By National Coordination of Marea Socialista
Recently the Communist Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), through a statement (I) called on the Venezuelan working class and popular sectors to build a revolutionary political alternative to what they call “the pact of the elites,” referring to the negotiations that are taking place in Mexico between the government of Nicolás Maduro and part of the traditional right-wing opposition.
Throughout the text, a series of elements can be read that correctly account for what has been the design of the ultra-capitalist plan, not only by Maduro’s government, but openly with the help of the traditional business community, with FEDECAMARAS in the lead and of course with the consequent acceptance of their political expressions, be it Juan Guaidó or Henrique Capriles and company.
In this sense, not only is it correct to denounce all the secret negotiations that have been taking place, for quite some time, between both leaderships of the old and new rich, but it is also necessary to join forces with the social sectors that have endured the enormous attacks of an unprecedented crisis in our contemporary history, with the workers suffering the great burden of suffering, with the common people as a whole. And for this, propaganda and public announcements alone are not enough; it is necessary to actually get involved in the practical and concrete work of struggle.
Marea Socialista insisted on this for years
The negotiations in Mexico are just another step in what has been a long journey of agreements between the corrupt leaderships, which have designed a course that has brought misery upon misery on the vast majority of the Venezuelan people. We have often said that, although they maintain their clashes between clans, what they do have full agreement on is who should pay for the crisis. Therefore, although the government is the one who takes helm in launching projects such as the Orinoco Mining Arc, the Anti-Blockade Law, the Law Against Hate, the Special Economic Zones Plan, Memorandum 2792 and in general all the onslaught of confiscation of fundamental workers’ rights, this policy is very much in the interest of the employers’ opposition and their international bosses (the United States and other great powers, as well as important sectors of world capitalism).
They are auctioning off the country, one putting it on a platter mainly for Chinese and Russian capitals, the other for the European and North American capitals. In the case of the new rich connected to the government bureaucracy, commonly called “Boliburgueses,” they are also taking advantage of the situation to invest part of the enormous sums of money that they have stolen and take the definitive step to become large owners, because it is not enough for them to be only bureaucrats of the government and the State.
It is an amply confirmed characterization and from Marea Socialista we have been warning about this course taken by the government, while we directed our efforts toward the attempt of rasing a political and militant alternative, with the capacity to mobilize in the streets against the two rights, against their anti-worker and anti-popular plans.
How to build that revolutionary alternative?
The frank weakness in which we find ourselves as left-wing and genuinely revolutionary factors in Venezuela is no secret to anyone. More so with the generalized panorama of demobilization and atomization in which workers find themselves, as well as the other precarious social sectors; inasmuch as there is no workers’ central or political party on the national stage that actually organizes and mobilizes due to the great demands that reflect our profound needs as a class.
The emergence of a new alternative political reference for the working class and the people can only come from the growth and development of their level of struggle and organization. That is why the great task of the moment is to try to build a space for struggle with a plan that aims at the social, organic and political recovery of the sectors hardest hit by the crisis, which do not see a reference in this panorama, to which they can link to in the search for real solutions to their problems.
It is clear then that each current, each party or union, cannot itself carry out the task of articulating and organizing the fight for the great demands and needs of that great majority of the population that has to survive daily without salaries, without healthcare, without an effective vaccination plan against Covid-19, without quality public services, without food and having also to bear with the brutal repression of the State security forces.
So, starting from the central coincidence that workers and popular sectors must find a way out based on our own interests, the situation invites us to have sufficient integrity and to be able to put in place a genuine and effective, democratic and transparent, articulation of all political factors that, from a class perspective, oppose the privatization plans of the government and its partners of the other right, the traditional right, which are sustained on the basis of corruption and our precarious conditions of life.
It is a priority to attend claims such as the recovery of a salary that corresponds to the cost of living, or what is the same, a salary that starts from the coverage of the cost of the basic food basket (taking into account Art 91 of the Constitution); recovery of the true value of social benefits, of our retirements and pensions; the fight for the freedom of imprisoned workers; promote and develop impactful campaigns to reject the criminalization of protest; question the payment of the illegitimate and corrupt foreign debt, to demand that these resources be used to attend to the emergencies and most urgent needs of the population; for an authentic massive vaccination plan against Covid-19 and for the adequate care of the sick… These are, among others, some of the axes that can contribute to organize the struggle in urgent terms, and from there, help to erect that political alternative that we so much need.
In Marea Socialista we continue fully committed to these concrete tasks of struggle and thus we have been coming together with other organizations in daily action. It seems important to us that the PCV and the APR seek to join forces in that direction, as reflected in their statement, and in the heat of these concrete struggles, carry forward the discussion process and the initiatives that may lead us to the construction of the so longed for political alternative. But we insist on the necessity of uniting in action and giving ourselves a common policy that leads to translate discursive lines into action.