On August 11, 2023, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela issued an illegal judicial sentence that materialized the leadership of the government and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)’s plan to take over the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) by assault.

With this judicial intervention, the social-democratic government executed a new modality of outlawing a Communist Party. In this case, with the seizure of the legal figurehead of the Party, through the arbitrary and authoritarian use of public powers, to hand it over to a group of people alien to the communist membership. These mercenaries were presented before the public opinion as supposed "discontented bases" of the PCV through a grotesque false flag operation that was organized, directed and financed by the government of Nicolás Maduro.

But how did we arrive at this situation of open attack by a government that claims to be progressive, and even anti-imperialist, against the Communist Party of Venezuela and the class-conscious workers' movement?

 In order to understand the current reactionary tendency of the forces leading the government in Venezuela and the anti-popular turn taken by government management, it is essential to take into account the specificity of the process of accumulation of capital in Venezuela [1] and the features of the management of the capitalist state during the "process of changes" initiated by the government of Hugo Chávez in 1998, as well as the turn it took with the rise of Nicolás Maduro in 2014.

Contrary to the normal course of world capital accumulation, which is ruled by efficiency in the extraction of surplus value relative to the working class as a whole, in Venezuela what determines the national process of accumulation and, therefore, the movement of the economy, is the magnitude and forms of appropriation of the oil rent.

Commodities such as oil are traded on the international market at commercial prices which are usually above their production prices, generating extraordinary profits for their producers. This extraordinary profit is called land or mining rent, and can be of different types, depending on the level of productivity of the land or deposits: absolute rent, differential rent I and II, or simple monopoly rent. [2]

The appropriation of this extraordinary income - which does not come from the average profits generated by industrial oil capital - is the object of a fierce struggle among domestic economic actors (non-oil private capital). This non-oil private capital, both domestic and foreign, is characterized by a low organic composition, which makes it dependent on the appropriation of oil rent in order to be able to increase its value at average profit rates, thus compensating the high costs generated by low productivity levels. Since the Venezuelan State is the means through which the course taken by the flow of rent towards capital as a whole is defined, the struggle between the different parties of the bourgeoisie and foreign powers for the political control of the State apparatus is a preponderant feature of our society.

The victory of President Hugo Chávez in 1998, occurred after more than 20 years of crisis of this parasitic form of capital accumulation, marked by a period of acute contraction of oil income and the imposition of neoliberal policies. The governments of the time applied an aggressive anti-popular adjustment characterized by privatizations, deregulation of the labor market, and price liberalization, among other shock measures.

The government of Hugo Chávez proposed containing the advance of the privatization agenda, which essentially targetted the oil industry and the dismantling of the so-called “social State”. However, it did so through re-launching this same rentier and dependent economic base, supported by an international strategy of recovery of oil prices. In this sense, Chávez's administration did not try to change the specificity of the capitalist exploitation process in Venezuela at all, but relied on it to promote a program of “nationalist and social” content, aimed at strengthening the role of the State in the economy and guaranteeing a series of social rights to the population, after the disastrous effects of the neoliberal vortex of the 80s and 90s. [3]

No matter how many conquests the working class and the popular movement obtained during the expansive phase of the oil rent under Hugo Chávez's administration, the fact that they were established on the fragile foundations of a rentier economy, gave these achievements a transitory and unstable character. [4] Furthermore - and as confirmed by several investigations -, the great beneficiaries of this period of oil bonanza of Hugo Chávez's government was not precisely the working class nor the popular strata, but the local bourgeoisie and the transnational monopolies. In fact, it is estimated that close to $200 billion were drained by the national and foreign bourgeoisie from the Venezuelan economy during the period 2003-2013. [5]

In 2007, the financial crisis and the abrupt fall of oil prices made the exhaustion of the capital accumulation process evident. However, far from considering its revolutionary overcoming, the Chávez government prolonged its collapse through increasing foreign debts, thus maintaining the fiction of a fragile stability and economic growth, which was already unsustainable due to the decrease in oil income, the technical backwardness of the national productive apparatus and the expansion of the foreign debt. [6]

The fragile bubble burst during the administration of Nicolás Maduro. The expansive phase of the oil income came to an end, and with it the "anti-neoliberal" form of management carried out by President Hugo Chávez. A prolonged period of income contraction began, mediated by the cyclical fall of oil prices and aggravated by the expiration of the international financial commitments acquired by the country.

Faced with this decline in revenues, Maduro's administration has progressively applied an anti-popular economic adjustment, with detrimental impact on the working class and the national productive apparatus. With reduced income, the government has decided to prioritize the payment of foreign debt, canceling close to $110 billion to international financial capital during the period 2013-2017. [7] In order to honor these commitments, the government sacrifices 60% of the country's imports and applies severe cuts to social spending, investment in strategic enterprises and public infrastructure.

The centralization of the deficient income towards the payment of debt and the demands of the most concentrated private capital generated a shortage of foreign currency in the domestic market that ended up destroying the exchange control policy, unleashing a hyperinflationary spiral and currency devaluation that pulverized the purchasing power of the workers' real wages for the benefit of capitalist profit.

The contraction of imports also translated into shortages of essential consumer goods and the proliferation of "black markets" of merchandise as a mechanism of the commercial sector to evade price controls.

The Maduro government used the "economic war" narrative to justify its erratic and anti-people economic policy, blaming external factors for the cause of the crisis and thus covering up its character. The Communist Party of Venezuela has always clearly expressed its criticism and opposition to the course taken by the government's economic policy, making clear its position on the capitalist character of the crisis and the need to confront it with a new and revolutionary economic policy. [8]

During the period from 2014 to 2017, the PCV, despite the deep differences with the government’s economic policy, prioritized the tactic of preserving the unity of the patriotic and anti-imperialist forces against the destabilizing plans of the pro-imperialist right wing that worked to force regime change outside legality.

However, the differences with the government reached such a point that, in 2018, the 14th National Conference of the PCV conditioned our support to the presidential candidacy of Nicolás Maduro for the elections of the same year to the signing of a programmatic agreement with which it assumed the commitment to revert the anti-popular tendency of its economic policy and the promotion of a series of measures aimed at protecting the right of the working class to decent wages and labor stability. [9]

Maduro and the PSUV leadership subscribed to this programmatic agreement, however, they violated its content a few months after the electoral victory. In August 2018, the government announces its "Program for Economic Recovery, Growth and Prosperity", with which it deepened the adjustment aimed at the dismantling of labor rights and the deregulation of the labor market. [10]

With this program, the government announced one of the biggest frauds committed against the Venezuelan working class and opened the way to a systematic process of dismantling labor rights established in the Constitution and the laws of the country. Through a fraudulent announcement of a salary increase, fixed at half a Petro [11] (equivalent to $30 per month), the government illegally flattened out the salaries of workers in all branches. In addition, it unilaterally eliminated the collective bargaining agreements through memorandum-circular No. 2792 issued by the Ministry of Labor in October 2018, thus nullifying the effects of the announced wage increase on the workers' collective bargaining agreements in force.

But this was not the only fraud since in the long run the government did not comply with its promise to anchor the salary increase to the price of the cryptocurrency, turning the alleged increase into a vulgar freezing of salaries in bolivars that the inflationary movement itself and the devaluation of the currency took charge of pulverizing.

In 2019, imperialism and the parties of the traditional bourgeoisie radicalized their plan of maximum pressure and installed an illegal "Interim Government" that gave a base to the unilateral coercive measures of imperialism against Venezuela. A freezing of public funds abroad was imposed; prohibition of trade to Venezuelan public entities; persecution of foreign companies establishing business with the country.

The impact of these criminal sanctions on the fragile economic situation worsened the crisis to its most critical levels. The GDP contracted 83% compared to 2013. [12]

The illegal sanctions ended up collapsing the oil industry, which had been in decline since 2014. [13] The prohibition for the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) to export fuel to its natural markets in the United States and the European Union, together with the restrictions on importing inputs necessary for the functioning of the industry's operations further affected its income and production capacity.

The bourgeoisie associated with the government took advantage of this difficult period of external aggressions to increase its wealth. The business consisted of participating in the network of companies that provided the service of international triangulation for the purchase and sale of goods; capturing juicy profits for the role of mediators in the process. In the most difficult period of hardship for working families, the national parasitic bourgeoisie took advantage of the situation to increase its fortune.

The consequences of the acute crisis deepened by the criminal sanctions fell entirely on the shoulders of the working class and the popular strata. The forced migration of workers abroad multiplied due to the precarious salaries, the reduction of job offers and desperation.

In this complex situation, the government of Nicolas Maduro, while speaking in the name of the Revolution, of the so-called “socialism of the 21st century”, ends up reaffirming its social democratic character by formulating a strategy of a pact of elites as a way out of the crisis and international isolation.

The definitive turn of the government's policy in an openly anti-worker direction occurred in 2020. Through a pact with the business sector and the parties of the traditional right wing, the PSUV government proposed overcoming the economic stagnation through establishing a new governance agreement and achieving the progressive lifting of external sanctions.

The solution to the economic and political crisis of the country, based on the pact of the bourgeoisie, is being developed under the same recipe of the neoliberal governments: policies aimed at minimizing the impact of the crisis and the sanctions on capitalist enterprises; incentive measures and promotion of national and foreign private investment; price liberalization; privatization of public enterprises; dismantling of social spending; freezing of salaries and deregulation of the labor market, as the main incentives to private capital.

Economic recovery involves imposing the toughest sacrifices on the working class and popular sectors in order to guarantee stability to private enterprise. As government spokespersons themselves describe it, it is a matter of rolling out a "red carpet" [14] to businessmen so that they feel motivated to invest.

One of the first measures taken by the government was the approval of an illegal law cynically called the "Anti-Blockade Law", which was presented to the country as a fundamental tool to overcome the sanctions policy. However, due to its content and application, this instrument was the legal basis on which the government relied to impose its neoliberal economic program outside the Constitution and laws. [15]

This law not only grants the Executive Power (Presidency of the Republic) the power to disregard articles of the Constitution, but also to act in secret and without rendering accounts of its actions. It is under these conditions that the mining exploitation businesses are being developed; the concessions with transnationals for the exploitation of oil and gas; the illegal privileges granted to the private sector and the secret economic agreements with the government of the United States.

But if oil revenues continue to be insufficient to sustain the normal valorization of capital of low organic composition operating in the national economy, how can their profitability be guaranteed? It is not that oil revenues ceased to play an important role in the valorization process of private capital. The policy of overvaluation of the national currency, sustained with the weekly injection of hundreds of millions of dollars to the exchange rate, [16] the public purchases and the fiscal and tax breaks, are mechanisms that reveal the transfer of public wealth to the private sector.

However, the insufficient magnitude still represented by oil income forces capitalists to resort to other sources of extraordinary income to play a counterbalance. The most relevant compensatory mechanism for the capitalists today are the conditions of overexploitation of the labor force. The sale of the labor force well below its value has become an essential means to guarantee the profit of the capitalist enterprises in Venezuela.

The government of Nicolás Maduro thus imposes a policy of destruction of labor rights outside the provisions of the Venezuelan Constitution and labor laws. The most criminal way to reduce labor costs to the maximum for the benefit of the companies and their profits was the wage bonus policy. The right established in Article 91 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which requires the State to fix a legal minimum wage in accordance with the basic food basket, is eliminated de facto, and in its place a policy freezing salaries to a derisory amount fixed in local currency - eroded by the effects of inflation and devaluation - and compensated with the payment of bonuses that have no impact on salaries is imposed. The immediate impact of this policy is the de-salarization of workers' income and the deregulation of the labor market so that private companies can unilaterally determine the income to be paid to workers in the form of bonuses. [17]

By de-salarizing incomes, the government also eliminates the right of workers to enjoy social benefits, vacation pay, profits and savings. The labor liabilities of the companies are reduced to a minimum, expanding their profit margins and condemning the working class to subsistence incomes.

Public sector workers have been the most affected, since not only do they receive bonuses below those paid in the private sector, but the government also imposed a unilateral and illegal cut in the bonuses they receive according to their collective bargaining agreements through the National Budget Office (Onapre).

The systematic and criminal theft from the working class is the backbone on which capitalist profit is sustained, and the vaunted "economic recovery" that the social-democratic government of Nicolás Maduro boasts so much about and which is applauded by the main chamber of business of the country, Fedecámaras. The most convincing proof of this anti-worker pact is the decision of the government leadership not to increase salaries, even though the economy registered a growth of 17% with respect to 2021, according to data from the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV). [18] As of February 2024, 23 months of wage freeze will have passed, with an accumulated inflation of more than 300%.

The response of the government of Nicolás Maduro to the massive mobilizations of public sector workers, teachers and doctors for salary increases has been repression, persecution, prosecution and imprisonment.

In addition to the repressive action, the government imposes restrictions to trade union freedoms and hinders the holding of elections to renew the leadership of the unions, especially those that are not aligned with its interests. The purpose of this maneuver is to prevent workers from having legalized unions and thus delay the process of discussion of collective bargaining agreements.

Certainly, the imperialist sanctions did not achieve their objective of bringing about a change of government, but they did play an important role in bringing about a change in economic policy in a direction favorable to the interests of imperialism and local business. At the end of the road, the Maduro government and the PSUV leadership ended up serving the demands of big capital. Now, they are futilely trying to hide their turnabout and conciliation process with imperialism and the right wing parties with a supposed dialogue of "national unity" in which the working class and the popular sectors are the big sacrifices.

Of course, this reactionary turn of the government of Nicolás Maduro brought with it changes in the map of its allies and enemies. The interests of the working class, the peasantry and the popular sectors came to represent an obstacle to the economic liberalization plan orchestrated between the government and the business federations gathered in the so-called "great national consensus".

Even so, the bourgeoisie strives to maintain the rhetoric of false polarization between the PSUV, on the one hand, and the right wing parties subordinated to the interests of the United States, on the other. The reality is that the unity of the bourgeoisie consolidates and advances with the implementation of this anti-popular economic adjustment.

The strategy of false polarization seeks to keep the workers deceived and subordinated to these two hegemonic blocs and to prevent any process that generates an autonomous and independent political movement of the working class that emerges as an alternative to the two poles of the pact of elites.

But there is a situation that makes the conditions of political struggle of the working class more complex and difficult. The PSUV leadership exercises an omnipotent control over the totality of the Public Powers of the State; which allows it to execute the neoliberal adjustment without resistance and with a profound repressive capacity. Through the authoritarian exercise of this power, the PSUV strikes at all forms of grouping of the working class in the struggle for its economic and political interests.

In the field of the struggle for demands, the attacks against union freedoms and the right of workers to protest for decent wages and other labor demands are intensifying; the cases of workers prosecuted for fighting for their rights are increasing and the institutional obstacles to the exercise of the right to union organization are multiplying.

The brutal repressive practices exercised by the government security forces and the Venezuelan justice system are reminiscent of the worst years of persecution against workers' struggles during the reactionary governments of the traditional right wing. Trampling on the legitimate right to exercise the right to protest, the repressive bodies apply practices that violate fundamental human rights, such as the kidnapping of union activists. Disrespecting the right of detained workers to due process and constitutional guarantees to the exercise of defense, the repressive bodies keep imprisoned union leaders totally cut off from their families for weeks, without access to lawyers, and without information about the detention center where they are being held. [19]

This is a strategy of terror applied against the class-conscious union leadership in order to sow fear among the working masses and to disarticulate the workers' struggles in the country for decent wages and the reestablishment of rolled-back labor rights. Likewise, the presentation of false evidence against these workers has become recurrent with the aim of incriminating them in criminal acts they did not commit in order to justify the illegal arrests and the violation of human rights on the part of the security forces and the justice system.

Politically, this offensive looks to undermine the freedoms of political association and democratic rights of the working class. To this end, they use state power to impose a siege and communicational blockade on the Communist Party of Venezuela while promoting defamation campaigns against it and any other force they identify as an adversary.

In past electoral processes, such as the regional elections of 2021, they illegally disqualified the candidacies of left-wing forces, cutting off the right of the workers to present independent candidates. It is not by chance that it was the candidacies of the PCV and its allies that were the object of the greatest number of disqualifications and not the candidacies of the traditional right wing parties. [20]

Finally, the most arbitrary way they used to impede the exercise of democratic rights and liberties of the working class and its parties was the intervention into their political organizations.

The intervention into the Communist Party of Venezuela was one of the most important objectives of the government to block any possibility for the workers and the revolutionary forces to present independent candidacies in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for this year. With this action, the PSUV believes it will prevent the emergence of an alternative political force to the pact of the bourgeoisie.

The manner in which the judicial intervention was executed is yet more proof of the authoritarian exercise of state power by the government leadership. [21] Ruling No. 1,160 issued by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice is not in accordance with the law and is a flagrant violation of the constitutional order and the rule of law. The PCV was judicially harmed in a process of which it was not officially notified; it was not allowed the right to defense; and where an accusation lacking evidence was used as a basis. [22]

This precedent of judicial intervention and outlawing of the PCV marks a very dangerous reference for the whole of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of the world. The authoritarian government has used the usurpation of the legal figurehead of the PCV as a means to execute the banning of the PCV and to suppress the democratic right of the communists to organize and struggle independently.

The strategy employed to assault the PCV demonstrates the deep degree of moral decomposition and servility of the PSUV government to the interests of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Nothing could be more profitable for the forces of capital that sweep away the rights of the workers and impose a program of economic deregulation, than to outlaw the political action of the Communist Party of Venezuela. The most aberrant part of their strategy is that they handed over the acronym of the organization to a group of mercenaries alien to our Party so as to sell the image of an alleged support of the PCV to the pact of the bourgeoisie.

The challenges ahead for the working class and the Communist Party of Venezuela are quite complex. In Venezuela there reigns a form of government that embodies the most brutal features of the dictatorship of capital. At this moment, Venezuelan workers are not only fighting to recover their violated labor rights, they must also mobilize to demand the reestablishment of their right to union organization, to have legal political parties and to recover elementary democratic rights.

This they must do by confronting a government that calls itself "anti-imperialist" and "socialist"; and that uses its past to manipulate the communist and revolutionary forces of the world and thus avoid any form of solidarity with the struggles of the workers and the Communist Party of Venezuela.

Just as the Venezuelan working class must overcome the ideological manipulation with which it looks to condemn it to being subordinated to two polarized bourgeois blocs and prevent it from emerging as an independent class force, so must the international Communist and Workers Movement do the same: tear down the barriers that the new social democracy intends to erect to the revolutionary exercise of proletarian internationalism. The Venezuelan working class needs the solidarity of the workers of the world to be able to fight against the authoritarian power of capital personified by a social-democratic government that takes away its economic and political rights.