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<h1 id="reader-title">Venezuela: Our Programme for the
Constituent Assembly</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By Lucha de Clases - In
Defence of Marxism, June 22nd 2017</div>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>What revolutionary programme does the working class
and the people need for the National Constituent
Assembly?</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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].</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>For an economy under the control of the worker
majority and for the benefit of the people, not a
handful of parasites.</p>
<ol>
<li>State control of foreign trade. No more handing
out of dollars to the capitalists.</li>
<li>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!</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>Nationalisation of all companies involved in
sabotage, hoarding and black marketeering. No more
playing with people’s hunger.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>Immediate suspension of foreign debt repayments.
The needs of the people are above the profits of the
debt-holding vultures.</li>
<li>All power to the working class and the organised
people. Down with bureaucracy.</li>
<li>Socialist workers’ councils to be set up in all
state institutions and state-owned companies, to
exercise workers’ control.</li>
<li>Election and right of recall for all public
officials.</li>
<li>No elected official or public official to earn a
wage higher than that of a skilled worker.</li>
<li>Defend the revolution through the revolutionary
organisation of the working class and the people.</li>
<li>Strengthen the Bolivarian militia and place it
under the direct control of the working class and
the organised people.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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.</li>
</ol>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
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