Some reflections about the Venezuelan situation

The crisis Venezuela is going through is, without a doubt, one of the principal international political situations of the moment and demands the intervention and the opinion of all socialist and revolutionary forces. In this respect, it is important to reaffirm that the struggle against any kind of  imperialist intervention and interference is a primary task. Everything that comes from the Lima Group, the United States and its puppet Guaido, must be denounced and confronted, because none of the plights the Venezuelan people are suffering will be solved by the hand of these sectors that solely seek to take complete control of the country´s enormous natural and economic resources.

In this sense, we value the mobilization and common action that we held in Argentina together with anti-capitalist, socialist and working-class forces days ago, against U.S. interference and coup threats. And we advocate the continuation of unitary mobilizations against all kinds of imperialist intervention. Additionally, we vindicate having realized the action from an position of independence and opposition to Maduro, who is responsible of many of the plights that Venezuelan workers and people are suffering. Through his brutal austerity and submission to other imperialist corporations, his corruption and attacks on social conquests, he has lost social support, and this has allowed the pro-imperialist right to recover terrain to attempt the interventionist actions it is carrying out.

We believe that only the working class, the popular majorities and the youth have the right to decide the future of Venezuela. This is why we advocate a political solution independent of imperialism and the bureaucracy, with radical changes through revolutionary constituent processes in the strategy for a workers´ and people´s government. In view of this perspective, it would be a positive step for the forces of the working-class, anti-capitalist ans socialist left of Venezuela to conform a common political alternative, against all the international and national powers.

The unity of the classist and revolutionary sectors would permit the promotion of the organization of the working class, the impoverished people and the youth with much more strength. And this is the only thing that can stop the current catastrophe and avoid an even worse outcome.

At the same time, it is necessary to develop a broad unity of action to strengthen and accompany the concrete struggles that are underway for jobs, wages, food, healthcare, education, electricity and all essential social and democratic rights that are being trampled.

The social and political crisis has generated diverse spaces of confluence and articulation, where different political proposals are debated. These are spaces that may have promoted correct proposals in their beginnings, but amid the crisis, under international pressure, have mistakenly abandoned all independence and shifted towards positions that have nothing to do with what the revolutionary left must advocate in Venezuela.

For example, in the Intersectorial of Venezuelan Workers, which had been organizing actions for specific and correct demands, different classist sectors have been giving a common battle, but, unfortunately, many union sectors have decided to back Guaido´s proposals and actions, weakening this independent space. Therefore, it becomes necessary to build new instruments of coordination for struggles in the labor movement.

And there is the case of the “Alliance for the Consultative Referendum” (ARC), which unites diverse leaders who come from Chavism. This Alliance participated in a meeting with Guaido some weeks ago, which, though a tactical decision, was also very questionable, then sent a letter to the United Nations authorities, vindicating its intervention, saying: “we greatly value the role you have been playing as general secretary of the United Nations in defense of multilateralism and peace”. This manifests a mistaken political course by important sectors of the ARC. From historical experience, we know that imperialist international institutions never play a positive role. On the contrary, the UN and all capitalist political or economic organisms, always act, in one way or another, at the service of the imperialist interests that are most convenient at the time. The same is true of the Vatican, European imperialism and bourgeois governments.

The ARC manifests a new and serious political mistake that places it in a perspective of no longer being a useful space for the grave situation Venezuela is living. It is not a matter of the opinions we may have of one or another of the ARC´s members, nor of its role in previous years. It is a matter of determining what is the correct policy to intervene in the current Venezuelan situation. In respect to this, we believe any space of articulation that is not truly independent of every shade of imperialism and its institutions, cannot play a positive role. We also disagree with their expectations in a solution to the crisis coming simply from the celebration of elections, when what is on the table is advocating that the working people decide on all great national issues and impose revolutionary changes. And this is only possible through its struggle and mobilization.

Because of all of this, we insist once again on the importance of building a truly working-class, socialist and anti-capitalist response to the Venezuelan crisis: advancing toward a common space of those of us who believe in the anti-imperialist struggle, independent mobilization, and a course of authentic social, economic and political transformation of a socialist character. Carrying out a campaign for these objectives is a task of revolutionaries and internationalists of the whole world.

Alejandro Bodart and Sergio Garcia