US Hands Off Venezuela

US Hands Off Venezuela 

Venezuela is collapsing. The US is attempting to bring about a coup, and install a right-wing regime in the country sympathetic to US interests. Venezuela has been very badly served by the Bonapartist regimes of Chavez, and then Maduro, which brought about the current state of chaos and collapse, but the answer to that is not a reversion to the authoritarian, right-wing regimes that preceded Chavez, and certainly not a return to such regimes brought about by US interference in the country, in the way the US repeatedly intervened in the affairs of Latin America in the 1950's, through to the 1980's. Indeed, the decision of Trump's regime in the US to back the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, is likely only to fuel backing for Maduro, from sections of the Venezuelan masses, who remember US intervention in support of right-wing parties and politicians in the past. 

As, Trotsky pointed out in relation to the opposition to Hitler, by western imperialism, 

"The democracies of the Versailles Entente helped the victory of Hitler by their vile oppression of defeated Germany. Now the lackeys of democratic imperialism of the Second and Third Internationals are helping with all their might the further strengthening of Hitler’s regime. Really, what would a military bloc of imperialist democracies against Hitler mean? A new edition of the Versailles chains, even more heavy, bloody and intolerable. Naturally, not a single German worker wants this. To throw off Hitler by revolution is one thing; to strangle Germany by an imperialist war is quite another. The howling of the “pacifist” jackals of democratic imperialism is therefore the best accompaniment to Hitler’s speeches. “You see,” he says to the German people, “even socialists and Communists of all enemy countries support their army and their diplomacy; if you will not rally around me, your leader, you are threatened with doom!” Stalin, the lackey of democratic imperialism, and all the lackeys of Stalin – Jouhaux, Toledano, and Company – are the best aides in deceiving, lulling, and intimidating the German workers." 

(“Phrases and Reality”, in Writings 1938-9 , p 21) 

And, whilst Chavez' Left Nationalist regime, facilitated the economic collapse of the country via its programme of economic nationalism, which made it susceptible to external sanctions, and indeed made those sanctions almost inevitable, the reality is that the economic sanctions imposed by the US on Venezuela, exacerbated the economic crisis in the country, and helped bring about the current state of chaos. That, of course, is one reason that the policy of economic nationalism, and socialism in one country is such a reactionary one, that inevitably leads to external intervention, without having first focussed on building international working-class solidarity, and transnational solutions to the problems faced by workers. The programme of Chavez, of nationalism in general, and of Stalinism is doomed to failure, and we should learn those lessons for the future, but here and now, the immediate concern is to oppose US intervention. 

The Venezuelan masses need to deal with the oppression they are facing from the Maduro regime, but it is up to them to deal with that regime, not the US, or its allies, including the reactionary right-wing nationalist regime, now installed in Brazil. Again, as Trotsky put it, opposing liberal intervention in the Balkans, prior to WWI, 

“But it is not at all a matter of indifference by what methods this emancipation is being accomplished. The method of “liberation” that is being followed today means the enslavement of Macedonia to the personal regime in Bulgaria and to Bulgarian militarism; it means, moreover, the strengthening of reaction in Bulgaria itself. That positive, progressive result which history will, in the last analysis, extract from the ghastly events in the Balkans, will suffer no harm from the exposures made by Balkan and European democracy; on the contrary, only a struggle against the usurpation of history's tasks by the present masters of the situation will educate the Balkan peoples to play the role of superseding not only Turkish despotism but also those who, for their own reactionary purposes, are, by their own barbarous methods, now destroying that despotism... 

Our agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against enslavement of the Balkan masses.” 

(War Correspondence, p 293-4) 

Who can doubt that Trump's intervention in Venezuela will enhance his reactionary agenda in the US itself. Less still, who can doubt that intervention in Venezuela by Brazil, will enhance the march of reaction under Bolsanaro in that country too. And, already, we see that, just as in the Balkans, and more recently in Syria, it is not just a matter of intervention on one side that threatens to rip the country apart spreading chaos and destruction. Whilst Trump is lined up on one side, the reactionary right-wing regime of Putin is lined up behind Maduro. Again as Trotsky put it, 

“It is necessary to vindicate the possibility for these peoples themselves to settle their own affairs, not only as they wish and see fit but also by their own strength, in the land where they are established. This means that European democracy has to combat every attempt to subject the fate of the Balkans to the ambitions of the Great Powers. Whether these ambitions be presented in the naked form of colonial policy or whether they be concealed behind phrases about racial kinship, they all alike menace the independence of the Balkan peoples. The Great Powers should be allowed to seek places for themselves in the Balkan Peninsula in one way only, that of free commercial rivalry and cultural influence. 

The Balkans for the Balkan Peoples! But this point of view signifies nonintervention. It means not only opposition to the territorial ambitions of the Great Powers, but also rejection of support for Balkan Slavdom in its struggle against Turkish rule. Isn't this a policy of narrow nationalism and state egoism? And doesn't it mean democracy renouncing its very self? 

Not at all. Democracy has no right, political or moral, to entrust the organisation of the Balkan peoples to forces that are outside its control – for it is not known when and where these forces will stop, and democracy, having once granted them the mandate of its political confidence, will be unable to check them.” 

(War Correspondence, p 148-52) 

By “democracy” here Trotsky was referring to the European Social-Democratic (Marxist) parties. And, Trotsky's argument, here, reflecting the position of the European workers' parties of the time, is valid today whether in relation to Venezuela, or to Syria or any other part of the world. The working-class cannot subcontract its historical tasks to the bourgeoisie, nor to imperialism, even when it lyingly presents itself as liberal-interventionism. The task of dealing with the repressive, reactionary regime of Maduro, in Venezuela, falls to the Venezuelan people itself, not to US imperialism, or any other imperialism, including that of Putin's Russia, or Xi's China, or Bolsanaro's Brazil. In fact, the road to their freedom resides in the Venezuelan masses uniting with the masses in the rest of Latin America, to throw off their collective chains of oppression, and to build a Socialist United States of Latin America. 

That is the agenda that workers in Venezuela needed to have adopted, as opposed to the economic nationalist agenda pursued by Chavez and Maduro. Marxists had a responsibility to intervene in the process, but, in fact, the Venezuelan masses were badly served by Marxists globally. On the one hand, large sections of what passes for the international Marxist movement, including some of those who today advise Corbyn, acted simply as cheerleaders for Chavez. That is a feature that has been seen repeatedly both at a national and international level, whereby “Marxists” largely distanced from the working-class, and devoid of any real influence on historical developments, have acted to jump on whatever the latest bandwagon has been. They have attached their fortunes to whatever has been the last best hope, even though in nearly every case that has proven to be to attach themselves to forces that are, in reality, thoroughly reactionary. Repeatedly, it has shown that, as Marx himself set out as early as The Communist Manifesto, to be “anti-capitalist” is not the same as being pro-socialist, and similarly to be anti-imperialist is not at all to be pro-socialist, or even progressive. 

By acting as cheerleaders for Chavez, these “left” forces cut themselves off from any necessary criticism of the limitations, and reactionary elements of his agenda. Inevitably, as that agenda leads to the current reactionary and disastrous consequences, many of those that acted as uncritical cheerleaders, rather than breaking clearly with the regime, are led to themselves act as its apologists, and thereby to drag themselves down into the swamp along with it. 

But, others in that community veered in the other direction. They adopted an Oehlerite sectarian stance in relation to the developments in Venezuela, and to the creation of the PSUV. On the basis that Chavez' regime did not meet their requirements for ideological purity, and the elements of Bonapartism apparent in the regime, they advised the Venezuelan masses to also boycott the PSUV, an organisation that was recruiting millions of Venezuelan workers to its ranks! The AWL, for example, argued that rather than joining the PSUV, the Venezuelan workers should join a tiny Venezuelan Trotskyist group that more people outside Venezuela had heard of, than had people in Venezuela itself. What was worse, the leaders of that tiny group, themselves then called on workers to join the PSUV. But, this was at a time when the AWL, were saying that the Labour Party was a stinking corpse that workers should give up all hope of resuscitating, and were standing their own candidates in General Elections, who proceeded to get far fewer votes even than the Monster Raving Loonies, and other such groups who stood unashamedly as cranks. 

There undoubtedly were Bonapartist elements of the Chavez regime, but as I wrote at the time, there are Bonapartist elements of every Presidential political system. Its not clear that the Presidential system in Venezuela was more Bonapartist than that in the United States or France, and in some ways, it was less so, because of the existence of a range of bodies based upon local direct democracy. Chavez regime was not a socialist regime, despite its claims. It was a left nationalist, but undoubtedly bourgeois regime, whose economic nationalism was based on promoting the interests of Venezuelan national capital. In that respect it was consonant with the left nationalist agendas promoted by Stalinism, as illustrated in the various Roads to Socialism, that Stalinist parties developed as their programmes in the 1970's. 

That programme relied heavily on nationalisation, and control by the capitalist state. Yet, in Venezuela, that also went along with a promotion of worker-owned cooperatives. But, as Marx points out in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, the revolutionary nature of cooperatives is derived not from their form, but by the fact that they are the creations of workers themselves. They reflect a maturity of the productive forces, but also of the maturity of the class consciousness and capacity of the working-class for self government. The whole revolutionary content of cooperatives is removed if they are simply things that are imposed from above by the state. 

As Trotsky pointed out in relation to the Second Six Year Plan in Mexico, it is quite acceptable, and indeed necessary for poor countries, seeking to industrialise to rely on foreign capital to assist in that process. 

“It is true that the realisation of the democratic agrarian revolution, i.e., handing over all the arable land to the peasantry, would increase the capacity of the domestic market in a relatively short time; but despite all that, the rate of industrialisation would be very slow. Considerable international capital is seeking areas of investment at the present time, even where only a modest (but sure) return is possible. Turning one’s back on foreign capital and speaking of collectivisation and industrialisation is mere intoxication with words.” 

And setting out the importance of making concessions to this foreign capital, Trotsky continues, 

“Lenin accorded great importance to these concessions for the economic development of the country and for the technical and administrative education of Soviet personnel. There has been no socialist revolution in Mexico. The international situation does not even allow for the cancellation of the public debt. The country we repeat is poor. Under such conditions it would be almost suicidal to close the doors to foreign capital. To construct state capitalism, capital is necessary.” 

And, the same could be said of Venezuela. Venezuela has many advantages. It has larger proven reserves of oil than even Saudi Arabia. If ever the programme of “left nationalism” of social-democracy in one country could work anywhere, it would have been Venezuela, particularly at a time when global oil prices, for much of the period of Chavez rule, were at more than $100 a barrel. Yet, Chavez failed to bring about the industrialisation of the country in a way that would have raised the mass of the population out of poverty. Instead a lot of the oil revenues were wasted, they were used essentially as rents to cover consumption rather than to finance investment. And, those rents were increasingly used by a corrupt regime to buy votes so as to keep Chavez cronies in office. Once oil prices fell that model collapsed, and it is that which has led to the current chaos within the country. 

But, it is precisely for those reasons that Marxists had to advocate neither simply cheer-leading Chavez and his regime, but also not standing in splendid, sectarian isolation from it. It was ridiculous, when the PSUV was first created, to argue, as the AWL did, that the 5 million workers that joined it were all, in some way, simply careerists and apparatchiks. Indeed, as I reported at the time, there were plenty of instances of rank and file PSUV members supporting strikes by workers, and of mobilising to reject Chavez loyalists for positions. It was necessary for socialists to have intervened in the PSUV, so as to retain the ear of the mass of Venezuelan workers, and to begin drawing them away from the Chavistas, by constant criticism of the politics of Chavez and his regime, and illustration of its limitations in practice, as they went through the struggle, and experience of daily life with those workers. Only in that way could a genuine mass workers party have been built in Venezuela. 

Those are lessons to be learned for the future, and to be applied elsewhere today. It is a lesson in Britain, not to be drawn in by a similar cult of personality, and Corbynismo, and thereby to act merely as cheerleaders for the Labour leader as the latest, last best thing, a fear I expressed right at the very beginning, when Corbyn announced his bid for leadership. There can be no confusing Corbyn with Blair, or the current situation in the Labour Party with that which existed for the previous 35 years. But, just because Corbyn represents an advance on that period does not mean that we should not criticise the deficiencies of his leadership, and of his politics and underlying ideology, because to do so is to invite a similar calamity to that seen elsewhere, most recently now in Venezuela. Criticising Corbyn is not to invite a return of Blair. Only the corrupt, the apologists, and the hard of thinking could believe such nonsense. It is the same mode of thinking as that which argued that it was not possible to criticise the regime in the USSR, for fear of giving succour to imperialism. But, in the end, the biggest gift to imperialism, the biggest friend of imperialism in setting back the struggle for socialism was the Stalinist regime in the USSR itself, as it discredited the name of socialism for nearly a century, and continues to do so today, long after its own demise. 

Daily Mirror Political Editor, Kevin McGuire, noted that former Labour MP, Dennis MacShane, on an official visit to Venezuela several years ago had noted from his meeting with opposition MP's that, “You could not meet such a nasty bunch of individuals”. It illustrates once again that “My enemy's enemy is not my friend.” Most of the forces that proclaim themselves “anti-imperialist” are far from being friends of the working-class or of socialism. They are mostly reactionary nationalists promoting a programme that would set the condition of the working-class in their respective countries back decades. The same is true of many of those that proclaim themselves “anti-capitalist” who, as Marx describes in relation to Sismondi, and Lenin describes in relation to the Narodniks, are reactionaries that seek to hold up capitalist development or even turn the clock backwards to some less developed form of capitalism, or worse. In fact, it is impossible to be a Marxist and to be “anti-capitalist”, because, in Marx's analysis, the road to socialism runs through capitalism, and is the product of its mature development. To pronounce yourself a socialist and “anti-capitalist” makes no more sense than to proclaim yourself in favour of children, but anti-parent! 

But, the same is true in the other direction. Maduro's regime is proving every day its reactionary nature, and is doing so via increasing repression. The intervention of the US, especially given the backing for Maduro from Putin, and other right-wing nationalists seeking their own strategic advantage in the region, is likely to lead to even greater repression, as Maduro, backed by the military, seeks to hold on to power. But, that fact does not make us indifferent to how the matter is resolved. A reversion in Venezuela to the right-wing regimes that existed prior to Chavez is not an alternative to the repressive regime of Maduro. Only a mobilisation of the Venezuelan masses, around a programme of socialist internationalism, and seeking to draw in the masses of the rest of Latin America, can provide a progressive road out of the current situation.