President Donald Trump’s escalating threats to the sovereignty of Venezuela’s working people are a serious danger to all workers. They’re the latest step in a decadeslong drive by both Democratic and Republican administrations to bring down Venezuela’s government.
Their goal is to install a government that will do Washington’s bidding, help accelerate the U.S. imperialists’ plunder of the country’s oil wealth, push back the influence of Beijing and facilitate the U.S. rulers’ political and military domination of the Western Hemisphere. The bipartisan imperialist gang in Washington especially wants a government in Venezuela that helps to isolate Cuba, advancing the U.S. rulers’ decadeslong drive to overthrow Cuba’s socialist revolution and eradicate the example it sets.
Workers and our unions should demand U.S. hands off both Venezuela and Cuba!
Washington’s sanctions against working people in Venezuela were first imposed by President George W. Bush in 2005 and have been deepened by administrations since. The measures have had a devastating impact, hitting hard on top of the effects of the worldwide capitalist crisis. Inflation in Venezuela is running at 270%. Some 8 million people have left the country over the last 10 years.
The bipartisan backing for the Trump administration’s assaults are highlighted in a Nov. 18 editorial in the liberal Washington Post. “With sticks and carrots Trump hopes to compel Maduro to abdicate,” the paper’s editors say approvingly, before gloating over the possibility of opposition leader María Corina Machado being installed by Washington.
Cuba is a special target of Washington’s two-party capitalist rulers. They fear the example of the Cuban Revolution spreading.
What was accomplished by Fidel Castro and the Cuban people after overthrowing the U.S.-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in 1959 shows real progress for working people is only possible by our class taking political power and uprooting the exploitation intrinsic to capitalist rule. They took their destiny into their own hands, transforming themselves in the process. They extended unstinting internationalist aid to anti-imperialist struggles, from Vietnam to Guinea-Bissau and throughout Latin America.
In so doing they strengthened their own revolution.
The example of Cuba’s socialist revolution is even more important in today’s crisis-ridden world, as cutthroat competition and sharpening trade wars expand, inexorably driving rival capitalist rulers toward fascism and a third world war.
There is an alternative! As persistent high prices, stultifying schedules and, more recently, growing layoffs hit workers hard — all the natural consequences of capitalism — workers in the U.S. and elsewhere will have our chance to emulate the example set by Castro and the leadership he built. We can build a party to lead workers and the oppressed to take power here, and to join the fight for a socialist world. Join the Socialist Workers Party!