Roger and All,
We've allowed the opening of Pandora's Box, and unleashed unspeakable
Evil upon the Land.
It's as if thieves had snuck into a grocery store and began grabbing
everything in sight. Greed has no boundaries, and Greed is what we
are witnessing around the world.
Corporate Greed.
It's painful to watch working class folks cuddling up to Donald Trump
and his Trumpsters. Can't they see that when the corporations are
done with them, they will kick them to the curb, too?
Carl Jarvis
On 2/23/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://themilitant.com/2019/02/23/political-crisis-wracks-toilers-in-venezuela-us-hands-off/
Political crisis wracks toilers in Venezuela – US hands off!
By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 83/No. 9
March 4, 2019
Washington continues to turn up economic and financial pressure in hopes
of bringing down the government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
In a speech Feb. 18 in Miami, where the largest émigré Venezuelan
population in the U.S. lives, President Donald Trump urged the
Venezuelan military brass to break with Maduro and throw their lot in
with the opposition led by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó. If
they don’t, he said, “You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no
way out. You will lose everything.”
The Maduro government has maintained a course that pushes working people
out of politics and demoralizes them. That’s why in the midst of the
capitalist economic and social crisis there the imperialist rulers in
Washington feel they’re in a stronger position today to press for the
fall of Maduro.
The U.S. government froze U.S. bank accounts of the Venezuelan
government and its state-owned PDVSA oil company on Jan. 28. It has also
blocked the sale of raw materials needed to process oil in Venezuela.
Working people need to oppose Washington’s interference with Venezuela’s
sovereignty and demand U.S. Hands Off!
Outcome of Chávez, Maduro course
The economic, social and political crisis in Venezuela is the
consequence of the political course followed by the government of Hugo
Chávez that came to power in 1998, a course continued by Maduro since
Chavéz’s death in 2013.
Chávez, a military officer, was elected president in 1998 amid a
working-class uprising. His final election rally was 700,000 strong.
Chávez called his political course the Bolivarian Revolution and
sometimes 21st Century socialism, which he sharply differentiated from
the Cuban Revolution, where Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement led
workers and farmers to take political power. Instead, Chávez and Maduro
used income from oil sales to fund welfare programs that fostered
workers’ dependency, and attempted to “manage” the capitalist economy.
This diversion from a course toward taking power began the process of
demobilizing Venezuelan toilers.
In Cuba the communist leadership of the revolution led by Castro
encouraged workers control and carried out a deep agrarian reform that
guaranteed that peasants could work their own land — transforming the
island’s workers and farmers into the masters of their own destiny and
opening a socialist revolution.
In Venezuela production and land remained in the hands of the capitalist
class.
Ostensibly to encourage production and make importing of necessary
materials easier, Chávez set up a system where capitalists could buy
dollars at a lower rate than on the “free” market. This became a huge
source of corruption, especially with capitalists most allied to the
government. They made a killing in an endless cycle of buying dollars
cheap, then reselling them on the black market, instead of using them to
buy needed imports.
The government and military bureaucracy mushroomed. The state-run oil
industry was plundered by bosses and bureaucrats while some of the
profits were used to fund the government’s welfare programs. When the
price of oil was high, this masked the underlying contradictions. But
when oil supplies on the world market were glutted, the price of oil
plummeted.
The government tried to keep funding their welfare programs by printing
money to make up for the short fall, sparking out-of-control inflation —
now over 1 million percent this year. No matter how often Maduro raises
the minimum wage, it can’t keep up with daily price increases.
Government-subsidized products are scarce. Workers seeking necessities
end up standing in lines for hours in hopes of finding something.
The resulting crisis and depoliticization of working people has opened
the door for Guaidó and greater interference by Washington.
What the U.S. rulers hate the most about the Chávez and Maduro
governments are the friendly ties these governments have had with the
Cuban Revolution. Tens of thousands of Cuban internationalist volunteers
have spent time over the past 20 years in Venezuela, staffing medical
clinics, including in the most isolated areas, participating in literacy
campaigns, and helping to train the army. And the Venezuelan government
sent oil to Cuba at low prices.
Maduro says there isn’t a crisis
Despite the conditions that have led some 3 million people to flee the
country, Maduro has repeatedly denied there is a crisis.
In a Feb. 7 “Open letter to the people of the U.S.,” Maduro claimed that
the U.S. government is “waging a military attack on Venezuela under the
pretext of a nonexistent humanitarian crisis.”
Denying the existence of the crisis gives a handle to the cynical
maneuvers of the U.S government and Guaidó, who shed crocodile tears
about the suffering people of Venezuela to present themselves as
fighters for humanitarian aid.
The opposition and Washington have said they intend to deliver a convoy
of aid to help Venezuelans into the country Feb. 23. Maduro says it
isn’t needed and won’t be permitted.
According to the Wall Street Journal, three U.S. military cargo planes
brought supplies to the Colombian border town of Cúcuta Feb. 16. Their
“humanitarian” aid? Hygiene kits with soap and toothbrushes. And
nutritional bars for just 3,500 kids. They say they will be sending a
few hundred tons, which would not make a dent in the crisis.
The U.S. rulers are using the crisis in Venezuela to slander and, they
hope, to isolate the Cuban Revolution. In his Feb. 18 speech in Miami
President Trump called Maduro “a Cuban puppet.” Washington and Guaidó
have been promoting bald-faced lies that the Cuban advisers in the army
are directing torture and repression against Maduro’s opponents.
Developments in Venezuela are dangerous for working people there and for
the Cuban Revolution. The only road forward is for workers and farmers
to organize and follow Cuba’s example, take political power into their
own hands, and overthrow capitalist exploitation and oppression.
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •School workers strike beats back gov’t attack
•Political crisis wracks toilers in Venezuela - US hands off!
•‘The working people need to build our own political party’
•Iraqis proud of Baghdad booksellers’ district that survived war,
repression
•Liberals’ ‘Green New Deal’ scheme no road forward for working people
•Thousands protest in Haiti, demand president, prime minister resign
Feature Articles •Book by Cuban leader José Ramón Fernández launched
Also In This Issue •Thanks to ‘Militant’ readers, appeal goes over the top
•Muslim prisoner in Alabama executed, denied right to imam
•Thousands of workers strike in Mexico, win wage hike
•Stewardship of nature falls to working class
On the Picket Line •Coal miners in Ukraine march demanding back pay
•Quebec aluminum workers stand firm in over yearlong lockout
As I See It •Rail workers need to use union power to fight for safety
25, 50 and 75 years ago
© Copyright 2019 The Militant - 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor - New
York, NY 10018 - themilitant@xxxxxx
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Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open
mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind
the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
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