Venezuela After January 10, 2025

The International Socialist League (LIS) and Marea Socialista in the face of Venezuelan Situation

A de facto regime

On July 28, 2024, electoral fraud was committed when Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed president-elect without presenting the electoral records. Now, since January 10, 2025, when Maduro was “sworn in” for a third presidential term of 6 years, what was already a markedly authoritarian government has crystallized as a de facto regime, positioned entirely outside the Venezuelan constitutional framework, with the repression and force of the military-police apparatus and the bureaucratic structure as its main support.

The government, which had been increasingly drifting towards authoritarianism, took a leap forward by preventing truly free elections, violating all electoral rules and responding with harsh repression against the people who took to the streets and neighbourhoods on July 29 to demand that their votes be respected. Nearly 2000 were arrested, including teenagers, on charges of “terrorism” and “inciting hatred” for the mere act of protesting.

It is common practice for the government to criminalise any dissent and carry out arrests, and then administer them according to internal or external pressures. In December 2024 and a few days before January 10, 2025, the government, in an attempt to calm the political and social climate, released some of the people who had been arrested in the months leading up to the Christmas holidays, most of them subjected to precautionary measures that restrict their rights. 

The new year has brought a new surge in repression and attacks on democratic rights, establishing something very similar to a state of siege and an undeclared suspension of guarantees, with a new wave of arrests that not only target the radical right, but also the moderate and left-wing opposition, as well as working-class activists. Former presidential candidate Enrique Márquez, who was supported by some political and social groups identified with the left, has already been arrested twice. The regime maintains a siege on the house of political leader Juan Barreto, who had been mayor in Caracas under Chavez and then broke with Maduro. It is persecuting the Chavista lawyer María Alejandra Díaz, baning her presidential candidature.

This repressive escalation includes kidnappings or temporary forced disappearances, the detention of family members as hostages, street police controls that search personal phones and confiscate those that may have anti-government content. Additionally, repression has become a business for many officials who ask for money to not implicate people detained in street operations or border posts. The simple fact of posting criticism or complaints on social networks can lead to a person being deprived of their liberty with ridiculous accusations. The objective of causing widespread fear in the population is clear.

Although the government hid the electoral records, it is known in Venezuela that the great majority of people voted against Nicolás Maduro. They did so not necessarily because they sympathize with the right-wing candidates (the government banned all left-wing candidates), but fundamentally because they are fed up with the prolonged crisis, which is being dumped on the backs of the working people.

The position of Marea Socialista regarding the elections and their results

The recognition of any of the self-proclaimed “presidents” (whether Maduro or Edmundo González) is not appropriate, because it has not been possible for Venezuelan voters to audit and verify the results, and because the electoral process was riddled with all kinds of violations and irregularities, such that this would require ensuring truly democratic elections. Elections in which all democratic norms have been violated with the arbitrary proscription of parties, disqualification of candidates, repression and all kinds of official advantage-taking cannot be validated.

In these elections, Marea Socialista, linked to the International Socialist League (ISL), maintained that workers did not have candidates that expressed their class interests and its position was to vote null. Marea proposed to continue preparing the autonomous reorganization of the working class and the people, against the bureaucracy and capital, and to recover the capacity to fight for its rights, to aspire at some point to raise an alternative to the Maduro government and the leadership of the capitalist right.

Maduro’s anti-working class and authoritarian policy

The disastrous anti-working class and authoritarian policy of the Maduro government, in addition to the dismantling of the conquests of the Bolivarian Revolution, together with the terrifying corruption, have been paving the way for the pro-gringo right, due to the rejection of the government’s false “socialism” by the great majority of the people. 

With Maduro, a kind of authoritarian and highly corrupt state capitalism was consolidated in the country, combined with neoliberal measures that hardly differ from those that the Venezuelan right has always promoted and that the most reactionary governments in Latin America have applied. The Maduro-military-PSUV government (and the so-called “boliburguesía” or “revolutionary bourgeoisie”) is neither a “left” nor a “socialist” government; with its peculiarities, it is more similar to the typical governments of the capitalist right, only fundamentally aligned with the emerging Chinese and Russian imperialisms, geopolitical and economic competitors of US and Western imperialism.

Thus, although it is at odds with US imperialism, it cannot be considered a consistent anti-imperialist government either. Proof of this is the business it maintains with the Chevron company, under conditions that are harmful to national sovereignty, with licenses granted by the United States (despite the economic sanctions). On the other hand, there are also the privatizations of public companies, even granting Chevron the executive management of joint ventures such as Petro Piar.

Imperialist sanctions, as measures to subdue Maduro politically, further aggravated the terrible situation that the working class and the people were already being subjected to. Furthermore, they serve as an excuse for the government to “justify” its authoritarianism and to intensify repression. We stand against these sanctions, which harm the Venezuelan people the most and provide Maduro and the ruling bureaucracy an excuse.

Although originating in the Chavez era, the bureaucratic and militaristic regime of Maduro and the PSUV actually reversed everything that was progressive during that period and aggravated its main problems, despotically consolidating a new caste and a predatory lumpen-bourgeoisie in power, fed by the plundering of national resources, corruption and illicit economies.

This is a government that has destroyed the wages and benefits achieved by workers in the first decade of the 21st century, including union democracy and the labor organizations that were not controlled by the state apparatus or the ruling party. In this way, it offers ultra-cheap labor to national business and transnational capital in conditions of almost absolute labor deregulation.

The right capitalizes on the delegitimization of the false left the bourgeoisie thales advantage of its policies

Due to such behavior, which has resulted in the discredit of the pseudo-leftist government discourse, the traditional right has recovered, managing to drag behind them a majority that lacks social, labor and political organizations of their own. Now, Maduro governs with economic policies that please business associations, having deregulated and cheapened labor to the extreme.

This right wing, represented by María Corina Machado, Edmundo González and others like Leopoldo López or Guaidó, presents itself as the “option” to remove Maduro, but does not oppose his anti-working class policies or his “neoliberal” measures, because Maduro is doing the “dirty” work for Venezuelan and foreign capitalists of destroying social gains and labor union resistance in the name of “socialism”. The bourgeoisie takes advantage of Maduro’s policies, since he has implemented or facilitated many that were in the program of the traditional right (dollarization, opening to capital, low wages, labor deregulation, social control…), although the latter would prefer to recover its direct management of the country and the preferential relationship with the US. On the other hand, the right is actually avoiding unleashing a popular rebellion beyond its control (as María Corina did when the post-election protests broke out on June 29) and is choosing to appeal to sectors of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and US military intervention.

Against imperialist interventionism and the calls of the right 

Marea Socialista resolutely rejects any call for foreign intervention, as well as the calls for coups that lack any real mass participation. Marea stands in defense of the Venezuelan nation and people against interventionism, which does not mean defending the exploitative and oppressive government. Marea insists that the working class and the popular sectors must rely only on their own forces, for which it is necessary to recover their organization and capacity to fight independently of the bosses, bureaucracies and their parties. The liberation of the Venezuelan people and the real recovery of our rights will not come from any of the oligarchies that currently fight for the political power and resources of Venezuela, and much less from those who call for a military intervention ordered by the US government, complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

Resist and recover the capacity to fight

We are in a moment that calls for helping workers and the people to resist against Maduro’s anti-working class and repressive regime, as well as against the super-exploitation of the employers in which the Venezuelan right is complicit. At the same time, we must raise an alternative for workers that allows us to seek a different way out than the one that the traditional right deceitfully offers, while the business class in Venezuela, to which its opposition parties respond, collaborates and takes advantage of the plunder to which the working class is subjected by the government.

The task at hand implies breaking the hegemony of two political leaderships that, while confronting each other, serve the same system of exploitation: the Maduro bureaucracy and the right wing opposition. Both are actually capitalist and are ultimately also both right-wing parties (because Maduroism is a fake left) that fight for control of the State.

Articulation and unity of action of the left opposition social activism

To this end, Marea has proposed and is promoting the articulation of the social and political forces of the left opposition and of working class and popular sectors around a plan of struggle that encompasses our most basic demands and the defense of our social and political rights, as well as mutual defense and solidarity against repression or in demand of the freedom of prisoners.

This is the reason why Marea has been participating in the unitary space of the National Meeting in Defense of the People’s Rights along with other organizations of the left that oppose the government, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela (the original one, because the government created a parallel parapet to prevent the CPV from participating in elections), the wing of Party Patria para Todos (PPT-APR) led by Rafael Uzcátegui, the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSL), and Communist Revolution, to build unity of action to carry out activities and promote campaigns with other organizations or political currents, social movements or unions.

Reorganize the working class and popular movement with independence from the bureaucracy, employers and their parties

The articulation of the forces that fight for the rights of workers and the people must continue to expand and, at the same time, their class independence must be preserved. We believe that only by developing our own organization, consciousness and willingness to fight in all areas, as well as by building a political tool independent of the bureaucracy and the bourgeois parties, will we be able to advance and accumulate forces to fight for a change that can pave the way for a workers’ and people’s government in Venezuela.

Fighting the position of the left that supports Maduro and developing international solidarity with workers and the people

But this task also requires action on the international level in coordination with other revolutionary anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-bureaucratic and authentically socialist parties, especially with those from countries with similar situations; it requires their mutual solidarity, because a definitive solution is not possible in any country without defeating capitalism, imperialism, the bourgeoisies and bureaucracies on a global scale, with the protagonism of the workers and the oppressed peoples of the world.

That is why we are carrying out our struggle in Venezuela as part of the struggle of the ISL throughout Latin America and other continents, to confront the rise of the far right, to express solidarity with the Palestinian people against the genocide in Gaza, to defend the rights of women, to fight for replacing the civilization model that is leading us through dangerous climate change. These tasks take on special importance when we see certain sectors of the so-called left at the international level that are supporting a regime as reactionary as Nicolás Maduro’s (as well as the Cuban bureaucracy and the Nicaraguan regime), who even lend themselves to the farce of a supposed “Anti-fascist International” with a government that shares many traits with the extreme right.

Against Maduro’s repression and reactionary reforms 

It is foreseeable that the government will insist on continuing to impose its conditions based on repression, blackmail and deceit, so we can only expect an even greater deepening of the anti-working class measures and the hardships people are enduring. For example, with the announced “constitutional reform” that Maduro intends to present as “expanding the already existing democracy”, what will happen is an attempt to completely eliminate the constitutional rights that have been blatantly violated for some time and they will want to “legitimize” those practices by adding new reactionary articles. We will have to fight against that.

We do not doubt that they will try to get rid of the annoying Article 91 that reminds them that they have destroyed wages, they will make political, union, social and electoral participation much more inaccessible, they will increase the opacity that covers corruption and the surrender to transnational capital by ending existing nationalist provisions (as they already did with the so-called “Anti-blockade Law”), they will favor their predatory extractivist projects, they will give “legal” cover to privatizations, they will further cut democratic rights and adopt more repressive “constitutional” laws… They will try to do some things by pretending that they organize and give to the people, with false communal organizations that will be absolutely controlled by the government’s apparatus. But it is no less than what the right wing opposition aspires to in many aspects; only that they want to do it under their own control.

Mass consciousness, struggle and political independence

To clarify the consciousness of the workers and the people, to recover the strength and the capacity to fight for the validity of class rights and interests, it is necessary to discuss among working-class and popular circles: the character of this government and why it is not the right or any part of the bureaucracy, but the people themselves who must and can build the necessary solution, why we have reached this situation and what we can do to get out of it. To discuss and resolve democratically what our class objectives are, the actions and the plan of struggle that must and can be carried forward in this difficult stage, taking into account the lessons that Venezuelan history itself and the international struggle of workers and peoples have given us.