[News] Venezuela: Our Programme for the Constituent Assembly

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13200


  Venezuela: Our Programme for the Constituent Assembly

By Lucha de Clases - In Defence of Marxism, June 22nd 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The calling of a National Constituent Assembly (ANC) has been issued in 
the middle of one of the worst offensives of the counter-revolution and 
imperialism in the last eighteen years. In this political situation, the 
convening of a Constituent Assembly has awoken important revolutionary 
aspirations among sections of the workers’ and people's vanguard, who 
are ready to fight to elect deputies to the Constituent Assembly who 
come from the rank and file and defend a programme of revolutionary demands.

This is in opposition to the bureaucratic clique at the top that is 
trying to impose itself with any means necessary, with the aim of 
imposing a programme of concessions to the ruling class and the 
abandonment of any pretence of a socialist programme.

The only alternative to the serious crisis which the Bolivarian 
Revolution is going through is to radicalise it along socialist lines, 
by completing the expropriation under workers’ control of the 
capitalists and the dismantling of the bourgeois state, creating 
revolutionary people’s militias and mobilising the masses to defeat the 
fascist assault. That should be the role of the ANC. Dialogue with 
sections of the capitalist class and the [opposition coalition] MUD 
offer no way out of the current crisis, but on the contrary, it makes 
things worse. The following programme is the proposal of the “Lucha de 
Clases” Marxist Tendency of the PSUV for the National Constituent Assembly.

What revolutionary programme does the working class and the people need 
for the National Constituent Assembly?

The current offensive on the part of reaction and imperialism against 
the government of Nicolas Maduro is merely the continuation of 18 years 
of attacks (economic sabotage, strikes of capital, hoarding, 
speculation, coup plotting, rioting, paramilitary infiltration, contract 
killings, bosses’ lockouts, and so on).

The key difference now is that the revolution finds itself at a very low 
ebb with popular support in decline, as we saw in the defeat in the 
National Assembly elections [of December 2015.] The reasons for this are 
both economic and political.

On the economic front, the world capitalist crisis has led to a collapse 
in oil prices which has severely reduced the country’s hard currency 
income, revealing the limitations of an economic model based on oil 
revenues. It is no longer possible to invest oil revenues on social 
spending while maintaining a capitalist economy. The attempt to regulate 
the capitalist economy (with price and foreign exchange controls) to the 
benefit of working people, has failed. The policy adopted by the 
government to deal with this crisis has been completely 
counter-productive. It keeps paying the foreign debt, on time and in 
full, while imports of food, spare parts and medicines is slashed, 
worsening scarcity and speculation. Dollars obtained from the sale of 
oil are handed over, without any control or accountability, to private 
businesses which then siphon them off into the black market. In order to 
finance the budget deficit, the government has resorted to the 
uncontrolled printing of money without any backing in production or hard 
currency reserves. This has sparked an inflationary spiral that hits 
workers in the pocket. The government continues to make appeals to 
private capitalists to invest and offers them concessions (lifting price 
controls, handing over dollars at subsidised prices, creating special 
economic zones, opening up the “Arco minero” for multinational 
exploitation, etc.). [The Arco Minero is an area of 114,000 square 
kilometres in the South-east of Venezuela rich in minerals].

On the political front, corruption, bureaucracy and reformism curtails 
and stifles the revolutionary initiative of the working class and the 
organised people. The people are called to struggle against imperialism 
and the parasitic bourgeoisie, but are not allowed to take over the 
reins themselves. They have organised the “Congreso de la Patria” 
[Congress of the Fatherland], but this is controlled by the same cliques 
as always. The working people suffer hardships, while high officials 
live in privileged conditions.

The combination of these economic and political factors is leading to 
demoralisation, scepticism and apathy among the revolutionary masses, 
which have always been the backbone and the bedrock of support of the 
Bolivarian Revolution. All this has led to a situation where we are now 
facing the threat of overthrow of the Maduro government at the hands of 
the bourgeois reaction, which would be an absolute disaster for the 
working class.

We firmly oppose this onslaught of reaction and imperialism. At the same 
time we must warn that reformism, half-measures, bureaucracy and 
corruption are preparing the ground for the victory of the reactionary 
opposition. The only way to face up to these problems is by taking 
measures which would allow us to really defeat the oligarchy 
(capitalists, landowners and bankers) and imperialism.

For an economy under the control of the worker majority and for the 
benefit of the people, not a handful of parasites.

 1. State control of foreign trade. No more handing out of dollars to
    the capitalists.
 2. A workers’ and people’s audit of the dollars handed out at a
    preferential exchange rate. Confiscation of the properties of all
    those who have used them fraudulently. Jail for the corrupt!
 3. Nationalisation of the food, medicines and basic products
    industries, and distribution and sales networks, under workers’
    control and the organised communities to prevent corruption and
    mismanagement.
 4. Nationalisation of all companies involved in sabotage, hoarding and
    black marketeering. No more playing with people’s hunger.
 5. Nationalisation and centralisation of the banking and insurance
    sectors under workers’ control. All resources to be put at the
    disposal of a national plan of production, carried out by
    state-owned companies and under workers’ control.
 6. Immediate suspension of foreign debt repayments. The needs of the
    people are above the profits of the debt-holding vultures.
 7. All power to the working class and the organised people. Down with
    bureaucracy.
 8. Socialist workers’ councils to be set up in all state institutions
    and state-owned companies, to exercise workers’ control.
 9. Election and right of recall for all public officials.
10. No elected official or public official to earn a wage higher than
    that of a skilled worker.
11. Defend the revolution through the revolutionary organisation of the
    working class and the people.
12. Strengthen the Bolivarian militia and place it under the direct
    control of the working class and the organised people.
13. Organise Bolivarian Militia units in every workplace, factory and
    neighbourhood, to ensure the defense of buildings, territory and
    people against the guarimba [right-wing] rioting and contract killings.
14. Creation of revolutionary committees of soldiers and NCOs within the
    Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), in order to exercise
    revolutionary vigilance and block any attempted coup by the officers.
15. Break off diplomatic relations with US imperialism and with all
    countries that are threatening national sovereignty. Issue an appeal
    to the peoples and the workers of the world to defend the Bolivarian
    revolution.

This programme consists of measures which put into practice the struggle 
for a socialist economy and for the destruction of the bourgeois state, 
and represents the legacy of Chavez as explained in his speech “Turn the 
Rudder” as well as in the “Socialist Fatherland Plan”. It is time to 
complete the revolution.

We will fight for this programme as part of the campaign for the 
National Constituent Assembly, but also, and above all, in every 
factory, neighbourhood, school and university.

In order to implement this programme we can only trust in our own 
forces, the forces of the working class and the revolutionary people 
which so many times have defended the Bolivarian revolution at all key 
junctures.

Only the people can save the people. The working class must take power. 
The revolution can only be defended by completing it. Expropriate the 
oligarchs.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20170623/870f5007/attachment.htm>