Like hyenas circling a wounded animal, the main capitalist powers are ramping up the pressure on the government of Venezuela, in the hope that the economic and political pressure can generate a coup against the Bolivarian revolution. The declaration of the upstart Juan Guaido, that he is the president rather than Nicolas Maduro, has been met with a chorus of hurrahs from the main leaders of world capitalism. Guaido’s ‘self-administered oath of office’ in front of his cheering supporters, has been met with acclaim by the right-wing leaders of Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, France, Britain and Canada, to name a few. The European Union collectively has issued an ultimatum to Maduro to hold fresh presidential elections. The very first to tweet his approval, of course, was Donald Trump, who does not see the irony in the fact that he occupies the White House, despite getting three million fewer votes than his election rival.
Orchestrated moves against the Venezuelan revolution
The Unites States and other major capitalist states are now preparing to increase the economic sanctions on Venezuela, to force a change of government. The USA previously bought half a million barrels a day of crude oil from Venezuela, for refining in the States, but that source of foreign exchange will now be closed off. John Bolton, US security adviser, has said that $7bn of Venezuela’s national petroleum company, PDVSA, will now be frozen. Further sanctions by the EU might mean that there will be no possibility of any international transactions being conducted with any bank accounts under the jurisdiction of US or EU banks. For years the USA has been throttling the Venezuelan economy and now it is time to deliver the coup de grace.
There can be no doubt that the moves against Venezuela have been orchestrated on a world scale. The Bolivarian revolution, massively popular in Venezuela and shining like a beacon to other workers in the region, has long been a thorn in the side of American imperialism and a danger to world capitalism in general. In early January, when Maduro was sworn in as president, the Financial Times, the most sober mouthpiece of British capitalism, complained in its editorial about his election victory, pointing out what needed to be done, namely a “Zimbabwe-style transition, led by a palace coup.”
“Whatever happens next”, it continued, “the role of the opposition-controlled National Assembly is key. It is the sole political institution recognised as legitimate by most of the international community. To make it truly effective, though, and a central actor in any transition, the fragmented and disorganised opposition needs to unify.” Step forward Juan Guaido, leader of the National Assembly.
Less than a week after the Financial Times weighed in with its advice, the BBC added its pennyworth, with a highly-slanted and frequently inaccurate hatchet-job on the Venezuelan government of the past twenty years. Entitled, Revolution in Ruins: The Hugo Chavez Story,this was the BBC’s efforts, as the mouthpiece of the British capitalist establishment, to prepare its viewers for the attempted coup of Guaido exactly a week later.
History of US interventions in the Americas
The collective world voice of capitalism is calling on Maduro to go voluntarily and for the Venezuelan armed forces to intervene and force him out if he doesn’t. Maduro has broken all diplomatic relations with the USA but Trump is insisting that his embassy and its staff and its military security will not leave Caracas – hoping, perhaps, to provoke an incident that would justify a more overt military intervention. In living memory, many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have had experience of American force of arms: Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Grenada and Puerto Rico have all experience direct military interventions. When there was an attempted coup against Chavez in 2002, the US government couldn’t get in quick enough to offer its support – although unfortunately for them, that coup collapsed.
Quite apart from these open interventions, there is a long record of dirty covert operations by the CIA against any radical or left-leaning government in Latin America: in Peru, Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere. Allende’s government in Chile was overthrown in a bloody coup in 1973, with no small help from the CIA. In the last few years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the opposition movement in Venezuela.
We take no lesson on ‘democracy’ from Trump
The labour movement internationally will therefore take no lessons in ‘democracy’ from the White House, which even today says absolutely nothing about dictatorships in Central America – oppressing their own people and creating waves of economic and political refugees at the same time – while complaining loud and long about Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
It is clear that this latest attempt to unseat Maduro is the most concerted and serious attempt yet at provoking a coup and it must be opposed by the labour movement internationally, not least by Labour Party members and the leadership of the Labour Party in Britain.
The attempt to overthrow Maduro may be the most serious yet, but its success is not a foregone conclusion. The press in Britain and the west have shown big demonstrations in support of the Venezuelan opposition, but they have paid scant attention to the support that the government has in working class areas. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela can draw on the support of hundreds of thousands of workers. Maduro boasted in December that the country’s civilian militia – many of them armed – has grown to 1.6 million, triple the size it was only a year ago. “We will arm the Bolivarian militia to the teeth”, Maduro claimed in a speech, “…an invading imperialist force may enter part of our fatherland, but the imperialists should know that they will not leave here alive.”
Guaido may not have the necessary social basis from which he can draw support against the majority of the working class who have benefitted from the reforms of Chavez/Maduro. But on the other hand, the economic sabotage of the last few years will inevitably have had some effect on workers and the poorest in society, as their daily efforts to find the basic necessities of life take their toll. The economic dislocation, pushing inflation up to astronomical heights and increasing shortages of many daily necessities, has sapped support in middle-class areas and, at least to a degree, will have had some effect among workers too.
You cannot make half a revolution
Marxists have argued since the first days of the Chavez movement that “you cannot make half a revolution” and the only guarantee of success is to lean on the initiative and organisations of the working class to deal decisive blows against the privileges, positions and power of the capitalist class. Both Chavez and Maduro have left significant levers of economic power in the hands of the capitalist class and the financial and land-owning oligarchy who have used that power to dislocate and sabotage the economy. Where industries have been taken over, it has not been based on workers’ control and management; on the contrary, it has opened a door for corruption and nepotism by top officials and military officers. A quarter of government officials are military officers. In a word, the Maduro government has failed to rest decisively on the organisations of the working class and the lower ranks of the armed forces and this has allowed the frenzied capitalist class to sabotage the economy and spread its poison.
If the claims are accurate, it is good that the government is able to mobilise a militia of one and a half million workers. But even that impressive militia would only represents the potential of workers’ power, unless it was accompanied with a high degree of mobilisation, determination and, above all, with a political programme to see through the Bolivarian revolution to the end. Having armed workers’ militias in every barrio, community and workplace, would offer the greatest guarantee of a safeguard against reaction. This needs to be linked to an economic and political programme of expropriation of the capitalist class: its factories, plants, latifundia and, not least, its press, radio and TV.
Maduro must rest upon the armed working class
To the extent that Maduro rests upon the armed and organised working class and on the lower ranks of the armed forces, and to the extent that he links this to seeing through the Bolivarian revolution, he will improve the chances of defeating this new coup attempt. To the extent that he relies only upon the tops of the armed forces and deals with the generals and the colonels, he risks losing all. According to the New York Times (January 25), “Rebellious military commanders (of the Venezuelan military) even held secret meetings with the Trump administration over the last year to discuss their plans to over throw Mr Maduro” and historically the top officers of the armed forces are not the traditional friends of the working class.
In an attempt to win over officers from the government, Guaido and the National Assembly have circulated an ‘amnesty law’. Venezuela’s chief military attaché in Washington has already defected, although it is one thing to jump ship in the safety of the US capital and another altogether in the maelstrom of Caracas.
If Maduro were to be overthrown now, most likely by means of a switch in loyalty by military leaders, it would mean an enormous defeat for working people in Venezuela. The economic chaos of today would be as nothing in comparison to the devastation that would be wrought by a new military government in Caracas.
The illegitimate National Assembly has already made clear what its economic and political programme would be, should Maduro be forced out. Guaido would seek the privatisation of all the industries taken over by the Chavez and Maduro governments and the rolling back of all the social gains and social programmes from which workers have benefitted. More importantly, they would introduce a vicious clamp-down on all areas of support that now exist for the PSUV and Maduro.
Whatever the degree of organisation or cohesion it is inevitable that many workers, perhaps in the thousands, would take up arms against a coup. The overthrow of Maduro could therefore lead to a military regime, albeit with a civilian ‘face’, that would consolidate itself by a bloody settling of accounts, like in Chile in 1973. That would be the preferred solution of the planners in the Pentagon and the right-wing political leaderships in states like Colombia, Argentina and Brazil. It would not be a benign dictatorship, set on organising elections, whatever the PR is saying now.
Discuss this as a matter of urgency
We would therefore urge Labour Parties, trade union branches, trades councils and Momentum groups to discuss this issue now as a matter of urgency and to pass the model resolution we have published elsewhere on our website. Socialists and activists have a responsibility to be prepared and should on-call to mobilise against any further moves to carry forward a coup in Venezuela. The destruction of the Maduro government would be a serious defeat for the working class in that country, but its significance goes far beyond and to whatever extent we can do so, we must support the Venezuelan government against the threat of reaction.
January 30, 2019
