A few days ago, U.S. troops attacked and hijacked a Venezuelan oil tanker in caribbean waters
near Grenada island. This measure is added to a long list of imperialist aggressions against
Venezuela in recent decades, which escalated a few months ago, with the United States
bombings of alleged «narco-boats», leaving more than 95 people dead. In recent days, Trump
has threatened to carry out direct military interventions, including ground invasion, «special
operations» (assassinations) or bombings within the country.
To attack Venezuela, the U.S. government, led by Trump, argues that Maduro is the leader of an
international drug cartel that would operate both internationally and within the United States,
information that was dismissed even by the U.S. own security agencies.
The reality is that the United States uses the «war on drugs» as a justification to attack a country
that does not fully align itself with its interests, in the same way it did when it invaded Panama
in 1989, accusing then-President Manuel Noriega of being a drug trafficker.
Some analysts argue that Trump’s goal is to implement a regime change in Venezuela, starting
with the removal of Maduro and possibly other important regime figures. This analysis is very
plausible, since for decades the United States has maintained a conflictive relationship with the
Venezuelan regime, at times tougher and at others more negotiable. The United States cannot
accept regimes that are not fully aligned with its interests, particularly in Latin America, its
«backyard,» and in a country that possesses the world’s largest oil reserves. The Venezuelan
migration crisis is another factor that drives imperialism to try to intervene in the country, with
the aim of containing the migration of millions of refugees to the United States.
U.S. imperialist aggression must be completely rejected by the world’s working class and youth.
U.S. imperialism is the greatest enemy of the working class and the peoples. An imperialist
intervention in Venezuela would mean the first step in intervening in any other country that
does not immediately submit to U.S. interests.
Venezuela’s working class, which is mostly fed up with Chavismo, should not believe that a U.S.
intervention would benefit the working people. On the contrary, Venezuela’s history is marked
by pro-U.S. governments that completely looted the country, that looting was so profound that
it gave rise to a great popular rebellion, the Caracazo, in 1989, later channeled by Chavismo.
Therefore, in the event of a U.S. invasion of Venezuela, military unity with the Maduro
government and all the Venezuelan people will be essential to expel the invaders. However, that
cannot mean any political support or alliance with Maduro.
No political support for Maduro’s regime!
Opposing imperialist intervention in Venezuela does not mean supporting the Maduro regime.
Chavismo, which has been in power for almost 30 years, has transformed Venezuela into
wasteland. There are almost eight million Venezuelans refugees around the world. Those who
remained in the country live, for the most part, in deep misery.
The «left» which defends the Maduro regime argues that the crisis in Venezuela is the result of
U.S. sanctions; that argument, however, is totally false. The economic and social crisis in
Venezuela began with the fall in the price of oil in 2013-2014. While the price of oil was at an
all-time high, Chavismo, led by Hugo Chávez, managed to finance a series of social programs
that kept the poorest population «pacified» and with a basic quality of life. These programs,
however, did not change the country’s dependence on oil.
While this process of «pacification» of the masses was taking place, Chavismo co-opted social
and workers’ leaders into the bourgeois state apparatus, offering them power, positions and
privileges. In this way, the military, Chavista businessmen and a new union and state
bureaucracy began to govern the country according to their own interests, often in association
with foreign capital, including North American capital. Cases of corruption multiplied and
Chavista leaders began to enrich themselves, a phenomenon that gave rise to the so-called
«bolibourgeoisie». One clear example of this process is Diosdado Cabello (military officer and
current Minister of the Interior of Venezuela), considered the number two of the Chavista
power, only behind Nicolás Maduro and one of the biggest businessmen in the country.
This decline of Chavismo – also expressed in the deterioration of PDVSA, the state oil company –
together with the country’s dependence on oil exports, generated the current economic crisis.
The imperialist sanctions came after the beginning of the crisis, due to the inability of the
Venezuelan state to pay the enormous debt it owed to U.S. creditors. For this reason, U.S.
sanctions and confiscations of the Maduro government have nothing to do with a dispute
between capitalism and socialism. In reality, these are inter-bourgeois disputes to define who
will keep the country’s oil revenue.
With Chávez’s death, the economic and social crisis in Venezuela deepened. Maduro, the new
dictator, together with the Armed Forces, began to repress demonstrations of social discontent
with a heavy hand. Freedom of association, which was already very limited during the Chávez
period, became virtually non-existent, as the Chavista bureaucracy controls the main unions and
persecutes its opponents.
We maintain that the Venezuelan regime is a bourgeois dictatorship because Maduro governs
supported by the Armed Forces and all bourgeois-democratic institutions are under his direct
control, without any autonomy, even by bourgeois own parameters. Opponents, both from the
left and the right, are persecuted, arrested and/or expelled from Venezuela, in addition to being
disqualified from contesting elections. The last elections, completely fraudulent, were just a
theater to grant some legitimacy to the Maduro government. Maduro’s speeches in defense of
socialism or the «unity of the Latin American peoples» are nothing more than speeches, since in
practice it is a bourgeois government administering a capitalist state that represses any attempt
at popular organization that questions its interests.
With the increase in conflicts with the United States, the dictatorship deepened its relations
with China, contracting huge loans. Today China is one of the largest creditors of the Venezuelan
state and also its main trading «partner». This dependence on Chinese capitalism, however, does
not imply a cooperative relationship. China has no interest in entering into a conflict with the
United States and is highly unlikely to defend Maduro against a U.S. attack. Its main interest is
that Venezuela pays the enormous debt it has with Chinese capital, something that could
happen even after a pro-imperialist military coup against Maduro.
To try to reduce the pressure on the regime, Maduro has sought to negotiate with U.S.
imperialism. These negotiations, which advanced during the Biden administration in the United
States, receded again with the arrival of Trump. During Biden’s presidency, Chevron oil company
exploited Venezuelan oil again, a relationship that continues to this day.
Currently, Trump seeks to force Maduro’s departure and a transition to a government closer to
U.S. imperialism, which guarantees greater bourgeois stability in the country and curbs the
penetration of Chinese capital.
It is necessary to build a political alternative of the workers in Venezuela
It is more urgent than ever to build a revolutionary workers’ party in Venezuela, with complete
independence from Chavismo. The future of the country should not be decided by the White
House, the Bolivarian bourgeoisie, nor by the pro-imperialist right. María Corina Machado
represents a neoliberal bourgeoisie allied to Washington, willing to restore a privatizing and
subordinate model. Both Chavismo and the right-wing opposition are expressions of the same
ruling class, linked to different blocs of international capital.
Therefore, the real alternative is workers’ and people’s self-organization. Only the working class
can recover the natural resources – oil, gas and mining – under workers’ control, expropriate the
bourgeoisie and rebuild the economy on socialist, democratic and internationalist foundations.
• No to U.S. imperialist interference in Venezuela and throughout Latin America!
• Down with the capitalist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro and the bolibourgeoisie!
• For the nationalization of oil and all natural resources under workers’ control!
• For a workers’ and people’s revolution that overthrows the Maduro dictatorship! For a
government of the workers and the poor Venezuelan people!
• For the internationalist unity of the peoples of Latin America against all forms of imperialist
domination!
IRC International Reconstruction Committee
