In our recent statement From New York City to Tierra del Fuego we argued that the US as the Global imperialist hegemon is in terminal decline heading for a depression of unforeseen dimensions. Trump's attempts to re-industrialise the US by bullying every country in the world has failed. The tariff (read sanctions) attack was a failure with the major BRICS refusing to play. Trump was shocked when India refused to comply and joined the growing list of states turning their backs on trade with, and investment in, the US.
The SCO meeting in China in early September became the final straw for Trump when he realised that he had not only lost the ‘great game’ for control of Eurasia, but was now threatened by the BRICS expansion in the US ‘backyard’ declared by the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. In a desperate attempt to prop up US power in the Western hemisphere and put a stop to the power of BRICS spreading in its backyard, Trump has retreated tactically to defend US interests on the hemispheric front, recognising that the survival of its global hegemony demands the defence of US interests on the ‘home front’.
Trump finds a situation in his backyard which has already been transformed by BRICS. A little pre-history. The US failed to halt the rise of the Bolivarian ‘revolution’ in Latin America (LA) following the victory of Chavez in Venezuela in 1998, which was soon joined in 2004 by other leftist regimes in Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and several Caribbean states, to form ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of Our Peoples of America). It had sanctioned and embargoed Cuba since the 1960’s but by the 21st century ALBA was aligned to China when it was emerging as an imperialist power.
Many attempts by the US to overthrow the regime in Venezuela failed, yet it was able to impose vicious sanctions to cripple the oil based economy. By 2009 however, China proved to be the saviour of the global economy. Its rise as a global rival to the US in the Americas, and the formation of BRICS by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, began to challenge US hegemony in its ‘own’ hemisphere. Venezuela, after Cuba, became the main battle ground to test the balance of power between the imperialist blocs in the hemisphere.
As revolutionaries we know that the ultimate test of the balance of power is between imperialism and socialism. It is necessary to analyse the developing situation and apply our revolutionary program to transform the coming war between US imperialism and a weak semi-colony, Venezuela, backed by imperialist Russia and China, into a class war where the workers and farmers of the hemisphere unite to defeat both imperialist sides and overthrow the national bourgeoisie to create a socialist republic of Venezuela as part of a union of socialist republics of the Americas!
The Venezuelan Revolution
The character of the Bolivarian revolution revived by Chavez is that of the bourgeoisie. It fell short of realising national independence and so is frozen in time. Venezuela is a semi-colony and is the source of imperialist superprofits (this is the case in the whole of LA). We said in ‘Cuba Sold Out’ that under Chavez, coming from different starting points, Venezuela met Cuba when it restored capitalism in 2011 as state capitalist regimes. We give military support to it against imperialism, both US and Russia/China. ALBA was an international Bolivarian popular front bloc with China at its head (some called it the 5th International!) which had to be split away from China.
BRICS today is a popular front now spread across the globe. We characterise the class membership of BRICS as a bloc where Russia and China as imperialist powers, exploit the semicolonial countries, which include India, Brazil and South Africa. We do not oppose states joining BRICS as it develops the forces of production along with the extraction of superprofits. But as a global popular front it serves the interests of the ruling classes, and not the working class which is the only class that can replace dying capitalism and build socialism.
That is why we oppose the characterisation of BRICS presented by most of the ‘socialist left’ as a politically progressive bloc that can defeat US imperialism and create the preconditions for socialism. But this is only a surface impression. Capitalism is dying as a mode of production and this process cannot be reversed. Capitalist growth serves only the interests of profits at the expense of the destruction of nature. We explain the danger of the BRICS popular front as the product of commodity fetishism.
The production of value is credited to workers, but in practice this appears as created by the market reducing class struggle to the redistribution of value at the level of exchange. This in turn allows the illusion that workers can win socialism by electoral reforms. Instead of organising to expropriate the means of production, workers become trapped in bourgeois electoralism begging for ‘fair shares’ of the value they produce rather than expropriating it all.
We need a program that critiques the fetish of the ‘American Dream’ and points the way for workers in the Americas to join forces to fight for workers’ revolution and abandon all hope of being rescued by BRICS. In 2019 we wrote:
“To defeat the designs of imperialism, whether USA sanctions and intervention, Chinese debt servitude or Russian projects and influence, the task before the working class is not to defend the Maduro government against the right power grab but to defend Venezuela against all expropriators of the national wealth and the imperialist and proxy militaries assembled in the wings. Maduro will not and cannot defend you! Russian mercenaries are assembled to defend Maduro while Elliot Abrams and war hawks in Washington dust off contingency plans. The URGENT task for revolutionary workers is to break from Maduro and build a revolutionary workers party that fights for the power of workers councils and workers militias. A party which breaks the ranks of the armed forces from defense of the capitalist order and arms the workers and peasants to oppose imperialist intervention, proxy army invaders and rightist coup leaders. Socialism cannot be built in one country. A workers’ government in Venezuela would need to extend the socialist revolution to Latin America and all of South America and beyond.”
After the recent SCO meeting in China, Russia and China are now primed to defend their interests in Venezuela. Russia has sent a detachment of specialist troops and China a Hospital Ship. Rumors of a Chinese navy vessel equipped with an Over The Horizon radar bound for the Caribbean may be disinformation. The BRICS leadership knows that Trump by launching a naval blockade of Venezuela has already opened a continental front against Russia and China on the US doorstep. They must anticipate that front to spread north to Mexico and south to Argentina to re-impose a US sphere of interest.
We must explain why this has to happen and why American workers North, Central and South have to unite to resist every attack coming from Trump. We do not oppose the Venezuelan regime calling on China (and Russia) to provide material aid in their defence. At the same time we do not give this call any political support because that sows illusions that workers can rely on the Bolibourgeoisie and their imperialist mentors to come to their aid. We have to attack the diversions created by national chauvinism and electoralism at home and abroad, and pursue the goal of permanent revolution. Leading that hemispheric struggle with our program is our immediate task.
The American Revolution
Our program is transitional, grounded in Trotsky’s method. It is a program that calls for workers to fight for what they need and to learn from experience that it is necessary to abolish capitalism. In the US and the rest of the Americas today the global crisis impacts on lives and livelihoods. There is no way out for the ruling classes other than fascism, genocide and war. We include genocide because the US today, facing the terminal crisis of capital is at the end of its life returning to its origins. It is destroying the conditions for its existence, including the humans who produce value, by exhausting nature. The original genocides were possible only because the indigenous peoples were materially incapable of resisting. Capitalism was born and developed by means of the slave and wage labour of the survivors.
Today, nature is exhausted. Fascism and war are not sufficient to keep capitalism alive. Yet humans have the means and power to resist and survive, as the example of Hamas proves. The US backed genocide in Gaza may serve the Zionist irredentist vision of a Greater Israel, but that genocide only speeds up the US demise. Against this destruction, in the imperialist epoch, the working masses can and will fight back and end the system that exploits them. As a result of the sacrifice of our indigenous antecedents, the pre-conditions for a universal socialism today are present and able to provide the basis for the final birth of civilization.
It is our view that US imperialism is in terminal decline, incapable of finding a way out, despite desperate tariff wars and sanctions unilaterally imposed on its rivals, and forced to resort to fascism, war and genocide to smash the working class. The evidence is everywhere. Trump claims to be above the law with only a pro-Trump Supreme Court standing in his way. He is using his expanded powers to attack the main threat to the US ruling class - the potentially revolutionary working class.
The US cannot produce enough value to pay its debts and unloads the costs of its crisis onto the working class and those of other countries fearful enough to accept his dictates. But having lost the tariff wars and facing a rapidly rising BRICS, Trump in retreating to defend the US home and hemispheric fronts, is being met by a rising resistance to his attacks. What happens in the coming months and years depends not only on the rise fascism and the end of bourgeois democracy, but also on the development of the class struggle of the exploited and oppressed to resist and fight back.
The same conditions that force Trump to revive the home and hemispheric ‘fronts’, also create the conditions for the rise of workers and farmers' resistance. Stagflation will inflame workers conditions and create opposition on both fronts. Workers must unite in all the Americas to stop Trump’s regime change attacks as and when they come. Whether they succeed or not in the Bolivarian and BRIC states depends on that solidarity. Workers United Fronts must span the whole hemisphere from Canada to Argentina. The surest way to stop US regime change is for workers to bring down Trump’s fascist regime at home!
The same applies in every country that comes under attack. Workers and farmers must convene permanent assemblies to organise general strikes and workers’ militias to bring down the reactionary regimes, preparing the ground for revolutionary workers’ governments in a federation of socialist republics of All America! The success of this continents-wide unity depends upon the revolutionary leadership in the form of a revolutionary workers’ and farmers’ party that spans the hemisphere. That international party can emerge only when all party programs are debated and tested in the heat of class struggle - in the strikes, assemblies, councils, and militias against fascism and war!
For a New World Party of Socialist revolution!
For a Federation of Socialist Republics of All America!
International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency
September 15, 2025
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