOR THE PRESENT CATASTROPHIC PERIOD”. Sliding scale of salaries for the employed workers and Misiones for the unemployed cannot be the program of Trotskyists for the Venezuelan working class, since it divides the working class and submits the different sectors to the Labor Ministry and the bourgeois State.
Let’s reflect on this question.
According to this note your program would be: decent judgments for the collective agreements and defense of the “Misiones” because in that way the mass living standard is maintained.
We believe the opposite of it. We think that there is an absolute tendency of masses to misery, and if Chavezism in a conjunctural way had to give concessions was to cover itself with demagoguery and control masses so that they don’t advance to revolution.
We affirm that every time is lesser the investment of the bourgeoisie on the wage sum and subsidies in relation to the devaluation and high cost of living for the inflation. We believe that there is chronic and structural hunger in Venezuela and that the bourgeoisie will throw even more the crisis on exploited, even Chavezism will do it on his own social base. For that reason, Capriles waits for it quietly, because he knows that Chavezism is a squeezed lemon.
Comrade RG has not thought where he could reach in the program based on that characterization.
We insist on it, we have studied deeply Argentina and his revolutionary process in 2001 and how the native bourgeoisie expropriated such revolution with the support of Castroism, the renegades of Trotskyism and all the Bolivarian of the continent.
There, as a byproduct of deaths and huge revolutionary upheavals at the end of the ‘90s and beginning of this Century with a 20% of unemployment as an engine force, the working class gained subsidies for the unemployment equivalent at that moment at U$S 100 and then U$S 40 with devaluation named “Planes Trabajar”.
When the growing cycle is renewed in Argentina, those unemployed entered as slaves to the productive process and the “maquila” Argentina emerged having more than 55% of labor force under no registration, without any right.
Kirchner has given U$S 30 like subsidy per children for every unemployed worker or any worker with a salary minor to U$S 600. We have studied a document of LOI-CI of Argentina and their press where they state it means a subsidy for the companies not for workers.
It is the State paying the part of the deferred social salary to workers and bosses don’t pay it while keep 50% of the working class under no registration.
It is a subsidy for the boss so that it can be kept low the value of the labor force as whole of the Argentinean working class. With a salary of U$S 600 in Argentina and U$S30 per children it is not possible to eat even ten days per month. The worker under no registration earning no more than U$S 300, plus the miserable subsidy given by the government…the Kirchners must live with that money. It is a subsidy for the Bolivarian bourgeoisie and alms for workers. And what should we state? That the subsidy in Argentina must not be collected, not to go to the market to buy cheaper food? Not to go to the doctor’s office in the neighborhood where you only have a doctor to assist sick people without the possibility to go to a high quality hospital…where only the bourgeoisie can go?
We say: let´s take everything; we would have nothing without fighting and giving deaths. But if we fought and died for these is not worthy, we must fight for everything.
Moreover, with the inflation and high cost of living, the subsidies for food and for unemployment are not enough to eat ten days per month.
These are the misery and hunger conditions we suffer after huge fights and for what? For the bourgeoisie makes big business?
This is what we, the Marxists, must tell the exploited, that is, what really is taking place.
The demand of a sliding scale of wages and working hours is a central slogan in Venezuela if the aim is to conquer the unity of the working class and exploited. It is not possible even dream with the unfrozen of the collective agreements without setting up a movement of revolutionary unemployed workers.
They are part of the working class despite Chávez and chavists don´t like it.
It is the first point of a program to conquer a revolutionary leadership of the trade unions.
Cháves was not initially a petty-bourgeois government but the representative of the officers’ caste of the most rotten Venezuelan bourgeoisie who came as Bonaparte to save the interests of the whole bourgeoisie and the imperialism’s business in Venezuela after the revolutionary process of the Caracazo.
The “Misiones” mean capitalist begging; even they are no longer this.
It has nothing to do with socialism or high quality health or free education that the Cuban masses gained by their revolution expropriating the bourgeoisie. In Cuba now they getting lost and the remains are exported abroad to cover the bourgeois governments, agents of imperialism, as “anti-imperialist” and “socialist”.
Those “Misiones” are the fate for the more than 500.000 workers dismissed in Cuba, that means the market “socialism”, that is, submission of the working class to the capitalist market.
Lastly, we affirm that every reader of the letter of the FLTI sent to you in relation to the political crisis in Venezuela can observe that at any moment it sustains what you say in your letter: “the MUD attacks or a sector of it including assassinations of men and women of the People are fascist-type and not simply deaths in any demonstration”. (bolds ours)
The FLTI’s document at any moment speaks about “simply deaths” in any demonstration. What the document states is the following:
“In this question you are seriously confused, which may even contradict the facts. In any reactionary bourgeois action there are people who die and this doesn’t mean it is a fascist coup. The counterrevolutionary bourgeois reaction of Capriles must be confronted, but first of all, if we want to mobilize the masses, we must fight the cowardice and effrontery of Maduro’s bourgeois faction, who hasn’t called the masses to do any action against this so called “fascism” or “coup”, as Maduro characterizes it. Since if the working class doesn’t break with Maduro and overpasses the limits of the “Bolivarian Revolution”, it will never be able to smash Capriles. Because Maduro has workers locked in their houses and the leaderships of the working class under his discipline. Both factions are using the masses to discuss their business. But the limit they both have on them is to support the regime and conquer a strong government to attack the working class and exploited people.”
As you can see here there is no mention of “simply deaths” or any demonstration. What it is affirmed is that in any bourgeois reactionary action can appear dead people but it doesn´t mean a fascist coup. The State is about it, a gang of armed men to kill workers…even Chavezism that as member of the murderous officers’ caste of the regime of Punto Fijo or the Bolivarian Constitution is tired of killing workers. And not for this reason they are fascist.
Fascism for Marxism is not the same way of bourgeois ruling than bonapartism or popular front or the bourgeois democratic regime or the bourgeois monarchy. It is a way of ruling based on the annihilation of every worker organization by methods of civil war of the middle class under the command of the Big Capital, and in a semi colonial country under the direct command of the imperialism closing a revolutionary situation. For that, it is the last resource of the bourgeoisie, like the classic bonapartism to smash a revolution.
It is the difference, simply. Read your document where you affirm that Capriles is at the head of fascist gangs that massacred in 2002. When this process was escaping from the control of Capriles and Maduro, quickly, they stopped every confrontation between them terrified with the irruption of masses like in 2002. As we have proved in this letter the fact that Capriles launched a fascist coup would be destroying a bourgeois opposition already conquered within the frames of the Bolivarian Constitution and that was very near to win over Chavezism in the elections. For them, it would have been a political suicide. The imperialism and the general staffs are cleverer that this. They know very well when and how to use each one of their agents.
The emergence of the militias of the worker organizations to smash the counterrevolutionary and fascistic gangs of the MUD will also emerge from the fight for the Self-Defense Committees to confront the brutal repression that the Chavist National Guard and boss hitmen against any serious workers’ fight…of course that the chavist Labor Ministry will pose like “democratic” and “allied” and “friend” of workers. Justly the mortal trap of chavezism for masses is about it.
The entire bourgeoisie is already conscious that the lie of “Socialism of the 21 C” is getting over. The Maduro-Capriles-Obama agreement is an attempt to strengthen the regime and his government to clash against masses to make them pay for the crisis of the capitalist world economy already striking Venezuela. As the it states the document the center of the FLTI has sent you: The lie of “21st Century Socialism” is reaching the end since “with it only the bourgeoisie and imperialism got profits… and Capriles, who already swore loyalty to the Bolivarian Constitution didn’t come out of nowhere but he comes out from the unconditional respect for the Chavezism’s private property”.
We warn that the fascistic gangs will not only emerge like the MUD are doing but when the break with chavezism on the part of the working class gets deeper-something that already has started- from the chavezism’s core will emerge …do you know what, comrades? An Al Assad and a monster like Kadhafy…or an Ahmadineyad who cried for the Chávez death while sent his counterrevolutionary Republican Guard of Ayatollahs to massacre from the core of the fascist Army of Al Assad the Syrian masses. Why? It is because around chavezism emerged a new and powerful bourgeoisie linked to the oil income and the Wall Street business.
Chavezism is part of a movement like it was the imperialist ruling regime of Yalta and Postdam, the movement of “not aligned” or the “OPEP” where the native bourgeoisies together with the oil companies defined and negotiated or confronted each other in a conjunctural way for the oil price.
To see the fascist danger coming from the core of the Venezuelan oligarchy of Capriles and not to see the murderous role the Bolivarian officers’ caste will play when their property appears to be under risk, it can be a very dangerous oblivion.
We expect to have your document.
Revolutionary Greetings,
Carlos Munzer
November 9th, 2016
The UTOPIA OF THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE REGIME OF THE BOLIVARIAN CONSTITUTION
The positions of the renegades of Trotskyism on Venezuela are a sample of how, in the midst of the global capitalist bankruptcy, the currents of the “New Left” play the role of holders of states and regimes. The LTS, a small group run from Buenos Aires by PTS, is one of the greatest shameless supporters of the decomposing Bolivarian Republic. At the other extreme of the renegades of Trotskyism, from a liberal democratic opposition to Maduro, the PSL (UIT) and the UST (LIT) raise a policy that essentially coincides with the LTS. They are rare opponents of Maduro who are in a front of class collaboration with Chavez currents. The position of these currents before the Bolivarian bourgeois regime makes it clear that the renegades of Trotskyism gave up the struggle for socialist revolution to embrace the program of “extreme democracy”. Therefore, this controversy is not limited to the LTS but is directed to all these currents. Let’s see.
In the October 26 statement published in La Izquierda Diario, the LTS says that the task at hand is “to conquer a greater freedom for the working people”. According to this current, it is about “responding to the legitimate democratic aspirations of the working people, who seek a solution to the very serious situation and want to really weigh their will in national affairs.”
In the first place, it is completely false to say that the workers are fighting to expand their democratic rights in a country where there were literally thousands of spontaneous revolts due to hunger since 2015, against the African living conditions imposed on them by the exploiters. If the PTS leaders lined up for 8 or 10 hours to get some rice or bread, or if they went down to the pickets for hunger or water in the slums, they would not meet people demanding to vote but with hungry workers, who ask for food, medicines, drinking water, whose children die. All the exploiters know it. The MUD and the Church do not get tired of saying it.
The PTS-LTS leadership also knows this. It is not an oversight, but the true demands for the workers’ bread are hidden in order to justify a liberal support program for Maduro and the Bolivarian regime, as we will see below. That leadership does not tell the truth to the working class.
The LTS-PTS and its Bernstein-like “extremen democracy”
In that statement, the LTS says that the working class must fight for “a greater democracy”, for a “Constituent Assembly” that will solve the exploited all the problems ... but without the need to defeat the Maduro government and the General Staff of the FANB, or to overthrow the Bolivarian regime to seize power. In that statement they speak of “socialism”, of “organisms of self-determination”, etc. but they do not even mention this central issue.
This current omits hunger, repression, the dead, mass detentions, fascism; they are silent that the Bolivarian Republic is a fierce class dictatorship organized so that Wall Street continues looting and sinking Venezuela. The leaders of the PTS are abstracted from all this and dream that Maduro and the generals retire peacefully, and that from this Bolivarian Republic a beautiful ‘democracy’ arises which will be the deepening of the ‘partial and limited conquests’ of Chavezism. In that ‘extreme democracy’ (a “Constituent Assembly”), arising from the expansion of the Bolivarian Republic, the workers will have many ‘rights and social conquests’. Chávez, says the LTS, advanced on that path but unfortunately had limits, and now the right wing tries to liquidate these conquests, as happens in Brazil with Dilma.
This “extreme democracy” is the longing of these people. It has nothing to envy to the utopia of the right-wing social-democrat Bernstein, who sought to move from capitalism to socialism by a peaceful and evolutionary stretch of bourgeois democracy.
Democratization of the Bolivarian Republic or socialist revolution?
Nobody denies that the exploited need more democracy. That is basic. The question is what kind of democracy do they need, how is it achieved and for what purpose?
In recent years, the exploited faced the Maduro government by setting up assemblies, strike committees, pickets, de facto committees in the neighborhoods, but not to demand voting as the LTS says, but for wages, food, medicines or water. There it was decided by show of hands what action to take forward, determining its future always with the method of workers’ democracy. There lived the democracy that the exploited needed to face Maduro. This happened in SIDOR, in the streets of San Félix, Ciudad Piar, Puerto Ordaz, in Catia and Petare.
The spreading, deepening and centralization of these organisms was a huge danger not only for Maduro, but especially for Wall Street and the oligarchy. That is why the army troops, the Gendarmerie, the police, the fascist collectives of the SEBIN, the union bureaucracy and the lumpen, came to dissolve these direct democracy organizations and crush the struggle of the workers with tanks and lead.
This was not done by the oligarchy or imperialism. The Bolivarians did it under the bourgeois Bolivarian Constitution that they themselves sanctioned in 1999, which protects first private property, and above all, the property and business of Wall Street. The Bolivarian Republic that the LTS wants to deepen is a ferocious Bonapartism that keeps the factories and working-class neighborhoods under military occupation to guarantee imperialist plunder. There are dead, missing and prisoners. For any suspicion, a worker is taken from his house by the SEBIN or the Chavez collectives, and if he is lucky, he is not shot in the head in front of his family, but he is imprisoned and tortured.
So, what “democracy” wants to expand the LTS? Does the “extreme democracy” that breaks with imperialism and makes “socialism” -as they maintain in its declaration- arise from the peaceful evolution of the bourgeois pro-imperialist Bolivarian Republic? This current speaks of breaking with imperialism with an “extreme democracy” without demolishing the Executive Power, the National Assembly of the MUD, the caste of judges and above all, the murderous officers of the FANB monitored by the Pentagon from Colombia. That is, they want to break with imperialism and leave intact the bourgeois state machinery that is just to guarantee the imperialist plundering with violence and terror on the exploited of Venezuela.
In the Bolivarian Republic, anyone who touches a single dollar of the transnationals ends up dead by repression, shot by the paramilitary gangs of the Chavists’ Collectives, or imprisoned with false charges and tortured like the CIVETCHI workers. The LTS wants to build an “extreme democracy” that coexists alongside that state machinery of repression at the service of imperialism.
This current knows perfectly well that in Venezuela all serious struggle for the rights of the exploited leads to a direct clash with the government and the troops, and that raises its revolutionary fall. Let’s look at the elementary question of food, for example.
What did the Executive Power do with food? He militarized his distribution and placed it under the direct custody of Padrino López, Chief of the General Staff of the FANB and superintendent of Maduro. Today the Armed Forces guard the department stores and merchandise stores. The officers manage the “bachaqueo” of food (resale on the black market) and have monopolized huge food deposits in the main barracks. They guarantee that rich neighborhoods will get meats, fresh vegetables, oils, preserves, etc. in abundance and quality, and that nothing comes to the working class neighborhoods.
in abundance and quality, and that nothing comes to the working class neighborhoods.
It is evident that in order to eat the exploited must expropriate not only those large warehouses, but also the property of imperialism and the oligarchy, to produce food and import the shortage. And it is also evident that this cannot be done peacefully with a Constituent Assembly, if the generals are not defeated before the institutions of the Bolivarian Constitution regime are demolished, because they guard the food deposits and the property of the banks and transnational. That is why, for the elementary question of obtaining food, the exploited must make a revolution: to set up direct democracy organizations, arm themselves and leave the army to prepare the insurrection and the seizure of power.
But these questions, which are the ABC of Marxism, perfectly known by the LTS-PTS and all the renegades of Trotskyism, are consciously silenced by these directions.
The lessons of the Maghreb and the Middle East
Social-democratic LTS-type recipes, which embellish implacable enemies and throw dirt into the eyes of workers, end in tragedy for the exploited. In the Maghreb and the Middle East all the renegades of Trotskyism applied a policy modeled after the LTS. When in 2011 the exploited from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc. took to the streets for bread and to conquer it they threw dictatorships and left armies, these currents said that they did not have to arm themselves, move towards the expropriation of imperialism and the seizure of power. They said that they were democratic revolutions, whose task was to replace the tyrannies of Mubarak, Ben Ali, etc. by bourgeois democratic regimes. “Eat? Of course”, they said, “but the immediate task is to conquer democracy; let’s vote and get organized”.
Which was the result? The bread was not obtained because neither was it expropriated to the imperialism and the oil companies nor power was taken; the “democratic revolution” proclaimed by these renegades ended in a bloodbath at the hands of the generals, fierce dictatorships such as Al Sisi in Egypt, and in Syria, a terrifying genocide that is costing the lives of 600 thousand exploited.
Maduro, the Castro, Evo Morales, etc., supported Khadafy as they support Assad today demanding the crushing and extermination of the revolutionary masses, because they know that there is not only the political regime at stake, but the property of the exploiters and the very existence of the bourgeois state that holds that property.
The program of the Fourth International is the key to the triumph of Venezuelan workers and exploited
We Trotskyists say to the workers, to the oppressed of Venezuela: in order to eat you have to make “the workers’ revolution” proclaimed by the workers of SIDOR, on whom the LTS turned its back. Let the renegades of Marxism accompany the Bolivarians to the grave. They have nothing to do with the most heartfelt aspirations of the deep proletariat that will rise up against the Bolivarians. The factory workers of La Paz and their struggle against Evo Morales are the vanguard of the workers’ movement that is beginning to emerge from the decline of the Bolivarians.
The Trotskyists of the FLTI defend the legacy of the Fourth International and the program theory of the Permanent Revolution because that is the flag that will lead to the triumph of the Latin American proletariat. In Venezuela there will be no bread or “democracy” if it is not making the revolution, if it is not defeating and throwing off the oppressors and exploiters who bleed the people to hand over the nation to Wall Street. Only in this way can a truly democratic Venezuela emerge, where the broad masses rule and not a handful of parasitic oligarchs and boli-bourgeois, with their general executioners; a Venezuela independent from imperialism and bankers; a socialist Venezuela, where the property is in the hands of the exploited, to meet the needs of the vast majority of the people; a Venezuela bastion of the Latin American and world revolution. This is the objective of the Trotskyists of the FLTI... a workers’ and socialist Venezuela without generals, bosses or imperialist bankers.
Liga Comunista de Trabajadores
(Workers’ Communist League) / Venezuela
