The Venezuelan crisis has laid bare the inconsistency of leftist organizations, even the ones that claim to be revolutionary or Trotskyist, when it comes to defending an independent position at a time when “democratic” tendencies encouraged by the right wing and imperialism against reactionary governments are on the rise. Venezuelan groups aligned with member parties of the Argentine Left Front (Frente de Izquierda), with the exception of the Partido Obrero, are advocating a policy which supports the candidates of the pro imperialist opposition. The same goes for Nuevo MAS and PSTU. 

This does not mean, of course, that we should provide any kind of support to Maduro’s dictatorship, but we should reveal that the whole political-electoral process was marked by a pact, behind people’s back, between the government, the opposition and imperialism. The Barbado agreement was precisely the confirmation of the antidemocratic character of the electoral procedure. On the one hand, it was strongly conditioned by imperialist sanctions and blockade against Venezuela, carried out in agreement with the opposition, and on the other hand, by the government’s proscription of different candidates both on the right wing and on the left, besides restrictions for the right to vote for millions of Venezuelans.

Positions

It is self-evident that the left has placed itself in the camp of pro imperialist opposition. PSL, an organization aligned with Izquierda Socialista, reproaches María Corina Machado and Edmundo González that “they did not call to deepen the mobilization” and also that “in the months leading up the elections they made people believe that only by voting could the government be defeated, they never warned about fraud”. They call to “give continuity to the popular protest” and to stay “on the streets organizing mobilizations”. Their slogans of the moment are “not to fraud! In the face of fraud, popular mobilization” ( PSL’s Statement 30/7).

Marea Socialista, aligned with MST, points out that “because people in Venezuela are on the streets with demands for democratic freedom and respect for their vote, we must keep gathering strength in the struggle for our rights, with unity, consciousness and class independence” (Marea Socialista’s Statement 30/7).

LTS, linked to PTS, says: “we support mobilizations and we completely understand the anger expressed in the demand to fulfill the will expressed by majority of the people in the elections. We demand an end to fraud, the government should provide proper access to all data, records and audit trails. (LTS’s Statement 30/7). Nuevo MAS states “we support popular mobilizations that have broken out on the streets. Which for the moment seem to be independent but are likely to be either completely repressed by Maduro (which we reject) or co-opted by the extreme right of Machado”. (Statement SoB 30/7), and the UCT (PSTU) states “¡No to electoral fraud! ¡Down with Maduro’s dictatorship! ¡Full support for mobilizations!” (Statement UCT 30/7).

Proimperialism

As we can see, the entire left supports or shows “solidarity” with mobilizations promoted by Corina Machado or with those that have arisen spontaneously. PSL (IS) and UCT (PSTU) have gone even further and propose to deepen the mobilizations. ¡But mobilizations stand, exclusively, for the fall of Maduro and the recognition of González Urrutia’s victory, that is, the recognition of the candidate of imperialism! Therefore, as they support and show solidarity with mobilizations, there is no differentiation with Corina Machado and Gonzales Urrutia. It is obvious that respecting the right of people to demonstrate and to repudiate state or para-state repression has nothing to do with supporting or being in solidarity with these demonstrations, which pursue a reactionary and pro-imperialist position.

PSL (IS) and Marea Socialista (MST) have achieve a true literary accomplishment:  their statements on Venezuela, avoid to denounce the direct and blatant US interference in the electoral process through opposition, and also avoid even mentioning the word “imperialism”.

¿How can one write even one paragraph about Venezuelan process without incorporating the role of US imperialism into the analysis? ¡A true feat! Such an omission incapacitates those left organizations from seeing the clashes and conflicts that are actually at stake in the Venezuelan process and, consequently, it is disqualified from standing as the political leadership of workers.  

But the statement of the LTS (PTS) can be considered perhaps even more dangerous, because it recognizes and underlines the direct interference of imperialism in the Venezuelan bourgeois opposition camp, but still maintains its “solidarity” with the mobilizations that came out on Monday after the elections to demand Maduro’s resignation and the recognition of Gonzalez Urrutia as the new president. Shamefully, this statement retroactively agrees with Izquierda Socialista and its support for the Syrian resistance in the civil war. Let us recall that the popular uprising against the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship was part of a series of popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East that took the name of the Arab Spring. But what began as a rebellion under social and political demands against a dictatorship became a civil war, in which the great global and regional powers interfered directly in the different camps in conflict. Izquierda Socialista openly supported “Syrian resistance”, regardless of the imperialist interests acting and operating behind it. With its statement on Venezuela and, before that, its defense of an “independent resistance” in the war in Ukraine- which is nothing more than positioning itself as the extreme left of the NATO camp – the PTS faces a reactionary type of revisionism. PTS and all this left wing, confirm their assimilation to the regime by demanding Maduro’s government to “publish the electoral records”.

People do have the right to know the elections results, but this right is preceded by the right of people to vote without any political conditioning imposed by imperialism and opposition through blockade and economic sanctions. The demand of the electoral register is, indeed, the poisoned fruit that Lula, Petro, AMLO and Cristina Fernández, collaborating with Yankee imperialism, try to encircle Maduro’s dictatorship, either to agree to the conditions for his continuity or to pave the path for an opposition government. By unilaterally demanding to publish electoral records, the left joins the “democratic” circus with which Latin American center-left pays tribute to imperialism. This is how the left reveals its democratic trend.  That is to say, it shows its tendency to get trapped in the logic of “dictatorship versus democracy”, which imperialism and the right-wing are so interested in installing, ignoring the real interests at stake and the fraudulent nature of the entire electoral process. How can elections be democratic, no matter how many electoral records are shown, when people suffer the consequences of sanctions imposed by imperialism, agreed upon with the opposition? How can elections be democratic, when Maduro bans candidates from the right and the left and where millions of Venezuelan migrants have not had the right to vote?

As we can see, the political position of a working-class and socialist left must start with denouncing and rejecting the whole electoral process and with defending the independent organization of the workers in opposition to the two reactionary alternatives in conflict. As the statement of the Partido Obrero points out, it is necessary to reject “repression and fraud, coup and self-coup maneuvers and all kinds of economic sanctions and imperialist interference. Standing up for national issues, so important to Venezuela, is not about supporting the Maduro government, but about implementing a true economic plan in the hands of a workers’ government that uses energetic resources as a vehicle to industrialize the country. The slogan of the moment is the independent organization of the workers”.

Balance Sheet

The left, in its own way, has contributed to trap Venezuelan workers into a reactionary polarization. It should be remembered that some of the forces now in the “democratic” camp of imperialism were in the past fervent supporters of the Chavista experience. This is the case of the PSL (IS), and of Marea Socialista (MST), which even to this day continues to defend the “Bolivarian revolution”. This same left raised the slogan “Out with Maduro” in 2019, when the Guaidó coup was in full swing, and “Out with Dilma” in 2016, when the right and imperialism were preparing the impeachment in Brazil. Their current support to mobilizations which demand the fall of Maduro and the recognition of victory for González Urrutia is very similar to their support for the “agrarian rebellion” in Argentina in 2008, the involvement with the “Syrian resistance” in the context of civil war, their support for Euromaidan in 2014 and for the Nato camp in the war in Ukraine.

As we can see, oscillations between bourgeois nationalism and pro-imperialist coupism in Venezuela are the consequence of strategic disorientation, dictated by bourgeois pressures from one camp or the other. However, the objective is to wage a battle for workers’ political independence. This requires a leftist organization with strategic clarity and political personality.