The political developments taking place in Venezuela represent a critical strategic experience for the international working class.
Washington’s military invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have undoubtedly laid bare the sheer criminality and ruthlessness of US capitalism and the international imperialist order under its domination.
Perhaps even more graphically exposed are the complete rottenness of the Latin American bourgeoisie and the promises of its “left-wing” representatives of having found an alternative road to emancipation from imperialism and capitalism.
The regime founded at the turn of the century by Hugo Chavez, until recently hailed as the harbinger of “21st Century Socialism” by the pseudo-left, is giving rise at astonishing speed to one the most outright semi-colonial puppet regimes in the Americas.
Measures dating back to a century ago asserting Venezuelan sovereignty over its national resources and politics are being wiped out as the country is fully subordinated to Washington’s imperialist strategy and the control of its massive oil reserves is handed over to US-based energy conglomerates.
The Chavista government headed by “interim president” Delcy Rodríguez, far from being the main target of US imperialism, is closely collaborating with Trump and his fascist cabinet in the plundering of Venezuela.
Instead of the promised “Latin American liberation from the Monroe Doctrine,” history has proven Chavismo to be a midwife for a neocolonial order proclaimed by US imperialism as it confronts its deepest historical crisis.
These events are having a deep impact on the consciousness of masses of people in Latin America and internationally and adding to an ongoing process of radicalization and political reorientation.
The organizations of the pseudo-left, directly responsible for the catastrophe in Venezuela, are now working desperately to prevent the working class from breaking from the demoralized nationalist bureaucracy and its apparatus.
With this reactionary purpose, the different Pabloite and Morenoite tendencies, the Stalinist Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and other dissident currents of Chavismo have launched a rotten political bloc to confront the “grave situation” in Venezuela.
These organizations – either affiliated to or supporting the “National Meeting in Defense of the People’s Rights” led by the Stalinists – issued a joint statement calling for opposition to “the military aggression and imperialist offensive” and to “the neocolonial collaboration of the national government with the Trump administration,” and demanding “democratic liberties.”
Covered under radical phraseology, this reactionary pseudo-left coalition is aimed at carving out space for these organizations in the new bourgeois setup being established under imperialist siege. Vindicating their position as the official “left opposition,” their central task is to prevent the working class from drawing the historical lessons from the crisis of Chavismo and developing its independent political movement.
The most cynical element in the whole initiative is the bloc’s claim to represent a “position of class independence and independence from any other factor of oppressive power.” This assertion is as genuine as Rodríguez’s cries to stop “Washington’s orders on politics in Venezuela” amid the intervals between her discussions with Trump administration officials on organizing the country’s pillage.
The manifesto’s signatories, while proclaiming themselves to be above any “factor of oppressive power,” don’t bother to discuss their own political origins and records. In fact, no political event dating from before January 3, 2026, is mentioned in the document’s five pages of conjunctural analysis and action demands.
Any historical balance sheet would expose the direct complicity of these pseudo-left organizations in the massive betrayal against the Venezuelan population.
The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), the principal organizer of this pseudo-left initiative, promoted the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 and was part of the Chavista coalition in power for more than two decades. Only in 2020 did the PCV withdraw its official support from the Maduro government.
After abandoning Maduro’s PSUV electoral coalition, the Great Patriotic Pole, the Venezuelan Stalinists then founded the Popular Revolutionary Alternative together with parties like Homeland for All (PPT), which occupied high posts in the Chávez government, and the group Class Struggle, affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) led by Alan Woods, who served as one of the most shameless cheerleaders of the Chavistas. Far from a negation of the Chavista bourgeois nationalist project, this bloc accused the Maduro government of breaking with Chavismo and presented itself as its true defender.
Associated with these forces, which until recently were part of the Chavista bourgeois regime, are representatives of the different Morenoite currents in the current pseudo-left bloc. Among them are Marea Socialista, affiliated with the International Socialist League (LIS); League of Workers for Socialism (LTS), affiliated with the Permanent Revolution Current (CRP); and the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL), affiliated with the Workers’ International Unity (UIT).
A division of labor in subordinating workers to Chavismo
If anything differentiates these Morenoite organizations from their Stalinist and petty-bourgeois nationalist allies, it is the even more cynical function they fulfilled in the division of labor to subordinate the working class to the Chavista bureaucracy.
The CRP, formerly known as “Trotskyist Fraction,” has long dedicated itself to issuing fraternal polemics against its former comrades in the other Morenoite concurrents, pointing to their “zigzags, without any anchoring in the firmest class independence and anti-imperialism,” as they moved between “calling to stuff the ballot boxes with votes for Chavez” and “aligning themselves under the supposed banners of ‘democracy’ raised by the right-wing” financed by US imperialism.
The fact that the CRP is now joining and promoting this bloc in the La Izquierda Diário website is the clearest indictment of these hollow criticisms. In the moment of gravest crisis faced by these treacherous pseudo-left organizations, the CRP drops its pretenses and aids them in masquerading as the defenders of “class independence.”
But the reactionary character of this pseudo-left bloc cannot be hidden by the clever use of pompous radical phraseology.
In a manifesto supposedly advancing an “independent class” position towards the Venezuelan crisis, one is struck by the complete absence of words such as “capitalism,” “socialism” and “bourgeoisie” (or “bourgeois”). The word “capitalist” is used only once in reference to the “pro-imperialist opposition” led by Maria Corina Machado.
In what is supposedly the most combative section of this phony manifesto, under the headline “Call for the mobilization of Venezuelan people and international solidarity,” one reads:
Now more than ever we have the urgent and unpostponable need to work for the unity of the working class and the exploited Venezuelan people around their class interests, and for the rescue of national sovereignty.
The organization and mobilization of the people and the working class is essential to overcome the imperialist domination that is being imposed on us. That is why we must recover the possibility of holding assemblies and promoting spaces to assemble in which the Venezuelan people that clearly oppose interventionism participate, where what has happened is discussed, and where a series of demands are put forward to resolve the crisis from the popular sectors and the working class.
While they mention the “class interests” of Venezuelan workers, one would look in vain for an actual explanation of what those interests actually consist. Nor does the statement clarify how “to resolve the crisis from the popular sectors and the working class.”
Intentionally blurring the conflicting class interests within Venezuela, the statement’s calls for the “rescue of national sovereignty” and to “overcome the imperialist domination” is aimed at deceiving the working class and ensuring its subordination to the national bourgeoisie.
None of the demands raised by the Morenoite-Stalinist bloc are oriented to the working class and for the development of its political consciousness and independent organization. They direct all their appeals to the bourgeois state itself, illegitimately presenting themselves as spokesmen for the Venezuelan workers.
This unmistakable bourgeois orientation was ratified in a demonstration to launch the bloc, held on January 28 in front of the People’s Ombudsman Office in Caracas. The action was centered on the delivery of a “document addressed to the People’s Ombudsman, Alfredo Ruiz, to demand a public statement regarding the grave political, social and human rights situation the country is experiencing,” reported the PCV.
The pseudo left’s focus on the demand of “political freedoms” to the Rodriguez regime coincides, not accidentally, with the banners raised by the right-wing opposition itself.
A point in their infamous manifesto states:
The prisoners that are being released under imperialist pressure, merit the solidarity and mobilization of the people to accelerate this process and to grant full freedom to all released from prison.
The pseudo-left call for a “mobilization of the people and the working class to overcome imperialist domination” reveals itself, in practice, to be indistinguishable from a united front with the fascistic right to “accelerate” a “transition” process driven by “imperialist pressure”!
This shameful political line is in direct continuity with the criminal role fulfilled by these pseudo-left forces in the recent period.
In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential elections, both the Morenoites and the Stalinists openly promoted the reactionary movement led by pro-imperialist opposition to overthrow Maduro, endorsing the demonstrations and their fraudulent “democratic” banners.
The Morenoites argued that the “popular assemblies of citizens” convoked by the CIA “asset” Machado “should be converted into permanent organs.” In other words, falsifying the structures organized by US-backed fascists as embryos of “popular power.”
Now, after the US military invasion produced precisely the result that this policy facilitated, these organizations seek to present themselves as opponents of the imperialist offensive and the neocolonial collaboration of the Rodriguez regime!
The central lesson of the catastrophic experience with Chavismo and other forms of petty-bourgeois nationalism in Latin America is precisely the need to forge revolutionary leadership on the basis of an intransigent struggle for the political independence of the working class.
The historical role fulfilled by Stalinism, aided Pabloite revisionism and its variants, such as Morenoism was precisely to derail the working class’s struggle for political independence. These revisionist tendencies represented an attempt to liquidate Trotskyism into the nationalist perspectives of Stalinism, while promoting bourgeois nationalism and petty-bourgeois guerrillaism as substitutes for the conscious and independent mobilization of the working class in the struggle for socialism.
As Trotsky wrote in 1937: “The modern history of bourgeois society is filled with all sorts of Popular Fronts, i.e. the most diverse political combinations for the deception of the toilers.” This tradition was tragically continued throughout the course of the 20th century.
In Latin America, it led to the US-backed 1973 coup in Chile, which was prepared by the betrayals of the Unidad Popular government joined by the Stalinists and backed by the Pabloites. In 1976, an equally brutal military regime took power in Argentina facilitated by the subordination of workers to Peronism promoted by Nahuel Moreno.
The 21st century “Pink Tide” was the most recent and decrepit manifestation of the promotion of bourgeois nationalism and “popular frontism” by the pseudo-left enemies of the working class.
The violent eruption of US imperialism is not a symptom of its strength, but of its historical demise. While the preservation of global capitalism doesn’t allow for a peaceful reconfiguration of the international order, the conditions for overthrowing the imperialist system as a whole are objectively posed.
The working class is being called upon the historical arena to resolve the crisis of humanity and to establish an international socialist society that corresponds to the objective character of globalized economy and the potential of technology.
The historic task confronting workers and youth in Venezuela and throughout Latin America is the construction of revolutionary parties based on the strategic lessons of these experiences. This means building sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, grounded in the intransigent defense of the political independence of the working class, the theory of permanent revolution, and the program of international socialist revolution.