The Communist Party¶

The Communist Party of Venezuela issued a condemnation of the actions of the government, calling it a desperate act in the face of rising popular discontent with neoliberalism. Their statement has some use, but is also tinged with their own chauvinism.

https://t.co/L39f04pdJW They do not make their argument from the place of protecting either indigenous peoples or the environment, whom both the Venezuelan and Guyanese governments have subordinated to the large-scale extraction of natural resources. For the PCV, it seems these concerns are irrelevant. They also clearly operate from a place of electoral opposition to the ruling PUSV, making the prediction that Maduro may plan to use the escalation as pretext to suspend next year's elections -- elections in which PCV intends to run candidates. They loudly proclaim their bona fides as Marxist-Leninists, anti-colonialists, and anti-imperialists, yet their stance does not reckon with the extractive, colonial nature of the bourgeois state they legitimate with their participation. They even supported Maduro until recently. They characterized the referendum as an attempt to instill chauvinistic patriotism, coupled as it was with a huge advertising effort to ensure popular support for it under the guise of "sovereignty." And yet, they themselves "affirm Venezuela's sovereignty" in this statement. Nevertheless, they are overall correct in assessing that these moves are being made, not in the name of "justice" or to the benefit of the people, but at the behest of capital. They point to a recent deal made by Venezuela to open oil exports to the US.

https://t.co/B0gipkyFfu It should come as little surprise that Venezuela would pursue detente with the US, using as leverage the massive fossil fuel reserves it commands. It is not socialist; it is very firmly capitalist. It has its own bourgeois class, who advance their interests through the state. The extent of its positioning as an enemy of the US empire is more akin to that of Russia than that of Cuba: its stubborn commitment to autarky and the advancement of its OWN bourgeoisie, rather than kneeling to western capital. It is still an economy predicated on exploitation, extraction, and displacement of indigenous peoples. Opening up to imperial fossil fuel interests doesn't change that fundamentally capitalist character; only the direction in which the profits of that exploitation flows.