-V.I. Lenin, 1915
That is why this note does not intend to exhaust the debate but to contribute elements that allow the necessary revolutionary critique of the political and economic processes that Our America has experienced in the last two decades, but particularly, to contribute to the necessary discussion of what the political situation in Venezuela exposes today. The text is called “The Bankruptcy of the International Left?”, not by whim but by the necessary recovery of one of the most relevant texts of the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution.
In “The Bankruptcy of the Second International “ [2], Lenin analyzed the practical implications of the decisions taken by the leaders of the social democratic parties in relation to the First World War, where they decided to support the development of an imperialist war whose costs would fall on the whole of the international working class, not only in terms of the monetary costs involved in any military incursion, but in terms of the struggle among the members of the working class themselves in defense of interests that are alien to them. What lessons can Lenin’s reflection leave us with regard to what is happening today in Venezuela?
This is the direction in which this article intends to go, which, making use of the theoretical tools provided by the Marxist method, seeks to motivate the discussion around the character of the State and the political and economic project embodied today by the government led by Nicolás Maduro and, consequently, to reflect on the position that those of us who claim to be Marxists, communists, revolutionaries, should have in the face of the current Bolivarian process.
That is why we will not start by discussing questions referring to the sphere of mere bourgeois legality, as is the case of whether or not there was fraud in the last elections that gave Nicolás Maduro the victory, but to discuss what is really important: what the Bolivarian project embodies today and what should be the position of the international workers movement in this regard.
The alliance of the left with progressivism: rejection of critical thinking and capitulation to the interests of the petty bourgeoisie
Vulgar thinking entails a moralistic and two-sided vision of reality, one that can only see and understand it in terms of “good” or “bad” and with this premise constructs a narrative whose central axis is found in the construction of an enemy that entails all that is “wrong” and must, therefore, be fought. This can be seen in each of Nicolás Maduro’s speeches, particularly in the last press conference held two days ago, in which he sought, through the use of biblical analogies, to justify the fact that the National Electoral Council (CNE) displayed, out loud, what a large part of the Venezuelan people are clamoring to see: the electoral records.
I emphasize the issue of critical thinking because it implies the desire to search for the truth, it implies doubt before statements that are presented as irrefutable truths, it means the deepest reflection, slowness to make statements and, above all, it means the unwavering commitment and willingness to confront error not to condemn it, but as a necessary condition to move forward. This is the path followed by the masters of scientific socialism in whose thought and political praxis the assimilation of dialectics and the development of critical thinking that implies movement and overcoming have become evident.
In its alliance with the most progressive elements of the local bourgeoisies, the left capitulated not only in terms of principles, but also in the practice of what the socialist-communist left meant, which in Marx’s terms should embody the most ruthless critique of all that exists. However, the self-styled socialist left and even worse, some communist organizations in the region, have preferred to close their eyes so as not to see. They have preferred to ignore and in many cases, to accuse as “treacherous and useful to imperialism” the organized working class that, from the left and from the class interests they represent, have raised deep and valid criticisms, towards the progressive regimes that, in this second wave are becoming less and less progressive.
Solidarity with governments has been preferred, even though they no longer embody the political-economic project that once mobilized the working people, and not solidarity with the working class which, organized to a greater or lesser extent, is the one that embodies the processes and supports the adjustment policies that, in the Venezuelan case, are being implemented by the increasingly authoritarian and reactionary government of Nicolás Maduro.
The deceptiveness of the anti-imperialist discourse of the Venezuelan government
For conscious workers, socialism is a deep conviction and not a convenient cover to hide conciliatory tendencies, to hide conciliatory petty bourgeois and nationalist opposition. -V.I. Lenin (1915)
The category imperialism has been vulgarized to such an extent that, nowadays, emptied of content, it has come to be used as a wild card to justify the repression of the working class when it organizes itself to defend its interests and denounce the handing over of resources to exploiters. The Manichean interpretation of geopolitics has led to the identification of “good capitalisms” versus “bad capitalisms”.
The idea of good or bad capitalisms represents not only a step backwards in terms of the inheritance left to us by the Marxist method for interpreting and transforming the material conditions of our existence, but also represents the capitulation of the left and revolutionary movements to the interests of the Latin American bourgeoisie, whose State has never been dismantled. That is to say, we are experiencing a period in which the self-styled revolutionary left finds itself prey to the ideology and strategy of the local and foreign bourgeoisie.
And if it really intends to assume the historical role of leadership of the working class, it needs to shake off the vestiges of bourgeois thought to articulate the struggle for socialism, and this requires making use of critical and dialectical thinking to interpret reality and act accordingly and not to be imprisoned by our wishful thinking. It is to understand that social processes are reversible, and that they are not exempt from being captured by bourgeois ideology. But to see it, we need to overcome that ardent and willful blindness that limits reflection regarding the scenario in which the class struggle is developing today, to then do it, as Marx would say, with the most ruthless criticism.
The government led by Nicolás Maduro represents the synthesis of the degradation of the Bolivarian project in the hands of the most authoritarian, reactionary elements, aligned to the economic interests of the rentier ruling classes. The anti-imperialist discourse used to seek alliances with the more or less incautious “leftists” is just that, a discursive strategy that does not conform to reality.
Politics is the concentrated expression of economics, Lenin taught us. That is, the economic policy applied by governments can and does give us information about the political-economic project they embody. From this point of view, let us analyze some aspects of the economic policy of Maduro’s government, with the caveat of pointing out that we do not place Hugo Chávez’s leadership in the same position as Maduro’s, beyond the responsibility of the former in the future decomposition of the Bolivarian project.
The main thing is to define what we understand by imperialism, only in this way will we be able to break down the economic policy and understand it in terms of the interests it embodies. Lenin understood imperialism as a kind of stage or form assumed by capitalism on a global scale in the twentieth century and whose main characteristic is parasitism, the result of the very decomposition of capitalism of [3]. This decomposition to which it refers is related to what Marx himself already described in Capital [4] when he gave an account of the factors counteracting the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
Among the characteristics of this stage of global capitalist development, Lenin pointed to the growing dynamics of concentration and centralization of production expressed in the predominant role of monopolies in the world market. This is followed by the growing relevance of finance capital and the role of banks, whose merger with industrial capital embodies the emergence of finance capital and, consequently, of the financial oligarchy, whose economic interests transcend the limits of the local market. For the financial oligarchy the export of capital is a necessary condition to ensure the export and sale of commodities on the world market.
Likewise, Lenin points out as another of the characteristics of imperialism, the division of the world among the capitalist powers, but not in the reduced sense of “countries”, but of capitals that expand and appropriate the resources of the countries with less concentrated capitals and that do not embody the necessary productive conditions demanded by competition. Lenin points out that the large monopolistic enterprises that concentrate and centralize a large part of capital, initially share the domestic market in which they emerge and, subsequently, given the narrow limits of the market, expand beyond its borders.
That is to say, the expansion of big capital and the appropriation of resources in the less advanced economies is an expression of the imperialist character assumed not only by one country but by the whole of capitalist competition on a global scale. Or, in other words, U.S. or European capital is as imperialist as Russian or Chinese capital when they expand with the same intention, driven by the inertia of the mode of production they reproduce. Of course, in global terms, the USA, first of all, and the European Union with Germany at its head, have a much more determining weight in the dominant capitalist subjectivity on a world scale, with a much more powerful and harmful military and cultural interference and burden, including the predation of natural resources.
Lenin argues that the division of the world among the great powers is an expression of the unfolding of capitalist social relations, insofar as capital is, in essence, global. It needs to expand the market to guarantee profitability and the rate of profit. Not only through the export of goods, but above all, through the appropriation of raw materials and labor power that allow lower production costs and guarantee a higher rate of surplus value. In this respect, Lenin points out[5] :
“The capitalists do not divide up the world carried away by a particular perversity, but because the degree of concentration to which they have arrived forces them to follow this path in order to obtain profits; and they divide it up according to capital, according to force.”
- Lenin (1917:100)
The moralistic critique of capitalism as a dominant social relation has been surpassed by the Marxist method, to fall into a moralistic critique not only implies a scientific retreat, but also implies the inability to adjust tactics and strategies according to the material reality that is observed. In the Venezuelan case, the government of Nicolás Maduro has ceded the natural wealth of Venezuela to foreign capitals, particularly, to Chinese and Russian capitals under different regimes of free trade zones, free of taxes and of course, also free of workers’ control.
The Venezuelan government’s surrenderist and anti-worker policies
The departure of Hugo Chavez can be considered as a turning point in the trajectory of the Bolivarian project. And to understand it, we must ask ourselves two fundamental questions in order to move forward, the first one is: what to do? And the second is: with whom?
With these two questions in mind, let us carry out the following exercise. In each of the national spaces of capital accumulation, the economy and with it its main actors, are trapped in the logic of global capitalist accumulation that demands compliance with certain rules that guarantee the investment of capital, both local and foreign. In the Venezuelan case, the productive sectors linked to strategic areas such as the energy sector (oil and its derivatives), the mining arc, iron, steel, aluminum, air and maritime transportation, infrastructure works, etc., have been deepening their dependence on large transnational capitals.
In the first constituent assembly of 1999, the government led by Chávez proposed (successfully) that the Republic reserve the right to defend the economic activities of its national companies. In the Constitution derived from the aforementioned constituent assembly, article 301 states, among other things, that the State may not grant foreign persons, companies or organizations more beneficial regimes than those established for nationals. And here we find the first turning point. During the government of Nicolás Maduro, in contravention of Article 151 of the National Constitution, they consented to re-submit disputes between the State and transnational corporations to arbitration awards of mechanisms such as ICSID[International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes]. As a result of this, in 2022 a US court authorized the enforcement of the ICSID arbitration award under which Venezuela is condemned to pay US$18.54 billion to Conoco Phillips, plus interest[6].
In 2017, with the Constitutional Law on Foreign Investment of December 29, foreign capital is granted a host of privileges not available on equal terms to local capital. Article 22 of said law, attributes to foreign capitals favorable conditions for investment (this means arranging the entire state structure to guarantee the profit of these sectors), as well as general or specific benefits or incentives. Among these we can mention tax relief, accelerated amortization, purchase of production by public sector entities, tax rebates, tariff and tax exemptions, special credit conditions, special rates in public services, preferential access to inputs and/or raw materials administered by the State, tax stability term, or any other benefit provided by the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela[7].
Based on the foregoing, we can be sure that the Constitutional Law of Productive Foreign Investment provides all the guarantees required by foreign capitals to facilitate capital flight. In other words, it constitutes a real massive capital drain from the Venezuelan economy. Similarly, in addition to unconstitutionally privileging foreign capitals, Article 6 of this law allows submitting to foreign courts (such as the ICSID) those disputes that have already been resolved by a final judgment in Venezuelan courts[8]. The analogy to this law for the case of the Paraguayan economy would be Law 60/90 on Investment Incentives and Law 5542/15 on Investment Guarantees, enacted by Horacio Cartes. How do these types of laws benefit the Venezuelan working class? That is the necessary question.
In this framework, the government of Nicolás Maduro has granted foreign capitals, particularly Chinese, five Special Economic Zones (SEZ), backed by the Organic Law of Special Economic Zones [Zonas Especiales Economicas, ZEE] enacted in July 2022 and which in its Article 27 and subsequent articles, establishes the regime of incentives for investment among which the following stand out: (a) Import Tax Reimbursement; (b) tax reimbursement on other national taxes; (c) capitals that import basic materials and inputs for the development of their activity will have greater benefits provided by the customs legislation. Inclusively, the incursion of banking capital into Venezuelan territory is enabled within the framework of the ZEE law to develop the financial services sector and will be subject to an exceptional and preferential tax regime.
In 2014, the ZEE of Paraguaná was created in the state of Falcón for the development of an industrial technological pole with the particularity that the percentage of the production internalized in the market will be exempted from national taxes, as well as will have all the tax guarantees. Among the guarantees is, for example, the reimbursement of Income Tax (ISR) at 100% during the first four years, while during the fifth and sixth year, the reimbursement will be 75% if the company manages to maintain an export of 60% of its production. The SEZ law coexists with the Free Zone and Free Trade Zone Law (free trade, of course) [9]. The SEZs of Puerto Cabello – Morón, the SEZ in La Guaira, Margarita and Isla La Tortuga are also enabled. These five SEZs are complemented by the Free Ports of Santa Elena and Nueva Esparta, the Free Zones in the state of Merida and Paraguaná, and the Free Zones of Paraguaná and Atuja [10]
For those who have not yet understood, Madurism has handed over the natural resources, as well as the Venezuelan labor force, for their exploitation to local and foreign capitals under preferential regimes that imply economic liberalization in the established zones.
To the laws that grant extraordinary benefits to foreign capitals is added the so-called “anti-blockade law”, which in reality is nothing more than a law that promotes privatization. Article 28, for example, establishes that operations for the purchase and payment of goods and services may be carried out outside the current legal framework by means of “exceptional” procedures designed by the Administration. In other words, an absolute discretionality that opens the way for all kinds of abuses and contraventions. The “anti-blockade” law not only favors local capital operating in Venezuelan territory, but also encourages foreign capital to operate in the territory. Similarly, it grants the private sector powers to generate alliances with the private sector (as is the case of the Fede Industrias, for example, and Fedecámaras, the former organized by the government itself and grouping the private business sector and the latter, once an opposition organization, is now in alliance with the government). The provisions of the aforementioned law aim at the massive reprivatization or return to their presumed owners of the assets that have been nationalized, expropriated, confiscated or whose concessions have expired, even though these measures have become final in Venezuelan courts [11].
Under the “anti-blockade” law, the Maduro government began the return of goods and properties expropriated during the Chávez government. Among the goods returned to the private sector is, for example, the Sambil La Candelaria Shopping Mall, in downtown Caracas, owned by the Cohen family, one of the most influential in Latin America. Thus, two Colombian companies (Cementera Argos, whose capital is of U.S. origin and is the fourth largest input production company after the commercial union with Summit Materials and Azucarera Ciamsa) that had been expropriated between 2006 and 2010, were returned (with compensation). In this process, the Colombian-Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce has played a central role [12].
To the policy of reversal of the expropriations carried out by the Chávez government, some 1,630 properties, including farms, hotels and more than 50 companies, complete the list of assets to be returned, among which there are also companies operated by the State that will be privatized. According to the statements made by Deputy Luis Eduardo Martinez, Vice President of the Dialogue Commission for the Democratic Action party, allies of the pro-Maduro government, thanks to whose intermediation they have achieved communication between the State and the main business chambers[13].
It is important to indicate at this point that one of the most relevant expropriations carried out by the Chávez government was the nationalization of the business associations operating in the energy sector in the Orinoco Oil Belt, which contains 20% of the total proven oil reserves in the world.
During the Chavez administration, lots for oil exploitation were assigned to transnational companies under the modality of joint ventures. Among the companies were Chevron (USA), Rosneft (Russia), Total Energies (France), Eni (Italy) and Repsol (Spain). As a result of U.S. sanctions, some of these companies decided to leave the exploitation strip. However, in November 2023, exploitation agreements were closed with companies such as Repsol, Ecopetrol, China Petroleum and Indian Oil, as a result of the Barbados Agreement, between the Maduro government, the opposition, and the United States. However, it is important to mention that the United States threatened to resume sanctions given the non-compliance with the agreements reached between the government and the Venezuelan opposition led by María Corina Machado[14].
Not to be left out, currently, the refining company Citgo, Venezuela’s most important offshore asset located in the United States, is about to be auctioned by US courts after, in 2019, Trump ordered its confiscation as part of the payment of the debt demanded by PDVSA’s creditors, among which are Wall Street banks JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, and advisors and investors Rothschild & Co. and Elliot Investment Management, in addition to corporations such as Vitol, Centerview Partners, Conoco Phillips and Koch Industries. These were later joined by PDVSA bondholders (since, as you may guess, the Venezuelan government had made the decision to issue PDVSA-backed debt securities). There were 18 international creditors demanding the collection of approximately US$ 21.3 billion. To this point it is important to remember that, in 2016 the government of Nicolás Maduro launched the Bono 2020 program putting as payment guarantee 51% of Citgo’s shares and the remaining 49% were offered as payment guarantee to the credit granted by the Russian company Rosfnet to leverage the deficit. Citgo Petroleum Corporation is one of the most important companies operating in the energy sector in the United States and is valued at 13 billion dollars, under its portfolio are three refineries located in the states of Texas, Louisiana and Illinois [15].
So, is “bad” capitalism only that captained by the Yankees? We communists are clear that it is not. The mechanisms of appropriation of resources by the most concentrated and hegemonic capitals adopt the most diverse strategies to get hold of the resources available in the territories that constitute their zone of influence. It is clear that in Venezuela there is a rivalry for the control of natural resources by U.S., Chinese and Russian capital. The difference lies in the fact that the Venezuelan government has aligned itself with the interests of these capitals, deepening the productive specialization of the country through a strong domination by the mechanism of debt.
Chinese capital is essential for Venezuela, however, it is insufficient to kick-start the economy as a whole. Hence the need to diversify the origin of capital operating in the territory. Chinese capital is predominant in primary sectors, specifically in the exploitation of gold, iron and other strategic minerals, in addition to the oil sector, its position in the military and defense area is also predominant. Likewise, Chinese capital has benefited from juicy contracts with the State to develop productive investments that never materialized. In an investigation carried out by Reuters Investigates in 2019, it discovered the case of the rice plant whose investment was 200 million dollars. The agreement with the Chinese company CAMC Engineering Ltda. consisted of developing rice plants that would supposedly generate more than 100 thousand jobs, something that never happened. The only beneficiaries were the Chinese businessmen, who received from the State at least US$ 100 million for the rice project and at least 40% of the value of the contract for the other four productive developments totaling around US$ 1.4 billion for work that never materialized [16].
Since Maduro took office, the Central Bank of Venezuela has not published official statistics on the performance of the economy (nor are other socioeconomic indicators published), so there is no verifiable data to determine the levels of indebtedness. However, some experts place it between US$120 billion and US$200 billion. China is Venezuela’s largest creditor, given that, in the last decade, a good part of its oil exports went to China within the framework of the current agreement in which credits are exchanged for oil. Anyone with a glimmer of rationality understands that debt is today one of the main mechanisms of domination [17].
It is well known that debt is one of the forms acquired by the export of capital. For Lenin, the interests of the export of capital have the same purpose as colonial conquest, given that in this way a certain type of social and economic relations are consolidated. More exactly, Lenin reclaims Hilferding’s idea when he points out that “finance capital does not want freedom, but domination[18].” The payment for debt service with China alone, annually takes between 5,500 and 6,000 million dollars of the GDP. This, logically, has led to the fact that, pressured by the increase of the debt and the need to comply with international commitments, and facing a collapsed economy, whose main sector (the oil sector) has been dragging along several years of stagnation and recession, are the elements that lead to the application of brutal adjustment policies whose weight falls on the Venezuelan working class.
We are not saying that there is no economic war or that the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by U.S. imperialism are a figment of the imagination. Rather, they simply do not explain by themselves the complexity that the Bolivarian project embodies today, nor the serious crisis in which the Venezuelan economy is engulfed and, of course, the decay of the Bolivarian political project led today by Nicolás Maduro.
The economic crisis is not only the result of international sanctions, although these play an important role. What must be questioned is the economic policy implemented in an economy that depends almost entirely on oil revenues, or in other words, on the fiscal policy that has been applied in the sector. What does this mean? Nothing more than that, any variation in the price of oil in the international financial market that is not compensated by the volume of exports, is inexorably transferred to the economy as a whole. And for several years now, oil production has been plummeting, as can be seen in the fact that from a production of 3,120,000 barrels per day produced in 1998, it dropped to 732,000 barrels per day in March 2019 [19].
As can be seen, the volume of exports is one of the most critical variables of a rentier economy such as the Venezuelan one. Data from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), exposed in the 2019 report, pointed out that the number of active drills in Venezuela has been gradually decreasing during the last decade, thus decreasing the crude oil extraction capacity, affecting the productivity of the wells. In 2016 the OPEC report indicated that 58 drills were active in Venezuela, by 2018 the number was reduced to 32 and by December 2019 only 25 drills were operational, which led Venezuela to move from the sixth position in the list of main oil producers, to the tenth place, below countries such as Algeria, Libya and Angola[20].
It is important to mention that the oil market is determined both by the rigidities of the market, which is incapable of reacting to imbalances giving rise to disproportionate jumps in supply and demand, as well as by geopolitical dynamics and the speculative movements of financial capital. All these components (in Jorge Beinstein’s terms) are part of a “broader entropic process” that encompasses the world economy as a whole [21] and whose surmounting necessarily requires the overcoming of the bourgeois social order.
And it is necessary to emphasize this point: what is in crisis in Venezuela is not socialism (which does not even exist in terms of horizon) but rentier capitalism whose productive matrix has not been overcome. The problem with rentier capitalism, as is the case of the Venezuelan economy and any other based on the appropriation of land rent, is the fact that there are physical limits to the increase in production, which inevitably leads to a decreasing trend in the production of commodities and, consequently, to an ever greater and much more brutal dispute for the appropriation of land rent by the capitals operating in the national space.
In fact, among the main mechanisms of transfer of value from the working class to capital is the exchange rate. Let us recall that the government maintains a monetary policy based on the permanent devaluation and control of the exchange rate. The bolivar has depreciated by 9,411,711,764,705,782%, while prices increased by 1,665,941,969,593%.
Between 2012 and 2021 alone, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) registered a 75% drop, being the lowest level of production in Venezuela’s recent history. As mentioned above, de facto dollarization is expressed in the fact that the dollar has been replacing the bolivar as the currency of exchange and reserve of value.
Similarly, the purchasing power of the working class has fallen by 91% between 2013 and 2022, this deterioration of the salary was accompanied by the increase of poverty and extreme poverty. Today, the minimum wage in Venezuela does not exceed 7 (seven) dollars, while the basic basket for a household of five people is estimated at 384 dollars and the food basket at 192 dollars. But the crisis of the Venezuelan economy does not affect everyone equally; on the contrary, there are also winners. The deterioration of the real wage implied an increase in the levels of profit for capital; the more the value of the labor force deteriorates, the more profit capital realizes [22].
The unfinished revolutions and the exclusion of the working class from the spaces of direction, control and decision, result in reactionary and regressive political and economic projects, product of the sharpening of the class struggle itself. This explains why the government of Nicolás Maduro has adopted policies that have been dismantling the conquests of the working class and developed an increasingly authoritarian character that translates into the persecution of union leaders and the proscription of opposition political parties, both right and left, as has been the case of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), victim of intervention by the PSUV, the hijacking of its electoral card and the murder of six of its militants during his government.
Specifically, in May 2023, the Central Committee of the PCV denounced the fact that militants of the PSUV, under the leadership of Maduro, held a fake congress to promote its intervention in the PCV, as part of a new phase in the policy of assault that had already begun after the deepening in the line of confrontation between the government and the PCV resulting from the anti-worker, anti-popular and anti-national policies. In 2018, in the framework of the National Conference, Nicolás Maduro had signed a commitment with communist activists that was never implemented, on the contrary, subsequent to those elections (and after waving the communist flag), Maduro never again granted a single meeting to the leadership of the PCV. Together with the non-compliance with the 19 points contained in the agreement, a line of censorship, media siege, persecution, imprisonment and disappearance of communist militants who did not align themselves with the PSUV government was carried out under the leadership of Diosdado Cabello, financing the formation of mercenary groups with public resources, to pass them off as “militants” [23].
The Madurista regime has been characterized by authoritarianism, persecution and adjustment policies that have dismantled the little that remained of the Bolivarian project promoted by Chávez. The moral and ideological debacle of Madurism is expressed in the proscription of the left so that it could not present candidacies that truly represent the interests of the working class. Organizations such as Tupamaros, Marea Socialista, Partido Socialismo y Libertad, Corriente Patria para Todos, Movimiento Popular Alternativo, and the Partido Comunista de Venezuela, could not participate in the elections given the restrictions on the most minimal democratic liberties.
On the material level, the Venezuelan working class faces shortages, hyperinflation, a de facto dollarization of the economy and a plummeting wage level that does not cover the minimum needs to guarantee its subsistence. The economic policies implemented by Maduro have led to an unprecedented migration generating one of the largest migration crises in the region, with more than 7.7 million refugees, of which 6.5 million were received in countries of the region, as reflected in the statistics of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) [24].
And it is precisely because of all this that we cannot be in the defensive line of the political-economic project of the current Venezuelan government which, in recent years, has not only shown no signs of intentions of the dismantling of the bourgeois oligarchic State and the overcoming of the rentier character of its economy (let alone the capitalist mode of production).
Rather, fundamentally, it has been implementing adjustment policies that have worsened the material living conditions of the Venezuelan working class. At the same time, it has systematically divided and weakened the organization of the working class, disciplining and ordering political life according to the interests of the ruling classes to the point that today, there is no political-economic project sufficiently cohesive and strong to be able to contest the course of the Venezuelan social formation from the left.
Among the set of economic measures that show the regressive character of the government, we can point out the wage policy that has destroyed wages, collective bargaining agreements and dismantled the labor rights of workers in both the public and private sectors. The policies of economic liberalization for the benefit of local and foreign capitals, which are translated into the different laws of special, free and free economic zones, as well as the law of maquilas, among others, are part of these measures.
At this point, and not to extend any further (even if we could), what can be observed today is the political and ideological defeat of the left, the absence of a political and economic class project, in short, an independent one. In short, the bankruptcy of a “progressive” left that covers its eyes so as not to see. What remains for the forces that claim to be revolutionary is the alignment and unrestricted solidarity with the Venezuelan working class organized and in struggle against the offensive of capital, embodied today in the government of Nicolás Maduro, in the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática led by nefarious actors like Maria Corina Machado who, among others, dispute for themselves the oil rent.
The forces that claim to be revolutionary, of the left, must shake themselves free and terminate the political, strategic and ideological pact with the “progressive” petty bourgeoisie to move on to the defense of the interests of the working class because, whoever governs, class interests will be defended.
Notes
- Alhelí González Cáceres is an Economist. Master in Social Sciences with specialization in Social Development and Research. PhD Candidate in Economics. Member of the Society of Political Economy of Paraguay and the Society of Political Economy of Latin America and the Caribbean. Member of the CLACSO WG Crisis and World Economy. Militant of the Paraguayan Communist Party and member of the Central Committee. National Secretary of Ideology and Formation. E-mail: caceresalheli06@gmail.com ︎
- Lenin (1915). The bankruptcy of the Second International. Accessible at: https://goo.su/iuN6a ︎
- Lenin (1917). Imperialism. Higher Stage of Capitalism. Accessible at: https://goo.su/fZlBKU ︎
- Marx (2009). Capital. Critique of Political Economy. Volume III. Book Three. The global process of production. Buenos Aires: Editorial Siglo XXI. ︎
- Ibidem. ︎
- Britto, L. (2023). New legal bases of the Venezuelan economy. In Curcio, P. Debate on the Venezuelan economy. Pp. 145-156. Caracas: Universidad Simón Bolívar, Instituto de Altos Estudios de América Latina. ︎
- Ibidem. ︎
- Ibidem. ︎
- Government of Falcón (03 August 2024). Special Economic Zone of Paraguaná. A new scenario that opens up to the Caribbean. Accessible at the following link: https://goo.su/cPrVQsL ︎
- SENIAT (03 August 2024). Special Territorial Regimes in Force in Venezuela. Accessible at: https://goo.su/PsmbY95 ︎
- Britto, L. (2023). New legal bases of the Venezuelan economy. In Curcio, P. Debate on the Venezuelan economy. Pp. 145-156. Caracas: Universidad Simón Bolívar, Instituto de Altos Estudios de América Latina. ︎
- Infobae (05 August 2024). Régimen de Venezuela indemnizará a dos empresas colombianas que fueron expropiadas por el chavismo (Venezuela’s regime will compensate two Colombian companies that were expropriated by Chavismo). Accessible at https://goo.su/iUihI ︎
- Tal Cual (05 August 2024). Maduro reverses Chávez’s “exprópiese” by returning companies. Accessible at https://goo.su/W7aiRY ︎
- El País (05 August 2024). Venezuela reaches agreements with half a dozen international oil companies after the end of sanctions. Accessible at https://goo.su/SqzMr ︎
- La Izquierda Diario (05 August 2024). Imperialist Rapiña. Why is the Venezuelan company Citgo at the gates of a compulsive auction. Accessible at https://goo.su/34apZi ︎
- Reuters Investigates (05 August 2024). Deceptive execution. How a Chinese business reaped millions while hunger grew in Venezuela. Accessible at https://goo.su/uw5vP ︎
- France 24 (03 August 2024). Nicolas Maduro looks to China for solutions to appease Venezuela’s economic crisis.Accessible at: https://goo.su/Rah1rA ︎.
- Encyclopédie de I’énergie (03 August 2024). Venezuela: Oil and the Socialism of the 21st Century. Accessible at: http://surl.li/ajfcua ︎
- Ibidem. ︎
- El Periódico (03 August 2024). Seis razones que explican la decadencia petrolera venezolana (Six reasons for Venezuela’s oil decline). Accessible at: https://acortar.link/r3ZBTw ︎
- Beinstein (2014). Oil crisis and global systemic decline. Accessible at: http://surl.li/hfwohu ︎
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The article appeared in Adelante, theoretical journal of the CP Paraguay.
Translated by Mark Burton
