Amid the deep crisis that Venezuela is going through, the national coordination of our organization, together with a representation of our international current, the Anticapitalist Network, has analyzed, evaluated, and reevaluated Venezuela’s political situation. We looked at what has been done up to now, and what should be the political and organizational course of action to take, all as part of the re-launching of our organization, with new tasks and political proposals.
We share here our first conclusions for our militants in the different states to consider before we meet with them, over the coming weeks, to debate these issues in depth.
We are also making this text public as a contribution from our organization to the working class, popular sectors, women and youth. We do this because we are convinced that socialist and anti-capitalist revolutionaries will continue to face great challenges. In Venezuela, we are determined to continue contributing our militant efforts against the imperialist, capitalist and bureaucratic social and political forces in all their forms.
The situation lived daily by workers, people, and the youth is unbearable. We struggle everyday in conditions of absolute precariousness just to get water, electricity, food and other basic needs covered. We have reached the limitof human survival, with hospitals in dreadful conditions, with no supplies, and long and inhumane lines just to get some water.
The unrest and daily response of each family are visible, starting with the courage shown by women, who do everything in their power to at least get some food and provide for their children. We cannot, nor want to -nor should have to- get used to these terrible conditions; we are fighting to get out of this agony so we can have the dignified life we deserve. With this goal in mind, we invite all working families, the autonomous popular movement, and those young people aspiring to have a future, to get organized and fight back, without accepting this decadent present.
Undoubtedly, we will not get out of this social and economic decadence by falling in the hands of the United States, imperialist Trump, and his puppet Guaidó. They have taken advantage of the enormous social discontent caused by our disastrous government, and are trying to move forward, at all costs, with their interventionist plans at the service of the great imperialist and transnational capital. They want to enjoy the millionaire profit from our extraordinary energy resources by promoting economic and political actions against Venezuela that only make the lives of millions more miserable. Anything coming out of the mouths of Trump and Guaidó must be denounced, confronted and rejected. We oppose a possible coup and any kind of interventionism, whether political, military or social. The first task of every anti-capitalist, socialist and working-class militant is to reject US plans of war in Venezuela and the entire region. If any kind of military intervention or invasion ever did take place, we would be active militants against it, independent from the government, and proposing specific measures for a direct attack on their imperialist interests in our country.
At the same time, opposing imperialist plans does not mean supporting Maduro’s regime. That is, a government that has destroyed the best social conquests of the Bolivarian process and has become an agent of transnational capital, in some cases of US capitals but in general of Chinese and Russian capitals. In the context of a geopolitical war, these last two powers also want to steal the natural and strategic resources of our country and the continent.
Contrary to the lies spread by pro-government media and spokespersons, Maduro’s government is not socialist, leftist, or left nationalist. It gradually consolidated as a bourgeois regime with Bonapartist characteristics and strong repressive-authoritarian tendencies in its political model, and as a model of nationalist capitalism regarding its economy. The government is to blame for unleashing a brutal austerity plan on the people through miserable wages and constant inflation, attacking workers’ rights, and for causing the deterioration of health care, education and other social rights. Meanwhile, it pays a corrupt external debt to financial capitalism, and has carried out and allowed the brutal embezzlement of our nation, all amid the shameful enrichment of government officials, in alliance with and being part of a new parasitic, financial bourgeoisie, born under the wing of the oil business. This is why we represent a clear opposition to this government, from an independent and leftist position.
On the base of these definitions, Marea Socialista wants to promote the emergence of a new left alternative, completely independent of US imperialism and its puppet Guaidó, from the Maduro regime and every variant that wants to maintain this unfair and unequal system through a third space or “transition government” of class conciliation. The millions of workers and the youth that suffer this social crisis on a daily basis deserve a new political tool that denounces and confronts all those accountable for the social crisis we are in.
To respond to the current crisis, we must also promote a process of autonomous mobilization in defense of our social rights. Our right to water, to electricity, to health and education, to a job, a wage and a house. We will not defend them if we do not mobilize with all our strength and independently from the reactionary actions of Guaidó and his national and international political allies.
Therefore, we call on honest workers, students, farmers, women, critical intellectuals, social activists and classist left organizations to come together in the coordination and promotion of a common struggle for the fair demands of the people. United with some of these classist organizations, we denounced those who support Guaidó and try to divert the struggles in his favor in the Workers Intersectorial of Venezuela. The following task for those of us who put up that fight, is to advance toward promoting a new coordination of the peoples´ and workers’ struggle.
At the same time, we must coordinate struggles and political actions everywhere. In that sense, in Marea Socialista, we have always had a unitary attitude towards different sectors that emerged from the Bolivarian process, today far from the government, beyond the differences and agreements we might have. In the previous months, we have promoted and been part of different platforms with different leaders, some of which at the time helped denounce the embezzlement of the nation, the theft of the external debt and the handing over of the Mining Arc of Orinoco.
However in recent times, faced with the possibility of a greater crisis and confrontation, a space called ARC (Alliance for the Consulting Referendum) emerged that, in fact, became a political entity that promotes the intervention and tutorship of the United Nations and other international bourgeois sectors as a solution; a policy that we reject, because we oppose every kind of interference by these imperialist organisms, responsible for great plights when they intervene in different countries. We also consider that it is incorrect to create false expectations in a solution to the crisis coming from simply holding elections. Intentions aside, the demand for elections is the same that Guaidó and the imperialist countries with bourgeois governments that support him have on their agenda, which they hope to win, opening up the country to the complete control of US imperialism. The proposal of a referendum and elections in the context prior to the interventionist plan of Guaidó and the United States might have been useful. But not now, and less so, when it is posed at the service of an incorrect objective under the oversight of the United Nations, the Vatican and other reactionary international institutions.
When the ARC first emerged, some members of Marea Socialista participated in it to pose our opinions and evaluate the possibility of it taking a correct path.
Yet today we believe that an incorrect policy has consolidated within it, due to the predominance of sectors that come from right-wing political forces, with the mistaken support of comrades who come from Chavism. We believe that this path will not solve the crisis, and it also feeds a political solution under a democratic bourgeois program of class conciliation that we do not agree with. Therefore, we have decided in Marea Socialista to not participate in the ARC. Though with some of its participants, we will surely meet in specific struggles and other spaces of debate.
Our political proposals
There are no shortcuts out of the deep crisis our country is going through, within the framework of the capitalist system. Though it is a longer and harder path, in our current situation, we still believe that a positive change for the working class can only come from a real leap in its massive and genuine mobilization. This is the only thing that can shift the path of the current situation in favor of workers and the people. This is the path we promote, and for this reason we propose building unities of the left based on this objective in the political terrain, while strengthening the national construction of our organization.
Marea Socialista calls on the social and political organizations of the left, committed activists, social and intellectual figures that are independent of Guaidó, Maduro and every capitalist formation, to meet and discuss the conformation of a unified political front of the left, behind an anti-capitalist, working-class and truly socialist program. And for this unity to also materialize in the joint promotion of the struggle of the working class, the people and the youth.
Our commitment to the anti-imperialist struggle against the plans of Guaidó and the United States is complete, we want the United States out of Venezuela and Latin America. Our opposition to the political and economic plans of the government is also consistent: we want to expel those responsible for the crisis through independent and autonomous mobilization. With Guaidó´s “Plan País” we will lose all sovereignty, they will turn the country over to the empire and we will not have a better quality of life. With Maduro´s “Plan de la Patria” farce, the current disaster will continue, as will the miserable and unstable life of millions. This is why we advocate an autonomous and independent working-class and popular solution.
We advocate developing an autonomous mobilization against any imperialist attack and foreign interference they may attempt in the following days and weeks, and promoting clear measures against the interests of the United States, which the Maduro government does not do. We are in favor of the unity of the people of Latin America against US imperialism, its associates Duque, Bolsonaro, Macri, and other governments complicit with US plans in the region.
We advocate an emergency plan that begins with the re-planning of the electrical system, in which its workers, technicians and professionals evaluate the situation and propose, in conjunction with the affected communities, a new plan under public state ownership, controlled and run by its workers, with social control of the people, not the ruling bureaucracy.
We advocate total workers´ control of the national oil system, with no intervention or participation of foreign corporations and no bureaucratic or military orders. We advocate banning mega-mining, expelling the mining corporations and opening a democratic debate with the communities and the workers about the possible forms of mining without contamination nor environmental destruction.
We advocate an emergency wage increase according to the basic basket. In this sense, we will maintain our demand to the TSJ for Article 91 of the Constitution to be applied, though we do not place expectations on that tribunal, but on the mobilization of the working class. It is false that there is no money; there are millions from oil profits, in the nefarious payment of the external debt and the millions hidden in international banks as part of the embezzlement of the nation. With those resources we could improve the lives of millions.
We are in favor of the recovery and repatriation of embezzled and stolen capital, so they can be destined to meet the urgent importation of food and medicine for meeting the needs of the people.
We advocate recovering the assets of PDVSA (like Citgo) and the funds confiscated by the United States and other imperialist countries, and taking every possible measure to gain reparations a country against that act of rapine.
We reject lay-offs in the public and private sectors, and advocate the hiring of the people who have been laid off. We advocate implementing workers’ control of production in any factory that lays off or threatens to close. This way we will maximize the capacity of the state industries in the food and basic products areas, abandoned by the government.
We advocate the right to free mobilization and social protest. We oppose any kind of state or paramilitary repression against fair demands of working people affected by the crisis. We demand the liberation of workers imprisoned for fighting and the annulment of charges against workers and rural people for protesting.
We advocate free union organization and the legalization of new unions, without the interference of the state, the government or the bosses.
We advocate the free circulation and dissemination of ideas and information, the end of state blockade, the censorship and attacks against the alternative media outlet Aporrea, a democratic space with many years of activism in favor of the rights of the working class.
Against the false democracy offered by Guaidó and the government´s fake Constituent Assembly, we advocate imposing a real sovereign and free constituent assembly through popular mobilization, in which the people debate and decide everything, with real representation of every party and political tendency. The sovereign people have the right to decide what to do with the great national issues in this crisis, and not to be forced to choose between Maduro and Guaidó, while those two decide the destiny of the country far from the working people.
In a real constituent process, Marea Socialista would propose an anti-capitalist and truly socialist integral emergency plan, that would do away with all interference and privilege of international corporations, end with the political privilege of the dominant castes and the judicial and electoral powers governed by the political power; we advocate the direct election of the judicial and electoral powers of the CNE.
We have these and more proposals in that sense, because we advocate a government of the working people, we want to end with the capitalist regime in all its variants and with the undemocratic institutions that, in one way or another, are sinking our country.
It is clear that we are in a new situation, with new political tasks, and we are now entering a new and different phase in our construction as an anti-capitalist, working-class, socialist and revolutionary organization.
In this political re-launching of Marea Socialista, we invite everyone who shares these ideals to join us. The workers that have been part of the Bolivarian process and experience the current disaster with disappointment. The youth that was born into political life in this crisis and sees the future with uncertainty. The women who fight for their rights everywhere, for equality in their workplaces and against every kind of misogynist violence.
We invite all of you to organize with Marea Socialista, to build a revolutionary party of the working class, the youth, the anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal feminism. A militant, revolutionary and internationalist organization tied to our comrades in the Anticapitalist Network and the new international organization we are in the process of founding, because international construction is a key part of our struggle against imperialist capitalism in Venezuela and the entire world.
For all these reasons, we invite you to make Marea Socialista a bigger and stronger militant, working-class and truly socialist organization. We will advance in these objectives in a national plenary of the organization next month, in which we will collectively debate how to strengthen this path.
National Coordination of Marea Socialista, April 5, 2019