Supreme Court approves assault on Communist Party of Venezuela

Lucha de Clases – the Venezuelan section of the International Marxist Tendency – expresses its firm opposition to the recent attack on the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), orchestrated by the leadership of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and carried out by the judiciary. This manoeuvre has stripped the PCV’s membership and the legitimate leadership of the party of legal control of its name, symbols and legal identity.

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Through ruling 1160, issued on Friday 11 August, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) decreed as “admissible” the appeal for legal protection filed by PSUV members on 10 July, and appointed an ad hoc Board of Directors to take legal control of the PCV. In this way, the judiciary has once again revealed its role as the executive arm of the state, which no longer hides its Bonapartist, authoritarian character and its opposition to the interests of the workers of the city and the countryside.

This shameful ruling adds to the long history of judicial intervention and denial of the electoral rights of multiple parties, in the interests of the PSUV's political scheming. In the past, this exact process has been used against right-wing parties in an attempt to build a “moderate opposition” tailored to the government's interests. In an extremely vicious manner, this manoeuvre has been carried out against left-wing organisations in order to prevent the formation of a political alternative that would take votes away from the PSUV in elections.

The PSUV leadership is unwilling to allow other united formations of the left to emerge from the sea of social discontent. Such an organisation would unmask the false ‘revolutionary and anti-imperialist’ phrases of the PSUV, which have distorted the true meaning of socialism in the eyes of a broad layer of the population. We will never stop repeating that socialism did not fail in Venezuela, because it was never established. What failed was the rentier capitalism that the corrupt bureaucracy of the PSUV insisted on regulating and sustaining at any cost.

It should be pointed out that the attack on the PCV has eliminated the only remaining option for the left to express itself electorally. This constitutes a serious violation of the political and organisational rights of the Venezuelan working people. For this reason, we absolutely and unwaveringly reject this attack.

The events of Thursday 10 August give important additional context to the PSUV’s manoeuvres. President Maduro, accompanied in the Miraflores palace by Venezuela’s most powerful bosses, signed a decree establishing four Special Economic Zones. In this way, the national government is continuing its policy of squeezing wages and undermining the basic rights of the working class, whilst making endless concessions to the capitalist class in Venezuela and internationally.

The assault on the PCV is part of the PSUV’s plan to win the “confidence” of the capitalists, on whose altar the government is willing to sacrifice its progressive past in its entirety. Maduro's aspiration is to make an electoral pact with the traditional oligarchy, which will allow him to continue running the state in the interests of the exploiters. To this end, the government has deployed an aggressive austerity policy that is unprecedented in the nation’s history. The criminalisation of protest, the persecution of workers, the excessive strengthening of the state’s repressive bodies, and now the pacifying of the left electorally – these attacks on the working class prepare the ground for the return to power of the bourgeoisie on an authoritarian basis.

The PSUV leadership has set itself up as a caste of the nouveau riche, based on the total plunder of public resources. The interests of the majority of the people are utterly alien to them. This is the bureaucracy that put the brakes on the advance of the Bolivarian Revolution, that suffocated the organisation and participation of the masses, that pulverised attempts at workers' control and reversed the reforms that benefited the peasantry. Today, this layer is jointly responsible, together with imperialism and the traditional bourgeoisie, for the historic precipice at which Venezuela finds itself. All of this constitutes the enormous service that Maduro has rendered to the interests of capital. History will never forget the executioners of the people!

We call on the working people to step up the struggle to rescue and extend their rights, and for the conquest of a dignified life, which will not be possible within the limited framework of the capitalist crisis. Today, the capitalist mode of production is rotting all over the world. The present situation in Venezuela is only an extreme expression of this tendency. The international struggle, organisation and mobilisation of the working class is necessary to overthrow capitalism and build a world free of all exploitation and oppression.

In light of this, we want to convey our revolutionary solidarity to the membership of the PCV in these difficult hours. National and international solidarity must be boldly linked with the workers', peasants' and popular struggles, in order to confront government policy, organise the oppressed and open up opportunities for the revolutionary transformation of society in the future.

For class solidarity and revolutionary solidarity!

Our answer will be more struggle and organisation!