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.

USA Hands Off Venezuela!

Chavistas rally to fight the threatened US led coup to grab Venezuela's oil wealth

Maduro and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) are not capable of resolving the crisis of capitalism and defeating right populist and imperialist coups d’etats in the long run. Rightist reaction makes headway exactly and only where the crisis of working class leadership is not resolved in the workers’ favor. Maduro’s regime is a “left-Populist” model of bourgeois power, of the dictatorship of Capital, that seeks to maneuver between the imperialist blocs and ultimately fails, leaving the masses where they were before, subjugated to the dictates of global capital and as objects to be exploited in inter-imperialist geopolitics.

We have often said, and it has proven to be true, that the PSUV, the Chavez “United Socialist Party of Venezuela,” has always been a popular front, all by itself, in its class membership composition and its program. When state power is held by such a party, the result is no different than the more classical popular front version of a coalition of reformist workers parties with one or more parties of the bourgeoisie. When such regimes fail it is the masses who pay the price. That is, of course, unless the social vanguard is  prepared to solve the crisis of proletarian leadership. This is the ideological struggle between Menshevism and Bolshevism in the modern context. The “socialists” take power and administer capitalism. Or the workers seize power!

We can already see how the struggle within the U.S. ruling class between Trumpsters and the neo-con layers of  historical rightism has resulted in the appointment of Elliot Abrams as Special Envoy for Venezuela. This is the same Abrams, who under threat of felony prosecution took a plea deal and was  convicted of withholding information from Congress in the Iran/Contra affair. He was an apologist for the Mozote massacre of over 500 in El Salvador and facilitator of any number of other such “fabulous achievements” for which he was charged but never tried. He is the capitalists’ equivalent of a mob enforcer, i.e., a persuader of enforcers. And he is now in charge of crushing the Venezuelan revolution.

Chavismo, an ideology based on a failed putchist’s rise to power as a “left-populist” was always incapable itself of freeing the country from the shackles of imperialism and establishing socialism.  Relying on administration of the capitalist state it, never desired to or tried to build a revolutionary workers party capable of making the socialist revolution. Rather, it recreated the often tried and often failed ‘bloc of classes’ model in the name of an “anti-imperialist” 21st  century Socialism. This “socialism” sought Win Win deals with like-minded “socialists” in China, where the bloc of four classes ideology has led to the resurgence of the capitalist mode of production with the “communist” party in power. Because of their faith in the “progressive” sectors of the bourgeoisie and in Chinese and Cuban socialism, the Chavistas prevented the popular assemblies from growing into revolutionary workers councils which armed the masses to establish direct democratic workers control of the economy and make the socialist revolution.   Instead the Chavistas used their party to bloc with the “progressive” bourgeoisie–the “bolio-bourgeoisie” and this bloc tied the workers trapped in the Chavista party to their own capitalist state and blocked their road to power.

The Venezuelan National Assembly is not an institution that serves the working masses of Venezuela, but the capitalist government of Maduro AND property rights that defy the official land reform, which  in any event actually guarantees the ownership rights of the latifundistas who can prove title dating to 1848, i.e., the biggest landowners! In total contrast we say the democratic organizations of the working class are the trade unions, the factory and workplace committees, worker and union self-defense guards, worker assemblies, workers councils and a revolutionary workers party and revolutionary workers’ International. We say expropriate the latifundistas and land to those who till it! For a Planned economy to employ and feed everyone!

Today in Latin America after decades of experiments in bourgeois “democracy,” sloganeering for another constituent assembly builds illusions in the failed forms of cross-class democracy.  Our fight is for the formation of workers councils and a government of workers councils that takes all political power into the hands of the workers’ self-organized bodies. A constituent assembly, “revolutionary” or otherwise, is only a detour and an obstacle to the path to workers power. A cross-class assembly will only serve the reaction. We call for workers councils and an All-Venezuela Council of Workers’ deputies. These should be immediately recallable by the local bodies.

The history of Popular Fronts has in all cases and varieties been an interregnum permitting rightism to prepare its revenge upon the masses. Likewise, where all petty-bourgeois tendencies in the workers’ movement embrace a nationalist and minimalist program, worker revolutionists propel an internationalist perspective, an international party, an explicit transitional program and the permanent revolution, where all the democratic tasks are carried through to consummation and exceeded and outgrown by concretizing the socialism of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!”

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.

The revolutionary cancellation of the debt to all imperialists will put a  workers government in direct conflict with Chinese imperialism. China is owed $23 billion, a debt which takes half of Venezuelan oil revenue proceeds to sustain.  For a rentier state with a one crop economy this debt to China is strangling the nation in the name of 21st century socialism. Chavez cut deals to provide underpriced oil to China in return for loans, which were lauded by the left as the foreign aid of  a ”workers State” (International Communist League-ICL and other Robertsonites) or as anti-imperialist solidarity by the World Social Forum (WSF), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Workers World Party (WWP), etc. Only revolutionary cancellation of debts to imperialists will permit long-term solving of the food crisis when linked to an internationalist perspective of socialist federation of Latin America, a planned workers economy that unites the cities and the countryside.

US HANDS OFF VENEZUELA! NO IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION!

PROSECUTE ELLIOT ABRAMS FOR WAR CRIMES! DOWN WITH TRUMP!

FOR MASS ACTIONS AND STRIKES AGAINST US MILITARY ADVENTURES!

ABOLISH SOUTH COM, BRING ALL US TROOPS HOME NOW!

RUSSIAN MERCENARIES OUT NOW!

ONLY WORKERS POWER CAN GUARANTEE  DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS TO FREE SPEECH, ASSEMBLY AND PRESS! FREE ALL CLASS WAR POLITICAL PRISONERS!

NEITHER MADURO NOR GUIADO BUT A WORKERS’ & CAMPESINOS’ GOVERNMENT BASED ON WORKERS COUNCILS AND WORKERS MILITIAS!

FOR WORKERS DEFENSE OF VENEZUELA FROM IMPERIALISM!

FOR WORKERS ACTION AND SELF-DEFENSE COMMITTEES TO DEFEAT RIGHT-WING AND IMPERIALIST REACTION!

VENEZUELAN MILITARY RANK-AND-FILE SOLDIERS: ARREST YOUR OFFICERS AND ARM THE MASSES! LAND TO THOSE WHO WORK IT!

CANCEL THE FOREIGN DEBT AND NATIONALIZE THE COMMANDING HEIGHTS OF THE ECONOMY UNDER WORKERS CONTROL WITH NO COMPENSATION! FOR A RATIONAL, SOCIALIST PLANNED ECONOMY!

FOR A VENEZUELAN REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS PARTY AND A NEW REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS INTERNATIONAL BASED ON THE METHOD OF THE 1938 TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM!

FOR A SOCIALIST FEDERATION OF LATIN AMERICA!

First Published by CWG(USA) http://www.cwgusa.org/?p=2264

Class Struggle, #123, Summer 2017/18

   CS 123 Summer 2017/2018 by davebrownz on Scribd

Class Struggle, 122, Spring (September-November) 2017

   Class Struggle 122 Spring 2017 by davebrownz on Scribd

Where is the FLTI on Russia/China in Venezuela?

 

When a revolution stops halfway instead of going all the way to victory, it will be defeated by the counter-revolution. Since Chavez took power in the name of the Bolivarian Revolution and proclaimed “21st Century Socialism” we saw this clearly as an attempt by the ‘Bolivarian’ fraction of the national bourgeoisie to build a sort of half-way house Cuban/Chinese 'socialism-in-one-country'. The fate of such a half-baked revolution would be that the weak national bourgeoisie would have to act as compradors to not only US imperialism, but the rising Russian and Chinese imperialism, to suppress the workers’ revolution.

We wrote in 2009 that the regime was nationalising US oil interests, but at the same time becoming dependent on Chinese and Russian loans to keep the state oil company, PDVSA, solvent. The regime's anti-imperialist posture against the US was boosted by its Castroite and Chinese ‘market socialist’ credentials under the guise of a “5th International”! When we pointed this out to the FLTI we were condemned as US social chauvinists.

As predicted, today we see the Bolivarian regime under pressure from imperialism, and from its own working class suffering from years of deprivation and repression by the regime. The FLTI see this crisis as one of the US staging a coup d’état to restore the opposition bourgeoisie to power and control of the PDVSA. We see it as much more than that.

The US under Trump is acting to limit the growing influence of its big rivals, Russia and China in Venezuela. Already its sanctions have forced the regime further into the arms of Russia and China. They have responded by upping their ownership and control of Venezuelan oil resources.

This means that as Russia and China increase their stakes in Venezuela, US sanctions will hit their investments hard. The have every reason to support the regime and its repression of the workers who turn against it.

Most important, the failure of the FLTI to understand the rise of Russia and China as imperialist powers, disarms workers who still have faith in the Bolivarian regime and its Russian and Chinese allies. If the army splits and a coup is attempted, then it is all on for a war between the regime backed by the US bloc and the opposition backed by the Russia/China bloc.

The FLTI is calling correctly for workers to break from the Bolivarian regime and build an independent workers government. And in the event of a coup and civil war it will correctly defend the regime militarily from US imperialism. But what will it say about the role of Russia and China when they take the side of the regime to defend their investments, and workers illusions in the Bolivarian revolution disarm them in the face of these new imperialist powers? To claim that Russia and China are dupes of the US won’t wash. Time to face the reality that Russia and China are new imperialist powers.

Mayday: Socialism or Death!

May 1^ST:  International Workers’ Day

Socialism or Death!

For workers to survive, capitalism must die!

Capitalism as a social system is breaking down. It has long passed its use-by date. Capitalism is well into its terminal crisis. Every month and year brings with it more death and destruction. 

The two imperialist blocs led by the US and China are engaged in a life and death struggle for survival. They now pit workers against one another from Bosnia to Venezuela and threaten a new world war. The threat of such a war is most evident in the build up of US military encirclement of China in the Pacific. Never before has the alternative “Socialism or Death” carried the same urgency. 

Capitalism was a huge advance over the previous societies because it allowed humanity to create sufficient wealth from nature to establish the conditions for a socialist society to emerge. For the first time in history humanity could look forward to living in a state of plenty, abundance and freedom, rather than a state of scarcity, poverty and misery.

Capitalism could do this because the profit motive drove individual capitalists to compete to revolutionise industry. To do this they had to increase the rate of exploitation of wage labor which increased the productivity of labor to undreamed of heights. 

But the inevitable consequence of this was that massive wealth was accumulated in the pockets of the capitalist class, while the producing class, the great mass of society, became relatively impoverished. All those who say that this obscene disparity of income can be corrected by means of reforms sow illusions in a peaceful outcome of capitalism’s decline and fall.

In reality capitalists are incapable of backing off the drive for profits which brings with it the destruction of those same forces of production that create the basis for socialism. Fracking and deep-sea drilling for oil and gas is proof of this. Not only must capitalism destroy itself it will destroy humanity and nature in its blind struggle to survive.

For humanity to prevent this destruction it must destroy capitalism first. The working class, the great majority of humanity, must overthrow capitalism to allow a new socialist society to emerge capable of stopping the earth’s climate catastrophe and the extinction of the human, and most other, species. 

We can see that this realisation is what underlies the many manifestations of worker and peasant uprisings and revolutions taking place around the world. While the capitalist system tries to make workers and peasants pay for its crisis by destroying jobs, living standards and the lives of workers, workers are rising up in resistance. 

Everywhere we look we can see workers rising up. The global crisis means that the imperialist powers can no longer rely on the bosses’ ‘democracy’ to impose austerity in every country. This has produced uprisings against dictatorships such as the Arab revolutions that were sparked by the suicide of Mahomed Bouazizi in Tunisia in December 2010, including the Syrian revolution that broke out in March 2011, against the regime of Bashar al Assad. 

In other places workers have gone on strike against the austerity attacks of bosses such as the miners of Marikana, South Africa, in August 2012, who were then shot down in cold blood by the ANC regime; the Greek popular resistance to extreme austerity that led to many general strikes; the youthful indignados of Spain and Italy who are still occupying squares; and the local wars such as in Syria and South Sudan that are driven by the rival imperialist blocs’ grab for cheap resources and cheap labor. 

In every case, workers resistance is met by capitalist force. Capitalism has no alternative but to physically destroy the class that can dig its grave, the proletariat. To make this destruction more efficient, capitalism uses the false leaders of the workers movements to divide and rule the proletariat along national, race, ethnic and religious lines. 

This typically means capitalist regimes use the labor bureaucracy that controls the unions on behalf of the ruling class to trap workers in popular fronts with one or another imperialist power like the US Democratic Party, and popular front parties such as ZANU-PF allied to China in Zimbabwe and the Bolivarian PSUV allied to China in Venezuela. 

These reactionary fronts and divisions destroy the class independence, unity and organisation of the proletariat, so that workers begin to fight one another instead of the class enemy. We can see such divisions exploding in Thailand, the Ukraine as well as Egypt, Sudan and Syria.

To prevent these destructive divisions, the proletariat needs a revolutionary socialist party and program to unite and guide workers internationally to a victorious socialist revolution. The current leadership of workers movements internationally are incapable of such a task as they share the ideology of the ruling classes to some degree. They promote national, race, ethnic and religious divisions in the name of the ‘democracy’ or the ‘lesser evil’ of one or another ruling class. 

A revolutionary party and program is necessary to fight for the independence of the working class from all such ruling class influences. In every struggle across the world, the international unity of the proletariat is the immediate aim. Its organisation into one world socialist movement led by a revolutionary party and program is the means, and the end is the socialist revolution and the building of a world socialist society. 

This requires that all healthy revolutionary currents that are fighting towards this objective urgently join forces in such a party and program. For us this has to be a party and program based on the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky. For today the Transitional Program of the Fourth International founded in 1938 embodies the method and tasks of the revolutionary party we need. 

Trotsky referred to Marxism as synonymous with dialectics, the method of analysing the dynamics of social change, and the method of applying this was a democratic centralist party. Not only is this the basis for true workers’ democracy where collective decisions are arrived at after all positions have been debated, the centralising of the collective actions of the party is the only means of testing theory in practice and enabling the workers to come to power in the socialist revolution. 

While the Transitional Program was never intended as a blueprint for all time its guiding transitional method is to combine the immediate demands for what workers need to survive and live, such as a living wage and basic democratic rights and freedoms, and while fighting the bosses’ resistance to these demands, workers are led to escalate the fight to challenge the bosses’ power by building their own organisations of armed workers’ power ultimately capable of overthrowing the capitalist state and creating a workers state. 

In this way the working class destroys capitalism, saving its advanced development of the forces of production as the basis for a new society where production is for need, and each and everyone is rewarded according to the formula: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need! 

Such is the future communist society envisaged by Karl Marx in which humanity and nature can live in harmony. “In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” –Karl Marx The Communist Manifesto

Liaison Committee of Communists

Revolutionary Workers’ Group, Zimbabwe,        rwg.zimbabwe@gmail.com

Communist Workers Group, Aotearoa/NZ,         http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz

Communist Workers Group, USA,                           cwgclasswar@gmail.com

May 1, 2014.