Venezuela: inter-imperialist struggle causes crisis
Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 3:38PM
Challenge_DesafĂ­o

There have been intense daily protests in Venezeula since 2017. The opposition in a threatening move declared Juan Guaidó as president in the National Assembly, and foremost as “President in Charge” of the country. This shows us as we’ve said in many articles that socialism of the 21st century offers almost the same as capitalism. We have to move the masses towards Communism.
The Venezuelan conflict has reaffirmed the chess pieces in inter-imperialist rivalries. This country has the biggest oil reserves in the world. Mike Pence, the vice-president of the United States, was the first to recognize Juan Guaidó as “president in charge” of Venezuela, after Canada, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica and other countries lined up with the U.S. interests did the same.
While China, Russia, Bolivia and its allies continue to recognize Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela. It seems like a proxy war is possible (funded and prepared by the U.S.). The same thing that happened in Iraq, Libya, Yemen (and more) will happen in Venezuela.
While it’s true that the U.S. intervention has worsened the crisis, we can’t limit our analysis just to that, as other leftist organizations do. The history of Venezuela shows, once again that keeping money, the market and production of social relations inevitably leads to a crisis.  
Hugo Chávez’s (president from 1999 to 2013) era had economic, political, and social success not because of socialism. He reached political success because his government was able to channel the greatest increase of crude oil price in history. Another aspect is savage oil inflation pushed by external elements out of Venezuela that funded fast growing minimum wages, mass construction of homes and educational, medical, and national coverage.
Nicolás Maduro inherited a time bomb from Chavez. The inevitable happened. The oil price collapsed in 2014 and the country entered a crisis with no end.
Learning from this process means understanding that communist revolution can’t depend on the ability to sell and buy resources or seeing the masses as simple beneficiaries of reforms. At no point did the working class in Venezuela rule the means of production or society.
The working class needs to be won over to communist ideas, and organized by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). The party has to be the main driver of these much needed changes, for a new way of life.Eliminating money and profit immediately will free the creativity of the masses for the solution of immediate problems (food, water, shelter, security). We must fight for the production of food, people’s needs, communist education, massive campaigns to eradicate sanitary problems, for the zones controlled by the Party. The success of these goals will prepare the masses and demonstrate the organizational capacity of the Party, with our class leading the way.
In contrast the outcome of the Venezuelan crisis depends on who the military officials and middle ranking, and base soldiers supports. The officials of the Venezuelan military continue to be loyal to the official government, despite the pressure and the offering of amnesty on behalf of the opposition.
 PLP long recognized the failures of socialism. Today we organize and fight for communism in many parts of the world. The Venezuelan crisis makes clear the need for a working class revolutionary communist party with a fixed aim: communism.

Article originally appeared on The Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party (http://www.plparchive.org/).
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