As Venezuela heads into an election on July 28, the country is clearly not doing well. A protracted economic crisis and increasingly repressive measures on the part of President Nicolas Maduro have given fresh openings for Maduro’s right-wing opposition. The elections have been dominated by sudden twists and turns as Maduro makes concessions one minute and cracks down the next. This is accompanied by erratic policy decisions such as inviting Russian warships to dock after military exercises and deploying troops to the border with Guyana.
The right-wing opposition, in spite of their pretensions to democracy, are long implicated in coup attempts against both Maduro and his more popular predecessor Hugo Chavez. Chavez and Maduro were themselves the products of mass popular movements. Unfortunately, Maduro’s repressive and dictatorial measures have only reinforced the false democratic claims of the opposition. In the face of repression, they’ve organized mass demonstrations comparable in size to those that first propelled Chavez to power.
Pro-capitalist forces have seized on Venezuela’s deep economic crisis to prove the inevitable failure of socialism. “What about Venezuela?” has become almost as common a right-wing trope as “What about Russia?” The current crisis in Venezuela, however, isn’t an example of the failure of socialism. Rather, it’s an example of the failure of trying to gradually bring about socialism within a capitalist state and economy. Understanding this failure is vital for the Venezuelan working class to rebuild their struggle.
Legacy Of The Bolivarian Revolution
The 1998 election of Hugo Chavez was one of the key political developments of its time. Coming during the “end of history” when capitalist restoration swept across the former Stalinist states and China, Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” was one of the first movements to revive interest in socialism. Chavez carried out significant reforms, taxing and nationalizing big business while building state-run social services for the poor. This lifted millions out of poverty in a country long plagued by inequality. It also kicked off the original “pink tide” of left populist leaders in Latin America, alongside Lula in Brazil and Evo Morales in Bolivia.
Like the other pink tide leaders, Chavez maintained capitalist relations by leaving large sections of the economy like food production under private ownership. Initially, he didn’t even call himself socialist. But he went farther than other pink tide leaders in taking on neoliberalism by nationalizing oil production and some other large industries. He attempted to moderate class antagonisms between the capitalist class and the working class, at points using the army to push back on both.
The Capitalists Fought Back
In response, the Venezuelan ruling class, backed by the US, carried out a failed coup attempt in 2002, followed by a lockout in 2003 (misreported as a strike in the bourgeois media), and a recall election in 2004, where the right-wing opposition engaged in extensive voter fraud. These attacks were defeated by mass uprisings of the Venezuelan working class. This pushed Chavez to a more open embrace of the term “socialism”, even going so far as to praise Lenin and Trotsky.
In spite of this, Chavez still adopted the mistaken reformist approach, rejected by Lenin and Trotsky, of trying to “simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” Previous attempts of left leaders to do this saw the state machine overthrow those left leaders, as in Chile in 1973. Other left leaders, like Lula in Brazil, caved to neoliberalism rather than risk provoking ruling class reaction. The strength of Chavez’s popular support prevented these two scenarios from playing out. But this didn’t change the non-viability of Chavez’s approach.
The crises facing Maduro, who assumed power following Chavez’s death in 2013, are the consequences of this. The problems began under Chavez, so they can’t be blamed on Maduro’s personal failings. While the right-wing attacks were fended off by the masses, Chavez leaned on the state itself. He pushed constitutional changes to strengthen his own executive power against other segments of the state. He revoked the broadcast license for the right-wing media company Radio Caracas Television.
Only One Class Can Run Society At A Time
Marxists use the term “Bonapartism” to refer to situations where the state places itself above the classes, while strengthening its power. In the last analysis a Bonapartist state will come down on the side of the ruling class. Chavez and Maduro differed from classical Bonapartist states in that the bulk of the ruling class remained staunchly opposed to them. However, another section of capitalists, called the “boli-bourgeoisie”, enriched themselves on the basis of the growing bureaucracy around Chavez and Maduro.
As long as capitalist relations remain intact, the market-driven rush for profits will inevitably claw back any pro-worker reforms one may fight for. In this sense, the Venezuelan experience parallels that of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Both involved popular left governments that retained capitalist relations. Both governments were able to fend off right-wing military reaction but stalled in the long term as capital flight and a crisis of profitability prevented the governments from sustaining their reforms. In both cases the resulting economic crises gave the ruling class new openings to wage a counterrevolution in a democratic form.
Venezuela was able to sustain itself primarily because the country’s vast oil reserves provided a source of revenue to continue funding Chavez’s and Maduro’s reforms. But in 2014, the price of oil dropped dramatically, yanking away the economic foundations of the Bolivarian Revolution. The resulting economic crisis saw drastic increases in inflation, scarcity, and speculation. By 2017, the inflation became hyperinflation, peaking at a rate of 130,060% in 2018.
The right-wing opposition tapped into the growing discontent. At the beginning of 2014, hardline reactionaries Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado organized the 12F demonstrations, which combined popular protest with violent attacks. Maduro supporters fought back, but Maduro used the protests to ramp up repression, portraying the demonstrations as a “coup in progress.”
By the 2015 National Assembly elections, the right-wing opposition won a national election for the first time since Chavez came to power. As relations broke down between the right-wing led National Assembly and the Maduro presidency, Maduro called for a new Constituent Assembly to be elected in 2017. The right-wing opposition boycotted the election, and violently attacked attempts to hold the vote, while promoting the National Assembly, with US backing, as the legitimate Venezuelan government. This is what prompted the US to establish sanctions against Venezuela in 2017. In 2019, National Assembly president Juan Guaido carried out another failed coup attempt. This crumbled faster than the 2002 coup attempt, less out of popular support for Maduro, and more out of lack of support for Guaido.
In the aftermath, Guaido headed a phantom government in exile backed by US imperialism. In Venezuela itself, Maduro increasingly presided over a failed state, with a tanked economy, a decline in popular support, and a breakdown in political relations.
Moves Towards Detente
In spite of Venezuela’s long-term global isolation, the current crisis comes after more recent moves towards stability and detente. At the end of 2022, the right-wing opposition formally ousted Guaido from their government in exile. In response, the US stopped recognizing the government in exile and seized the Venezuelan embassy from the opposition in February 2023. Without the financial crutch of US imperialism, the opposition couldn’t afford lawyers and, by June of 2023, they agreed to run within the official Venezuelan elections.
Bypassing the opposition, the Biden administration engaged in direct talks in Barbados with the Maduro government. On October 17, 2023, an agreement was reached that the US would suspend the sanctions on Venezuela. In turn Maduro and the opposition agreed to free and fair elections for 2024, and Maduro would collaborate with the Biden administration’s crackdown on migration. As the elections became reality, however, the detente broke down.
These moves towards detente weren’t the result of Biden embracing socialism, nor of Maduro embracing liberal bourgeois democratic values. Rather, they were the product of the changing era. US imperialism, the Maduro government, and the right-wing opposition all found themselves weakened. Each force sought to exploit each others’ weaknesses.
The end of the neoliberal era saw a decline in US imperialism’s global hegemony. This gave Maduro more leeway by leaning on Russian and Chinese imperialism. As US imperialism tries to counter the Russia-China bloc through near-shoring, it felt pressured to make concessions to Maduro. This was exacerbated after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which cut off a major source of oil to the US-aligned bloc.
The right-wing opposition has also been weakened since Guaido’s coup attempt in 2019. Guaido himself was increasingly seen as a joke. When he was removed, the government in exile lost its pretense to democratic legitimacy. Continuing to prop it up became a burden for US imperialism.
However, the weakening of US imperialism and the right-wing opposition doesn’t mean a strengthening of the Maduro government. The economic crisis is still ongoing. Maduro was able to rein in hyperinflation, but on the basis of draconian austerity measures, along with a dollarization of the economy. These have allowed growth for private companies, but at the expense of workers, especially in the public sector. The minimum monthly salary for a public school teacher is about $10, while university professors earn between $60 and $80. This resulted in growing discontent among Maduro’s working-class base of support. As the opposition was thrown into crisis in 2023, Venezuela was shaken by strikes of teachers and other unions. This pressured the Maduro administration to make peace with US imperialism and allow companies like Chevron to massively scale up operations in the country.
The forces that paved the way to detente in 2023 are inherently unstable. As each player engaged in a game of brinkmanship, things were bound to fall apart.
Brinkmanship
It was barely a week after signing the Barbados agreement that things broke down, when the opposition primaries elected hardliner Maria Corina Machado as their presidential candidate. While Machado is currently hyped up by US imperialism as a paragon of democracy, she signed the Carmona Decree in which the 2002 coup leaders sought to dissolve Chavez’s democratically elected government. Machado had already been banned from running for this. In spite of the utter hypocrisy of her democratic credentials, she’s currently massively popular, primarily a response to Maduro’s own decline in support. Maduro’s own democratic credentials were called into question as he not only blocked Machado from running, but engaged in targeted arrests of her supporters.
While Machado’s agenda is one of staunch adherence to US imperialism, the shorter-term interests of US imperialism would have preferred a less confrontational candidate. As such, the Biden administration did what it could to hold things together. This included special diplomatic missions to Colombia, where they urged new pink tide leader Gustavo Petro to pressure both Maduro and the opposition to come to an agreement.
At the same time, the Biden administration repeatedly threatened to reinstate sanctions if the opposition was blocked from running. This resulted in a round of brinkmanship where US imperialism did everything to convey its seriousness about restoring sanctions while also doing everything to avoid actually restoring them. This included attempts to allow oil trade to continue and secret meetings in Mexico with representatives from the Venezuelan government. Nonetheless, Biden restored sanctions in April.
Meanwhile, both the Maduro government and the right-wing opposition engaged in their own brinkmanship. After Machado was banned from running, the opposition attempted to put forward Corina Yoris as a replacement, only for her to also be banned. By mid-April, the opposition was thrown into disarray when another candidate, Manuel Rosales, announced his candidacy and wasn’t banned. Machado loyalists saw Rosales as a puppet “loyal opposition” designed to derail her campaign, while Rosales supporters saw him as the only means to a legal campaign. In a matter of days, however, the tables turned when the entire opposition united behind yet another candidate, Edmundo Gonzales, a relative unknown whose candidacy had already been approved. With the backing of both Machado and Rosales, his popularity dramatically rose, with polls showing him beating Maduro by over 20 points.
On Maduro’s part, the desire is to demonstrate enough of a commitment to democratic rights to get the sanctions reversed, while simultaneously making sure he doesn’t lose power to the right-wing opposition. While still formally allowing Gonzalez to run, his targeted arrests of opposition supporters have continued. In April he invited EU election monitors to oversee the election, only to kick them out in May.
This sort of brinkmanship is par for the course for US imperialism and the right-wing opposition. For Maduro, it’s a sign of decline. In the earlier days of the Bolivarian Revolution, the government had mass support that could be mobilized during elections without cracking down on democratic rights. When the opposition resorted to undemocratic maneuvers, that mass support was mobilized to beat them back. The withering of this mass support has seen Maduro rely increasingly on wielding the state to stay in power. In this situation, whoever wins, the Venezuelan working class loses.
Migration Crisis
The extent of the disaster for the Venezuelan working class is seen in the refugee crisis. Going back to the Chavez years, there were waves of migration from Venezuela, but this was dominated by ruling class figures who feared the empowerment of the Venezuelan working class. Over the past few years, however, migration from Venezuela changed quantitatively and qualitatively. Starting in 2021, the rate of migration drastically ramped up. Venezuela is now the second largest source of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border after Mexico itself. The class character also shifted to poorer Venezuelans forced to make dangerous journeys across Panama’s Darien Gap.
In the US, the migrant crisis has fueled right-wing attacks on immigrant rights from figures like Trump. Biden and the Democrats, rather than challenging Trump on this, have continued Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. Most recently, Biden signed a near-total ban on asylum seekers.
Venezuelan migrants have become pawns in the sanctions negotiations between Venezuela and the US. During the detente moves in 2023, the Biden administration arranged direct deportations to Venezuela. When Biden threatened to restore sanctions in 2024, Maduro threatened to stop accepting the deportations.
While US imperialism cavalierly uses Venezuelan refugees as a bargaining chip, it also holds up the refugee crisis as a warning to the poor and oppressed of the evils of socialism. This is hypocritical on the part of US imperialism, given the role years of sanctions played in wrecking Venezuela’s standard of living. However, this doesn’t absolve Maduro. Beyond the economic crisis, Maduro’s crackdown on democratic rights discourages even working-class migrants from returning. A PAX sapiens poll from October 2023 found that, while 58% of Venezuelan migrants would likely return if Venezuela’s economy significantly improves, only 14% would do so if that happens but Maduro remains in power.
Essequibo
The disconnect between Maduro’s rule and a genuinely revolutionary, working-class program is seen in his confrontation with Guyana over the Essequibo region. This is an oil-rich region, making up two thirds of Guyana’s area, but less than a sixth of its population. Essequibo has long been disputed between the two countries, although tensions had receded under Chavez.
On December 3, 2023, however, in the middle of the electoral crisis, Maduro held a referendum laying claim to the region. He then deployed troops to the border and announced he would permit Venezuela-based companies to explore the oil, gas, and mineral deposits in the region. Guyana in turn began joint military operations with the US.
Right-wing talking points portray this as naked aggression on Venezuela’s part, comparing it to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Maduro’s own line, echoed by some on the left, portrays it as an anti-imperialist measure. The region was formerly incorporated into Guyana in 1899, when Guyana was still a British colony but Venezuela was an independent republic. As such, the Venezuelan claims to Essequibo originate with a challenge to British imperialism. Even then, the Venezuelan nationalists leaned on US imperialism, especially the Grover Cleveland administration, as a counter to British imperialism. Today, Guyana has been independent for more than half a century, regardless of its right-wing, pro-capitalist government.
A more cynical explanation of the dispute points to the discovery of oil off the coast of Guyana a decade ago. Following this, ExxonMobil swooped in and other oil companies followed suit. Over the past few years, Guyana has undergone a massive oil boom that has enriched the Guyanese ruling class and international capitalism, while drastically ramping up inequality in the country. For US imperialism, Guyana offers a way to continue near-shoring its oil supply without Venezuela. Meanwhile, Venezuela sees Guyanese oil as a threat to its own oil-based economy.
This economic explanation isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete. Venezuelan nationalist claims to Essequibo have support even among the right-wing opposition, and the referendum served as a way to cut across their support. The referendum itself won 95% support, albeit on a low turnout. This was accompanied by a campaign of arrests against opposition supporters for boycotting the referendum.
If Maduro led a genuinely revolutionary, working-class government, he would appeal to the working class of Guyana against the country’s domination by the oil companies. He would also defend the right to self-determination of the mostly indigenous population in Essequibo, who were never consulted by Venezuela or Guyana in any of the disputes over the region. By resorting to these nationalist maneuvers, Maduro can entrench his own power, but at the expense of the Bolivarian Revolution he claims to champion.
New Pink Tide
Maduro’s nationalist demagoguery is all the more rotten given that it comes during a second pink tide in the rest of Latin America. The return to power of Lula in Brazil, the successes of Morena in Mexico, and the rise of Gustavo Petro in Colombia reflect new openings for an internationalist struggle in Latin America. Petro’s case is particularly significant since Colombia was a bastion of reaction during the first pink tide and often sparred with Venezuela. The new pink tide, like the original, and like Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, share the same illusions in the capitalist state. And some of the figures, such as Lula, are far more tied to capitalism than their image would suggest. Nonetheless, the resurgence of class struggle behind the new pink tide points the way out of Venezuela’s crisis.
Unlike the original pink tide, which took place in the neoliberal era, the new one takes place in the New Cold War and the age of disorder. This gives a different character to the new pink tide governments. The New Cold War gives Latin American governments more leeway to challenge US imperialism without challenging capitalism or imperialism in general. Much of Lula’s perceived radicalism stems from his leaning on Russian and Chinese imperialism, through the BRICS coalition, to push back against the US. This approach has meant that many new pink tide governments are more willing to defend Maduro than the original pink tide governments were willing to defend Chavez, but not on the basis of class struggle.
Throughout the current crisis, the new pink tide governments in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico have acted as Maduro’s more respectable friends in diplomatic negotiations with the US. A particular controversy broke out in March 2024, when Lula dismissed concerns about Machado being banned from running, saying that, when he was blocked from running in 2018, “Instead of crying, I chose another candidate and he contested the elections.” Machado responded by denouncing Lula for “validating the abuses of an autocrat.”
This approach, on the part of both Maduro and the new pink tide governments, is not how to challenge capitalism and imperialism. However, the mass movements that propelled these governments to power do point the way forward. An internationalist appeal to global working-class struggles can take on US imperialism’s attempts to block progressive change. And it can do this without leaning on Russian and Chinese imperialism.
The Way Forward
In spite of the current popularity of the right-wing opposition, working people need to be clear that the capitalists won’t improve Venezuelan democracy. They stand for privatization, austerity, and servitude to US imperialism, and they’re perfectly willing to crush democratic rights when it suits them. In power, they will wage vicious anti-worker attacks comparable to Brazil under Bolsonaro and Argentina under Milei.
At the same time, workers can’t support Maduro either. While many of his Bonapartist blows are directed against reactionary forces aligned with US imperialism, he has also wielded those repressive measures against workers and the poor. On top of this, his attempts to appeal to different imperialist powers and play them off against each other isn’t a genuine challenge to imperialism.
The way forward is seen in the mass movements that initiated the Bolivarian Revolution and that brought about the original and the new pink tides. An independent working class movement can challenge Maduro’s repression and anti-worker policies, while also resisting the threat posed by the right.
The experience of the Bolivarian Revolution shows that we can’t wield the state machine ready-made to do away with capitalism. But the positive sides of the Bolivarian Revolution and the two pink tides show how left electoral campaigns can empower the class struggle.
Only the working class can genuinely defend democratic rights while taking on capitalism and imperialism. Nationalizing not only the oil companies but the commanding heights of the economy, and placing them under democratic workers’ control can allow for economic planning free from the profit motive, to take on poverty. Faced with the threat of imperialist sanctions and interventions, the only solution is international solidarity with the working class in Latin America and globally.