For a socialist solution in Venezuela

By Eduardo Sartelli – Venezuela is not experiencing a tragedy. The gods of the capricious Olympus are not the ones who had forced it to choose between the imperialism and the most debased of the Latin American bourgeoisies. Chavism is responsible. A dictatorship that kills workers, starves its people and sullies everything it touches. It had had everything in its hands and it lost it all. It’s a (bourgeois) headless sword. Chavism is a political scam, and what Venezuelan people are suffering is Chavism fault. The only hope left is that Chavism will fall in the middle of an insurrection that establishes de facto a regime of armed and mobilized masses. A short impasse will be reached, an impasse in which imperialism and the opposition bourgeoisie will rapidly try to fill the gap. Guaidó proclamation attempts to anticipate events and avoid the consequences of what the opposition have never wanted: the fall of the regime due to uncontrolled mass mobilization. The openly confessed meetings between Guaidó and Diosdado Cabello are part of the negotiation, not to save the “peace” as Cabello said, but to avoid the mass insurrection. They both know that such way out creates conditions for immediate popular autonomy. They both know also that mass insurrection encourages the emergence of new leadership, that arise from street fighting, and of new organizations that spontaneously blossom to reorganize life and meet the most basic needs.

Most of the left-wing, hypocritically, speaks about the coup d’état as if there were not any rebel masses in the streets, even clearly Chavist masses. It tries to wash its hands, more worried about being labeled as “pro-imperialist” than for pursuing the current and pressing tasks that the Venezuelan working class is already conducting. Left-wing refers to Maduro as a “legitimate” president and talks about “the lesser of the two evils”, forgetting that his main support are not the Venezuelan masses but the Russian and Chinese imperialisms. The left-wing does not say a word about them or their appropriation of the main Venezuelan economic resources. Venezuela has become a colonial enclave, but apparently, there are “good” imperialisms and “sovereign” colonies. A common excuse among the revolutionaries is the fear to a Yankee military invasion or (more probably) a Brazilian one. Neither Bolsonaro nor Trump are going to take action until Maduro falls. At that moment, they are hoping the Venezuelan opposition takes control of the situation. Only in the case of the establishment of a revolutionary government, they would take military action. The idea of a military invasion is a Chavist huge lie to force everybody to line up behind him and remove every possible revolutionary leadership for the crisis.

A large part of the left-wing does not have the nerve to speak the truth: Chavism has to be destroyed. This is the starting point for any revolutionary strategy. The pretension of a scenario in which imperialism does not play its game in the crisis, the only one in which the left-wing would dare to encourage the fall of Maduro, is absurd. The matter is here and now, in this scenario. In this context, the aim is the organization of popular assemblies by workplace and by neighborhood, the swift formation of a National Assembly of Employed and Unemployed Workers, the arming of the population and the formation of defense guards for the assemblies, the propaganda to break the armed forces and the control over the neuralgic points of social life (factories, banks, marketing chains, food and medicines distribution centers, the media, energy supply, etc.). Imperialism will want to end the crisis fast. If an Assembly of workers is not raised as an instance of dual power, we know how things are going to end. Lining up behind Maduro will only lead to the prolongation of the crisis and to the defeat by the Yankee imperialism. Down with Maduro, up with the Venezuelan working class!