We call on the working class to maintain its independence in the struggle against Maduro´s austerity package and authoritarianism.
National Assembly deputy and central figure of the Venezuelan traditional right, Juan Guaido, has made some observations in regard to the different mobilizations that have emerged in different Latin American countries, giving explanations that oscillate from cynical to ridiculous, but must be closely followed by the different sectors of the working people that continue fighting against the living conditions imposed by Maduro´s government, especially when this representative has announced political measures for the month of November.
Guaido has a contradictory position on the uprising of the Ecuadorian and Chilean people against the governments of Lenin Moreno and Sebastian Piñera, because on one hand he wants to take their example against Maduro´s government, but on the other hand he accuses Maduro and the Sao Paulo Forum of instigating the rebellions. The first is deeply cynical because the austerity measures that those governments agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are what caused the popular reaction in these countries and in others, like Argentina or Haiti, while the self-proclaimed interim president´s “Plan Pais”, presented at the beginning of the year, promotes those same measures.
On the other hand, believing that Nicolás Maduro is part of any conspiracy anywhere that has popular sectors, workers and native peoples as its protagonists is ridiculous, when in our country Maduro has unloaded a brutal austerity package on the people that led us to the most calamitous situation known in historical records. Maduro and his militarist leadership have brutally repressed the Venezuelan people who have taken to the streets at different times to struggle for the fundamental rights that were taken away from them with blood and fire. And if something is clear, it is that a general process of struggle against anti-workers measures (of the kind Maduro applies, though the international creditors are different from the IMF) is the last thing the authoritarian resident of Miraflores wants.
The self-proclaimed “interim president”, who has no power or government, Juan Guaidó, called on his supporters that oppose Maduro´s government to take to the streets on November 16. Once again, he calls on them to protest and end the usurpation after several previous failed attempts, in which he tried to provoke the government´s fall through the mobilization of sectors of the people or coup operations and interventional attempts, without being successful or even getting near to his goal.
Guaidó is trying to use the dynamic of workers and social struggles and opportunistically calls for a mass demonstration in order to try to divert them to his political channel. That was what he wanted to do at the beginning of 2019, which to some extent diverted the wave of protests of workers, professional associations and communities that were on the rise at that time. Instead of strengthening the resistance of the people against Maduro´s policies, he undermined the autonomous and genuine development of the workers’ and people’s demands and gave Maduro excuses to repress them with more force.
This is what happened when the right wing unionists in the Intersectorial of Workers of Venezuela (ITV) that was a space for the coordination of the struggles, subordinated their unions´ demands to Guaidó´s political agenda, stopping the autonomous workers’ protest and damaging the rising union movement.
Now Guaidó seems to assume that the uprisings in Ecuador and Chile will serve as an example to promote something similar in Venezuela against Maduro, but the he represents the policies that caused the uprisings in these Latin American nations that reject the austerity measures dictated by the IMF and identical to what Guaidó contemplates in his “Plan Pais”.
But it turns out that Maduro is already applying similar measures, although he is a self proclaimed anti-neoliberal. The government says that Venezuela´s economic problems are caused by Trump´s sanctions, but we know that these problems predate and are not caused by the sanctions, though the sanctions have aggravated them.
If a social uprising has not happened in Venezuela, it is because of combined factors, like the massive migration, the survival of a part of the people through external remittances, the clientelist subsidies that condition social docility to the government and its repressive control, joined by the complementary activities of the informal economy. The sectors that once supported Chavez are concerned about the possibility of the return of the traditional right, which has an inhibitory effect.
Maduro and Guaidó are on the opposite side of the mobilizing dynamic of the Latin American people at the moment, and although they both hypocritically support the Chileans, Ecuadorians or Haitians, they both know that these uprisings go against them and their condition of agents of one or the other faction of world imperialism; Maduro at the service of China and Russia, advised by the Cuban bureaucracy, and Guaidó openly supporting US financial capital.
It is very important for those who have been part of the conflicts that have continued on the streets against the unloading of the crisis on the people by the government to keep this fact in mind. Because we must be aware that we confront the bureaucracy and capital, and that both Maduro and Guaidó are part of the same system of exploitation and oppression.
The struggle for wages to equate the basic basket, according to what is established in Art. 91 of the CRBV, or to recover benefits at their real value, the defense of collective bargaining, health care and the general rights of workers, must maintain its class independence and only rely on our own ability to articulate and organize, following the fundamental goals of the Venezuelan working class, which has been pushed into misery and has suffered the disarticulation of its forces.
Chile and Ecuador are at this time great references for us, but with the clear understanding of the keys to these processes so it is evident that we have no way out as an impoverished people, with Maduro and his corrupt government, nor with powers like those who indebted their countries with organizations like the IMF, which then demands the application of economic policies that only sharpen the already precarious conditions of workers and popular sectors everywhere.
Lenin Moreno and Piñera are being forced to retreat by the strength of the indigenous and popular mobilization with clear demands. This is the great lesson we must assimilate. In general, our needs are the same as that of their peoples.
But in the case of Venezuela, it makes no sense for the struggle to make us choose between Maduro and others who would also apply policies like Piñera´s and Moreno´s or of the other governments of the Lima Group in our country. We must get rid of the leaderships that do not support our interests and not trust the shortcuts proposed by opportunistic figures like Guaidó, who offers us freedom to impose his own chains on us.
That is why we reject Guaidó´s interference in the workers´ struggles. He only wants to parasitize and divert those struggles at the service of the bourgeoisie and foreign imperialist interests. We want the development of our own struggles, for the unity of the workers and the people resisting Maduro´s austerity package and authoritarianism. Above all, in order to avoid deception and manipulation, an essential condition is maintaining our class independence and not following the exploiters´ leaders or parties.
From Marea Socialista as part of the International Socialist League (LIS-ILS), whose sister organizations are actively participating in Chile with the Movimiento Anticapitalista and against Macri in Argentina with the Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores (MST) and the FIT-Unidad, we insist on the urgent need to build a combative political tool at the service of the sectors that bear the brunt of the crisis and try to overcome the catastrophe caused by the mafia and corrupt leadership of the bureaucracy, the military, the boli-bourgeoisie and the PSUV, as well as the sectors of the traditional bourgeoisie and the expressions of imperialist capitalism.
Marea Socialista