Vol. 78/No. 16      April 28, 2014

For more than a decade and a half Washington has backed efforts to overturn the Venezuelan government and bring an end to its close trade and diplomatic ties to revolutionary Cuba.

Since mid-February the opposition has organized frequent demonstrations — based foremost among university students, middle-class professionals and business people big and small — barricaded major thoroughfares and attacked government offices and police with Molotov cocktails and rocks.

The response by the government of President Nicolás Maduro — sending in cops using tear gas and rubber bullets, arresting some protest leaders and expelling foreign journalists — has helped to fuel the protests. Some pro-government neighborhood organizations known as colectivos (collectives) have attacked opposition demonstrations. At least 25 people have died in clashes over the last month.

The worldwide crisis of capitalism has hit hard in Venezuela. Government policies ostensibly designed to mitigate its effects through state regulations, currency and price controls, construction projects and other measures have largely failed. In some cases they have created problems of their own or been sabotaged by capitalist businesses.

Inflation reached more than 56 percent in 2013. Shortages of basic necessities from toilet paper to chicken and cooking oil are endemic. Violent crime rates, including 16,000 murders in 2012, are among the highest in the world. Tens of thousands live in unfinished buildings, shopping centers and homeless shelters in Caracas alone, where there is an estimated shortage of 400,000 apartments and homes.

Opposition targets Cuba

Machado and fellow opposition leader Leopoldo López, who like Machado is from a ruling capitalist family, paint themselves as defenders of free speech and democratic rights. Both were outspoken supporters of the failed U.S.-backed 2002 military coup against Chávez — a coup that was reversed two days later by the spontaneous mobilization of working people.

Chávez was first elected president in 1998 with widespread support, six years after he led a failed coup against the unpopular government of Carlos Andrés Pérez.

The Chávez government used profits from the state oil industry, much of which was nationalized under Pérez, to subsidize housing, food and government programs and finance extended medical care. He hired construction companies to build housing and mass transit in poorer neighborhoods. Some 160,000 peasants were given title to fallow land, while more than 80 percent of agricultural land remained in capitalist hands.

Chávez was openly critical of U.S. imperialist policy in Latin America and around the world, while rejecting the need for socialist revolution. Instead, he advocated a “third road” between capitalism and socialism that could improve the lives of workers and peasants, while defending the Venezuelan nation — patriotic capitalist and worker alike.

For example, in a 2008 interview, Christopher Hitchens asked Chávez what the difference was between him and Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. “Fidel is a communist. I am not. I am a social democrat,” Chávez replied. “Fidel is a Marxist-Leninist. I am not. Fidel is an atheist. I am not.”

Since Chávez was elected, the number of government employees increased by more than 1 million. Today nearly one of every five workers is employed by the government.

Through cooperative agreements between the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, Havana helped establish social programs known as “missions,” staffed by tens of thousands of Cuban volunteers, from teachers and sports instructors to agronomists. Barrio Adentro, staffed by 20,000 Cuban doctors, today provides free medical care to working people across the country.

Anti-imperialist trade policies

Caracas’ ties with Havana and the two governments’ initiation of new trade and diplomatic alliances in Latin America and the Caribbean to counter U.S. imperialist domination of the region have provoked the ire of Washington.

This includes the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), a trade bloc of nine Latin American countries formed in 2004, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States. In 2005 the Venezuelan government launched PetroCaribe, which provides Cuba and 13 other Caribbean countries with oil at preferential prices, weakening the stranglehold of imperialist-dominated oil monopolies.

Government subsidies and social programs since 1998 have helped improve living conditions of working people. At the same time they have strengthened workers’ dependence on the capitalist state and promoted the illusion that something other than independent working-class political action can advance their interests. Today, many government programs are in decline, while the government is weaker without the strong Bonapartist leader it had with Chávez.

Oil production in crisis

Venezuela owes more than $60 billion to foreign creditors and Maduro has made sure that they are paid on time. Domestic capitalists are owed some $50 billion.

Maduro had floated reducing subsidies for gas prices, which stand at roughly 6 cents a gallon. But he has shelved the idea since the latest wave of opposition protests began.

The government has implemented a complicated auction of U.S. dollars for Venezuelan businesses at the official exchange rate of 6.3 bolivars to the dollar, one tenth the black market rate.

Some capitalists, especially those with ties to the government, are taking advantage of the gap. They are making fortunes in currency speculation buying dollars at the official rate, ostensibly to import needed goods, and selling them on the black market.

The government has tried to impose price controls and passed a law stating that capitalists will be allowed a 30 percent maximum profit rate, leading to acute shortages of goods at the official prices and a thriving black market at whatever price the market will bear.

While chastising greedy capitalists, Maduro has also criticized workers who demand higher wages. He labeled steelworkers on strike at the Sidor company in September and October as “labor criminals, anarcho-syndicalists.”

In a move to head off opposition in the armed forces, the government announced in September that it was giving members of the military a pay raise and vehicles, furniture and appliances for their homes. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Maduro has appointed more than 300 active duty or retired military officials to government posts.

Although the crisis is hitting working people the hardest, “the protests shaking the capital this month have been dominated by the city’s middle- and upper-class residents,” the New York Times reported Feb. 28. “Yet in the city’s poorer sections, life has mostly gone on as usual.” Even those who oppose the government “do not trust the opposition,” the paper said.

Henrique Capriles, the opposition’s presidential candidate who lost to Maduro last year, has publicly distanced himself from López and Machado’s central slogan, “Maduro, leave now!”

“Most Venezuelans live in poor neighborhoods and that message does not draw in their discontent,” Capriles told El Nacional, a pro-imperialist daily. Recognizing the popularity of the Cuban doctor and teacher volunteers among working people in Venezuela, Capriles said during his presidential campaign that he would not dismantle the medical and education programs, although like López and Machado he promised that “not a drop of oil will go toward financing the government of the Castros.”  
 
 
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