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Venezuela

2021 begins with a new National Assembly. Will it lead to advances?

Wednesday 13 January 2021, by José Domenico

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On 5 January, the new National Assembly, elected on 6 December, was installed and began its work. This event marks important developments in the country’s political situation. [1]

The first and most important aspect is that it represents a major blow - we hope a decisive one - to the parallel government, which US imperialism and the local bourgeoisie have been trying to impose on us for two years, using the puppet Juan Guaidó, to subject us directly to the dictates of capital.

This ongoing defeat of the "Guaidó Project" is based on three elements.

The first is the popular resistance that isolated, confronted and defeated all the aggressions, in particular the invasion - under the pretext of "humanitarian aid" - in February 2019, the attempted coup d’état in April 2019 and the mercenary invasion of our coasts in May 2020.

The second is the electoral defeat suffered by the fascist right - disguised as democratic - that participated in the 6D elections, combined with the political defeat of the ridiculous "binding popular consultation" conducted by the undisguised fascist right.

The third and last element is the political defeat of Donald Trump in the elections, there in his own backyard, by the rebellious masses, who have expressed themselves by the millions on the streets since the assassination of George Floyd in May 2020, opening a political crisis in the most powerful imperialism on earth.

Defeating the parallel government is a victory for democracy and sovereignty by the Venezuelan masses against imperialism and the fascist bourgeoisie. This defeat must be consolidated by dismantling each and every one of the give-aways and cheats that they tried and in several cases succeeded in imposing.

It is also necessary to punish Guaidó and all those who acted against the Venezuelan people by requesting and endorsing sanctions and robberies against the nation; as well as by promoting and supporting military aggression.

We know that imperialism and the national bourgeoisie will not "back away from the fight" no matter how badly defeated they are in their latest plan. But, thanks to this victory, it is now possible and necessary for the revolution to advance. The National Assembly has to be an instrument of this advance.

The new National Assembly has a very big majority for those who claim to be revolutionaries and socialists, with more than 90% of representatives from the PSUV and one from the APR PCV.

The number of seats taken by the PSUV was so large that, beyond the "usual" and widely questioned leaders, a good number of militant cadres who express much more directly and genuinely the anxieties and wishes of the working people, have joined it. There is a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of this new National Assembly to recover and carry forward the Revolution.

The National Assembly that started work yesterday must confront the imperialist blockade and its effects on the lives of millions of Venezuelan working class families by reviving the real economy. Not the one that just makes the bourgeoisie even richer, but the one that takes socialist measures to solve the urgent needs which we, working families, face, with hunger wages and public services that are ever more expensive and useless, due to the imperialist blockade and bourgeois commercial speculation, aided by the negligence and corruption of the state bureaucracy.

This new Assembly can and must decisively support the organisation of the people, so that they can take into their own hands the planning, production and distribution of essential goods from the Social Property Enterprises, directly and indirectly, along with the Peasant Councils, the CLAPs (food distribution committees) the Workers’ Productive Councils and the Communal Councils.

In order to recover and expand participatory and protagonist democracy, the new National Assembly must defend the democratic right to struggle and protest of all the workers and the people; it must begin its work by demanding the immediate release of all workers, peasants and people’s leaders imprisoned for fighting for their rights or denouncing corruption, and at the same time it must demand the imprisonment of the fascist sponsors of guarimbas (violent opposition protests), attacks, sanctions and military invasions. May the National Assembly serve to combat the negligence and corruption that is rampant in most of the state institutions, making them complicit in the effects of the blockade.

The legislators who are beginning work today must give effective support to the democratic and anti-neoliberal struggles that are shaking our continent, cornering the reactionary governments of the "Lima group" and renewing hopes for a Latin America that is free and independent of imperialism, united and in solidarity. That is the way to break the imperialist siege: the dream of Bolivar and Chavez.

We in LUCHAS call on all members of the Assembly elected from the ranks of the PSUV and the APR PCV, to put themselves at the disposal of a programme of struggle for these revolutionary objectives. To become genuine spokespeople of the organised working class, of the real people’s power.

A National Assembly linked to and integrated with the workers’, peasants’ and communal grassroots can be a great engine of mobilisation that will take advantage of the current setback of the bourgeoisie; not to reconcile with it, increasing the misery of the people and rolling back the achievements made, but to advance, to regain political space and living conditions for the great majorities, i.e. for more Revolution.

We know that many of the representatives elected are aware of these imperative needs of the Bolivarian Revolution, with which we stake its very existence against the imperialist attacks.

They will have to decide whether to remain prisoners of a false "loyalty" of silence and submission, repeating “whatever Nicolas says”, under the watch of Jorge Rodriguez, or whether to use their capacities and experiences to be the living and active voice of the Chavist grassroots, the revolutionary working people from where they come.

At the same time we as LUCHAS call on all unions, communal organizations, peasants, environmentalists, gender activists, etc, to bring their demands and mobilisations to this new Assembly, to demand their support and concrete actions to improve the living conditions of the majority, to achieve independence from imperialism, the democratic rights of the people and to fight against fascism, bureaucracy and corruption.

We believe that the new National Assembly can be an instrument of the Revolution, but we will not encourage false hopes among the ranks of the peasants, workers and communities. We are emphatic: it will not be with a National Assembly as "protector of the people", nor with a government as "protector of the people", that we will get out of this economic and social quagmire that the imperialist aggression has plunged us into.

Only the daily and ever more profound application of participatory and protagonist democracy, in the planning, execution and control of economic, political, social measures, etc. from and through the workers’, peasants’ and communal organizations, will enable us to definitively overcome this condition of submission to capitalism, which is the source of our hardships.

There are possibilities to move forward: Let’s move forward!

6 January 2021

Source insisto y resisto.

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Footnotes

[1The article, “An illusion of election” by Patrick Guillaudat, published in International Viewpoint on 2 January, concluded that December’s elections in Venezuela, for the National Assembly, were illegitimate. This is the view of a number of supporters of the Fourth International, as it is of the Venezuelan organisation, Marea Socialista, which was in sympathy with the Fourth International for a number of years. Luchas, Permanent Observer organization of the Fourth International in Venezeula, takes a different view published here and in the article “ Parliamentary elections – Results and prospects”.