Venezuela
The year that has just begun suggests a change in the conditions of struggle in Venezuela, a change that has been growing since early 2013 when the bourgeoisie stepped up its economic, political and ideological campaign among the masses to create hopelessness and alienation towards the Bolivarian project.
This sharpening of the contradictions implies a change in the forms of struggle, which expresses a new period within the bourgeois democratic stage, caused by the effects of the crisis of capitalism on the Venezuelan economy, by the illness and death of Chavez and by the need to create a new leadership along the way. This task fell to Nicolas Maduro, who had to overcome huge obstacles, used by imperialism to strike the Bolivarian process, with the intention of weakening and destroying it.
In 2014 this period will surely cause great upsurges among the masses and open clashes for two main reasons: 1) because there will not be elections, which will cause the sharpening of the political confrontation to be expressed, not in the electoral arena, but in the economic struggle and the struggle of the masses with street confrontations, and 2) because the economic attack is deepening through hoarding, shortages and speculation in order to create hardships for the people.
It is clear that the government is maneuvering within this reality in which it wants to maintain a balance between the demands of the bourgeoisie and of the people. This will be debated in three big arenas: 1) the conciliation with the bourgeoisie in order to advance through outright reformism with the idea of slowing the economic offensive, 2) the unstable equilibrium based on giving up in some areas and closing off in others in order to not radicalise the situation, and 3) the popular revolutionary offensive, led by leftist sectors of the government, or launched by the masses given the economic hardships.
We must understand that the right will intensify its offensive, which can create high levels of shortages, speculation and uncertainty among the masses. Last year’s recipe was hoarding products, creating fictitious shortages by low supply, to stimulate panic buying and to raise prices in a speculative manner. Despite doubts, the government responded with sound and energetic measures, which put the hoarded goods on the street at affordable prices and with great popular support.
The bourgeois understood well the positive effects of such governmental policies, which were firm and fair and led to popular support for the government, and as a result they are now resorting to boycotting production, they have given collective vacations, have decreased imports and are preparing for a period of planned scarcity, which is now more complicated, since it will be without stocks and blaming the government for not having facilitated the measures necessary to gain access to the dollars, which they have used fraudulently.
The measures to intervene in companies can find them with empty storehouses, without production or raw materials or inputs, with a foreign trade corporation in the making, with a newly inaugurated exchange policy, which in reality has further devalued the Bolivar, with some more aggressive measures, with workers upset by the closing of businesses and the people demanding a solution to their economic problems. The scene can become very complex. We are in a tense environment in which we, the working class and people, must be prepared to participate and lead the actions against the class enemy, against the bourgeoisie and imperialism, pushing aside the conciliatory and reformist positions that lead the people to defeat, capitulating to the economic power of the bourgeoisie, a power that should be wrenched away, in order to put all productive capacities of the private oligopolies at the service of the people, to meet their needs.
In this complex situation, organisation, mobilisation and revolutionary energy are required to stop the bourgeois offensive, to defeat it in the street, to push aside reformism and advance without hesitation, with an iron hand, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, a period of subjection of the conspirators and of concentration of all abilities to achieve supply in all areas of production without the obstacle of the private sector selfishness of the bourgeoisie.
Socialism Is Built Only With the Worker-Peasant Alliance in Power and the People in Arms!
Editorial Acero
Revolucionario (Revolutionary Steel)
No. 25, February 2014,
Internal
Organ of the Central Committee,
Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of
Venezuela.