Venezuela

Two articles by members of the National Independent Autonomous Workers’ Coordinating Committee discuss the implications of Maduro’s inauguration after the disputed July 28 presidential elections and the dangers of his proposed constitutional reforms.

Comunes — With Chávez, we were moving in a revolutionary and popular direction. But in the past 10 years, the Bolivarian Revolution has lost protagonism and is no longer expressed in government policies. The results are in plain sight.

Luís Bonilla-Molina — The July 28 presidential election marked the start of a new phase within Madurismo, one of deepening authoritarianism in order to stabilise its pro-capitalist regime.

Various revolutionary left groups and human rights organisations have released statements denouncing the wave of police repression unleashed in the lead up to Nicolás Maduro’s inauguration.

Luís Bonilla-Molina — To understand the situation of the Venezuelan working class, it is important to analyse the Maduro government and Madurismo in three phases.

A new left-wing political organisation, Comunes, has been launched in Venezuela to confront the government’s repressive authoritarianism, neoliberal economic policies and attacks on working people’s rights.

Greg Godels argues that the road to defeating imperial aggression — US or any other — is to win the working class to the fight with a class-oriented program that attacks the roots of imperialism: capitalism.

María Alejandra Díaz — Caught between two warring parties intent on continuing head-on towards a collision, we must insist on doing politics and defending transparency, popular sovereignty and the Constitution.

Neirlay Andrade argues that the Maduro government’s refusal to publish election results means it ‘is crossing a line of no return and rapidly imposing a reactionary regime.’

Malfred Gerig situates the impact of United States’ sanctions on Venezuela and the rise of Venezuela’s crony capitalism within the context of the nation’s “Long Depression”.

Steve Ellner lays out his views on anti-US imperialism, how this should factor into the left’s appraisal of China and Latin America’s Pink Tide governments, and what this means for international solidarity activists.

Steve Ellner — A distinction needs to be made between critical support for the Pink Tide and the passive revolution analysis that gets translated into frontal opposition to those governments.