Venezuela -January 5th, 2017

On the recent lootings and oppression in Venezuela:

WE CANNOT STAND STARVATION ANY LONGER… ENOUGH WITH MISERY!
OUT WITH MADURO, MUD AND IMF! OPEN THE ROAD TO A NEW “CARACAZO”!

A few days ago, in late December, the exploited of Venezuela took the streets once again because they were sick of the starvation and shortage. There were lootings in the states of Tachira, Apure and mainly in Bolivar, which were fiercely oppressed by the troops of the National Guard; as a result there were at least 3 deaths, hundreds of injured and around 500 imprisoned.
Removing abruptly Bs 100 notes (60% of the total circulating) in 3 days –which was a robbery and a provocation against the people and Maduro had to take it back- sent thousands of people to break into supermarkets and stores shouting “Out with Maduro!”. Every new day is a torment for Venezuelan workers. Their families eat once a day, if they are lucky. Ill people die every day for the lack of medicines in hospitals and clinics; lay-offs multiply every day; wages have been destroyed by the 1000% annual inflation.
Generals and Maduro –Assad’s apprentice- declared curfew due to the lootings. They keep the State of Exception and districts have been brutally militarized; protests are oppressed with real ammo. Murders, detentions, tortures, disappearing by the troops and -mainly and more and more- Bolivarian collectives have been generalized. The “Operations for People’s Liberation” real fascist razias under military leadership- devastate working districts, with massacres like in Barlovento (12 youth killed and found in common graves) and Cariaco (9 deaths).
Now Maduro demanded “oppression against terrorism” to his Vice-President El Aissami, who is a man of the Arab bourgeoisie of bazaar like Assad in Syria. What bazaar bourgeoisie understand for “fighting against terrorism” can be seen in Syria: slaughter against those who fight for bread and freedom; it is a genocide that Maduro, Evo Morales and Castro celebrate publicly every time they can.

Workers pay with capitalist barbarism of starvation and death the scam of “Bolivarian revolution” and “21st Century Socialism” proclaimed by Castro and world left.
In Venezuela the only international conspiracy is called “negotiation rounds” between the government and MUD and they are against the working class. Wall Street rules. The government and MUD oligarchy obey and pact in “rounds” how to hit. La Habana salutes the “dialogue” and the Church blesses them. Castrist and pseudo-Trotskist left silence this pact. In order to keep plundering the nation, imperialism and rich countries need a defeated working class. That is why they are terrified of the ghost of “Caracazo”, a new uprising of the workers and poor people of the hills.
Today the working class is in the last trench due to the betrayal of union bureaucracies, who are hated by workers and only supported thanks by Venezuelan left. Workers rebel desperately and attack supermarkets because CTV, CSBT, UNETE, bureaucracies closed the doors of the struggling organizations. They are the internal police within the working class; they are bureaucrats paid by the bosses, who even send hitmen for the fascist Collectives to kill working activists.
Before such a betrayal there is not a single left current in Venezuela that calls to propel workers’ self-organization and expel Torres, Rangels, Máspero and co. They constantly talk about struggles while they share fronts and associations with union bureaucracies, like Chirino and Bodas (PSL) in FADESS with pro-MUD bureaucrats; or in tens of union meetings that left held to give prestige to sold-out leaders.

None of them tells the working class that in order to get bread and wages they must defeat imperialism and the Generals; they must expel the government and MUD with the general revolutionary strike. Lootings prove that there is no other way. Masses shout “Out with Maduro” in every picket, proving to have an accurate class instinct.
Venezuelan left talks about “democracy” when the Bolivarian Generals of “democracy and Constitution” put a gun in workers’ head. They used to say that revolution could not be done against Chavez because workers did not have class consciousness. Then it could not be done against Maduro because there was an ongoing so-called coup of “the right”. And now when workers (despite Venezuelan left) have ended their experience with Chavista bourgeoisie and demand the fall of the government, this left wants to submit them to the armoured “democracy” of the Bolivarian Constitution… on behalf of “class independence”.

An example of this class collaboration policy is the Platform of Critical Chavism and Struggling People, where PSL (UIT) and UST (LIT) –unusual champions of the “class independence”- make agreements with bourgeois politicians (even former Ministers of Chavez like Hector Navarro -1-). Enough blaming the working class… the problem is yours mister leaders, mister leaders of the Venezuelan left!
C-CURA leadership and militant unions must break now all kind of subordination to exploiters’ “democracy and Constitution” and they must put their members and sources at the service of organizing a big fight for bread a wages:

With Maduro, MUD and IMF strangling the nation there is only starvation, death and repression. Down with “negotiation rounds”! Workers’ enemies must be expelled! Open the road to rebellion and hate of the oppressed! Open the road to Caracazo! Without working and popular revolution there is no solution!
In order to get food and medicines we must stop paying the foreign debt! Banks, factories, lands and big store houses of the TNCs and oligarchy must be expropriated without compensation and under workers’ control. Foreign trade must be nationalized and a unified state bank must be created to end with the robbery of dollars by banks and the bourgeoisie.

Working and popular supply committees to guarantee that the expropriated food reach working families!
Out from our unions the traitors paid by the bosses! Open the road to workers’ self-organization! We must set up factory committees and centralize them local, regional and nationally!
Enough workers killed! Let’s set up working self-defense committees against state hitmen!
Down with the curfew, the State of Exception and district militarization!
Generals defend food store houses against the starving people, while they command the killing. Down with the Generals and FANB officers! Rank and file soldiers’ committees to dismiss the murderous officers and open the food store houses!

Freedom to all those imprisoned by the plunders! Freedom to Rodney Alvarez and CIVETCHI workers!
These huge tasks require the strongest unity of the working class against Maduro, MUD and Wall Street. A big National Working Congress must be call now, with rank and file delegates from the entire working class. The Revolutionary General Strike must be prepared! C-CURA leadership and militant working organizations, if they truly claim defending workers’ interests, must break their subordination to the Bolviarians’ regime, oligarchy and Wall Street and prepare this fight.
“Workers’ alternative” proclaimed by Venezuelan left will not get bread or wages for workers, because they are preparing to defeat Maduro, MUD, Generals and imperialism –the guarantors of starvation and slavery- in the streets. Only a working and popular government based in armed workers, privates and peasants committees –set up over the ruins of this regime-can guarantee bread and wages for the people, it can even call a truly sovereign and democratic National Constituent Assembly.

OUT WITH IMPERIALISM FROM LATIN AMERICA! DOWN WITH BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION!
FOR A WORKING AND SOCIALIST VENEZUELA, WITHOUT BOSSES, GENERALS OR IMPERIALIST BANKERS!

Liga Comunista de los Trabajadores - Venezuela