From just over a month ago, we are witnessing blatant imperialist interventionism in Venezuela. The failed coup attempt of February 23 will not be the last. Meanwhile, the economic and social crisis that millions of workers and the people of Venezuela are suffering continues to deepen. The country is deteriorated to the limit of collapse, with a situation of unbearable poverty and decadence.
Trump takes advantage of the popular desperation due to the economic collapse and enormous discredit of Maduro´s government, who the majority of the population correctly hold responsible for their suffering, to launch this unacceptable intervention on Venezuela, and continues to threaten with a possible military invasion to impose his puppet, the right-wing Juan Guaido, who proclaimed himself provisional president.
For its offensive, the U.S. government counts with the active collaboration of the governments of the Lima Grupo, totally functional to the mandates of the “master in the North”, and with the complicity of the European Union and other international organisms, who play the “good cop” in this imperialist interventionist offensive.
This attempted coup is supposedly carried out in the name of “democracy”, “human rights” and “humanitarian aid” for the people. This carries an incredible cynicism, coming from Donald Trump and officials of the government which has most attacked democratic rights in the world, responsible for the hunger of hundreds of millions of people, bloody wars of rapine and mass exoduses. Or from Ivan Duque, president of Colombia and representative of a regime of terror, responsible for thousands of disappearances and violations of human rights, and the proto-fascist Jair Bolsonaro, defender of the worst dictatorship in the history of Brazil, who are in charge of announcing the servile positions of the Lima Group, along with other right-wing anti-workers heads of state, like Mauricio Macri.
We reject the aggression that is taking place. All the speeches about “democracy” that surround it, is at the service of imposing an illegitimate government that would allows big corporations to plunder Venezuela´s enormous resources whim, which would bring more hardships for the workers and people of Venezuela.
The Maduro government
In turn, it is a fact that the government of Nicolas Maduro has lost all social consensus. The huge mobilizations and protests against him that take place in Venezuela, to which many contingents from the popular neighborhoods have joined, prove this.}
His policy of sustaining himself and the bureaucracy that profits from the privileges derived from the control of the state to negotiate, causing a huge embezzlement to the nation, while governing with capitalists and allowing foreign corporations to get rich, is responsible for the humanitarian crisis experienced by the Caribbean country and the indignation of the Venezuelan people who no longer support the arrogance, corruption and hardships to which they are being subjected.
The current government of Venezuela has nothing to do with the left or socialism. Nor with the left nationalism of the Chavez era, which, riding the mass mobilization, took some progressive measures that allowed significant improvements in the living standards of working people. Maduro, maintaining a deceitful anti-imperialist discourse, has reversed that process. Not even in these moments of imperialist aggression and coup threat has he taken a single measure against the imperialist corporations or the bourgeoisie that is behind the coup. He continues to pay foreign debt and allow the flight of foreign currency, while subjecting the people to wages that are insufficient to eat a single day. Maduro’s is a capitalist government that uses repressive methods to contain popular discontent and defend its privileges. The bureaucracy in power, with its actions, is responsible for the strengthening of nefarious characters like Guaido, just as the PT has been responsible for the emergence of Bolsonaro in Brazil and all the Latin American false progressive leaders are responsible for the return of right-wing alternatives after a long time.
Maduro can not continue ruling for six more years. He has lost popular support and will only be able to sustain himself on the basis of the armed forces and an increasingly brutal repression, like the one unleashed by Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua to remain in power against the will of the popular majorities.
Nor can a puppet government imposed by the United States, by any means, be accepted. If they attempt this through a military invasion or a coup supported by sectors of the army, the workers and peoples who suffer daily the aggression of the imperialist beast and the bourgeoisie will close ranks and promote an international mobilization until defeating them.
For a working-class solution to the crisis
Faced with all this and the enormous concern that millions of Venezuelans have for what may happen next weeks, we believe that today the solution for Venezuela can only come from the articulation of a series of political and programmatic proposals, independent of the interests of U.S., European, Chinese, Russian imperialism and the Vatican, as well as of the Venezuelan government and the bureaucracy that clenches onto power.
The working people, mobilized independently, are the only ones who can respond according to the needs of the majority of the population. It is necessary to promote and impose a revolutionary constituent process, for workers to be the ones who discuss and decide what to do with oil, mining, wages, inflation, external debt, health and public education, corruption and all the great national issues. And apply an emergency economic plan that starts by not paying the external debt, recovering the millions sent to foreign accounts, regaining full control of oil production, distribution and marketing under workers´ control and without the intervention of foreign corporations, breaking all mining agreements that plunder the country and destroy nature; granting, with these resources, an important and urgent wage increase to all sectors and imposing a strict control of foreign trade and domestic production to curb inflation by punishing companies that continue to increase prices .
In order to strengthen this policy, it is very important for the classist workers´ organizations and the Venezuelan revolutionary left, which are confronting foreign interventionism, Guaido and also daily confront the Maduro government and the bureaucracy, along with honest intellectuals and other popular fighters, to advance toward shaping a common anti-capitalist and truly socialist political alternative for Venezuela. With the strategy of accumulating social and political strength so that the proposal that the workers be the ones who govern and decide everything, gain more and more strength, sympathy and social support. And to help new generations join as militants to organize themselves politically for these objectives.
Yankees out of Venezuela!
Nos Guaido nor Maduro! They must all go!
For the independent mobilization of the working class and the people!
Working people must decide their own destiny!
For a working-class emergency plan!
Workers must govern!
Anticapitalist Network – PST Turkey
Ankara, February 27, 2019