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Hugo Chavez Death and the Way Forward for Venezuela

With the following observation from the thespec.com
1
we hope we can dispense with the illusions of
what Bolivarianism` and 21
st
Century Socialism` are presented as and identiIy the actual class character oI
the state that the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) administers, what road-blocks still exist for
workers on the path to socialism, and what defending and advancing the social gains already made in the anti-
imperialist struggle means and how it can be done.

'Jene:uela todav has the fairest distribution of wealth in the Americas, with the obvious excep-
tion of Canada.
Jene:uelas 'Gini coefficient,` which measures the wealth gap between the rich and the poor,
is 0.39, whereas the United States is 0.45 and Brazil, even after 10 years of reforming left-wing
governments, is still 0.52. (A lower score means less inequality of income.)
For all of Chave:s ranting about class struggle and his admiration for Fidel Castro, this was
not achieved in Venezuela by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. It was ac-
complished by spending the oil revenue differently. He changed the political psychology of the
countrv, and it now has the potential to be a Saudi Arabia with democracv`

CLASS WAR

Chave: presents a copv of Simon Bolivars sword as a gift to the bloodv butcher al-Assad

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Despite 'liberating their oil, through compensated nationalization, Venezuela has not escaped the
clutches of imperialism. World capitalism in the imperialist epoch dominates and must super-exploit the semi-
colonies to survive. Even the most self-sufficient workers collectives are dominated and exploited via the im-
position and financialization of markets, the commodification of labor, overt military threat of intervention and
covert subterfuge and counter-revolutionary instigation. Venezuela has been subject to all these obstacles to
liberation and socialism.

To overcome these obstacles, nationalization without compensation of imperialist and big national
capital is paramount: the establishment of workers control of production, the establishment of a social-
economic plan under workers control and the imposition of a monopoly of foreign trade are all required to
hold off the exploitative consequences of the international dominance of the law-of-value (which commodifies
labor power making profit and capitalism possible) on any nation seeking to escape imperialist control. In ad-
dition a conscious policy to spread these transformative measures across borders is essential because such a
system, as was proved with the USSR and China, cannot long have a peaceful coexistence with imperialism.
On a world scale either the working class takes ascendancy and abolishes the capitalist mode of production or
the capitalist reaction acts in every way possible to crush the rise of the working class, ideologically, economi-
cally, militarily, and subordinate it to the barbarism of the domination of the law-of-value.

GINI Coefficient
2

Source http://venezuela-us.org/tablas/gini_e.html
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Evolu-
tion
Gini
Coefi-
cient
(INE)
0.4865 0.4693 0.4772 0.4573 0.4938 0.4811 0.4559 0.4748 0.4422 0.4200 0.4099 0.3928

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Between two Imperialist Blocs

Today the same forces that call Obama socialist peg Venezuela as such, but by any scientific or Marx-
ist measure we must conclude Venezuela remains a semi-colony of imperialism looking for the best deal be-
tween its two major trading partners, the competing imperialist powers US and China.



While Chavez hand-in-hand with Hu JinTao in April 2009 cut oil deals while trumpeting the New '5
th
Interna-
tional and the building oI '21
st
Century Socialism the Chinese Development Bank (CDB) had something
else altogether in mind. The Financial Times
3
bloggers comment:

'State-owned CDB has agreed to lend Venezuela $42.5bn since 2008, or around half the loans
the country received during that period. Almost all of those loans are backed by sales contracts
for crude oil.,

Shipments of oil to China bv Jene:uelas state energv giant PDJSA have increased nearlv ten
times since 2006 and the countrv now sells around 19 per cent of its oil output to China, .
Jene:uelas second biggest trading partner after the US.

But a glance at the terms of the loans extended by CDB so far show that the Chinese lender has
been thinking for a long time about how it would get its money back when Chvez eventually
left the stage.

As well as securing most of the loans with oil contracts, CDB has insisted that most of the loans
are spent on projects that directly benefit the Venezuelan people, particularly housing and pub-
lic infrastructure projects.

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large chunks of the loans it gives to Venezuela and other countries are also conditional on
Chinese companies getting the contracts to build that housing and infrastructure. (Emphasis ours)


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Sources close to CDB have told the FT that the banks thinking in Jene:uela was that as long
as the money was spent on projects that obviously benefit the nation then whoever comes after
Chavez will not be able to easily deIault on the loans.

Rather than building socialist internationalism the Chinese foreign investment/trade model is relatively
indistinguishable from that of the IMF loan-to-build model except that it is wrapped in Red Flags, easily em-
braced by the populist and eclectic leader, yet rendering long term and disastrous effects for the people of
Venezuela whose wealth it is that will be paying oII the Chinese contracts. This week`s Latin America Herald
Times reports:

'Oil Minister Rafael Ramire: said Thursdav that Jene:uela is sending 640,000 barrels a dav of
oil to China, of which 270,000 barrels a day are used to repay the loans, according to Ramirez.
A confidential US cable from the US embassy in Caracas to the State Department in Washing-
ton revealed by WikiLeaks in 2010 documented that a PDVSA director had revealed that the
state oil company "had analyzed its crude sales to China and determined that China had only
paid $5 a barrel of crude on a couple of deals." (Emphasis ours)
According to the Venezuela Central Bank, in December there was a 78.1% shortage of sugar;
76.8% of wheat flour; 86.1 shortage of sunflower seed oil; 56.8% shortage of corn oil; 67.1%
shortage of mixed vegetable oil; and a 43.3% shortage of pre-cooked corn flour. Shortages
worsened in Januarv.`

Defend and Extend the Gains of the Venezuelan Revolution`

While joining in the worldwide mourning among the workers and oppressed, the major gains made
during Chavez`s term have been highlighted and celebrated by much oI the leIt. One Mike P., on a San Fran-
cisco Bay Area chat thread`s sentiments exempliIy the views oI much oI the leIt:

`The past 13 vears of President Chave: rule has seen Jene:uela improve bv all economic indi-
cators education indicators, health care indicators, housing indicators and especially the build-
ing from the bottom, a true democracy. The latter is in danger today as USA is currently spend-
ing tens of millions of dollars inside Venezuela to defeat the Bolivarian Revolution and rein-
state the old oligarchv.
Many of us will miss Chavez greatly, but we take solace in knowing he did all he could to pre-
pare his countrv for this moment.. .the people of Jene:uela will defend the gains against our
governments coming assault.. .we can stand shoulder to shoulder with the people in Jene-
zuela to protect their gains, while learning form the good people of Venezuela what it means to
build a 21st centurv socialism.`
We salute the enthusiasm of comrade Mike and join his defense of the gains accomplished in Vene-
zuela and agree that Obama (Chavez`s choice in the last US election) will mobilize the might oI imperialism to
undermine those gains. Our duty as internationalists is to deIeat imperialism`s interventions against the people
of Venezuela; be they overt military, covert, diplomatic, economic, ideological, propagandistic etc. To support
the people of Venezuela we advocate a united front of workers organizations to educate American workers and
their allies about imperialist interventionism and set networks in place to launch the types of mass actions, po-
litical and general strikes needed to stop the imperialist intervention. To put an end once and for all to imperi-

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alist intervention workers must put and end to imperialism and this requires the socialist revolution in the im-
perialist homelands.

A Sober Assessment: Limits on the Bourgeois Nationalist Revolution

We disagree with Mike`s assessment however that Chavez 'did all he could to prepare his country Ior
this moment. A sober assessment oI Chavismo, the 'Bolivarian Revolution and '21
st
c. Socialism is re-
quired if workers in Venezuela or here at home can be mobilized to defend and advance its gains described
above.

Chavez came to power as a radical populist democrat, a Venezuelan nationalist. And as is the history
of radical democracy in Latin America, populists who come to power quickly run up against the limits imperi-
alism sets for the semi-colonies. Seemingly democratic and nationalist tasks such as purchasing the wealth of
the nation back Irom imperialism exposes the limits which the world`s billionaires will allow radical national-
ist/democrats in semi-colonies to go before attempting to destabilize and replace them. From Arbenz to Al-
lende to Zalaya, from Mosaddegh to Lumumba to Aristide imperialism has shown over and again it has only
so much patience. The aspirations of the liberal national bourgeois in the semi-colonies Ior modern democ-
racy,` Ireedom` and opportunity` are limited by imperialism`s insatiable thirst Ior proIit and the numeric and
material weakness of their class. Modern revolutions against imperialism in these nations depend on populist
mobilizations of the masses which can either be constrained by a populist leader committed to defending capi-
talist property for the national bourgeoisie but willing to make concession to the populace, or become
unleashed (think Fidel Castro) resolving the contradiction of the semi-colonial bourgeois revolution by making
the revolution against imperialism permanent by seizing the power and wealth of the national bourgeoisie and
spreading the revolution beyond its borders.

Had Bush/Cheney not gotten US imperialism bogged down in Afghanistan, which served as a jumping
off point to invade Iraq, and had the masses not been mobilized, the 2002 coup-d`etat against Chavez might
have been successful. Despite the media blackout of the anti-war movement building internationally with mil-
lions out on the streets in February 2003, the imperialists knew they were pushing the patience of the masses
and as dim-witted as Bush was, there were some real calculating bastards running the show who understood
how far they could push our patience and that military intervention, at least for a time in Venezuela, would not
be an option.

Chavez survived the failed 2002 coup, came back re-invigorated with anti-imperialist sentiment and
committed to building his version oI Bolivarian Socialism.` For this he created a popular Iront/cross class
party, the PSUV, which rejected Marxism and established its version oI socialism based on the state`s
conquest` oI the nation`s oil wealth. Chavez rejected the lessons oI revolutionary Marxism and under the
guise oI developing a new road to socialism contained the proletariat`s revolutionary movement, conIined the
revolution to capitalism with welfare and minimal distributional gains of the oil rent. Today much of the left
embraces this without saying directly, 'it is the best we can do under the current conditions. Some long-time
socialists even praise Bolivarianism as a socialist revolution and Chavez as the first great Socialist leader of
the 21
st
century.




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The US Communist Party (CP-USA)
4
which long ago abandoned the revolutionary road to socialism
states:

'.we were delighted with the progress that Jene:uela made, under Chave: wise and firm
leadership, in eliminating poverty and illiteracy, in providing for the health care and housing
needs of the Venezuelan people, and in rechanneling the country's oil wealth away from corpo-
rate greed and toward meeting the needs of the people.

We were no less enthusiastic about President Chavez's role in international affairs. His work in
creating ALBA) (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples' of our America), PETROCARIBE and
CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), as well as his government's ac-
tivities to develop MERCOSUR and UNASUR, have had a revolutionary impact in correcting
the imbalance of power between the Latin American and Caribbean countries on the one hand,
and the United States, Canada and Europe on the other.`

Thus, like the Bolivarians the CP sees these new capitalist trade alliances, rather than socialist revolu-
tion (the expropriation of the capitalists and the construction of a planned economy,) as the road to liberating
the masses from imperialism. Alongside the Bolivarians they ignore or willfully hide from the masses the fact
that even these liberated trade zones` are mediated by the constraints oI the capitalist production cycle and
that their reliance on an alliance with their own weak comprador bourgeoisie, traps the workers as wage slaves
in a multi-class party and popular front government which enforces the capitalist property relations at the point
of production through the vehicle of the state.


REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST OR BOURGEOIS BONAPARTIST?


Chavez is quoted in Aporrea (7/29/07) as stating that the PSUV will not be Marxist-Leninist, as Marx-
ism is a dogmatic thesis that is now over and is not in accord with today`s reality. He went on to say the work-
ing class is not the motor oI socialism. The Iollowing day Jorge Giordani Minister, oI People`s Power and
Planning stated, 'There does not exist anv contradiction between private enterprise and Jene:uelan social-
ism.`

To which Earl Gilman, long time revolutionary worker and editor of El Nuevo Topo, commented:

'If the working class is not the motor of the revolution, then apparentlv the officer corps are
that motor. Though he may make justified criticisms of Marx, by rejecting the Marxist method
he is following the footsteps of such figures as General Velasco of Peru and General Juan
Peron of Argentina.`

Contrary to common view oI most 'socialists the Revolutionary Communist Internationalist Tendency
(RCIT) pointed out in their obituary for Chavez:

'The truth is that Chave: was no socialist. He was rather a bourgeois-Bonapartist politician who used
socialist rhetoric but led a capitalist regime for 14 years. Under his government, between 1998 and
2008 the private sectors share of the economv grew from 64.7 to 70.9 at the expense of the public
sector. In particular, the parasitic sector of 'finance and insurance`, i.e. monev capital, grew rapidlv
in this period, by 258.4%.... According to United Nations UNCTAD and other sources, the share of
workers wages in national income is todav below the level when Chave: took power..

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In addition, militant workers who organized strikes or factory occupations faced reprisal, dismissal,
jail or even murder. A well known example for this is the union leader Ruben Gonzalez, a member of
the Chave:s partv PSUJ, who was sentenced to 7 vears in prison, which accused him of violence dur-
ing a strike at the state-owned Ferrominera Orinoco. While he was freed after one year in prison be-
cause of mass protests, at least 125 worker militants remain in prison for being involved in various
strike actions or occupations and more than 2,500 activists have faced criminali:ation.`

The RCIT goes on to answer the question that iI he was not a socialist 'why was he despised by the rich and
powerIul?:

'.Thev hated him because Chave: stood at the top of a regime which had the support of onlv a minor-
ity of the Venezuelan capitalists and which had to rest on the lower grades of the army and the millions
of workers and poor. It was a regime similar to those which Trotsky analyzed in Mexico in the late
1930s and which he characteri:ed as 'Bonapartist sui generis of a distinctive character`.

Therefore the Chavez regimes was forced given the massive pressure from the workers and urban
poor to subsidi:e certain social reforms ('misiones`) which were beneficial for the poorest strata of
the population and which have contributed at least according to official statistics - to a certain re-
duction of the extreme inequality of income in the country. The regime could do so because Venezuela
is the fifth largest oil producer of the OPEC member states and its oil production and trade accounts
for roughlv 30 of GDP, 94 of export earnings, and more than 50 of the central governments
budget revenues. This gave the regime the material basis to finance certain social reforms.`


In their rejection of Marxism not only does the PSUV abandon the centrality of the working class in
making its own revolution, they reject the need to end capitalist exploitation at the point of production, to ex-
propriate the big bourgeoisie and foreign capital-without compensation. They reject the Marxist theory of the
state as they ignore the lessons of the Paris Commune-that the working class can not just lay its hands on the
bourgeois state and administer it for its own historic interests and that instead, the capitalist state apparatus (the
military, the legislature, the judiciary, the executive, the bureaucracy, the police and the prisons) must be
smashed and replaced by the armed workers assemblies, guiding the task of social and economic reorganiza-
tion to advance and protect the process of the expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the socialization/negation of
capital. Chavez rejected building up the workers assemblies to replace bourgeois legislative and executive in-
stitutions. The popular assemblies in Venezuela were not organized to replace the rule of the bourgeois state
but rather to buttress it.


IN THE PANTHEON OF SOCIALIST LEADERS


Taking his place alongside the defunct socialism of the Kautskyian Social Democrats, the Mensheviks,
Stalinists and Maoists, Chavez rejected the revolutionary Marxist insistence upon the political independence of
the working class. In his theory and practice he opposed the workers organizing their own party and forming
their own working class dictatorship. His populist democratic credentials were exposed as mere rhetoric as he
rejected the best traditions oI worker`s democracy (the right to Iorm political Iactions) inside the PSUV while
drawing to it layers of the national bourgeoisie including former coup plotters.

Indeed embryonic stirrings of the new proletarian state (emergent whenever class independence, self
organization, and self armament takes place, such as in cordones industriales and workers councils) inside the
old state run counter to Chavez`s project and needed to be manipulated and declawed. The theoretical Iounda-

8
tion upon which Chavismo is based is flawed and will have to be defeated theoretically and organizationally
replaced with a revolutionary socialist workers party in order to fight back the counter-revolution and make the
socialist revolution possible.

It follows, like the cart follows the horse that if the task of expropriating the big capitalists is taken
off the table and foreign capital is compensated for properties nationalized, there is no need for the workers
to have their own class independent party, or their own mass assemblies, or their own armed brigades. The
bourgeois legislature, the bourgeois courts, the professional army are, in the Chavez theory and practice,
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a formula for the defeat not the triumph of the working class.


~.THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE


Instead of basing the Bolivarian Revolution firmly on materialist footing as Lenin had in 1917, Chavez,
a moralist and idealist used his charisma, his moral certitude (in himself-a strength of will) based upon his
roots from among the impoverished. His democratic credentials became heroic when he led the failed coup
against the oligarchy in 1992, winning to himself a following among a small layer of the capitalist class, the
'Bolibourgeoisie. This layer was fed up with the power of the oligarchy and the subservience of the economy
to imperialism, yet was too weak itself to fight for independence from imperialism and to establish sufficient
national democracy to meet their class needs and desires. Today in the power vacuum Iollowing Chavez`s
death, it will aim to drive the PSUV further to the right.

This alliance that formed around Chavez of a sector of the capitalist class on one side, the strong popu-
list Bolivarian revolutionary leader mediating the state and the unfulfilled masses striving for socialism on the
other is not an original historical drama. Chavez ignored Marx`s analysis oI the French Revolution wherein
Bonapartism was identified. Therein Chavez may have glimpsed a mirror image of himself bridging the gulf
between irreconcilable social classes, limiting the drive of the most downtrodden toward socialism by sharing
some of the wealth recouped from the oil rent bought back from imperialism, yet maintaining the social rela-
tions inherent in the capitalist mode of production, through which the workers exploitation is perpetuated.


THE POPULIST ALLIANCE BURIES THE WORKERS PROGRAM TURNING MARXIST THE-
ORY INSIDE OUT!


In Chavez`s theory and practice he drew around him all the Iorces oI the leIt who traditionally join or
give left cover to popular fronts and cross-class alliances. Among those who have abandoned the fight for
class independence there is a coalescence of anti-Leninism, neo-Kautskyianism, World Social Forum (WSF)
and layers of fake Trotskyists (like Alan Woods whose IMT drops its programmatic independence to join the
PSUV,) and those who argue that underconsumption rather than overproduction
6
is the explanation for the
cause of the capitalist crisis replacing the need for social planning with Keynesian pump priming on the con-
sumption side.

This intersection oI 'Bolivarian Revolution-'21
st
Century Socialism and the 'Market Socialist ex-
ample of China is held up by both the Bolivarians and the International Communist League (ICL/Spartacist) as
a model of a post capitalist state, albeit one which is market-driven and fully integrated into the world of capi-
talist system of finance, production for profit and market driven-distribution.


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If preparing the masses for the task of socialist construction is what Mike P. was referring to, then de-
spite the gains made by the masses during the era of Chavismo, el Commandante did not prepare the people
for the task ahead. Not unless his intention was to replicate the super-exploitation for capitalist accumulation
which, for a strange confluence of the Bolivarians, Marcyites, Robersonites, Castroites, and even the Chinese
Stalinist-capitalists themselves, is passed off to the international workers as varied and sundry forms of a post-
capitalist Workers State--that is China today (21
st
C. Socialism for the Bolivarians, Market Socialism for the
CCP, and Deformed Workers State for the ICL.)

To build socialism, the workers need their own revolutionary socialist party which must build a revolu-
tionary international which refuses to compromise with exploiters and oppressors. How can the exploited
Venezuelan workers make common cause with and expect the support of the workers revolution in Colombia,
for example, when the PSUV collaborates against the FARC; or solidarity with the super exploited diamond
miners of Zimbabwe when Chavez embraces their exploiter-Mugabe; otherwise the international proletarian
unity needed to overthrow imperialism and all their lackeys will not be assembled.


STRANGE BEDFELLOWS


As a leftist icon Chavez and his movement became a magnet for professed anti-capitalist, progressives,
the WSF, leftists, self-styled socialists, and even the Hollywood set. From Oliver Stone, Danny Glover, and
Sean Penn, to Tariq Ali (one time leader of the USEC-Fourth International and current editor of New Left Re-
view,) Madea Benjamin (Code Pink,) Cindy Sheehan (the Peace mom,) Alan Woods (leader of the fake Trot-
skyist IMT) and the Castro brothers (capitalist restorationist leaders of the beleaguered Cuban people);
progressives` oI all stripes Iound something in Chavez to celebrate, encourage and support-a spark of hope in
a dark world.


Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans, Hugo Chavez, Medea Benjamin, Caracas, Venezuela, January 28, 2006. Photo by Code Pink

And as could be expected, Chavez sought allies among the enemies or supposed enemies of imperial-
ism. He Iamously gave out copies oI Simon Bolivar`s sword to heads oI state whose anti-imperialism and na-
tion building he likened to Bolivar`s.


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BeIriending imperialism`s list oI bad boys,` Ahmadinejad, Gaddafi, al-Assad, Castro, Mugabe,
Morales as well as the moderates Lula, Zalaya, Kirchner and others, Chavez sought protection for Venezuela
building alliances with other semi-colonial states. Yet, aside from Cuba, all these nations were capitalist, in
the worst of them crony capitalism elevated the leaders families, clan and tribes while the masses and/or mi-
grant labor were exploited and oppressed. In an advanced semi-colony like Brazil the Workers Party`s (PT`s)
socialism had been reduced to 'la bolsa de familia,` (a minimum grocery package Ior the poor.) In 'socialist
Cuba a privileged bureaucracy, rather than the masses, ruled and were Iinding the maintenance oI their privi-
leges threatened by the isolation of the Cuban deformed workers state, so they were busily restoring capital-
ism, turning beachfront property over to imperialist hoteliers, inviting Spain, Canada and China to reap profit
at the expense of the Cuban people who, in the name of liberalization and reform, found themselves thrown
out oI work by the tens oI thousands! It was in Castro that Chavez Iound his 'special Iriend, mentor and trad-
ing partner. Indeed it was the oil for doctors and educators trade that resulted in the most progressive advances
for Venezuela and helped alleviate some of the economic (read oil) isolation Cuba had felt since the counter-
revolution in the USSR.

OI course you can`t blame the President oI a nation with one oI the world`s largest oil reserves Ior be-
ing feted and photographed with every imperialist thug and practically every comprador bourgeois tin pot dic-
tator on the planet. When you are in the oil business and the social programs you promised to the people de-
pend on your selling and burning every drop of fossil fuel rather than expropriating big capital and negating
the exploitative relations of production, you have to be very friendly; so friendly in fact that this unsustainable
aspect oI Bolivarian Socialism` and its inherent threat to the environment is ignored by the Greens and Green/
Red alliance.

As the unfolding events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown, imperialism will tolerate
many a tin pot dictator if they provide a service and are able to contain the national revolution by keeping the
working class in check. Mubarak contained the Egyptian masses and kept a lid on the Palestinian Revolution,
Gaddafi, a thorn in the side of imperialism for decades made nice and was accepted back into the fold in 2003
and Syria`s al Assad, like Mubarak was a contract torturer Ior the CIA and both kept the Palestinian revolution
in check for Zionism. The imperialists stand by these thugs until it becomes clear they could no longer contain
the masses, sending imperialism to look for a new strongman, or comprador layer, who while posing as de-
mocrats, step into the leadership vacuum over the top of the unfolding revolutions and contain them and re-
store capitalist 'stability Ior imperialist exploitation.

So it should have come as no surprise to the supporters of Gaddafi who place the responsibly for his
downfall and death on imperialism rather than on the righteous uprising of the Libyan masses, or to Cindy
Sheehan, whom Chavez dubbed 'Senora Esperan:a,` that rather than supporting her campaign for vice presi-
dent in which she presented herselI as a 'revolutionary socialist, anti-imperialist and a friend/supporter of

11
Chavez, He chose to support Wall Street`s pick Ior the CEO oI US imperialism, calling Obama a "good guy"
5
and stating that, "If I were American, I'd vote for Obama." Ironic? Go Figure!

THE REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST ROAD FORWARD

While socialists oppose the interventions and exploitation by imperialism of the semi- colonies we do
not for a moment abandon the masses there who, in order to survive find themselves in revolutionary struggle
against capitalism as it is brutally maintained by the likes of Ahmadinejad, Gaddafi, al-Assad, Mugabe,
Morales as well as Dilma, Kirchner and others. Yet there are many fake socialists who fawn obsequiously and
abandon the socialist revolution wherever a national liberation movement arises that forms a bloc of classes,
makes some progressive gains against direct imperialist domination and exploitation, even when these regimes
support and maintain the power of the local bourgeoisie and cut new deals with imperialism at the expense of
socialist revolution.

These self-styled Marxists from Alan Woods to Tariq Ali and Cindy Sheehan, make common cause,
through their uncritical alliance with Chavez, with the criminal exploiters of the masses in Syria, Libya, Zim-
babwe, Iran, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Cuba and China.

Overcoming the legacy of Chavez, the international working class, that of Latin America and of Vene-
zuela in particular, must come to major theoretical understanding of the role of a Bonaparte, the strongman
who mediates between social classes but allows the dominant mode of production to remain intact. Out of
such a theoretical reevaluation an international revolutionary Marxist workers party must be built to re-
establish the working class program.

Comrade Earl Gilman warns that today Iollowing the passing oI Chavez a period oI dual power` is
opening as the Bolibourgeoisie in the PSUV and the government seeks to appease the counter-revolution. We
do not see this as dual power` in the classical sense. For dual power to emerge the workers need to break
from the popular front and assert class independence. To defend the gains of the workers movement, revolu-
tionary workers in Venezuela need to advocate for the formation of workers, farmers and soldiers councils and
militias and for seizing all power by a workers council government. That demand will split the working class
base of the PSUV and the regime away from the Bolibourgeoisie and state bureaucracy. Then we would have
dual power, which will open the road to socialism. To advocate for and make this real the workers need their
vanguard to be organized as a combat party of professional revolutionaries.
Liaison Committee of Communists (March 10, 2013):
Revolutionary Workers Group Zimbabwe
Communist Workers Group USA
Communist Workers Group Ao/NZ
____________________________________

1. http://www.thespec.com/opinion/columns/article/899068--venezuela-after-hugo-chavez

2. http://venezuela-us.org/tablas/gini_e.html

3. http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/03/08/after-chavez-will-china-still-fund-chavismo/#axzz2Mymljr6g

4. http://cpusa.org/hugo-chavez-1954-2013/

5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/hugo-chavez-says-hed-vote_n_1927024.html

6. 'At first glance these appear to be two sides of the same coin. But they are not. Underconsumption means that all you have to do is increase the incomes of con-
sumers and the problem is solved. This is the underlying assumption of that branch of neo-classical economics (value is set by supply and demand) dressed up as
Marxism. It means that by increasing demand you can match it with supply. And since capitalists cannot be trusted to do this,
the state has to intervene to overcome underconsumption. This would prevent the Iinancialisation` oI surplus capital and crises such as the one we are facing. For
Marx, the crisis is caused by overproduction of capital, both commodities and money, when insufficient profits are realized, even when those commodities are
consumed at their values. The solution for the capitalists is to increase their rate of profit by reducing the costs of plant, machinery, raw materials and labor power.
The 'wiping out oI capital does not only reIer to the destruction oI Iictitious or unproductive capital but the devaluation of productive capital, both over-valued
plant, machinery and raw materials, and variable capital the value of labor-power, or wages. Class Struggle #80 Sept/Oct 2008 http://www.geocities.com/
communistworker/

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Communist Workers Group USA

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Labor Donated
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free much of hu-
manity from the bonds of feudal or tribal society, and developed
the economy, society and culture to a new higher level. But it
could only do this by exploiting the labour of the productive
classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increas-
ingly destructive of "na-ture" and humanity. In the early 20th cen-
tury it entered the epoch of imperial-ism in which successive cri-
ses unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolu-tions. Today
we Iight to end capitalism`s wars, Iamine, oppression and injus-
tice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling classes
and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative and oppressive soci-ety
that has exceeded its use-by date.
What we Fight For
We fight to overthrow Capitalism
By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-conditions for
socialism a world-wide working class and modern industry ca-
pable of meeting all our basic needs. The potential to eliminate
poverty, starvation, disease and war has long existed. The October
Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land
to millions. But it became the victim of the combined assault of
imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with its
deformed offspring in Europe, degenerated back towards capital-
ism. In the absence of a workers political revolution, capitalism
was restored between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then fol-
lowed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North Korea survive as
degenerate workers states. We unconditionally defend these states
against capitalism and fight for political revolution to overthrow
the bureaucracy as part of world socialist revolution.
While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing
between the working class and socialism are political, social and
cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideol-
ogy and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and
capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a liv-
ing science that explains both capitalism`s continued exploitation
and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of
individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and why the
reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie
workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and
equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle
against the inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of capi-
talism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a
revolutionary class-consciousness.
The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party as
totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a centrally or-
ganised party there can be no revolution. We base our beliefs on
the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a
party, armed with a transitional program, forms a bridge that joins
the daily fight to defend all the past and present gains won from
capitalism to the victorious socialist revolution. Defensive strug-
gles for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and con-
ditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all nationalities,
genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about move-
ments for workers control, political strikes and the arming of the
working class, as necessary steps to workers' power and the
smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way, workers will
learn that each new step is one of many in a long march to revolu-
tionize every barrier put in the path to their victorious revolution.
We fight for a Revolutionary Party
Communism stands for the creation of a classless, stateless soci-
ety beyond socialism that is capable of meeting all human needs.
Against the ruling class lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for
all, that nature can be "conserved", that socialism and communism
are "dead", we raise the red flag of communism to keep alive the
revolutionary tradition of the Communist Manifesto of 1848, the
Bolshevik-led October Revolution, the Third Communist Interna-
tional until 1924, and the revolutionary Fourth International up to
its collapse into centrism, with the closing of the International cen-
ter. We fight to build a new Communist International, as a world
party of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious strug-
gle for socialism.
We fight to defend Marxism
We fight for Socialism.
We fight for Communism.
Join us: where overthrowing capitalism is all in a days work !!
Women organi:e a rallv on International Womens Dav in India