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<h1 id="reader-title">The Beginning of a Crucial Week in
Venezuela</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">By Jorge Martin – In
Defense of Marxism , July 25th 2017</div>
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<p>The Venezuelan opposition, backed by Washington and
Madrid, has launched an all out offensive to prevent
Sunday's Constituent Assembly elections form going
ahead. We stand firmly against this reactionary
attempt which can only be defeated by revolutionary
means.</p>
<p>The opening salvo of this offensive was fired by US
president Donald Trump who promised, in an official
statement, to implement “strong and swift” economic
sanctions against Venezuela if the Constituent
Assembly goes ahead. There is a lot of discussion in
the pages of the business papers in the US about the
precise meaning of this threat. If the US was to
impose sanctions on the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA
that would cut the main source of foreign currency the
government has. While PDVSA sells oil to a variety of
countries, most of its sales to China and Russia are
in payment for loans already given, while the US is
its main cash customer. However, cutting oil imports
from Venezuela would have an impact on the US market.
While the US can always use its strategic reserves any
disruption of supply from Venezuela would complicate
matters for US refineries, which are fine tuned to use
extra heavy Venezuelan oil. This disruption might lead
to a temporary increase in the price of fuel in the
US, something no American president wants to face. It
is more likely that any sanctions would be a
continuation of the current US policy (introduced by
Obama) of targeted sanctions against Venezuelan high
officials. However, more serious economic sanctions
cannot be ruled out, at a time when US foreign policy
in Latin America is driven by the mad-dog <em>gusanos</em> in
Miami and their representatives in the Republican
party. One way or another, Trump's statement is a
serious threat and an intolerable act of imperialist
aggression.</p>
<p>Today, an editorial in the Spanish paper El País, the
voice of Spanish multinationals with crucial interests
in Latin America, denounces Maduro's “assault on the
democratic system” and demands that the “international
community” makes an effort to “stop this institutional
coup”. Of course El País and the Spanish ruling
Popular Party know all about coups in Venezuela since
they supported the short lived April 2002 coup against
president Hugo Chavez. El País further calls on Spain
to “lead an effort uniting European and Latin American
countries and the US” to send “the chavista regime an
unequivocal message of the consequences of the final
desctruction of the Venezuelan democratic system”
“Maduro and his collaborators should know that their
actions will not be left unpunished”. This is the
extraordinary language of imperialist intervention in
Venezuela, coming from those who have been consistent
in defending the interests of multinationals and those
of the Venezuelan oligarchy.</p>
<p>The current stage of the reactionary offensive (which
has been going on for over three months) started with
the so-called “consultation” on July 16 in which the
“democratic” opposition asked if people rejected the
Constituent Assembly and refused to recognise its
legitimacy, if they wanted to Army to intervene and if
they approved of the formation of a parallel
“government of national unity”. This was an attempt to
legitimise their calls for a coup and to prevent the
Constituent Assembly elections from going ahead.</p>
<p>As we have already explained elsewhere, the
“consultation” saw a sizeable mobilisation of the
ranks of the opposition (concentrated in the middle
and upper class layers of the population), but also
witnessed a significant mobilisation of the Chavista
ranks in a simultaneous dry run for the CA elections.
The figures of participation given by the opposition
are clearly widely exaggerated, but that did not
prevent them from going ahead with their plans.</p>
<p>Last Thursday, July 20, they called for a “civic
strike”, which in reality was not supported from any
section of the workers. All major state-owned
companies were working normally as did the majority of
private sector ones. What you had was a shut down of
commerce and shopping malls, a paralisation of
privately owned transport, as well as a large scale
campaign of road blockades and barricades. There are
many examples of workers arriving at their workplaces
only to find themselves locked out by their employers.
In Barcelona, Anzoátegui, for instance, workers at the
Macusa factory (which makes leather seats for the car
industry) were told they had to take a paid day off,
something they refused. You will not find a single
report of assemblies in the workplaces where workers
decided to participate in the “strike”.<a
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<p>The opposition violence on the day reached a new
peak. Groups of rioters with molotov cocktails and
home made rocket launchers besieged and attempted to
set on fire the building of the VTV state TV channel
in Los Ruices in Caracas. At least one of the
attackers was pictured holding an assault rifle. They
were finally repelled by the joint action of the
National Guard and VTV workers who came out shouting
revolutionary slogans like “Chavez no murió, se
multiplicó” (Chavez didn't die, he multiplied). In
Cabudare, Lara, workers at the milk processing plant
Lacteos Los Andes (nationalised under Chavez), also
had to repel a similar attack by violent opposition
rioters. These examples are significant and show the
beginning of a working class reaction.</p>
<p>Riots and road blockades were more intense in the
local councils which have opposition mayors, where the
municipal police collaborated and defended the
rioters, like in Baruta or in parts of Barinas. Again,
the day's protest were mainly concentrated in the
middle and upper class areas of the main cities, with
little or no following in the working class and poor
neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>The opposition has also stepped up their
institutional challenge, by having the National
Assembly to appoint a new set of Supreme Court judges.
This is a clear attempt to create a situation of dual
power in the state institutions. However, the
opposition stopped short of appointing a new
government, something they had promised to do. This is
probably a reflection of splits within the opposition
ranks between the old parties of the ruling class
(mainly Acción Democrática) and the new young and more
far right leaders of the opposition (like Maria Corina
Machado, Freddy Guevara, Juan Requesens, etc). María
Corina Machado in an interviewed explained that her
party disagreed with the “governability pact” which
the MUD (United Democratic Roundtable) had announced.
Freddy Guevara on his part publicly praised the
“Resistance”, that is the small groups of armed
rioters which have been at the forefront of the
clashes with the police and terrorist activities of
the last three months.</p>
<p>For this week the opposition has called for two days
of “general strike” on Wednesday and Thursday. This
means in fact a bosses lock out in some companies, but
above all a widespread campaign of road blockades and
barricades, probably combined with sabotage of the
electricity grid in key cities, in an attempt to bring
the country to a standstill. Several opposition
leaders have made public appeals for people to
stockpile on food and basic products for the whole
week and stay home.</p>
<p>One of the main opposition leaders, Henrique
Capriles, has issued a call for a “take over of
Caracas” on Friday 28, following on from their “48h
national strike”, and even hinted that they “do not
rule out marching on Miraflores Palace”, which brings
ominous memories of the coup in April 2002, which was
triggered by an opposition march on the presidential
palace.</p>
<p>On Saturday 29, the opposition is calling on its
supporters to march on their local election centres
and blockade them in order to physically prevent the
elections from taking place on Sunday. “Further
measures” will be announced for Sunday, the opposition
leaders <span>have promised</span>.</p>
<p>The National Electoral Council has already made plans
to allow people living in 74 of the country's 1141
parishes, where the opposition violence has
concentrated, to vote in other polling stations other
than their own.</p>
<p>This week, therefore, will be crucial in the
insurrectionary offensive of the opposition and
imperialism.</p>
<p>At the same time there is a lot of background noise
about negotiations. It is said that the former Spanish
president Zapatero has arrived in Caracas. He was part
of the failed negotiations between the government and
the opposition at the end of last year and also played
a role in the release of opposition leader and coup
plotter Leopoldo Lopez from jail into house arrest two
weeks ago. President Maduro made yet another appeal to
the opposition to negotiate in his Sunday TV program.
Some leaders of the “moderate” wing of the opposition
have been also cautiously using the word “negotiation”
in their statements. In an article in El Nacional (the
main opposition mouthpiece), a leader of Avanzada
Progresista (the party of Lara governor Henri Falcón)
called for a negotiation involving concessions on both
sides.</p>
<p>This is the voice of those in the ruling class who
recognise that while Chavismo has lost a lot of
support, they have not been able to win over the
masses in the working class and poor neighbourhoods
nor to create any significant rifts within the army.
They also fear a descent into a civil war which would
not be in the interests of the ruling class if it
could be avoided. However, these sectors are in
conflict with the new breed of opposition leaders who
base themselves on the frenzied petty bourgeois masses
which make up their base and rely on the violent
rioters of the “Resistance”. Both sectors have the
same aims, their difference is one of tactics.</p>
<p>If the MUD was to come to power, with the support of
imperialism, that would be clearly be a major set back
for the Bolivarian revolution and would threaten all
its conquests. The oligarchy would launch an all out
assault on working people. They would introduce a
brutal austerity package making the workers pay for
the full price of the capitalist crisis, through cuts
in health care and education, pensions, social
housing, mass lay offs in the public sector, the
privatisation of state-owned companies, the return of
expropriated land to its former owners, etc. As well
as this, they would unleash a campaign of repression
and a politically motivated purge against
revolutionary activists and their organisations.</p>
<p>Faced with this situation we cannot be neutral. It is
scandalous that organisations like the misnamed Party
of Socialism and Freedom of Orlando Chirino has in
effect joined the opposition offensive, calling on
people to participate in their “consultation” and
giving public support to their “civic strike”. They
have joined the camp of the capitalist class. </p>
<p>We are implacably opposed to the opposition
offensive, which represents the interests of the
capitalists, bankers and landowners with the full
backing of US (and Spanish) imperialism. This is
therefore a class struggle and can only be fought with
class struggle methods. Faced with armed assaults
against state-owned companies, workers should form
Popular Defence Brigades (BDP), armed self defence
organisations, like the ones peasant organisations
have already set up in Zulia, Barinas and Apure. Last
week a caravan of the BDP marched from Santa Bárbara
de Barinas to Socopó, in a show of strength and made
an appeal to others to replicate their example. It is
the time to activate the reserve of the army in which
many workers are already enlisted.</p>
<p>At the same time the so-called “48h general strike”,
which in reality is a bosses lockout, can only be
effectively fought with mass workplace meetings,
factory occupations and the threat of expropriation.
Any capitalist involved in the counter-revolutionary
offensive should have its assets expropriated under
workers control. As they say in Venezuela, “la culebra
se mata por la cabeza” (“you kill the snake by its
head”) and the reactionary campaign is organised and
financed by big capitalists and landowners.</p>
<p>The opposition wants to prevent the Constituent
Assembly from taking place and so maximum
participation must be ensured. However, the idea that
the Constituent Assembly itself will “bullet-proof”
the revolution and guarantee “peace and dialogue” as
the government argues is either naïve or foolish. The
counter-revolution must be fought with revolutionary
means. Also because only by revolutionary means can we
start to solve the economic problems which affect
millions of working class families. Only by unleashing
the revolutionary initiative of the masses can the
fighting spirit of the masses be rekindled.</p>
<p><strong>Only the people saves the people!</strong></p>
<p><strong>Hands Off Venezuela!</strong></p>
<p><strong>Expropriate the coup plotters!</strong></p>
<p><strong>Factory closed, factory occupied!</strong></p>
<p><strong>Down with the reactionary and imperialist
offensive!</strong></p>
<p><strong>Defend the Venezuelan revolution! </strong></p>
<p><em>Edited by Venezuelanalysis.com. </em></p>
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