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Maduro and his shielded assumption: One of the reactionary factions prevails The events of July 28 were the culmination of a fraud that had been orchestrated with political proscriptions, intervention and disqualification of parties and candidates, imprisonment of leaders of opposition campaign teams, by a civil-military clique that has absolute control of all the powers of the State, supported by the Armed Forces and police forces, its fundamental support. The Government sought a presidential election tailored to its needs, in which an entire arsenal of anti-democratic mechanisms was put into practice, both before and after the election, which would allow it to hold on to power despite the lack of popular support. However, it did not fully succeed and at the end of the election day it chose to throw the opposition witnesses out of the polling stations, declare itself re-elected without showing a single record and refuse to verify the results established by its own electoral law. The records were placed in the custody of the Armed Forces, without public access, which later passed, according to the government, to the power of the TSJ. It is also part of the reality that the country went to elections conditioned not only by the proscriptive and repressive mechanisms of the government, but also by the siege of the economic sanctions of the United States and European countries, which over the years increased the brutal economic crisis, sinking the country and increasing the suffering of the working people. This is kept quiet by the right-wing opposition subordinated to the United States, which hides this reality in its discourse of “free elections.” MCM and Edmundo González did not raise their voices against the ban on left-wing political sectors either. Only employers' options participated in the June 28 election, because the government was in charge of preventing any option to its left. Those sectors that question the exploitation of workers and the unprecedented social inequalities under current capitalism in Venezuela did not have the slightest democratic space in those elections. That is why the proscriptive scheme hit this political spectrum harder. It is worth remembering that this election was reached after successive failed negotiations to arrive at agreed elections, like the Barbados agreements. The main political parties grouped in the so-called “Democratic Unitary Platform”, the Maduro government with the evident participation of the United States, held negotiations that later entered into crisis. As part of these agreements was a supposed electoral schedule that established holding the presidential elections in the second half of the year. Although María Corina Machado’s party did not formally have spokespersons in these negotiations, it was positioned to pressure from outside for an agreement that would favor it, a position that was reinforced with its overwhelming victory in the primaries of the right. Even so, the agreements that implied “guarantees of electoral participation” did not specify names, to the point that a White House envoy, Juan González, went so far as to say, “We care about the process, not the candidate,” in reference to the disqualifications, opening the door for the pragmatism of American interests to accept that MCM did not participate. However, figures linked to the negotiations indicate that the lack of real guarantees regarding the future of the ruling group in the event of losing the elections, which could result in them being imprisoned or extradited to the US, among other options, or the possibility that the agreements would not be fulfilled once they were out of power, played a key role in the failure of the negotiations. On June 29th there was a reaction in popular sectors against the fraud, hundreds of protests were registered in numerous cities, such as in Caracas, where the main focus was on neighborhoods and areas such as Catia and Petare. A protest that was suppressed with a brutal repressive response, which claimed dozens of deaths, more than 2 thousand arrests, action by official repressive bodies and paramilitary groups, thousands of house raids, police cordoning off the exits of many neighborhoods, repressive terror propaganda on social networks, imprisonments for having published messages on social networks, and a massive denunciation device with which the militants of the ruling party pointed out neighbors who protested or denounced the fraud. It is important to mention that Edmundo González and María Corina had declared at midnight on Sunday that they were not calling people to the streets. That is why the protests on Monday June 29th were very spontaneous, and took place in places considered bastions of Chavismo. That is why the call for a rally on Tuesday, July 30 by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González in the more affluent east of the city, a traditional bastion of this political sector, will be different. It had a highly controlled character and was very different from what was experienced on Monday, July 29 in the popular areas. A crossroads with no progressive alternative for the working people On the occasion of the June 28 elections, we said that the polarization between the Maduro government and the armed forces and the sector represented by María Corina, Edmundo and the US was between reactionary factions, that it was a dead end for the working class. After June 28, the fact that some are favored by the popular vote does not automatically make them a progressive alternative, as we will explain later. Despite the prophets of doom, both a certain international left that supports Maduro, as well as those sectors that under the banner of “democracy” line up behind MCM and Edmundo González, there is no such “progressive field” within which to place themselves. It is necessary to forge a field of their own, a political reference of the working class and social sectors neglected by the economic and social system that both the government and María Corina defend. Both sectors represent the interests of businessmen, transnational corporations and government officials who have become rich in the shadow of controlling oil revenues. The scenario is a dispute between a widely repudiated government, which is betting on staying in power at all costs, and an opposition that is not only anti-worker but also pro-imperialist, which only seeks to regain control of state resources and manage Venezuelan capitalism for its own benefit, that is, to do what the civic-police-military caste in power does today. In the case of Maduro, we are faced with a government based on repression, which will continue with big business with imperialist transnationals, which will continue, as soon as it can, paying the foreign debt at the cost of hunger, health, education, water and gas of the people, even willing to return to the IMF to obtain more debt, maintaining the brutal capitalist plans against the workers. Although Maduro is the one in power, both sectors are responsible for the tragedy that the country is experiencing. Because if Maduro is the heir and continuer of the huge plundering of oil revenues carried out by all fractions of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie under Chavismo, both through legal means and through astronomical corruption, and led the country to an economic catastrophe with the policy in the face of the crisis that began to develop since 2014, the side in which María Corina Machado is a member must take responsibility for what the US economic sanctions have meant from 2017 onwards, a policy that they requested and have supported at all times. Recent calculations by Venezuelan opposition economists based in the US estimate that these punishments against the country's economy represented half (52%) of Venezuela's economic contraction between 2012 and 2020; estimates that without sanctions Venezuela would still have faced a severe crisis, with per capita income falling by 34%, but sanctions would have contributed to a drop in per capita GDP of an extraordinary 71%, equivalent to almost three successive Great Depressions. Neither side cared about the unprecedented sinking of the people into poverty, the fact that millions went through years of hunger and continued to suffer great need, producing one of the largest migrations ever recorded in Latin America, condemning them to break up families and abandon their homes in flight from poverty. What does the option led by María Corina Machado represent? It is a fact that the option represented by María Corina has been the victim of aggressive anti-democratic attacks by the Government since before the elections, and the consummation of the fraud would be the culmination of that reality. That, however, does not make MCM and company the expression of a democratic or progressive option for the Venezuelan people. As we pointed out before, economic asphyxiation through the oil embargo, confiscations and other imperialist “sanctions” are weapons with which one of the actors in the dispute, in this case, US imperialism and its allied politicians in the country, influence national politics. María Corina Machado and Edmundo González are part of this path of imperialism intervening and influencing the last election. At the same time, one of the declared objectives of this external economic aggression is to deepen the hardships of the Venezuelan people, betting that this will contribute to the US objective of a change of regime. The way in which MCM and the US government have sought to aggravate hunger and popular suffering in order to achieve their political objective is very democratic! If we look at their career, we see that MCM was involved in all the anti-democratic movements that began when Chavez had an obvious popular majority, and yet the right-wing opposition tried to violently oust them from power, always supported by the US, without caring at all about the popular will. The business-military coup of April 2002, the employers' strike and oil sabotage of 2002-2003, the calls for military coups from Plaza Altamira, the refusal to recognize the results of the 2004 referendum, the boycott of the legislative elections of 2005 (to leave the coup agenda open) - the "democratic" MCM was enthusiastic about all of this. With Maduro in power, María Corina was part of the right wing that rejected the 2013 elections, promoting “La Salida” (The Exit), with which they intended that radicalized right-wing mobilizations of sectors of the middle class would impose a change of government. In 2017, when the loss of the precarious electoral majority that the government was able to show in 2013 was already clear, and it was increasingly relying on openly authoritarian mechanisms, the opposition policy that MCM shared also offered nothing but authoritarian solutions, since their appeal was nothing more than for the military – the same repressors – to remove Maduro’s chair, resorting to frauds such as plebiscites organized by them, where their political base voted and based on whose results they called, once again, on the military, to carry out a coup against Maduro. María Corina also joined the right-wing bet in 2019 when, once again, the “popular sovereignty” of Venezuelans was the least important thing, since imperialist aggressions – including threats of military invasion, which MCM openly supported – were at the service of achieving Donald Trump’s political objectives. MCM has always been so subservient to US interests, even when it engages in demagogy with the interests of the Venezuelan people, that, as an argument in its favor, it has stated that displacing Maduro and taking over the government itself is convenient for “the national security of the United States” and that this will make Venezuela “a faithful ally of the United States.” The objective is to have a government in Caracas that is based on US needs. The speech about the “popular sovereignty” of Venezuelans is gratuitous. In line with this, MCM is in line with the worst of regional and international politics, supporting everything from the colonialist and racist State of Israel and its genocide against the Palestinian people, to nefarious figures like Uribe, who sowed blood and terror in Colombia among the youth, peasants, trade unionists, journalists and defenders of the environment and human rights. From there to the support of the repressive governments of Piñera, Boluarte, Lenín Moreno, Duque, wherever there has been a repressive right-wing government in Latin America, there it has had the support of MCM. Thus, while he is demagogically addressing the problems of the Venezuelan people, Edmundo embraces the reactionary Milei, who is carrying out brutal austerity measures against the Argentine working people. MCM is a businesswoman and politician who has always opposed any small economic or social conquest received by the workers and popular sectors, expressing the interest of a bourgeois family accustomed to enriching itself through the exploitation of workers and the use of the country's public resources. That is why her economic program has nothing progressive for the working class in relation to what the Maduro government has been implementing; she proposes to "privatize everything," her economic "liberalism" implies preserving above all the interests of businessmen and the rich, as is already happening today, and a policy of these characteristics is not applied without repression against those below. It is no coincidence that a constant in the policy of MCM and Co. is the appeal to the military – and now also the police – to deal the final blow to Maduro. They are not concerned about whether the police and military commanders are repressors or violators of human rights, but rather whether they help the objectives of the US and its allies in the country. Thus we see that, for both parties in conflict, achieving their objectives is directly linked to having the current Armed Forces and repressive bodies on their side. What is the social and political nature of the current Venezuelan regime? Against those who, especially from certain reformist and statist lefts outside Venezuela, claim that “despite everything” one should take sides in favor of maintaining the Venezuelan political regime, it must be said that they are proposing to align themselves with a bourgeois regime that expresses the specific way in which a civic-military caste, profoundly anti-worker and anti-popular, is managing the decadent and besieged (by imperialist sanctions) Venezuelan capitalism. An economic and political force in which former officials turned bourgeois, high bureaucrats with the most varied levels of economic association with businessmen and “new rich” favored or born in Chavismo, form a symbiosis; a caste that, in turn, has achieved high levels of coexistence and community of interests with broad sectors of the traditional bourgeoisie, with whom they share the benefits of the fierce economic liberalization and the unprecedented destruction of the historical conquests of the working class. The current Venezuelan political regime is derived from that headed by Chavez, but its mutation, based on the elements already present in Chavismo at that time, and in the midst of different economic and political conditions, has left behind those aspects of a government that relied on the controlled mobilization of the working and poor masses, granting them a series of economic and social rights, seeking better terms of trade with Western imperialist capital and exercising a certain state control over the economy to put some timid limits on private capital (new rights for the working class, price controls, etc.). It is not, of course, the political regime that US imperialism would like, but it is quite far from that sui generis Bonapartism “turned to the left,” and is, on the other hand, a reactionary regime supported by the decided support of China and Russia, another pole of capitalist powers that do not represent any progressive alternative for the people. Maduro and the Armed Forces have been a government that has destroyed, like no other in the history of Venezuelan capitalism, wages and labor conquests. Through the payment of the foreign debt, its monetary policy, the disregard by decree of collective contracts and collective bargaining agreements, the almost total freedom of private capital to do and undo (in wages, health and labor safety, consumer prices, rents, the environment, etc.), and repression of workers, it has advanced labor counter-reforms that are more regressive than any other right-wing and pro-imperialist government in the region. That is the way in which it has carried out a decade of continuous capitalist adjustments that have made the deep crisis, and then also the criminal imperialist sanctions, fall on the shoulders of the working class and the poor people. All this increasingly alienated it from popular support, and the proportions of the relationship between “consensus” and coercion changed radically. In circumstances that were no longer an oil boom but a fall in oil prices, the weight of an enormous foreign debt, a country defrauded by capital flight, and then also severe imperialist economic aggression, the bourgeois State that granted rights began to put its face of attacks on living conditions, the rights of working people and democratic freedoms in the foreground. Since under Chavez there was neither “diversification of the productive matrix” nor “development of productive forces,” but, on the contrary, rentism and dependency deepened – the position that imperialist capitalism has always given Venezuela – and since the internal “metabolism” of Venezuelan capitalism was not modified either, consisting of public income being converted into private capital and, in certain periods, into a source of “original accumulation” for new cohorts of bourgeoisie, resources that since the late 1970s have tended to accumulate outside the country, when the oil boom and the possibilities of international credit ended – circumstances that depend on the main capitalist powers – the country was not stronger but weaker. From the haggling with imperialist capital in the Chavez era, with lukewarm nationalist measures (and others not so much, such as opening up to the penetration of Chinese and Russian capital), we have moved with Maduro to an unprecedented economic surrender to foreign capital, with tax exemptions like a century ago, with free rein to the most archaic and voracious plundering of natural resources, the multiplication of “special economic zones,” the handing over of national companies or part of them and, what is no less important, one of the cheapest and most repressed labor forces in the world. The reactionary evolution of the regime means that today it has a very good understanding with the business elites, while acting as the executioner of the working class. The cordial relations with the capitalist unions are not merely formal, but rather a matter of joint work to agree on policies. “There are no persecuted or imprisoned businessmen,” declared a well-known representative of the parasitic Venezuelan bourgeoisie… something that the working class cannot say about itself, which suffers the imprisonment or judicial persecution of hundreds of its leaders and activists. This collusion has reached such a point that prominent opinion makers who support MCM and Edmundo González have complained about the passivity and abstinence of the business associations in the dispute – unlike in previous periods, when they were an active part of the anti-government movements – accusing them of “lack of commitment” and of “privileging their economic interests before the fight for freedom and democracy.” Beyond the laughable nature of this ideological propaganda that supposes an ideal type of capitalists who care more about freedom and democracy than their economic interests, the truth is that while the government unleashed its massive and brutal repression against the popular sectors that were protesting against the fraud, none of the leaders of the national business community questioned the government, there was no statement from Fedecámaras… except one to warn against possible “acts of violence by the protesters against property.” The reality is that the profound authoritarianism and repressive control of the population on which the Venezuelan regime is based are at the service of the specific type of capitalism that operates in Venezuela today: one that seeks to escape from collapse and external economic coercion on the basis of national surrender, of the total subordination of the working class, the poor people and nature to the needs of capital, in which a reactionary individual “entrepreneurship” and a generalized commodification are officially promoted, where more and more every good, service, place of recreation, forest, land, etc., is susceptible to being commodified and turned into a private business. With Maduro, a civic-military-police dictatorial regime is established If Maduro formally assumes a new presidential term, we will be in the presence of a political form marked by the ignorance of the elementary mechanisms of bourgeois democracy – in this case, that of universal suffocation – and the suffocation of democratic freedoms through repression (sometimes bloody) and the induction of terror in the population. A civic-military-police dictatorial regime would be established, to use Maduro's own definition of the type of "unity" that sustains him in power, based on repression and fraud. As we have explained, the government apparatus continues to be articulated around various political cliques centered on Maduro, where the military and police corporation, with containment and repression, in the absence of popular support, are those that have been sustaining it. If the military removes Maduro from office, he collapses, and this explains the fruitless calls by María Corina Machado to the Armed Forces to carry out a forceful action, as we have explained above, which is why “the field is open to forceful solutions” in the face of the constant failures of seeking negotiated solutions. Therefore, in the overall situation, the Armed Forces continue to be the balance in the deep national crisis, to which both the government and US imperialism and the right grant the role of “arbiters” of the situation (or of a “transition”), reaching a position that can allow them to have their own game in the political diatribe. Although it is important to note that the dictatorial regime imposed by Maduro is not a classic dictatorship, in the style of those that existed in the Southern Cone of Latin America or in Central America in the 70s and 80s, with their genocides and methods of civil war to crush internally, where the military exercised absolute power of the State. The more it is devoid of popular support, the more the repressive apparatus is entrenched to sustain itself. The State punishes and represses, increasing its Bonapartism and authoritarianism, consolidating itself in the Armed Forces and with an absolute concentration of powers, often shielded behind “security” speeches, arguing internal and external threats. An authoritarian framework that is also supported by the existence of paramilitary groups (misnamed “collectives”) at the service of the government, armed with the State’s permission and that fulfill the role of intimidating and attacking those who organize to protest in the neighborhoods and workplaces. What has brought them together with the ruling clique in recent times are the great material interests, and what would imply a displacement of the power of the State. It must be considered that the Government constitutes an entire state bureaucracy with great material interests created in 25 years, different from other administrations that when they lose a presidential term, they return to their businesses and private companies. In addition, the Armed Forces also have large companies and businesses under their command in multiple spheres of the economy, and they bear the weight of repression. But losing the power of the State does not only mean losing business, but that a sector of Maduro could go to prison or be extradited to the United States, in case of a resounding fall, accused of drug trafficking, and even, in case of being displaced from the State via some transition, they fear that these agreements will not be fulfilled. From there to the clinging to power. This does not mean that there is no tension within the bureaucracy entrenched in the State. It is important to highlight that no one imagined that the sector led by Tareck El Aissami, who represented a key sector of the government power group, now in prison, could fall. The purges, the settling of scores, the panic of betrayal, are hovering in Miraflores, accelerating its elements of decomposition and internal political chaos. Its strength also comes from the almost non-existent capacity to fight of the mass movement, which suffered the brutal blows of the economic catastrophe that ended up weakening its forces, and which has found, at least for the moment, its main internal contender today led by María Corina. Imperialism and regional alignments Although Maduro may still be sworn in on January 10, not everything is decided in the current political scenario. Ten days later, Donald Trump will be assuming the presidency in the United States, and it is still not known for certain what policy he will have towards Venezuela. The new White House president has appointed Marco Rubio as head of the State Department, who was extremely involved with Juan Guaidó's interim government during the coup attempt led by Washington in 2019, and the attempts to apply forceful actions against the country. He also named Congressman Mike Waltz as national security adviser, one of the Republican legislators who, in August 2024, wrote a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee to support the nomination of the right-wing oppositionist María Corina Machado for the Nobel Peace Prize. Hence, the climate is one that could lead to greater aggression on the part of Trump towards Venezuela. Although the objective of realigning Venezuela within the sphere of influence of the United States remains a constant, and he is heading in an aggressive direction, this policy can be achieved through negotiation. And it is not yet defined whether he will follow the same path that he did with Juan Guaidó when he recognized him as president of Venezuela in January 2019, with Edmundo González, when the latter proclaims himself effective president of Venezuela, the same day as Maduro, as he has already announced and as has María Corina Machado. Regardless of whether it was an isolated statement, the Republican senator of the United States, Bernie Moreno, declared during the installation of the Congress of the North American country, that Donald Trump “will work with Maduro because he is the one who is going to take office,” which is symptomatic of what may be being discussed within the new government that arrives at the White House. On the other hand, it is worth taking into account the presence of China and Russia in Venezuela, which are part of the regional political game. China's economic interests are great in Venezuela; since the Chavez administration, the Asian country has been considered a strategic ally, with strong investments in the oil sector and other economic areas of similar magnitude. And the United States has been announcing a great rivalry with China, with Marco Rubio being one of the hawks of this policy. Why would Trump give Venezuela to China on a silver platter, if he can still attract it with Maduro in government? The same can be said with respect to Russia, in the midst of a war in the European extreme. US imperialism – whose capital has never ceased to be present in the country – is struggling to recover the lost space and bring Venezuela back under its orbit, but it has not been able to achieve its objectives through its various aggressions and interventionism. Given this situation, and not being able to overturn it, what Republican Bernie Moreno says makes sense, where there is also an entire oil lobby and bondholders who are fighting for an understanding with Maduro, with the Republican Party and Trump himself belonging to that oil world. What is clear is that if Maduro takes office, and there is little to indicate otherwise at the moment, barring an unforeseen event, he would be a more internationally isolated government. This is already known by right-wing governments in other countries or by the continental right, but the drama will come with the equidistant policy adopted by certain Latin American "progressivisms", especially Brazil and Colombia, which have sought to distance themselves from Maduro's fraud, although they do not announce an open break. Even the Chilean Boric has completely distanced himself, as has the president-elect of the Frente Amplio of Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi. Brazil and Colombia were the few most important allies that Maduro had in Latin America, a continent where Trumpism with Milei in Argentina is gaining ground. The need to sustain and fight for a working-class perspective In this scenario, we need a political perspective of our own as a class, a policy on the democratic question and on social and national problems that expresses the political independence of the working class, that proposes a program based on the interests of the workers. We must prevent our class from only having as political alternatives those that express the class interests of those who trample on us, of the big capitals of any geographical origin and of the rich of this country, whether they are new or old. From that perspective, we opposed the government’s anti-democratic attacks prior to the elections, the imperialist sanctions, and the fraud of June 28. In the run-up to the elections, we raised, together with other organizations, a campaign that expressed class independence: “The working class has no candidate,” we said, and we explained in various ways why neither Maduro nor Edmundo/MCM (nor the other lesser candidates) expressed the interests of the working class, including denouncing how the government banned any political option to its left. From that position and within the framework of denouncing the electoral process as a whole as fraudulent (which was originally attempted to be agreed upon between the government, imperialism, and the right, and which later failed as we explained at the beginning of this declaration), as soon as the elements of electoral fraud appeared, we denounced it, we raised the right of the Venezuelan people to know the truth (“Let all the minutes be published,” we demanded at the time), while denouncing the repression and undertaking a united campaign with various organizations. The opposition of Edmundo and Maria Corina maintains that it was favored by the majority vote, but that behind them there was and is no possibility of an independent class policy. This is part of the acuteness of the contradictions of the situation for the working class. These are conditions of extreme weakness of our class, not only organizationally and objectively (massive migration, emptying of unions, abandonment of many salaried workers to become self-employed or merchants, combination of both conditions in the majority of those who are still salaried, repression and terror induced by the government), but also subjectively, because in the face of a starving, deeply anti-worker and repressive government, choosing an option like the one represented by MCM is also part of the weakness. We are staunch anti-imperialists, which is why we have always rejected and continue to reject imperialist sanctions, the confiscation of property and all imperialist aggression or threats. That is why we denounce all the traditional Venezuelan right wing that supports all imperialist aggressions, including the nefarious point of asking for military intervention, as Maria Corina Machado did. We denounce this vassal policy of this sector, which among its plans is to bring the country back to its knees before the IMF, as even the Maduro government itself has suggested doing. We say, down with all imperialist interference in Venezuela and Latin America! In these circumstances, fighting against fraud and for democratic freedoms from one's own perspective was and is key, because it is about fighting as a class, against a leap forward in the repressive mechanisms with which one of the reactionary factions imposes its interests, which are not ours. The result of a consolidation of the new stage of the current regime is not only the defeat of an anti-worker and anti-popular faction (that of MCM), but also the triumph of another no less reactionary faction, the triumph of a faction that tramples on the majority will of the people at will and imposes itself on them by means of more repression and state terror. In this context, and while both the current regime and MCM/Edmundo appeal to the repressive bodies and their respective allies in the capitalist powers, we demand the campaign “Enough repression! Freedom for prisoners for protesting!” –which has achieved some of its modest but very important objectives–, as a way of confronting, from the working class and popular sectors, the strengthening of the repressive capacities of the capitalist government in office. At the same time as these fights are taking place, what our class faces is the need to find ways to recompose its forces, not only objectively but also subjectively, recovering programmatic banners, clearing ideas of the distortions and frauds with which Chavismo filled them, knowing how to differentiate friends from enemies and demagogues, among those who today speak to us of “freedom.” Those who claim to be anti-capitalists must continue to draw strategic and historical lessons from the damage that assimilating to Chavismo and contributing to its strength implied for a large part of the left and our class, without fighting instead to build some truly revolutionary political force of the working class, which could present itself as an alternative and not have today a crossroads where only reactionary options are in sight. It is from this perspective that we, the Trotskyists of the League of Workers for Socialism (LTS), intervene in this reality, as part of the Trotskyist Fraction for the Fourth International (FT-CI). https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Maduro-y-su-asuncion-blindada-Se-impone-uno-de-los-bandos-reaccionarios-262340? Back |
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