In Venezuela, the establishment that emerged from the last elections has once again thrown itself into action, supported by a powerful promotional and propaganda machinery based on a supposed rivalry between popular democratic chavismo and the simple putschist opposition

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As far as the right-wing opposition is concerned, after various accusations and running back and forth between government offices, and after a great deal of pressure, it finally came up with an outside candidate in the person of Edmundo González (1) as its representative, given that its main candidate and undisputed leader, Mrs. María Corina Machado, was disqualified from the elections by the judicial system of President Nicolás Maduro’s government. However, if González succeeds in winning the elections, he will certainly give way to the established candidate: the perfect manoeuvre to prolong the qarrels, complots and sabotages of the bourgeoisie politically represented by the Chavistas and their opponents trying to regain the lost trust expressed by the imperialist government of Joe Biden, which has been wavering recently because of the numerous cases of embezzlement of millions of dollars of financial aid provided by the Americans to the said opposition, and which at the same time has sought to improve its very conflictual relations, first with Chávez and then with Maduro, and has even recognised that social tensions are now brought under control by the Maduro authorities.

The country is carefree, business is thriving and capitalism is only interested in peace, in social peace.

On the other hand, there is Maduro’s candidacy; despite the likely strong electoral abstention, his victory is the most certain thing to happen, given the popularity that Chavismo still enjoys among the large masses of Venezuelans (Chavismo is estimated to have 1/3 of the votes certain). As usual, the results will be widely published on the front pages of various newspapers and websites, while the percentage and degree of electoral abstention will only be available on a minimum of websites and news stands.

For the bourgeoisie, events of this kind are very important, not only to give spectacle and an air of festivity to a society in which there is resentment and difficulty, but also to ensure that the intoxicating effect of democratic mechanisms remains effective in paralysing its main enemy: the proletariat. For it, the most certain thing that will happen in Venezuela is that nothing visible will change; on the contrary, the over-exploitation of the working masses will tend to increase, given the ups and downs of an economy based almost exclusively on a single commodity and raw material, such as oil, whose fluctuations in world prices have a rapid and direct impact on the social and economic situation of the proletarians exploited in Venezuela by national and international capital, regardless of whether the economic sanctions imposed by US imperialism are intensified or weakened.

This is what goes through the minds of the proletarians who are forced to witness this gigantic circus. Maduro's government claims that the Venezuelan economy has returned to growth, but the figures are rather illusory given the slump suffered by the economy and its lacklustre growth, which, far from being able to bring even modest prosperity, instead is and will be paid for by the worsening exploitation and rising product prices affecting the huge proletarian class and the poor masses.

Many proletarians will turn their backs on this electoral tragicomedy; various "extreme" left organisations have seized on these sentiments and campaigned with the theme “the working class has no candidates in these elections” (2). But this attitude towards elections is not based on Marxist positions denouncing the bourgeois democratic electoral system as such, as summarised by Marx in 1871: universal suffrage is used to decide once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and trample the people in parliament. The struggle against electoral illusions and the belief in democracy is essential for the proletariat to understand that the remedy to misery is the direct struggle against the bosses and their state, and that the key to their emancipation is the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois order and the installation in its place of the power of the proletarian dictatorship, which is essential for the uprooting of the capitalist regime.

On the contrary, the aforementioned organisations lament the fact that the electoral participation of their candidates was not allowed... Permeated to the core with democratic electoral principles, they call for invalid votes to be cast. Electoral cretinism to the nth!

Despite their “socialist” and anti-capitalist proclamations, they are in fact, historically attested, incompetent opportunist organisations that back away when it comes to a rupture with the bourgeois political system. The Venezuelan proletariat cannot count on these forces, which are only trying to pander to it through the electoral system; it will have to constitute itself, like its class brothers and sisters in other countries, into the class, communist and international party so as to carry its struggle forward to the final victory over capitalism.

The first step in this direction is the revival of the open struggle against exploitation, repression and poverty, on the independent class basis and without falling into the trap of electoralism, nationalism and class collaboration under the pretext of democracy and patriotic unity.

(1) Mr Edmundo González Urrutia is a kind of series two of Juan Guaidó; a bland and little-known figure in the Venezuelan political scene who does not even campaign “since others do it”; and whose main political background, according to Mario Silva, a leading commentator on Chavismo, is that, in addition to allegedly participating in massacres of guerrillas and peasants in Central America, he was sent as ambassador to Argentina, supported the coup against Chávez in April 2002, and was removed from office when the coup failed.

(2) These “far-left” parties are: Patria Para Todos (PPT-APR), Marea Socialista (MS), Partido Socialismo y Libertad (PSL), Liga de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (LTS); see their Unitary Statement of 25 April 2024.

Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program