Nowadays, in Bolivarian Venezuela we are living an intense debate about the theory and practice of socialism which the Communist Party of Venezuela welcomes with satisfaction and trying to contribute to it. Throughout the twentieth century, the oligarchy in power and their real masters, the U.S. monopolies, strove in vain to divert our people from the socialist road.

On March 5^th 1931, the first communist cell in the country was founded in Caracas, which marks the birth of the Communist Party of Venezuela. This event takes place in the middle of one of the fiercest dictatorships known in Latin America, the one from Juan Vicente Gómez (1908 - 1935). By then, being a communist was considered treason by the Constitution and was punished with 20 years' imprisonment on the crime of "communism." There is no doubt of the courage, conviction and commitment to the revolution that those comrades who decided to found the PCV had.

The PCV has worked for 80 years of hard struggle in which its membership suffered unjust imprisonment, torture chambers, secrecy, illegality, in applying the teachings of Marxism-Leninism in our national life in order to transform it to form a society of full freedom and rights for the oppressed and exploited working people.

In the collective construction on socialist ideas, the following ideological issues have been and are important in Venezuelan society:

1.-THE CONCEPT OF NATIONAL LIBERATION

Lenin showed that in the era of imperialism "diverse forms of dependent countries which, politically, are formally independent, but in fact, are enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence"¹ are typical. At the same time, Lenin said that imperialism is , in the political field, a "striving for annexations ..., violence and reaction"². And it is the world proletariat leader who warns that the savagery in the search for sources of raw materials and the exportation of capital leads capitalism to the "conquest of colonies".

The Venezuelan people have suffered directly the imperialist oppression, the plundering of their resources and the imposition of tyrannical regimes that were at the service of foreign monopolies. In the 1930's and 1940's thousands of workers employed by the Lago Petroleum Company (LPC) of the Rockefellers and the Venezuelan Oil Concession (VOC) of Morgan and Mellon, suffered cramped, dying of malaria and accidents, tortured by Gomez's police, poorly paid, humiliated and fired, the Indians dispossessed of their land, thousands of women forced into prostitution in the oil fields, agricultural plantations destroyed by the imposition of the oil economy with thousands of farmers into poverty, the Lake Maracaibo ecologically destroyed by the foreign industry and other misfortunes.

As explained by Professor Federico Brito Figueroa, a Venezuelan communist, the fabulous enrichment of the imperialist monopolies increased "the general pauperism in the country and the opulence of the U.S. financial oligarchy"³. Oil imperialism in the twentieth century imposed three reactionary regimes: the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935), Perez Jimenez's (1948-1958) and neo-colonial false democracy (1959-1999).

No wonder, therefore, that the PCV has accepted the resolutions of the Communist International (CI) and the classics of Marxism-Leninism in favor of the rights to self-determination and full sovereignty of the peoples.

"At the end of 1936 the First Congress of Workers of Venezuela meets in Caracas, with 219 delegates from all over the country, many of them communists, with great collaboration of veteran comrades in the organization of the Congress and in the preparation of the theses. The Congress ended with the creation of the Venezuelan Confederation of Labor, CTV" says Comrade Key Sánchez.

The PCV organized the first strike by oil workers in December 1936 to January 1937, which was essentially a struggle against imperialism. "The final assessment of that first year of political and social activity so far in this century was highly positive - Jesús Faria pointed, who was Secretary General of the Communist Party of Venezuela - although it had only been for the number of men and women who joined the class struggle". He adds, "beyond the results, one important aspect of this strike, the most important event in the struggle against imperialism in recorded history to date, was the powerful united activity of the working class with all other democratic, patriotic and anti-Gómez sectors of Venezuela".

On August 8, 1937, seven months after the oil strike ended, the First Conference of the Communist Party of Venezuela was held, where the Party decided to "face the music” and become the Party of the Working Class, independent and with profound internationalist principles. From there, the activism of the PCV will develop with the workers in the perspective of the Socialist Venezuela during the democratic transition which ended in 1952, when a new military coup took place.

On January 23, 1958, the PCV led the overthrow of the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez with the support of the working class and the popular democratic movement. However, the U.S. managed through repression of the trade union movement and the banning of leftist parties, including PCV, to restore the bourgeois representative democratic system that would remain in power until 1999.

In 1958, the PCV promoted a class and popular militant concentration to reject former President Nixon which was about to provoke an intervention by the Marines from their bases in Puerto Rico to his rescue. To widen the various forms of class struggle, the PCV with other anti-imperialist bodies created the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) and the National Liberation Forces (FLN) to confront the regime designed by the U.S. Government.

Therefore, the demand of national liberation is the creative application of Marxism - Leninism to the Venezuelan situation, the core axis of the political agenda since 1935 and the central struggle of tens of thousands of Venezuelan communists and anti-imperialists since 1931. It is the continuation of the struggle for independence and freedom of the indigenous peoples against the Spanish conquerors since the sixteenth century, of the slaves and all our people under the leadership of the Liberator Simón Bolívar in the nineteenth century.

The contradiction between capital and labour that characterizes the time of transition from capitalism to socialism is also manifested in the contradiction between the peoples, on the one hand and monopolies, imperialism, which is the last stage of capitalism, as Lenin defined it brilliantly in 1916, on the other. This ascertainment leads us to the obligation of forming a broad Anti-imperialist Front that brings together social forces, popular sectors who struggle or have or have an interest in struggling to defeat imperialism which, amid deep economic crisis, becomes far more dangerous and aggressive than ever.

On November 23, 2009, PCV leader Pedro Eusse explained some features of this Front: "It goes beyond, far beyond the Marxist parties... we are aware that the struggle against imperialism is not only a task of the Marxist -Leninists, but of the vast democratic, popular and progressive, social and political movement and needs to have greater strength in the struggle against imperialist domination"⁴.

The threat of aggression suffered today by the country and the progressive governments of the continent with the seven military bases in Colombia, by a fascist regime directed from the Pentagon; the activation of the Fourth Fleet deployed in the Atlantic Ocean and the rest of military bases in the Caribbean and South America, demonstrates that Marxism-Leninism is the main theoretical tool to understand and deal with imperialism. "The final resolution of the principal contradiction of the moment, between the Bolivarian revolution and U.S. imperialism, demands the broader national, continental and global unity of popular forces and progressive governments"⁵.

3.THE PHASES OF SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION

The communists in Venezuela have learned to adapt our struggle to the needs of the joining of workers' and popular forces, the promotion of the socio-political alliance against monopolies and imperialism taking advantage of the opportunities arising from the 
developments in our country in relation to the Bolivarian process with the goal of socialism, a socioeconomic system that requires the fulfilment of some basic characteristics: a state of new type that our 6^th Congress called "democratic and popular state”, a popular economy with the basic and concentrated means of production socialized, a well-organized working class, a cohesive revolutionary political leadership and a high revolutionary consciousness of society.

Frederick Engels said in Anti-Dühring that taking possession of all means of production by society can only become a reality "once the material conditions for its realization occur"**. Venezuela promotes a transition process that we characterized in the 12^th Congress as "national liberation revolution, clearly anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly, democratic and popular, which opens perspectives for socialism, insofar as the class struggle is resolved in favour of the most consistent ideological and political forces of the Revolution"⁶.

The National Ideological Workshop "Contribution to the debate on socialism in Venezuela" that we held in 2008 stated that "in Venezuela, the transition to socialism is just beginning"⁷.

For this transition to be actually oriented toward socialism, the PCV believes that some preconditions should be fulfilled:

1.-Development of the political vanguard of the working class,

2.-Conquest of political power of the state,

3.-Development of the productive forces,

4.-Strengthening the state ownership under workers' control,

5.-Weakening and subsequent suppression of imperialist domination mechanisms,

6.-Establishment of economic planning,

7.-Development of people's education and others⁸.

The Central Committee of the PCV has analyzed that the Bolivarian process of national liberation is making progress in the recovery of sovereignty "but still there are no conditions, nor subjective of consciousness and social organization, nor transformation of the productive base and relations of production, ie we not have a strategic plan for the construction of the social and economic base of a socialist society"⁹. One of the most serious problems faced by the revolutionary forces is the bourgeois state that has not been dismantled and that permanently hampers this.

Around the present State, our ideological Workshop analyzed that "the leadership of the state is in the hands of the petty bourgeoisie, and this alone, as demonstrated historically, is not interested in developing the tasks of the transition period"¹⁰.

Lenin warned that the super-profits of monopolies allowed "to corrupt labour leaders and the top layer of the labour aristocracy"¹¹. The task which the U.S. monopolies entrusted with their lackeys of the AD and COPEI governments between 1958 and 1998, was the dividing up of the Venezuelan working class by corrupting their leaders and a privileged workers' sector. They achieved this to the point that the Confederation of Workers of Venezuela (CTV) was one of the actors in the 2002 fascist coup against President Hugo Chávez. The PCV fully recognizes that the working class is the most interested and best able to carry to the end the Venezuelan revolutionary process and to make socialism a reality. That's why it has always strived to organize the oil workers' unions of agricultural workers, industrial workers, seafarers and port employees, professionals and other sectors.

Imperialism partially achieved the goal of destroying the organization of the working class as the main revolutionary subject and that is why the task of emancipation was led by patriotic military officers and other sectors led by Commander Chávez. This is nothing new or exceptional. A Soviet scientist noted that the democratic intelligentsia has a "significant role - and sometimes a leading one - in the national liberation revolution" in countries "where the working class has not become an independent force, while the national bourgeoisie is weak or pro-imperialist"¹².

The priority is to strengthen the Workers' Classist Current “Cruz Villegas”, to support the rising of workers' awareness, to organize the Socialist Councils of Workers, to boost the Labour Act, to promote the unity of the class and revolutionary trade unions forces and to isolate the traitors and corrupt trade unionists that still exert some influence. We stand for a "broad alliance of democratic, nationalist and anti-imperialist forces"¹³ in which the conscious working class is closely allied with all "the driving forces of the revolution in its current stage of transition": "large sections of workers, peasants, progressive middle class and intelligentsia, wide swath of small and middle bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie that is not associated with transnational capital"¹⁴. In Venezuela there are no patriotic sectors within the monopoly bourgeoisie, which has refused to become a national bourgeoisie and for decades has been a buyer and an agent of U.S. imperialism.

5.THE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM

The Communist Party of Venezuela is a direct son of the international effort of the working class led by the first successful socialist revolution, the Soviet Revolution, to overthrow capitalism and build a superior civilization. Both the Venezuelan people and the PCV have resisted and overcome in many battles against the class enemy thanks to the wide international solidarity we have received.

From the generous support given to us by Caribbean Bureau of the Communist International (CI), the fraternal assistance of the Communist Party of Colombia to keep safe pursued comrades, the international campaign for the freedom of PCV's President Comrade Gustavo Machado in 1968, to the support from all over the world to our people in the defeat of the criminal fascist coup of 2002. Therefore, the PCV waves with the same force the two flags of national liberation and proletarian internationalism to which we have sought to contribute.

In 1925, Gustavo Machado founded with Julio Antonio Mella the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas that became the basis for the creation of the Communist Party of Cuba, fought with Sandino in Nicaragua in 1928 and helped Fidel Castro in the 50s to prepare the Granma expedition. Venezuelan comrades fell martyrs in the expedition of 1959 to overthrow the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and a detachment of the Communist Youth arrested in 1964 U.S. Colonel Michael Smolen to require imperialists the immediate release of Vietnamese patriot Van Troi (action that sealed the unbreakable friendship between the peoples of Venezuela and Vietnam).

The PCV supports the solidarity position of President Chávez' with the struggle of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples, the peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose independence he has recognized diplomatically, with the Honduran people resisting the reactionary regime and other expressions of solidarity that correspond to our historical line.

We say that the program advanced by the government of President Chavez is basically the program proposed by the Sixth Congress of the CPV in 1980. We recognize and support the leadership of President Hugo Chávez in the struggle against imperialism, for national liberation, continental unity and socialism¹⁵. We recognize that hist leadership is not just national but continental and global and that it is "a reference for peoples and rulers"¹⁶. We note that the broad Anti-Imperialist Front that the country needs "requires for its development" of the leadership of Commander Chávez¹⁷. We supported Chávez's presidential candidacy in 1998 and we have actively supported the anti-imperialist direction of his government and the vast majority of progressive and revolutionary proposals made by the president. At this time the PCV participates with the allied party, the PSUV and other social and political movements, in the construction of a political and electoral Patriotic Alliance. We "naturally" support and promote the Bolivarian Revolution since we consider it the "continuity" of our own history¹⁸. The PCV exerts autonomy in the process of our country to raise our own policy that has some characteristic points:

• Call for formation of a collective leadership including President Chávez. In January 2010 our C.C. noted that "the decision to proceed to the creation of a collective leadership of the revolutionary processnot has not been taken yet"¹⁹.

• Struggle to build the political vanguard role of the working class.

• Constructive criticism about the mistakes errors committed by the government and self-criticism about our own mistakes.

• Struggle to "dismantle the old bourgeois, bureaucratic, corrupt and corrupting state"²⁰. We have denounced how from the old state a new bourgeoisie that accumulates privileges and performs anti-worker and corrupt practices appears²¹.

• Determination not only to maintain but to strengthen to the most our party not to defend "personal interests" or as a "whim", as some opponents accuse us, but to not squander the struggle heritage of 80 years and to defend the strategic interests of the working class.

• Firm policy of proletarian internationalism which supports the government's foreign policy but is independent to support the causes and struggles that deserve that support without being subject to the "reason of state", which is sometimes reason of the bourgeois state.

• Foundation of our policy in Marxism-Leninism and the legacy of Bolívar.

• In face of inconsiderate criticism and anticommunist assertions we vindicate the "enormous importance that the existence of “real socialism” had to mankind"²².

7.THE PCV AND THE SO-CALLED "SOCIALISM OF THE 21^ST CENTURY"

Since 1999 the Bolivarian process has gone by successive ideological definitions. First was the definition of "anti-neoliberal", afterwards the proposal of the "Third Way" inspired by the right-wing British Labour of Mr. Blair, afterwards the firm Bolivarian assertion, afterwards the “endogenous developmen”. At one point, the writer Heinz Dieterich Steffan succeeded in proposing the never very clear definition of "socialism of the 21^st century". It was something allegedly "new" and opposed, on one hand, to the socialist construction of the 20^th century that continues in the 21^st century in several countries (Cuba, China, Korea, Vietnam and Laos) and scientific socialism considered as “dogmatism” by the petty bourgeois, on the other hand.

In 1848 Karl Marx denounced several false socialisms, like feudal socialism, petty bourgeois socialism, German or "true" socialism and the bourgeois or conservative socialism²³. Several petty bourgeois currents attempted to appropriate the concept to render the true socialism meaningless. Against this, the PCV has been clear: our extraordinary congress of 2007 agreed on the development of the Marxist-Leninist consciousness. On June 19, 2009, the General Secretary Óscar Figuera argued strongly before the National Assembly that “the only existing socialism is scientific Socialism”²⁴.

I n the National Ideological Workshop we offered a complete definition of socialism that began this way: "Socialism is a socioeconomic structure where the the social ownership of the basic means of production of goods and services predominates"²⁵.

We welcome that, on the roots of class struggle, President Hugo Chávez and the PSUV are heading ever more decisively in favour of scientific socialism. The extraordinary congress of the PSUV has defined among its principles the scientific socialism and anti-imperialism²⁶, which is equivalent to the official burial of the "socialism of the 21^st century". This corresponds to a growing maturation of the popular and workers' forces engaged in the anti-imperialist process and an increased marginalization of the petty bourgeois and bourgeois groups which, as we have pointed out in early 2010 “somehow conduct the process today without the socialist goal”.