Venezuela

Subjecting the workers of Guayana to a precarious existence, as has already been done to the oil workers, has become a priority for the national bourgeoisie, and especially for the Chavist faction in power. This is because the reduction of costs, especially in the primary industries of the region - iron, steel, aluminium, etc - is an imperative necessity to face up to international competition, which is being sharpened by the deepening economic crisis.

The facts that our comrades in Venezuela relate here once again shows that every country is being hit by the same economic crisis and the same measures of austerity. The factions in power can easily pretend to be “liberal”, “progressive” or “revolutionary” but they are part of the same “wild” capitalist attack faced by workers all across the globe.

"Guayana is a powder-keg". This phrase is often repeated by the representatives of the bourgeoisie, the leaders of political parties and unions, whether they are members of the opposition or favourable to the Chavez government; this is how all of them talk about the struggles and mobilisations being carried out by the working class in Cuidad Guayana...

 

The political crisis that has been developing in Honduras since the coup that overthrow President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday 28 June is not simply ‘another coup' in this poor and small ‘banana republic' of 7.5 million inhabitants. This confrontation has important geopolitical repercussions, as well as at the level of the class struggle.

At our public meetings, via e-mails and forums (one of them being Revleft), we have received criticism as much from outside as inside Venezuela. We are accused of giving a proletarian character to a petty-bourgeois movement with nothing to do with a real proletarian struggle, or of supporting the children of the rich of the country who oppose the Chavist regime. We reaffirm our position for the following reasons...

The Chávez government - with the support of the opposition and unions- has unleashed repression against the workers of the Steel Zone of Venezuela who are struggling for their most basic necessities. Here we see the real Senor Chávez and his "socialism of the 21st century".

Dear Comrades.I read with much interest your debate with EK on the question of Che, national liberation, Stalinism etc. This seems to me to be a crucial question at the moment particularly amongst leftists and from what I see, in Latin America with the rise of left-leaning governments in Venezuela etc...

We are publishing our response to a letter sent by a reader from Brazil (T), who asks our opinion about an article he received, from which we are publishing some extracts, and

We are publishing a leaflet by a close contact of the ICC about the student movement in Venezuela. It was produced by the comrade at the height of the movement and distributed at a student assembly held on the 22 June in one of the lecture halls of the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

In Caracas on the 28th May student demonstrations began, which rapidly spread to various cities across the country; the apparent motive was the decision of the government to close the television channel Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which until now has been the main media outlet for the sectors of the national capital that oppose the government of Chávez. This served to ignite the social discontent that had been incubating within the working masses and the population as a whole, this time expressing itself through the student demonstrations...

The striking victory of Chavez in the elections held on 3 December 2006 (Chavez won 63% of the vote against 37% for the opposition candidate) not only consolidates and legitimates the power of the Chavist faction of the bourgeoisie for the next 6 years, but represents a triumph for the whole of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie. Once again, the conflict between bourgeois factions, which has dominated the political scene since Chavez came to power in 1999, has succeeded in polarising the population and drawing it into participating massively in the electoral process. According to the figures of the National Electoral Council, the rate of abstention was the lowest ever, falling from around 40% to about 25%.

When Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez was invited to visit London by Ken Livingstone it was inevitable that it would be used by both Left and Right in capitalism’s political circus. The Right accused him of authoritarianism, sponsoring terrorism, anti-Semitism, repressing and intimidating the media, supporting Iran’s bid for nuclear weapons...

We are publishing here part of our intervention on Alasbarricadas, a Spanish language anarchist internet forum ( www.alasbarricadas.org ).The thread, entitled “Anarchism, anti-imperialism, Cuba and Venezuela”, raised the question of what position to take faced with Chávez and his ‘Bolivarian revolution’ in Venezuela.

We are publishing here an article from Internacionalismo (the ICC's publication in Venezuela) from October 2005 on the situation in Venezuela. The article shows well the reality of the ‘socialism’ of Chavez, who has been in power for seven years, after years of division of power between the right (Christian democracy) and left (AD, social democratic), years during which the leaders of both parties filled their own pockets so arrogantly and brazenly that they couldn’t help preparing the ground for a demagogue like Chavez, who is himself accused of being a dictator by his adversaries.

On April 11th, opposition forces, including factions within the army, overthrew the Chavez government in Venezuela. Forty-eight hours later, Chavez and his government were restored to power. In both instances, the bourgeoisie invoked the rhetoric of democracy. When Chavez was overthrown capitalist propaganda told workers in Venezuela, and the U.S. as well, that the opposition forces were overturning a tyrannical populist president. The military forces involved in this action took great pains to insist this was not a coup, but rather manifestation of the "support of the army for civil society." When Chavez returned to power, capitalist propaganda declared that the overthrow of a democratically elected leader by wealthy oligarchs could not be tolerated.

Introduction

The victory of Hugo Chavez in the referendum on his presidency was not a triumphant for the proletariat and poor masses in Venezuela. Rather, as this Appeal to the workers of Venezuela and the world by the ICC's section demonstrates, it represents a powerful blow against the working class.