Venezuela: we categorically reject the false "Anti-Blockade Law"
ByUnited Socialist
It is the instrument of a large-scale privatizing assault, with delivery of public companies to foreign capital.
Contains massive violations of the Constitution, to sovereignty, to citizens' rights and it would be fatal for workers.
On the occasion of the launch of the "Anti-Blockade Law", President Maduro has had to acknowledge and give some figures for part of the disaster in which the country finds itself, but he presents everything as "the fault of the empire", hiding the role of bureaucracy and corruption.
The blockade greatly aggravates the crisis in Venezuela
Undoubtedly, the blockade and sanctions have a great impact on the situation of the economy and exacerbate the suffering of the Venezuelan people. Prevent or hinder considerably, right now, the importation of essential products for economic functioning and social activity, as happens with gasoline and other petroleum derivatives that are not being generated in Venezuela as was done before. They also affect the import of products of all kinds, that are required for productive activity, for feeding, to health, for the proper functioning of the services. In this sense, blocking, supported by sectors of the Venezuelan opposition right, It is a criminal operation and violation of Human Rights, applied by US imperialism and by all those who adhere to its discipline in the world market.
The parties of the traditional bourgeoisie have not spoken out against the economic sense of the "Anti-Blockade Law" because they share its privatizing nature.
Support for the blockade by sectors of the bourgeoisie and their parties in Venezuela amounts to an aggression against Venezuelans that cannot be tolerated or go unpunished.. But its purpose, partly, It would be considered fulfilled if the government opens the economy to foreign capital and distributes national resources with it. And that is what Yankee imperialism wants to force, but not with the Chinese and Russians as beneficiaries, nor with the PSUV bureaucracy as a preferred partner, Of course. Hence, beyond some democratic and constitutional aspects, the traditional opposition does not question the economic approach of the "Anti-blockade Law", because it gives capitalists and transnationals the opportunity to participate in the business of distributing the companies and properties of the Venezuelan State. They don't make a fuss about this because it's part of their policy.
But the blockade is not the initial cause of the situation we suffer
The blockade has aggravated pre-existing conditions, what has been the result, mainly, the disastrous management of the State by the government bureaucracy and the incidence of capitalist and anti-worker policies that for a long time, before this lock, they have been applied by political will and at the convenience of the ruling bureaucracy: destruction of PDVSA's productive capacity, ruin of basic companies, liquidation of productive capacities in all areas, elimination of salary (Zero Salary), dissolution of social benefits, disappearance of health systems for workers, suspension of collective bargaining, collapse of all public services to the point of taking us to the limits of barbarism ...
The government does not recognize, Of course, something very important and decisive for the situation of bankruptcy and extreme misery in which the country is immersed: your own responsibility, the result of their bad policies, the predatory action of embezzlement, of the payment of the illegitimate debt and the impact of the anti-worker measures that has caused a misery never seen in the bosom of the people.
Maduro argues in favor of the content of this Law as an instrument of a “State of War”, instead of referring only to the “State of Exception” with which it had justified its measures. This certainly contains something significant, because in this context it seeks to assume greater powers and competencies over other State institutions, reinforcing authoritarianism and aggravating the violation of rights.
It is a law that clearly violates the current Constitution and the entire legal system, stands above it, leaving the Executive without obstacles or effective controls of any kind, to modify the creation mechanisms, property, management, administration and operation of public or mixed companies, both in the national territory and abroad.
It is not an Anti-Blockade Law, It is a law of dispossession of the Venezuelan people
The so-called "Anti-Blockade Law" does not actually implement any kind of anti-blockade mechanisms and what it serves is to open itself completely to the privatization and semi-privatization of State companies and public services, ceding sovereignty to attract "foreign investment". The sea; Imperialist "investments", privileging, to the Chinese and Russian, without ruling out the gringas and Europeans; to transnational capital that moves in the globalized capitalist world. We put the term "investments" in quotes, because in many cases it will be an auction or an exchange of foreign debt for shares in companies, leaving of course, a good chew or a substantial shareholding for the bureaucracy administering the Venezuelan State, in order to allow the bureaucrats to crystallize their conversion into a new bourgeoisie: the "revolutionary bourgeoisie", as Minister Castro Soteldo calls it.
They say it is to prevent new confiscations from Venezuela abroad, but already the "lomito" they let him lose in the most irresponsible way, by keeping the PDVSA subsidiary, CITGO, in United States, and give a chance to be taken under the pretext of handing it over to the "interim government" of Guaidó. On the other hand, the same Maduro government was the one that delivered Venezuelan monetary gold to the English bank, as collateral for your financial operations, putting the country's resources at risk, that are in dispute.
That is to say; the law is late for the purposes it falsely claims to serve and is not, obviously, for what it claims to be. Its real purpose is another: give the bureaucracy and the ruling neo-lumpen-bourgeoisie a chance, created from the accumulation of private capital with funds and resources of the State, to partner with foreign capital, to take possession of public assets in conjunction with transnationals and, especially but not exclusively, with emerging imperialisms (China, Russia). And this they are preparing after having scraped the pot everywhere and after having ruined the economy.
Why does the government do this?
It is necessary to explain why the government is launching this project at this time, what intention does it obey; because these are not simple "errors" of "social democrats" and "reformists". For it, we want to warn that we do not appeal to qualifiers susceptible to the application of the infamous "Law Against Hate", but we are doing class characterizations, based on the Marxist method. This government is not "reformist", well it does not reform, rather, it dismantles what was reformed in the Chávez period; it is a frankly reactionary and absolutely retrograde government, what is applying, for quite some time, a profound counter-reform and an openly anti-worker policy, in order to liquidate all the conquests and transformations that occurred throughout the Bolivarian revolution. And why is that? WhyAll this is done at the service of sectors of the State bureaucracy and of the new bourgeoisie opportunistic, fed on corruption and authoritarian abuse: it is a caste of government officials and the PSUV party, military, neo-bourgeois and figureheads, that has been installed from the degeneration and defeat of a revolutionary process, of the destruction of a democratic and anti-imperialist revolution that existed in Venezuela for some years with Chávez, and that it no longer exists.
Turns out that, a simple bureaucracy depends on maintaining political and administrative control of the state, but if it does not have its own economic power: properties, investments, industries, land, banks… cannot reproduce the accumulated capital with the criminal capture of income, and if I lost that political and administrative control, would be stripped of their source of income. That is why it needs to consummate its conversion into a capitalist class and this is what the caste that today controls the bourgeois state has been doing.; that State that has never wanted to replace in favor of the "Popular Power", but, Unlike, has been reinforcing as its instrument of domination against the working class and against the people, in competition and dispute with the old bourgeoisie that previously administered it.
It is one thing to extract money from the State for the benefit of a caste and a group of high public officials, and another, is to take root with properties in important industries and very juicy businesses, having as partners bourgeois and foreign capital, in an impressive anti-national operation. On the other hand, it is enough what they could get from the commissions and "bribes" in the distribution, to have more capital to invest in the appropriation of public goods or in the installation of private companies, like those that have been establishing, for example, in the importing commercial sector.
The senior political leadership of Chavismo and particularly the Madurista, not only did he not break with the capital, but has been looking for ways to become a proprietary class, instead of socializing the economy. So that, Many of the policies that caused the crisis are the same that the bourgeoisie has been applying in the countries in which harsh neoliberal adjustments were implemented against the working class and against the people., in favor of capitalist sectors. Therefore, what is in Venezuela has nothing to do with socialism and is its most absolute negation, not only economically, of the social relations of production and property, but politically, because the plan of the pro-capitalist bureaucracy led it to impose an authoritarian regime, very repressive, against the working class and popular sectors, who were supposed to be the subject of the revolution. What little organization and popular power there was was dismantled to establish an almost absolute social and political dominance of the bureaucracy.
Sectors of the left and the periphery of Chavismo have been forced to step out of this Law, but we need a Left Opposition and not aileftsatelite
Sectors of the left have been timidly distancing themselves from the government, in the face of its marked pro-capitalist and authoritarian course. This is the case of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PVC) and the groupings of the Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR). These organizations announced an “electoral demarcation” with their own candidacies for the parliamentary elections scheduled for 6D, clarifying that it did not mean being against the Maduro government. But with the appearance of a project as unacceptable as the "Anti-blockade Law", now they are being pushed to a more forceful definition. that way, The need and the possibility of a broad confluence of the left and popular movements to go against the approval of this law and agree on the unity of action against the anti-worker policies that it has been applying and intends to continue imposing the bureaucratic government. All of this could force the PCV, to the Uzcátegui sector of the PPT and the other members of the APR to discuss whether it is time to dare to take the step of a clear and definitive break with the government, which could open the way to the discussion of the idea of forming a “left opposition” that aspires to offer an anti-capitalist alternative to the workers and the people in general..
Some fallacies and deceptions of the government to confuse the workers andto town
In deception maneuver, the government babbles the offer of this Law as a supposed way to recover salaries and benefits, which serves to say that you have to "hold on" in silence and hope that the plan works, striving to "recover production" without salary, without workers and popular riots of any kind, because within the framework of the blockade and the "State of War" any protest would be exploited by imperialism (the gringo) and by the opposition right (the other right, the traditional, because these others are the official, the "revolutionary bourgeoisie" with "red" clothes from the "left", already quite faded).
In the bill they speak of "incentives", both for investors and for "workers" and "professionals" who develop "initiatives", what in reality would be the forecast of certain crumbs for the union bureaucracy and for officials of the state apparatus. There is no doubt that with changes in the ownership of companies or with the constitution of new capitalist companies with state resources, no more jobs or much better pay will come, because the transnationals that are, They have been reducing staff and applying layoffs and benefit from the advantage of having a government that has managed to implement Zero Salary, unpaid labor, that does not even reach half a dollar a day. This is no promise to the working class, but a goal for capital, with semi-slave super-exploitation conditions and guaranteed profits, in a highly repressive labor regime, for the containment of the class struggle.
The Government applies the economic policy of the opposition right (likebe guided by the MUD Program and the Guaidó Country Plan)
Politically, This law serves the bureaucracy to justify itself and try to mask its actions of surrender and robbery, and incidentally, leave the traditional right opposition in a bad way as co-responsible for the blockade. As we said, the opposition right is being cautious and prefers to remain silent on the merits of this Law, which is not strange, because it largely responds to its own policy and the government, definitely, seems to have changed the Homeland Program for the MUD Program and Guaidó's Country Plan. With such a law, The distances between the Maduro government and that classic right in economic matters would practically be erased.
One would have to wonder if this privatization and handover law would open some kind of negotiation between the government and the opposition right, that responds to the traditional bourgeoisie, and if they plan to leave some margin to make deals with the United States (business leads to politics, and vice versa) or if it is only for the bureaucracy and for the factors that in the global economic sphere and in world geopolitics dispute with Western capitalism, as is the case of the chinese. If we get to see, the management and Guardó have not touched almost anything; they maintain their properties and move politically with impunity, despite crying out for the United States to militarily invade the country and constantly plotting coups.
The secret, to prevent information and allow bureaucratic impunity
Something completely scandalous is the implantation of the secrecy of the information, which is already a common practice of the bureaucracy against the laws and the Constitution. Citizens lose all right to be informed of transactions with State properties or new investments (capital transfers) be done. Formally it is said that it is in the name of "security" and against the blockade, but we know that it is about secrecy at the service of shady businesses and impunity, outside of national sovereignty. Whoever dares to make use of the Social Comptroller's Office will be criminalized and prosecuted and the corrupt submissive will go unpunished., as is now the case with the "Law of Hate" used to gag and repress anyone who denounces the atrocities of the government against the people.
Without any lock, the bureaucracy guarantees itself to be part of the appropriation of public goods
Being categorically against privatizations and private shareholding expansion in state companies, and flatly rejecting this false "Anti-Blockade Law" as a hypocritical cover for privatization, you have to question, Nevertheless, that there are no “legal” impediments to prevent government officials from taking advantage in a particular and advantageous way, your relatives or figureheads. In order to place them publicly, it would be necessary to ask why they did not place articles that expressly prohibit the participation of officials, relatives and direct associates in business, taking into account the Anti-Corruption Law, conflicts of interest or provisions against nepotism. The answers are obvious.
Let's summon the people and all sectors of the left to oppose this capitalist and unconstitutional law
Is precisefight and make a great political campaign, within the broadest unity of action, so that this law on the looting of public property is not passed. All political factors, critical currents, movements and groups of the working class and the popular sectors that fight we have to declare ourselves in emergency and in radical refusal to approve this law, demanding that it be withdrawn by the government or denied by the ANC (beyond our position on the validity of that organism). The PCV and the APR have the duty to assume a radical and combative position in this regard; and against this there can be no other response than a frank break with the government.
We must summon the pronouncement of those constituents who are not willing to become accomplices of this assault, and also to call conscientiously those who may still have some attachment to what were the founding principles of the PSUV, so that they denounce and refuse to approve this monstrosity. Some very authoritative voices such as that of Luís Brito García have already taken a step forward in this regard., that other intellectuals and recognized figures should not delay in giving.
On the other hand, a matter like this, would have to be subjected toConsultative Referendum for its serious implications and national significance. Y, Yes even then, they will approve it, we would have to fight immediately for the law to be annulled, within the framework of the most active surveillance and reporting (Despite the threats and sanctions to those who provide information on the transactions of purchase and sale of State assets), as part of the exercise of the right to the Social Comptroller. We can never accept a law of this kind, and we will have to fight for it to be terminated or subject it to aAbrogatory Referendum.
We need a government of the workers and the people, and free ourselves from the dominance of bureaucracy and capital
Beyond this, against a government that promotes the appropriation of national assets, that are public, and that in the name of the Anti-Blockade, he carries out the ultimate goals of that blockade - to submit and sell- we are placed in the need to state that we have to overcome this reactionary government, to this other right that has betrayed the Bolivarian Revolution and has denied its economic keys, social, political and anti-imperialist. With the mobilization of the working class and popular sectors of Venezuela we need to go to a true Constituent, authentically democratic, Popular and Sovereign, that allows the country to truly transform, recover lost rights and fix the reactionary wrongs created by the bureaucratic Maduro-Militares-PSUV government and by the ANC.
However, in contrast to the capitalist and pro-imperialist route that this Law marks, What is our alternative to get Venezuela out of the crisis?, What is the truly revolutionary way out, workers' and popular, from our point of view?
To justify the law of dispossession and surrender, the government today appeals to the same arguments with which the traditional right was previously refuted: that in order to recover the economy and generate well-being it is necessary to "open the economy to private capital and attract foreign investment" to handle the fundamental areas of production and services, even the strategies that the Bolivarian revolution and the Constitution of 1999 reserved exclusively for the domain of the Venezuelan State for socio-economic reasons, sovereignty and national security.
But the best times that the Venezuelan people lived were not the product of private control of strategic areas of the economy and services, but rather of their management by the Venezuelan State to meet public needs.. It was not state property but corruption that melted the economy. And the situation would have been different if social property and genuine and democratic control of workers and organized citizenship over the economy had been developed., as well as especially the public sphere, preventing the looting carried out by the bureaucracy and by the bourgeois sectors that benefited from it. So the problem was not state property or social property (that the latter never really was) but the lack of sufficient democratic participation, management control and deep exercise of social control.
Recovery is possible with other economic measures, that point towards socialization, instead of bureaucratic statism or monopoly ownership. Instead of doing what the government is doing in the interests of capital, a democratic and free discussion could be opened within the workers, of professionals and technicians of state-owned companies, with the participation of citizens and communities, to discuss what and how to do with the companies that are public patrimony of Venezuelans, as an alternative to the pretense of taking them away for the benefit of private capital.
Doing this would be in accordance with the socialist approach, with the construction of a system where the collective property of the people predominates and where the government is exercised by the people themselves through their own democratic organisms and not the old bourgeois State that the capitalists created in their image and likeness to exercise their class and domination. guarantee the enjoyment of the exploitation profits of the vast majority.
So what we propose is to socialize instead of privatize, and make democratic planning based on the participation of workers, farmers, organized communities and citizens, to solve the energy problem, services, the fuel, production and supply, salary recovery, among many others. But this cannot be done by a government of bureaucrats who want to be capitalists or the bourgeoisie who want to re-control their state as they did before.; a government like Maduro's cannot and will never want to do this, nor a government like the one that Guaidó intends to implement, who by the way, Despite being “interim” it is already stealing the resources that imperialism confiscated from the Venezuelan State.
That is why from MS we say: Neither bureaucracy nor capital, nor Maduro with the Chinese, nor Guaidó with Trump (or who assumes the administration of the United States government). We are for a government of the workers and the people and for a sovereign relationship with other countries.
To get to have a government of this type we need a new revolution and based on that we need to build a political tool of the working class and popular sectors., independent of the bourgeoisie and without bureaucracy, forging a class culture that prevents bourgeois and bureaucratic vices from reproducing within it, as unfortunately happened with the PSUV.
We refer to the creation of a democratic revolutionary party or a great movement that responds to the interests of the working class, peasant and popular sectors, instead of being an instrument for the careerism of bureaucrats and military with a capitalist vocation or of employers who use politics to subdue the people.
We are against both the privatization model and bureaucratic statism, and instead of it, we are in favor of the socialization of key areas of the economy and of fundamental services. We vindicate the need to retake the lost course of the revolution, the path that had begun to follow from the year 2002 and that bureaucratization frustrated, especially since the last years of Chávez. That is why we say that a second revolution is necessary in Venezuela, and we insist that the exit is not to the right but to the left; but not calling "left" right-wing policies such as those applied by the government of Nicolás Maduro and the bureaucratic caste.
The current disaster in the world is precisely the failure of these policies of privatization and looting of countries at the hands of foreign capital.
For an Emergency Plan to overcome the crisis, at the service of the workers and the Venezuelan people
On previous occasions we have proposed an Economic Emergency Route as an alternative to the policies adopted by the government and the proposals of the right-wing opposition. Among those proposals, that we propose for your democratic discussion, some measures are found like the following, that we believe necessary to apply to get out of the current situation in favor of the interests of the workers and the people, instead of favoring the bureaucracy and national and foreign private capital. Of course, here we only expose a part of the essential measures that in our opinion should be part of this program:
*Fight so that any instrument equivalent to the so-called Anti-Blockade Law is not approved or repealed, involving the privatization and delivery of national assets and resources, or the granting of advantages to foreign and national capital that are harmful to the sovereignty or the interests of the country and our people. Warn countries, to transnationals and foreign or national capitals on the invalidity of any "agreement", transaction, negotiation or treaty, given the unconstitutional nature of these laws, that would expose them to the effects of reversing all Irritan decisions. Repeal all unconstitutional Investment Protection laws approved by the ANC.
* Actions for the recovery of embezzled resources and escaped capital, criminally extracted from the country. Expropriation of embezzlers and those found to be involved in acts of corruption.
* The country is already in Default for some sections of the External Debt, but it is necessary to suspend all payments and carry out a Public and Citizen Audit, to identify corrupt and illegitimate debt and allocate those resources in response to the needs derived from the pandemic, in social needs and in the recovery of the national productive apparatus. Reject any debt swap operation that involves the handover or transfer of ownership of public sector companies, be PDVSA and its subsidiaries, of basic industries, of large services operated by the Venezuelan State or of state companies created for the production of essential consumer goods.
* Stop the destruction of nature caused by the Orinoco Mining Arc and use whatever resources are possible without compromising environmental integrity, to really dedicate them to national development and to alleviate the impact of the crisis on the people.
* Establish high taxes for big capital and allocate the proceeds to an Economic Recovery Fund and Social Aid for the People. Eliminate VAT. Set a budget in foreign exchange. Disapply non-double taxation treaties that exempt foreign capital from tax payments in the country.
* Abrogation of the Law for the Promotion and Protection of Foreign Investment, that favors capitals from the same countries that harass, sanction and block the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Apply reciprocal measures of confiscation of companies and assets that the United States may possess in Venezuela, in response to the CITGO seizure, as well as the expropriation of companies and capital from those who promote and collaborate in the so-called "Economic War" with speculative actions or economic sabotage., especially those capitalist sectors linked to Juan Guaidó and María Corina Machado, instead of going after workers who make labor claims. Place these companies under democratic worker control, professionals and technicians, commissions of the scientific and academic unions, under close supervision of social comptroller bodies.
* Prepare a productive plan associated with the progressive recovery of wages, that allows, in principle, that the minimum wage covers the cost of the Food Basket and, as soon as possible, to scaleuntil covering the cost of the Basic Basket as established in Art 91 the CRBV. Adjust wages in accordance with Art 91 every time the cost of the Basic Basket exceeds their purchasing power.
* To restore to workers the value of their social benefits, canceled due to currency conversion and other circumstances. Revalue pensions and reestablish health and social security mechanisms for the working class.
*Put state companies to work to the maximum of their capacity, for the recovery of production and supply potential, under the control of its workers and in the exercise of strict social control.
