Mücadele Birliği (Struggle Unity, Türkiye)
For a quarter of a century, Bolivarian Venezuela has had to withstand unimaginable attacks. Maintaining a revolution that defends the interests of the working people right under the nose of the imperialist beast, with a clear socialist orientation emerging step by step, and doing so despite imperialist pressure and attacks that trample on every kind of international rule, law, and diplomacy, is a great achievement of the Venezuelan people and the Bolivarian government.
The intuition of the working classes is deep and powerful. The poor people of Venezuela saw in Chávez one of the uncompromising heroes of the proletarian world, embraced him and stood by him. In 2002, when an imperialism-backed military coup arrested Chávez and imprisoned him in a barracks, the working people, with deep intuition, grasped the powerful connection between Chávez’s destiny and their own, and, to defend their hero, they surrounded Miraflores, the Presidential Palace, and defeated the coup. Later, the Comandante would say on a television program that from that moment on, he had made the firm decision to devote his entire life to the working people.
The Venezuelan workers and laborers, who pulled their hero out of the fire, successfully overcame one of the most difficult obstacles facing the Bolivarian Revolution with this mass heroism. After that stage, the Bolivarian government always relied on the revolutionary initiative of the working people. It established and spread grassroots organizations. Committees grew into communes. Authority, in economic and political terms, spread to the grassroots through these communes. The people were armed and organized in the form of militias. The bourgeoisie’s “representative democracy” was overcome, and an example of proletarian democracy began to be built. The Bolivarian Revolution, which turned its face toward socialism, sought to find its own path.
It is well known that every proletarian revolution, or popular revolution turning its face toward socialism, overcomes bourgeois “representative democracy” at its very first step and implements the unity of the legislature and the executive. The Paris Commune, the Russian Soviets, the Italian Councils, the Cuban Revolutionary Defense Committees, the Iranian Shuras, and many others… Their fundamental characteristic is that they serve as both legislative and executive organs. They do not merely make laws and take decisions; they directly implement laws and decisions. Moreover, these structures, organized directly from the grassroots upward, ensure that the will and initiative of the people are firmly grounded through the ability to recall their representatives at any time.
The first workers’ government, the Paris Commune, which lasted only 72 days, had a profound impact on the entire world. It influenced all subsequent workers’ and popular revolutions and made tremendous contributions to Marxist theory. Neither the Commune, nor the Soviet, nor the Council or Shura was a tool derived from the research of theorists. Every real popular revolution mobilizes the collective genius of workers and laborers. The masses combine the accumulated knowledge filtered through their historical memory with their collective genius and create together the tools suited to the needs of the revolutionary moment. Theory studies and examines the tools created by the collective genius of the masses in practical life, gives them their due value, and puts the most appropriate tools at the service of the proletarian revolution.
The Venezuelan people created communes (comunas) during the Bolivarian revolutionary process. The leaders of the revolution, with theoretical foresight, realized the vital importance of the commune for the development of the revolution and embraced this product of the collective genius of the people. Comandante Chávez attached such importance to these tools that he declared, “Comuna o Nada” (Commune or Nothing). Venezuelan workers and laborers gathered widely in communes. An entire community of workers created a “network of communes” that spread across the country. In this way, they organized and defended themselves, the economy, and the revolution. They repelled the most brutal attacks of imperialism, the coups carried out by internal collaborators, and the attempts at coups and invasions.
What we have witnessed over the last quarter century is essentially nothing more than a conflict between the Venezuelan workers and the Bolivarian government, striving to develop the revolution toward socialism by relying on communes and militias—the direct armed force of the people—and imperialist aggression, attempting to strangle the Bolivarian Revolution through its counterrevolutionary bases within the country. To be more precise, what we have witnessed is a civil war in the Marxist sense of the word: a civil war that has been ongoing without interruption for a quarter of a century. On one side of this war are the revolutionary Bolivarian government, the working class, the laboring and poor people; on the other side are the bourgeoisie, the reactionary forces, and the imperialist states that support and organize them in every way.
Just look at what has happened since Commander Chávez was elected president: coups, coup attempts, economic sabotage, assassinations, the kidnapping and murder of chavistas, embargoes, the appointment of “puppet presidents,” the seizure of assets abroad, and attempts at invasion with mercenaries… These are manifestations of the civil war waged against the Bolivarian Revolution by the imperialists and their collaborators within the country.
Recognizing reality as it is constitutes the first step in dealing with it. The reality is that US imperialism, together with the European imperialists behind it, has been waging a relentless civil war for a quarter of a century to strangle the Bolivarian Revolution, relying on the Venezuelan collaborationist bourgeoisie. Having lost the war on many fronts so far, the imperialists are now intensifying their efforts to escalate the situation to a de facto occupation under the current conditions. They have maximized pressure by deploying their navy off the coast of Venezuela. They are waiting for an opportunity to launch a de facto occupation.
The widely accepted thesis in Washington these days is this: Overthrow Venezuela, and Cuba will be economically strained and enter a crisis with no way out! Nicaragua is already being shaken by violent actions. It too will not be able to hold out and will fall. The last bastion, Cuba, will thus become vulnerable to attack. And this time, it will face crises without an ally. This is roughly the “roadmap” of the murderous warmongers in the White House!
It is clear from this point of view that the struggle of the peoples to save their own future is inextricably linked. The enemy is common: Imperialism! The imperialists, led by the US, are spreading their wars in order to win the global civil war they have launched against the working class and laboring peoples of the world in order to survive. And in Latin America, the “backyard” of this monster, socialist and socialist-oriented countries are, of course, always the target. This is the meaning of the US Navy off the coast of Venezuela.
US imperialism has declared to the world that it will stop at nothing, including military occupation, to achieve its goals. The danger is great. Imperialist occupation is lurking just across the border. The working people of Venezuela are armed and actively waiting. But time is passing. Let us not forget that imperialist financial capital plays to win by buying people, blackmailing them, and forcing individuals in certain positions to change sides through subversion and conspiracy. They make their plans not to win over the peoples, but to crush and control them. Therefore, the faster and more energetically the revolution moves, the higher its chances of success.
The US, the European imperialists behaving like lapdogs, the puppet states in the Lima Group, and the Venezuelan bourgeoisie are preparing for war not to reconcile with the revolutionary government, but to destroy it.
However, despite this picture, the balance of power in Venezuela still favors the revolutionary government. When the civil war is won, the external war will also be prevented. The condition for shattering the warmongering resolve of US imperialism is to resolutely destroy the imperialists’ bases in Venezuela, to crush these bases with military force.
The bases of the US and world reaction in Venezuela, as we saw in the example of the puppet Guaidó, are, contrary to what is believed, extremely weak and extremely rotten. First and foremost, they have no working class or poor people behind them. The army, which relies on the working class and the poor working people, is behind the revolutionary government. The widespread militia force has the capacity to crush the counterrevolutionaries.
The way to prevent an external war is to win the civil war. The way to win the internal war is to seize all the wealth, money, banks, factories, and land of the bourgeoisie, to accelerate the march toward socialism, and to crush the main pillar of the counterrevolution by relying on the power of arms.
This is the only way to prevent the imperialists from having any power to rely on “domestically” for their invasion. If this base is dismantled and crushed, the imperialists will not have the courage to start a foreign war.
The Bolivarian Revolution has successfully repelled the enemy’s attacks to date. It has managed to survive by directly arming the people, knowing how to mobilize the masses at every critical juncture, and conquering the streets with the revolutionary energy of the toiling masses. It responded to the enemy’s protests by mobilizing incomparably larger masses. The militia forces and the army put on a show of force and successfully defended the borders. Now it is time to go further, to advance toward socialism by dismantling the enemy’s entire economic base.
A revolution based on the working class and the revolutionary advance of the working people cannot be easily defeated. All that is needed is for the collective genius of the workers to be unleashed and for them to march forward with determination.
Down with US imperialism and its collaborators!
The Bolivarian Revolution will win!
Victory will belong to the Venezuelan working class and the laboring people!
¡El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!
¡Venceremos!