Contents "The internationalist proletarian" n.15
VENEZUELA: AN ECONOMY DROWNING IN DEBT
From 2013 to 2017 there was a general drop in the price of oil globally and specifically the price of Venezuelan oil went from around $100 a barrel in 2012-2013 to $30 a barrel in 2016.
This was the diagnosis of the Venezuelan economy that we published in 2015 in El Comunista no.55: "Why does the Venezuelan economy enter into crisis with the fall in the price of oil? Because 96% of the dollars that enter the country depend on the sale of oil, for every dollar that the average annual price of Venezuelan oil falls, this capitalist state stops receiving 600 million dollars. (...) It is the fall in the price of oil, due to the world crisis of overproduction that determines the Venezuelan crisis and the growing indebtedness of its economy." (El Comunista no.55, April 2015).
Two years later, the Venezuelan government suspended payments.
The Venezuelan capitalist state is up to its neck in debt
The data collected in the following tables on Venezuela's foreign debt are from December 2023 and are taken from the report "Saldar la deuda, salvar Venezuela" (Paying off the debt, saving Venezuela) carried out by the bourgeois organization Transparencia Venezuela. This organization is part of the Transparency International organization whose aim is to focus on the booty pocketed by the capitalists and the representatives of the bourgeoisie, the so-called corruption, and to sell the possibility of a "transparent" and "fair" management of capitalism. We, as Marxists and materialists, are interested in the data to be able to follow the course of capitalism in Venezuela, but without ceasing to denounce the ideological campaigns of the bourgeoisie which are aimed at pointing to corruption as the origin of the economic crises and the ills of the working class, as well as the possibility of a model management of capitalism. With this type of campaign the bourgeoisie hides the fact that the only source of profit in capitalism is the surplus value extracted from the unpaid labor time of the working class and that wage labor is a form of exploitation and slavery based directly on theft. This profit is what they then rip each other off, divide underhandedly, etc. With the hype they give to "corruption" they conceal the fact that, even if there were no corruption, we would still be living in a system of exploitation and slavery.
In Venezuelan capitalism, moreover, the bourgeoisie has the resource of using the scarecrow of "socialism": the so-called "opposition" says that the economic crisis is caused by the "socialist" system implemented in Venezuela by Chavism; the ruling party says that the situation of misery is caused by the attacks of other imperialist powers against its "socialism". All of them blame the crisis, shortages and hunger on socialism, when this mode of production has not occurred so far anywhere in the world, much less in the "socialism" of the Venezuelan bourgeois bankers.
In the Venezuelan state, products have the form of commodity, commodities are bought with money (bolivars or dollars), production is carried out by companies with a double entry balance sheet, the labor force is just another commodity, and its remuneration is the salary. Therefore, the mode of production that rules in Venezuela, in spite of all the deceitful propaganda from both sides, is not socialism but CAPITALISM, with all its categories and laws: law of value, law of supply and demand, anarchy of production, overproduction, etc.
In no.61 of El Comunista (November 2018) we exposed a brief summary of what Venezuelan capitalism has been since its birth and what are the reasons for the economic situation of the last years of Venezuela: "It is the high and low oil prices in the international market that govern life and health in Venezuela: when oil prices are high they buy everything, they pay gold prices for obsolete, ruined companies, when oil prices collapse in the world market they sell everything at a bargain. This is what is happening in the Venezuelan economy, to the deluded grandchildren of Bolivar. They abandoned the entire industrial park, they dedicated themselves to the exploitation of capital and oil, the high oil prices facilitated credits and they got into debt up to their marrow, promoting the liquidation of their own industry by selling oil in exchange for manufactured products which have then flooded the Venezuelan market, first destroying their own industry and agriculture and then producing a runaway inflation, plunging the proletarian masses into an unprecedented misery. They sold oil at a price far above its cost price to their supposed allies in a purely imperialist and abusive action, but their regional arrogance has dialectically produced their collapse. The oil rent drug addiction of Venezuelan capitalism has destroyed its already incipient agrarian and industrial development.”
And this is part of what the Venezuelan capitalist state currently owes to the rest of the capitalist world:
The total foreign debt would amount to 161,371,173,132 dollars. If one looks only at the evolution of PDVSA's debt it "went from a debt of 3,000 million dollars in 2006 to more than 50,000 million dollars this year." (El Nacional, 29-05-2023).
Venezuela's public debt represented 31% of GDP in 1998, 35% in 2003, 17% in 2008; 43% in 2013, 126% in 2018 and 166% in 2023.
In this graph we can observe the dramatic fall of the Venezuelan GDP as a result of the dependence of the economy on oil and the destruction of the industry itself (including oil):
The collection of this debt is part of what has marked the interventions and relations of the rest of the countries and capitalist powers with the Venezuelan capitalist state.
Who holds the government and PDVSA debt bonds?
There is no information on in whose hands more than 80% of the Venezuelan state and PDVSA debt is in: "it is barely possible to identify a total of positions that reaches 19.39% of the circulating capital for Venezuelan bonds and 17.82% in the case of PDVSA bonds (...)." (Saldar la deuda report).
According to the report, prior to the imposition of sanctions, in 2017, 60% of the public debt would be in the hands of US investors who were getting rid of it after the sanctions, passing it in part to European investors who in turn were selling it to investors from Turkey, Russia, China or the Middle East after the tightening of sanctions in 2019. Of this state debt less than 10% has been judicially claimed. Litigation to collect the debt increases the money that should be paid by the Venezuelan state: "Di Korsou refinery in Curaçao demands in a Delaware court (...) 62.3 million dollars (...) for lack of maintenance of the Isla refinery (...) a compensation of 1 billion dollars is sought." (El Nacional, 20-04-2023).
The CITGO auction and crossed interests of the US, Russian and Venezuelan imperialisms
CITGO, on US soil, became a 100% subsidiary of PDVSA in the 1990's in a sample of the imperialist expansion of Venezuelan capitalism which continued under the lie of the false "Bolivarian socialism of the XXI Century". Through CITGO, Chavism was carrying out the oil business with the US while for the show and for the consumption of the masses it launched the "Yankee anti-imperialist" discourse.
In 2017 when the Venezuelan state went into suspension of payments it swapped the PDVSA bonds maturing that year for the so-called PDVSA 2020 bond pledging CITGO as collateral in case of default. This was against US interests if it could not control who would keep the shares of the seventh most important refinery on American soil.
In 2019, the fraction of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie represented by the puppet Juan Guaidó appointed a new administrative board for CITGO with the support of the US, whose function was initially to prevent the creditors from cashing in the guarantee, that is, to take possession of CITGO, for this purpose they paid the interest on the bonds with the foreign accounts of PDVSA. Subsequently, the US suspended the possibility that the owners of the debt bonds could keep CITGO and this suspension has been extended from 2019 to date.
Despite the suspension, in June 2024 the CITGO auction ordered by a US court in response to the claim made by several creditors began to be carried out. The truth is that the CITGO auction will not even cover half of the claimed debt: "The claim of the holders (...) has allowed 18 creditors to jointly seek 21.3 billion dollars in compensation for expropriations and defaults (...) Citgo, (...) has been valued between 11 and 13 billion dollars. But the highest offer in the first bidding round was $7.3 billion." (Correo del Caroní, 10-06-2024). This offer, made by the U.S. company Elliot Investment, was reduced by 2 billion in November 2024 and this January the court has decided to reopen the bidding to try to get more and higher offers... So there are still several chapters on this issue.
The battle of the "officialism" and the "opposition" has always revolved around which fraction of the bourgeoisie would take over the management of PDVSA and its subsidiaries. The role of the US in relation to CITGO is to allow or not to allow the fraction of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie that converges with its interests.
On the other hand, the Venezuelan state gave Russian imperialism as a guarantee no less than 49.9% of CITGO in exchange for a loan of 1.5 billion dollars, so another of the functions of this administrative board, in line with US interests, was to eliminate Russia from the equation by recovering these shares: "The ad hoc administrative board of PDVSA, (...) informed this Monday that it managed to recover the certificate of the shares of Citgo that the government of Nicolás Maduro offered as guarantee to a subsidiary of the Russian oil company Rosneft. (...) for 49.9% of Citgo's shares in exchange for Rosneft making a loan to PDVSA for 1.5 billion dollars, to be paid with shipments of Venezuelan crude for four years." (El Nacional, 26-06-2023).
The debt to Chinese imperialism
It is estimated that the total loans made by Chinese imperialism amount to 62,631 million dollars, of which the 15,600 million dollars mentioned above remain to be paid:
"Venezuela became the Latin American country that received the most loans from China: 45% of the total loans granted between 2000 and 2017. These disbursements totaled USD 62,631 million. (...) Despite the fact that in 2017 the government opted not to pay certain creditors, (...) it continued to comply with the interest payment agreement with China, and after 2018 it amortized capital with oil shipments. (...) a renegotiation of the debt with the Asian country was carried out again, in which the payment of capital stipulated for 2020 was paused. (...) China's banks have been privileged creditors against other commercial debt holders and against financial debt creditors. (...) Venezuela sent 376,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) to China during 2007-2016." (Saldar la deuda report).
Officially, Chinese imperialism stopped taking Venezuelan oil after the tightening of US sanctions in August 2019. But the reality is that it has not stopped taking oil at any time, using defense companies to do so and claiming to take "bitumen": "to help pay the debt owed to China, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC), a state-owned defense-focused conglomerate, has been shipping Venezuelan crude oil to China since November 2020. (...) China's imports of Venezuelan oil, branded as Malaysian crude or a bitumen blend, averaged 430,000 bpd during the first eight months of 2023 (...) Venezuelan crude grades, mostly Merey and Boscan heavy acids, are widely used by independent refiners in China's eastern Shandong province, where the oil has generally been labeled as diluted bitumen to avoid being included in tightly controlled import quotas." (La Nación, 12-09-2023). They are cashing in on the debt by taking up to half of the oil barrel production in 2023. And getting this oil at a discount: "China's savings from the purchase of Venezuelan oil [from January to September 2023] was $1.17 billion (...) an average of $10 per barrel (...)." (Banca y Negocios, 11-10-2023).
Coke exports are added to the oil going to China: "Venezuela increased 10 times the amount of coke exports to China during the year 2022" (Banca y Negocios, 04-02-2023).
But it is not alone in its efforts to circumvent sanctions, and companies are using military technology to hide the location of their ships. This is how a former Israeli naval officer, owner of a maritime intelligence company whose data is used by the U.S. government to investigate sanctions violations explains it: "It's a situation that is out of control and not driven by countries or superpowers. «These are ordinary companies using this technique. The scale is staggering»." (El Nacional, 03-02-2022).
Reduction of Chinese oil investments in Venezuela and creation of SEZs
For years, Chinese imperialism has not been interested in making new investments in the Venezuelan oil industry, this is linked to the interest of the bourgeoisie at the international level to leave oil aside to focus on other energy sources.
Chinese imperialism is establishing special economic zones where it can produce more cheaply, make investments, and move its goods, as part of its expansion and penetration throughout the world and in this case in Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America.
In June 2022 the Organic Law of Special Economic Zones (LOZEE) was approved in Venezuela under Chinese paternity: "The SEZs in the decree are Paraguaná (Falcón), Puerto Cabello - Morón (Carabobo), La Guaira (La Guaira), Margarita (Nueva Esparta) and La Tortuga Island (Miranda Island Territory)." (Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, 11-08-2023).
Within the framework of these special economic zones, "The governor of the state of Carabobo, Rafael Lacava, announced that a letter of intent was signed to begin the construction stage of the first heavy machinery assembly plant in Venezuela with the collaboration of a Chinese manufacturer." (Banca y Negocios, 28-02-2024).
In the last visit made by the character Maduro to China, no agreement was signed for the oil industry, but 31 agreements were signed to develop these economic zones: "covering fields such as education, agriculture, communications and aeronautics. During the ceremony, the absence of any document related to the oil industry was highlighted (...) Between 2000 and 2019 Venezuela and China signed close to 500 agreements, many of which contemplated millionaire financings directed to the oil sector (...)." (Tal Cual, 13-09-2023). In this same meeting: "they agreed to elevate bilateral relations to the level of Strategic Association All Proof and All Time." (AVECH)
At the end of 2024, a meeting was held in Venezuela to develop these SEZs with Chinese business presence.
Trade relations with Iran
The lack of maintenance of the oil infrastructure has caused the refineries to be in tatters and there has been a chronic shortage of gasoline in the country. Since 2020 Iran has been supplying gasoline to Venezuela and since 2022 it has been investing in the refining plants in order to reactivate them: "Iran and Venezuela signed a 110 million-euro contract to repair and restart the El Palito refinery (...)." (El Nacional, 14-05-2022). In this refinery, the board of directors is controlled by Iranian imperialism. They are also tuning up another plant in Paraguaná: "it is expected that the companies will sign in the next few weeks a contract for about 493 million dollars to modernize the 955,000 bpd Paraguaná refining complex (...)" (El Nacional, 07-02-2023).
The result of these investments has been the partial reactivation of the plants, although the internal demand is still not covered: "All the refineries of Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa), Cardón, Amuay, Puerto La Cruz and El Palito, are operational after six years of interrupted work due to constant incidents (...) the Pdvsa refineries are producing a total of 150,000 b/d of fuel. El Palito, in Carabobo state, which has a capacity to process 145,000 b/d, has the largest share in the current volume with 60,000 b/d of production. "It has not been possible to cover the demand of the domestic market because we should be covering at least between 220,000 and 240,000 b/d (...) indicated Quiroz Serrano to Tal Cual." (El Nacional, 31-07-2023).
Trade relations between Iran and Venezuela do not stop at refineries: "The President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, affirmed this Monday, during his official visit to Venezuela, that the economic and commercial cooperation with the Caribbean nation amounts to 3 billion dollars, and that the goal is to be able to have an exchange that reaches 20 billion dollars (...) subscribed this Monday, more than 20 agreements in petrochemicals, transportation, mining and other areas, with which they hope to multiply bilateral cooperation for the next 20 years (...) included a memorandum of understanding between the Oil portfolios of both countries (...)." (El Universal, 13-06-2023).
It is understood that all these agreements will serve to pay the debt with Iran.
Deterioration of the oil industry
PDVSA itself claims that its fleet is obsolete: "More than half of the 22 tankers in the Venezuelan fleet are so deteriorated that they should be repaired immediately or withdrawn from service, according to an internal report by state oil company PDVSA (...) Five of PDVSA's tankers are at least 30 years old, beyond their recommended useful life (...) Planning to send the tankers to dry dock has been greatly affected by the lack of payment to shipyards and suppliers" (...) PDVSA leased 41 vessels last year, the documents said, paying approximately double the market rate, (...) Venezuela has paid shipyards in Iran and Argentina at least $300 million for six new vessels ordered in 2005. It has only received two of these units, according to the documents." (Banca y Negocios, 04-05-2023).
This lack of maintenance of both vessels and PDVSA's infrastructure causes constant accidents and labor murders: "Last September 28, the state oil company confirmed the sinking due to "bad weather conditions" of an oil barge in Lake Maracaibo, which caused the deaths of five of its crew members. (...) In March of this same year, a fire in the Cardón refinery (Falcón state) forced its stoppage (...) In August, there was a similar situation in those same facilities (...) In July, the government of Nicolás Maduro confirmed the explosion and fire of a gas pipeline of the state oil company in the eastern state of Anzoátegui (...) Last year, the Observatory of Political Ecology of Venezuela registered 8 fires in PDVSA facilities in Anzoátegui, Falcón, Monagas, Portuguesa and Zulia, but without ruling out the existence of others that have not been reported by the press. (...)" (Efecto Cocuyo, 17-10-2024).
"Five people were injured this Monday due to the explosion of a gas pipeline of the state oil company PDVSA in the state of Monagas (...)" (El Nacional, 11-11-2024). This explosion left several states without gas and electricity supply.
And this is only what comes out in the press.
Relaxation of U.S. sanctions
In 2019 the US (the main destination of Venezuelan oil exports) applied sanctions on Venezuelan oil because it wanted to displace it in favor of its own fracking oil industry for domestic consumption and export. As can be seen in the graph below, despite the sanctions, oil has been exported from Venezuela. The countries that stop appearing for a while are only the USA, Europe and India.
In March 2022 two US delegations visited Venezuela: "On March 5, the US delegation met with Maduro's Executive to discuss energy issues, as confirmed at the time by the White House (...)." (El Nacional, 27-06-2022). Since then, the US has been approving licenses and relaxing the sanctions imposed, so that the US companies themselves can collect the debt by taking the oil.
In November 2022 "The United States granted (...) Chevron a six-month license to operate in Venezuela (...) although preventing cash exchanges and demanding that crude oil shipments go to U.S. refineries". (El Nacional 29-11-2022). And a Chevron executive has been appointed as manager: "The board of directors of the mixed company Petropiar, S.A. approved the appointment of Martin Philipsen, who is part of the Chevron company, as the new general manager (...) ″. (El Nacional, 05-02-2023).
The result of the relaxation of sanctions: "During the first half of 2023, oil exports from Venezuela to the United States (US) grew 122.4%, compared to the same period of 2022 (...)" (Banca y Negocios, 12-09-2023).
The increases in production have been due to Chevron's investments: "El Economista (...) pointed out that the production of crude oil in Venezuela in the last two years "has been increasing fundamentally due to the investments" made by the US company Chevron." (Banca y Negocios, 23-08-2024).
In December 2023 Venezuela moved from 9th to 7th place among the main exporters to the US with 163,000 barrels per day, in June 2024 to 5th place with 226,000 barrels per day and in July 2024 to 3rd place with 308,000 barrels per day (behind Mexico with 413,000 and ahead of Saudi Arabia with 280,000, 5th place was occupied by Guyana and 6th place by Brazil) (EIA).
Iran was Venezuela's main naphtha supplier. However, Chevron has unseated it: "the American Chevron has sent since December about 1,570,000 barrels of naphtha (...) In January, an oil tanker from Iran unloaded about 440,000 barrels (...) which implies a reduction of imports of this product of 2 million barrels compared to January 2022 (...)" (Banca y Negocios, 03-03-2023).
After the visits made by the US in 2022, European oil companies have also been able to take oil to collect their debts. And anticipating the possible return of the sanctions, a new Spain-Venezuela joint venture has been created: "The oil sanctions of the United States push Spain and Venezuela to create a joint venture to extract and trade oil in the world. The new company is called Roraima: 51 % of shares belong to the Venezuelan state and 49 % to the Spanish oil company Repsol." (El Impulso, 18-04-2024).
After the electoral circus of July 2024 and with the threat of new restrictions there was a concentration of ships taking oil: "in 19 days – since July 29, 12 ships left for the US from the docks of Jose, Amuay and Puerto La Cruz with cargo belonging to the American Chevron and the Spanish Repsol, (...) Other tankers sailed to destinations such as Cuba, Belgium, Colombia, Spain, Malaysia (...)". (Tal Cual, 18-08-2024).
The statements of the US company Chevron are crystal clear that its interest is to be able to collect the debt, no matter which puppet is ruling: "Chevron's message to the White House behind the scenes is that it needs to continue operating in Venezuela even if Nicolás Maduro remains in power after the disputed elections, The Wall Street Journal revealed (...) CEO Mike Wirth said his company has found that, in general, it is better to work with a government in power without taking positions that make it difficult for a subsequent government to continue". (Correo del Caroní, 17-09-2024).
In addition, part of the North American bourgeoisie dedicated to the fossil fuel business sees in the current economic situation of Venezuela a business opportunity: "This Tuesday, oil businessmen from Texas signed a memorandum of understanding with Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) through which the operation of 3,000 wells in a period of a year and a half in the Orinoco Oil Belt is established. (...) "We are going to make an important investment in more than 16,000 oil wells so that in the next three years Venezuela reaches the production of 3,250,000 bpd, thus recovering 80% of its capacity"(...) He recalled that Texas is in crisis and has a deficit of 4 million barrels and is importing oil and gasoline to cover it." (El Universal, 12-06-2024). And the sanctions are an obstacle: "Texas oil businessmen have urged US President-elect Donald Trump to lift the sanctions imposed on Venezuela and Cuba (...) The businessmen pointed out that the sanctions have made it easier for powers such as the BRICS, as China, India and Russia, to acquire significant control over Venezuela's and Cuba's raw materials, becoming key buyers of these resources" (El Universal, 03-01-2025).
For its part, India asked the US for new authorizations to be able to collect the debt: "The Indian oil company ONGC Videsh Ltd.(OVL) is seeking an authorization from the United States (US) to operate two oil projects in Venezuela (...) this would help the Indian company to manage the finances of its projects in Venezuela, as well as to recover «an outstanding dividend» of more than US$ 500 million." (Banca y Negocios, 30-08-2024). Part of the payment for the oil will be made by Indian imperialism with the refined crude that Venezuela needs as a diluent due to the heaviness of its oil.
From producing more than 3 million barrels per day, having a regional imperialist policy with UNASUR based on oil income, having refineries in the US... PDVSA has gone from producing to paying the debt.
The nationalization-privatization cycle
In 2020, in a confirmation of the bankruptcy of the Venezuelan capitalist state, the anti-blockade law was signed, the objective of which is to privatize companies on the cheap, as part of the nationalization-privatization cycle that capitalism recurrently carries out. If before we have seen the declarations of Chevron and the Texas oil businessmen, now we see those of the president of the Venezuelan industrial employers' association: "The president of Conindustria, Luigi Pisella, informed that there are between 500 and 600 companies to which the government wants to incorporate private capital, preferably national (...) "Everything is on the table. They can be direct sales or public-private alliances, where the State retains a participation (...) he remarked the urgent need to maintain the relaxation of the sanctions that exist against strategic entities of the Venezuelan State and which affect the whole country. In his opinion, in order for this process of incorporation of private capital to companies in the hands of the State to work, sanctions that prevent doing business with the participation of the Executive (...)" (Banca y Negocios, 21-11-2024).
Material misery for the working class
These graphs show the increase in unemployment, the plummeting of wages and the runaway inflation based on throwing bolivars into circulation without any backing with which Venezuelan criminal capitalism unloaded the worst years of the crisis on the backs of the proletariat.
It is estimated that almost 8 million Venezuelans have emigrated in the last 10 years, as if they had lived through a war.
When Chavism came to power we wrote in El Comunista no.36, October 1999: "The Venezuelan economy and its oil monoculture is the most dependent on the WORLD MARKET, on its ups and downs, in America. (...) Oil prices cannot be changed by any Venezuelan government, no matter how much electoral, patriotic or Bolivarian phraseology is spouted by the spokesmen of the petty bourgeoisie (...) to control from within the discontent that these measures should provoke again, they need a civilian army, well organized, centralized and obedient, of red berets and block or corner commissars. This political police, well intertwined with the army and other repressive bodies, will have to prepare the preventive and selective repression, for which they will not hesitate to use the underworld and all kinds of lumpen. The objective is to reimplant the social and police control of the bourgeois STATE in the proletarian neighborhoods of Caracas and other cities, with the aim of imposing that everybody pays taxes, rates, electricity, water, telephone, apartment rent, etc., and to prevent, violently if necessary, future "caracazos" or social explosions. Proletarians, internationalists, beware of these henchmen, in order to continue carrying out the corresponding tasks" ("El Comunista" no.36, Venezuela is the reflection of the world market). And indeed, this civilian army was formed.
On the one hand, making extensive use of the lumpen, controlling the working class neighborhoods of the cities with the "colectivos" (collectives), armed groups formed by delinquency financed by the army party. How antithetical to the communist movement is the alliance with the lumpen was made clear by Engels in 1870: "The lumpenproletariat, this scum of depraved elements from all classes, with headquarters in the big cities, is the worst of all the possible allies. This rabble is absolutely venal and absolutely brazen. If the French workers, in every revolution, inscribed on the houses: Mort aux voleurs! Death to thieves! and even shot some, they did so not out of reverence for property, but because they rightly considered it necessary above all to keep that gang at bay. Every leader of the workers who uses these scoundrels as guards or relies on them for support proves himself by this action alone a traitor to the movement." (The Peasant War in Germany, Engels, 1870).
These are the methods historically used by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, these "Bolivarian socialists of the XXI Century" being heirs of the French bourgeoisie of the XIX century: "The Provisional Government formed 24 battalions of Mobile Guards, each a thousand strong, composed of young men from 15 to 20 years. They belonged for the most part to the lumpenproletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the crumbs of society, (...) The Provisional Government paid them 1 franc 50 centimes a day, that is, it bought them. It gave them their own uniform, that is, it made them outwardly distinct from the blouse-wearing workers." (The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, K. Marx).
On the other hand, this civilian army has been formed through the Communal Councils and the CLAP (Local Supply and Production Committees) formed by the "manzaneros" or "block chiefs" who are in charge of distributing the subsidized food bags and domestic gas. These agents of the bourgeoisie control the entire census of the proletarian neighborhoods, even knowing the place of work of the workers. They are in charge of acting as informers watching who goes out to protest and acting as social firemen when there are power cuts, threatening not to give the CLAP bags or gas in case of protest. There are also the "Peace Judges", elected by vote just like the communal councils, whose function is to "mediate" in conflicts in working class neighborhoods due to utility cuts or in educational institutions if classes are suspended due to water cuts, especially if they go on strike. With the crisis, many Chavists became anti-Chavists and in the communal councils there have been elected elements who have gone over to the other bourgeois side, but it is mainly the army party that continues to control this apparatus of repression to date. In any case, they are organs of control of the bourgeoisie.
Like any bourgeois state, the Venezuelan capitalist state also exercises social control through the political-social police of integrated unionism in order to liquidate any hint of struggle that may develop outside its control: an example of this has been the struggles carried out in the teaching sector.
The workers of the educational centers (teachers, administrative and cleaning personnel) went on strike at the beginning of 2023 due to the drastic drop in their salaries, demanding the payment of the salary in dollars for all sectors of the working class. From being paid $100 in mid-2022, sharp inflation reduced the wage to the equivalent of $30 in early 2023. The workers initially mobilized without the "authorization" of the integrated unionism overflowing the control of the State at the beginning. The integrated unionism refused to call the strike even though the workers demanded it. Calling a strike opened the possibility of totally losing control of the situation. Instead of calling a strike, and in order to regain control, they came up with "permanent assemblies", that is to say, folkloric activities to which, if the workers attended, they were stamped with an attendance sheet. This attendance was then credited to the state-employer who paid the workers their meager salary and did not fire them because their absence from work was justified. It was blackmail in every sense of the word. Such was the pittance that the workers were paid and such was the need for the state-employer to regain control that it continued to pay them without them having to go to work.
The next move of the bourgeois state was to reduce the working day without reducing wages so that the reduced working day would allow other jobs to be available for subsistence. In this way a large part of the workers were demobilized and returned to work with this partial working day.
However, several groups of workers, especially those organized in the few class organizations in Venezuela, such as the Núcleo Proletario Clasista, remained without returning to work, protesting on the margin of the pantomimes of integrated unionism and managing that in some regions the referendum called to vote on the return to work could not be held. The strike lasted 6 months.
Although there was no official increase in the minimum wage, the State was forced by the mobilization to increase the wage through the increase of the basket ticket from 45 Bs to $40 indexed to the BCV's $ for both public and private sector and an additional bonus, the so-called Bono de Guerra (War Bonus) of $40 for all public sector workers (currently paid at $90). This represented a wage increase of 266% in percentage terms, while maintaining a relative value of the wage in relation to the basic food basket that was completely insufficient. This wage increase was therefore insufficient, but it has the value that, in spite of the repression and control exercised against the working class, the workers demonstrated that by opening a breach in the dike of containment of integrated unionism it is possible to put pressure on the boss-state.
Once the workers were demobilized, for the 2024-2025 school year, the Ministry of Education ordered a return to the full school day. Only in those centers organized through class unionism has it been possible to maintain the reduced workday for the time being. The reasons given by the workers for maintaining the reduced working day not only have to do with the need to be moonlighting to pay for food, rent, etc., but also because of the difficulty of attending the work center daily due to the constant water and electricity cuts, the problem of transportation... In addition, the schools are not prepared for the return to full time for all workers and students because the infrastructure is in ruins and because of the unhealthy conditions caused by the constant water cuts. To avoid possible new mobilizations, the integrated trade unionism has come to the fore again with the blackmail that if you go through their ticket office they will justify the absences on the days when you do not go to work and thus maintain the reduced working day... In this way they will be able to go dosing the ASPHIXIA that they apply to the workers.
In a further twist, in mid-October 2024, when half of the extra pay was being collected, the Ministry of Education began to suspend salaries. It initially justified the decision by saying that it was not possible to have more than one job and suspended the salaries of workers who worked in public and subsidized schools, arguing that it was impossible to work 70 or 80 hours a week. The possibility of combining two jobs came, as has been said, from the reduction of working hours after the mobilizations. Subsequently, and excusing themselves for errors in payroll management, they suspended the salaries of workers who only worked in one center. The total number of suspended workers has not been published. It seems that after more than two months of withholding the payment of salaries, the Venezuelan state-employer has begun to pay the salary arrears... After the previous blackmail, the integrated unionism succeeded in preventing the workers from mobilizing without its authorization. To this was added the narcotic of parliamentarism and the hope that on January 10 their luck would change with the arrival of the new Messiah of the day... which in the end did not arrive... The imprisonments that took place after the protests for the last parliamentary elections have also served as propaganda of terror within the working class, preventing mobilizations for the defense of their own interests.
This FALSE Bolivarian-style socialism exercises the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie disguising it with the names of the dictatorship of the proletariat ("councils") while maintaining the law of value, wage labor, exploitation, the company-by-company economy.... In this way confusion is generated in the working class so that it is allergic to the concept "dictatorship of the proletariat" by relating it to this caricature of socialism with its "communal councils" and "collectives", with the misery and repression of the working class.
But this despotic exercise of power by the bourgeoisie cannot make the proletariat renounce its own revolutionary dictatorship. And it is the function of communists to clarify these questions for the Venezuelan proletariat and for the proletariat of the whole world. Once the bourgeois state has been violently overthrown by the proletariat, the class struggle continues, dialectically inverted. The bourgeoisie retains its organization, its influence, its resources, its traditions and counts on the support of the bourgeoisie of other countries. The working class must exercise its class domination to prevent the restoration of capitalism and for this it must exercise its class dictatorship temporarily.
The question a Marxist militant must ask is: dictatorship of which class? against which classes?
In the dictatorship of the proletariat the working class, the overwhelming majority of the population, will exercise dictatorship against the bourgeoisie and the other reactionary classes (petty bourgeoisie and lumpen), by means of a despotic control that ensures that the revolutionary program and the immediate economic measures to liquidate capitalism are implemented: "The form of the specific revolution of the proletariat is politically dictatorship. Not personal dictatorship, it is understood, but class dictatorship. This is endowed with its own original and specific organs, which are organs of management of state power in the phase of full struggle (...) The dictatorship is defined by the force and by the direction of that force: it should not be said that it builds socialism on condition of being the just dictatorship, but that it is the true proletarian dictatorship when it walks towards communism" (Class, Party and State in the Marxist Theory).
If the working class renounces the exercise of its dictatorship, it renounces the overcoming of capitalism and renounces communism. Now, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a TRANSITORY process for the abolition of social classes, when this process has culminated it will not be necessary to have to repress any class and the proletarian class will not even exist to be able to exercise the dictatorship. And the State as an instrument of domination of one class by another will be extinguished: " When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." (Manifesto of the Communist Party).