In light of the uncertainty over the possible events that could occur on February 23, Marea Socialista affirms, above all else, its rejection of the imperialist intervention promoted by Juan Guaidó -as an instrument of Trump- and the threat of an armed aggression against Venezuela. We sustain our firm position in defense of national sovereignty, the self-determination of peoples and reject all forms of imperialist interference. No self-proclaimed president can decide to bring a supposed “humanitarian aid” as a smoke screen for imperialist penetration in Venezuelan territory or as bait for a provocation that could lead to a military confrontation.
We reject all forms of imperialist intervention with neo-colonial intentions and argue for international solidarity and cooperation arranged with the Venezuelan State, under terms agreed upon internationally to bring assistance to the people in a state of emergency, without manipulations of any kind.
We denounce the abomination of wanting to pay for the disputes between the ruling political and economic sectors with the people´s lives and the destruction of the country´s infrastructure. Behind the confrontation between Maduro and Guaidó, hide the appetites of different factors of global capitalism, mainly the United States, China and Russia, as well as the struggle of the traditional Venezuelan bourgeoisie to retake the State that today is managed by the corrupt and neo-bourgeois Maduro-military-PSUV government.
Without underestimating the potential risk that it may serve as a trigger for a confrontation or a form of pressure to provoke the division of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, the “humanitarian air” issue has also turned into a kind of media spectacle with the “war of the concerts” on both sides of the border, with artists of one and the other side. But the backdrop of the concerts is made of the military, economic, social and political pressures that seek the fall of the Maduro government and the establishment of another government through unconstitutional ways, without being elected by the people. We cannot discard the possibility of this scenario being utilized to stage pronouncements of military officers, to allow mercenaries to enter the country or to provoke clashes between protesters and soldiers and use the news of repression as an international media scandal, to support Guaidó and justify interventionist actions of greater significance.
Marea Socialista has been sustaining that the Venezuelan people, the working class and popular sectors, needs to recover social organizational independence, and political independence, in order to escape from the claws of the polarization imposed on us by the bureaucracy´s and capital´s control over political expressions. At the ends of that polarization, Maduro represents the government of a corrupt caste of new bourgeoisie, military and civil officers who have embezzled the country´s wealth and make the people pay for the consequences of betraying the process of the Bolivarian Revolution. To apply their plans a a new bourgeoisie associated to emergent imperialist powers, they sacrifice the working class with destructive anti-labor measures. We have never seen a worse offensive against the working class and popular sectors. Maduro and the State bureaucracy have carried out a systematic dismantling of the best conquests obtained during the Bolivarian Revolution, in conjunction to the effects of the sabotage and rapine of national and foreign capitalists, the embezzlement and the weight of the foreign debt.
Guaidó is the spear point of U.S. interventionism. He is the operator of a coup d´etat through unconstitutional statute of the National Assembly, and he is prepared to apply an equally anti-labor and anti-national plan of recycled neo-liberalism, known as Plan País. Guaidó is the visible figure of the Venezuelan traditional bourgeoisie´s great operation to recapture the State, and he is the puppet propped up by the Trump Administration to restore the semi-colonial dominion of Venezuela by the United States. They want to put an end to the remains of a popular process which has been led to failure by the betrayals of the bureaucracy.
The counterrevolution carried out by the Maduro bureaucracy, through the imposition of regressive policies, hunger and repression, have generated a colossal discontent, reaching levels of desperation in broad sectors. This is the situation on which Guaidó and the classic right-wing opposition have been able to mount themselves on. Guaidó occupies, for now, the vacuum left by the lack of a strong third alternative, representative of workers´ and peoples autonomy, against a polarization between two political leaderships who represent two versions of the exploiters: the bureaucracy and capital.
In this situation, Marea Socialista insists on class independence and affirms: Not Maduro, nor Guaidó! The people don´t want Maduro, and no one chose Guaidó. We also affirm that we will not accept the arrival of a new president by the hand of U.S. imperialism to impose policies as damaging for our people as the ones Maduro has been applying.
This is why we center our call to make all efforts, in first place, to avoid intervention and war, which would be like taking a lethal poison against a sickness. We believe that no solution will come from impositions and shady deals between leaderships. Therefore, against the fight between two governments and two supposed presidents without legitimacy, in violation of the Constitution, we say that the only democratic option is to consult the people, for which there is the Consultative Referendum based on Art. 5, 70 and 71 (and in correspondence with Art. 333) of the Constitution, which would give the people the word and power of decision, to decide if they agree with a religitimization of all powers through general elections, which would imply the conformation of a new plural and independent CNE with social participation.
For this, we are part of the creation of the Alliance for the Consultative Referendum, which brings together political currents and social activists that promote an agreement for the realization of the referendum and are disposed to carry out a campaign to gather the 10% of electoral signatures that the Constitution requires to activate the consultation. This campaign should allow a regroupment of people to struggle for our own interests and objectives.
Of course, the problems of the Venezuelan people will not be resolved by holding elections, but we would at least avoid war and reestablish a democratic framework within which we could continue the struggle, building the necessary social strength and political autonomy of the working class, driving the proposal of an emergency plan at the service of the peoples needs and the recovery of national resources.
We do not discard the possibility of a deepening of the crisis opening up the necessity of a new Constituent Assembly of a truly popular character, democratic and sovereign, because we will need to somehow restructure and refound this country that has been destroyed. But, unfortunately, the damage caused by the PSUV´s phony Constituent Assembly, has made it difficult for people to consider this slogan on its agenda at the time. In any case, the key is for the working class and popular sectors to have instruments of political participation of our own, because otherwise, any election that can take place will allow new sectors of the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie to impose themselves.
This is why we are dedicated to building, with Marea Socialista as a starting point, a party of the working class and the people that will fight for a society ruled by the real democratic power of the people, governed by the great majorities, unmaking exploitation and all forms of oppression, instead of continuing to be submitted to authoritarian governments, economic elites and international capitalism.
For the same reason, though we have been a part of the creation of the Intersyndical of Venezuelan Workers as a space for the articulation of our struggles, we reject that sectors of the union leaderships have adopted positions that lead us to lose class independence once again, by placing the Intersyndical´s agenda at the service of Guaidó´s strategy, as a way to “lose Maduro”, without taking heed that this places the working class behind the interests of bourgeois and pro-imperialist politicians who have nothing to offer but more exploitation and are willing to take us to the brink of war. This is what tailing behind bourgeois politicians who would continue to use the State in favor of exploitation, would mean. This is equivalent to what happened with the SCBT when it turned its back on the interests of the working class and put itself at the service of the corrupt bureaucracy and the apparatus of the bourgeois State.
We will continue to make all efforts to recompose and even refound the organizations of the working class, because without our own organization and independent mobilization, we cannot achieve the necessary strength to drive our struggles and our own project as a class.
No to war! No to imperialist intervention in Venezuela! Not Maduro nor Guaidó! The people must decide in a consultative referendum! General elections to re-legitimize all powers! International solidarity and cooperation, yes, interventionist manipulation through “humanitarian aid”, no! End to all sanctions and forms of blockade that sacrifice the Venezuelan people! Emergency economic and social plan to recover the value of wages and production in the people´s interests! For the political independence of the working class! Not bureaucracy nor capital!
Marea Socialista