Venezuela faces civil war

Chris Trotter, well-known in NZ as a ‘left’ commentator, rubbishes those calling for revolution to solve the crisis in Venezuela. He describes the power of the armed forces of modern states and then asks revolutionaries “how big is your army?” compared to that of Maduro.  Clearly, he wants workers to put their trust in Maduro to defend Venezuela against any imperialist intervention rather than arm themselves to resist imperialism, win over the ranks of the army, and replace Maduro’s‘Bolivarian’ bourgeois regime with a workers and poor farmers’ government. 

Trotter has always had a distaste for the revolutionary masses, from the time when he wrote off the Red Fed and backed the social democratic road to socialism in Aotearoa in his book No Right Turn. The role of social democracy (those self-proclaimed labourite leaders in the unions and in government) is to disarm the masses and capitulate to the capitalist state. To speak only about how 'socialist' Maduro has a big loyal army ignores the urgency of splitting the ranks from the officer command to supply arms to the workers loyal to Maduro to form militias capable of defeating a determined US-sponsored coup. 

Chile 1973 is evidence of what happens when reformists rely on a self-professed 'socialist' leader who actively opposes arming the masses.  Germany 1919 is an example of armed mutineers capable of taking power being disarmed by a deal between the reformist 2nd International Social Democracy and the German ruling class. The positive example is Russia 1917 when the armed workers, soldiers and peasants’ soviets took power and defended and defeated an imperialist invasion in a four-year civil war. 

The history lesson is, never rely on social democratic politicians or popular fronts if you want to make a revolution. The masses have the ability to arm and defeat the forces of both social democracy and fascism. A current example is the Anti-Fa mobilization in the US recounted in this issue. Social democracy will always slag off the revolutionary left as 'unrealistic', ‘ultraleft’ and ‘sectarian’, as a way of blaming workers for not being ready for revolution.  A cheap and nasty disarming and diverting of workers onto the parliamentary road and into the arms of fascism. 

The most significant test case of armed workers organising today is what is happening in the USA. The dominant but declining world power with a Bonapartist leader (who claims to stand for the nation ‘above classes’ but is covertly serving reactionary classes) capable of moving right to an open fascist regime using petty bourgeois armed gangs to openly attack working class organisations. That is the cue for the outbreak of an armed US civil war, actually a 'class war', between armed workers and armed capitalists that is the inevitable result of the decline and decay of US imperialism. 

Of course, such regimes attempt to suppress the armed masses at home by embarking on more imperialist adventures and invasions of neo-colonies like Venezuela in the name of the ‘war on terror’. US military adventures will come up against its major rivals, Russia and China, causing more genocides and bigger wars.

The outcome, socialism or barbarism, will depend on organized armed worker self defence against a right Bonapartist or Fascist regime, and refusal to fight foreign wars against oppressed countries or imperialist rivals. Just as the German and Russian workers and soldiers did 100 years ago.