The struggle for control of Venezuela’s Oil – A short Marxist history to Venezuelan electoral crisis 2024

The struggle for control of Venezuela’s Oil – A short Marxist History. The shape changes of the national bourgeoise in Venezuela – to the electoral Crisis 2024 of Nicholas Maduro
September 11, 2024

Introduction
We make no apology for carrying three articles on Venezuela in fairly quick succession.

The first was a reprint from 2004. We also republished recently, an article from Karyn Pomerantz co-editor of the Multiracial Unity Blog, from 24 August 2024. (At MLRG.online). This current article then is a further third, new article.

Hopefully the torrent of news about Venezuela of itself serves as an adequate justification, for yet another piece. Obviously the intent is to try and make sense of the contradictory messages from the bourgeois press. Recent events rocking Venezuela and thus South America, are very significant for the international working class movement. Fears of a USA backed coup in Venezuela are very real.

This article aims to bring readers to the present-day from a historical perspective – but hopefully a better one than is obtained from bourgeois papers. It therefore reprises some major events of the long war between comprador and national bourgeoisie of Venezuela from the 20th to the 21st century. Each of these sets of bourgeoisie wished to bring the major source of revenue in Venezuela – oil – under their own control. Throughout this long war the USA imperialists strove hard to enable their compradors against the national bourgeoisie. But the compradors often pretended to be nationalists. And the nationalists sometimes morphed into compradors, especially when they finally were able to not only taste, but wield power.

One central theme of this article then, is the shape-changes of the national bourgeoisie in the late 20th-21st century. Marxist-Leninists may lose their way if they mis-identify shades of national bourgeoisie as representing the working class. It is of note that the situation in Venezuela and the Bolivarian Chavez movement has historical precedents. It is similar to how Castro and the Cuban national bourgeoisie were historically mis-identified by some Leftists, as communist revolutionaries.

This tendency to err in judging national bourgeois movements as being ‘revolutionary socialist’ ones, is amplifed when seeking “easy solutions” to side-step the revolution. This has happened frequently following disappointments in the dismal history of failed revolutions in South America. It has enouraged many Marxists in retreat to find solace in mirages of “alternative routes” to the Bolshevik one. One such influential Leftist for instance was Marta Harnecker.

She wrote in 2010, to assuage anxiety that not enough was being done by Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution”.  Harnecker wrote that the important thing was not the “pace” but the “direction”:

“Rather than classifying Latin American governments according to some kind of typology as many analysts have done… What we should do is try to evaluate their performance by keeping in mind the balance of forces with which they have to operate. Therefore, we should not look as much at the pace with which they proceed as the direction in which they are going. The pace, to a large extent, depends on how these governments deal with the obstacles found in their path.”                                      
Marta Harnecker, “America & Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes” Chapter 1 July 29, 2010; Venezuela Analysis

In 2024, surely one should now agree, that even if the pace was not considered too glacial in 2010, today – both pace and direction must be considered as incorrect.

Actually Hugo Chavez gave the game away best himself, in a 2003 interview with Tariq Ali the prominent Trotskyist. Chavez proudly admitted to being essentially an extreme left social democrat, carrying out a bourgeois democratic agenda:

“Tariq Ali: “The Bolivarians have been incredibly restrained. When I asked Chavez to explain his own philosophy, he replied”:
Chavez: ‘I don’t believe in the dogmatic postulates of Marxist revolution. I don’t accept that we are living in a period of proletarian revolutions. (Editor’s emphasis) All that must be revised. Reality is telling us that every day. Are we aiming in Venezuela today for the abolition of private property or a classless society? I don’t think so. But if I’m told that because of that reality you can’t do anything to help the poor, the people who have made this country rich through their labour and never forget that some of it was slave labour, then I say ‘We part company’. I will never accept that there can be no redistribution of wealth in society. Our upper classes don’t even like paying taxes. That’s one reason they hate me. We said ‘You must pay your taxes’. I believe it’s better to die in battle, rather than hold aloft a very revolutionary and very pure banner, and do nothing…

That position often strikes me as very convenient, a good excuse … Try and make your revolution, go into combat, advance a little, even if it’s only a millimetre, in the right direction, instead of dreaming about utopias.”
Tariq Ali, “The importance of Hugo Chavez”; Trinicenter August 17; 2003; last accessed 27 August 2024; 

This vision of Chavez calling on the rich to “pay your tax” – is really quite revealing. Rather milder of course than simply expropriating them. For that you see, says Chavez, is a “dream about utopia”. Chavez offers Bolsheviks a strange straw-man dichotomy – ‘do nothing and remain pure’ or ‘die in battle’ to tax the rich.

We will find that Chavez initially followed those such as Tony Blair (as suggested by Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May- June 2016).  But as he was pushed more left – he found the revisionist line of Istvan Meszaros. Editor of Monthly Review John Bellamy Foster is another fan of Meszaros. Foster details how Chavez followed Meszaros as a pole-star.

There are two other aspects – besides the changing shape of the national bourgeoisie –  of a more general relevance to Marxist-Leninists contained in this article.

First is the role of the “Jacques Duclos Letter” – directed against Earl Browder, and its’ resonance  inside Venezuela. An interesting situation, one revisionist (Jaques Duclos) criticising the liquidationism of the other revisionist (Earl Browder). It became pertinent to the history of the Venezuelan Communist party (PCV). Undoubtedly the PCV revisionism has retarded the workers movement in Venezuela. It could not have been otherwise. Marxist-Leninists hold that the bourgeois revolution cannot be taken to completion to a socialist revolution in the absence of a Communist party free of revisionist trends. Hence the relevance of these 1940s debates on Venezuela today.

Secondly the nature of ground rent and differential rent in the development of the colonial bourgeoisie gives clues as to how bourgeois nationalist state controls over oil lead to the “Dutch disease” – or the failure to develop other industries. Karl Marx laid the foundation of such considerations in Capital. In discussing agriculture, he noted that “Instead of agriculture we might equally well have taken mining, since the laws are the same.” (‘Capital’ Volume III; London 1981 Tr David Fernbach; p. 752). As we detail below, Chavez did not believe that this was a problem for Venezuela.

The basic argument from Marx can be extrapolated to today’s oil nationalists in so-called ‘petrostates’. Three authors in especial are cited in this regard. Wolfgang Hein and Mohssen Massarrat – are included in Nore and Turner’s important ‘Oil and Class Struggle” (“Oil and the Venezuelan State”; Chapter 11; in and Chapter 3. “The Energy Crisis” in Ed: Petter Nore and Terisa Turner; “Oil and Class Struggle”; 1980; London). Fernanado Coronil also notes the role of differential rates of ground rent owing to oil-bearing land in “The Magical State. Nature, money and modernity in Venezuela”; Chicago 1997.

These larger theoretical points are only touched upon in this piece. They both require a full updating of the Comintern debates led by Lenin, and continued by Stalin. (We have discussed these in several places before, including the role of M.N.Roy).  However since the 1920-1930s the historical room on the stage of world history for the national bourgeoisie has become increasingly confined. That is one large part of why the Venezuelan national bourgeoisie – in all its historical manifestations up to Chavez – has found itself unable to remove the oil noose. The other reason for that inability, is as mentioned above, the fall into revisionism of the Venezuelan Communist Party.

Nonetheless the main aim of the article lies elsewhere. That is in tracing the roots of how Venezuela got to Chavez. In order to then be able to ask how should Marxist-Leninists assess Chavez and his successor Maduro? What steps should be taken now in Venezuela today – should Marxist-Leninists support or not support Maduro?

For a brief period – Chavez did rally the working and toiling classes to his Bolivarian Movement. What forward steps Chavez took, we supported. After the death of Chavez, his appointed heir, Nicolas Maduro took power.

We last discussed Hugo Chavez in January 2003 as he faced a renewed crisis fueled by the local comprador bourgeoisie together with the USA. We wrote in conclusion then that:

“The crisis continues. Without a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, the working class will not be able to obtain its security. However, there is little doubt that the Hugo Chavez government is a progressive one that demands the support of all militants.” Alliance, Volume 1, Issue 1. January 2003

Does that remain true now in 2024 – Is Maduro still a “progressive” leader currently? We do not deny that Maduro faces vicious pro-USA fascist forces inside Venezuela. However before a free pass is given to Maduro as he faces a renewed neo-fascist attack, surely we need to characterise him?

Initially following Chavez’s death, workers continued to support Maduro. After Chavez – Maduro faced a stark choice. Would he move the country to a genuine socialism, or would ‘compromises’ be made?

Maduro chose the latter course, picking enrichment of a fraction of local bourgeoisie.

During Maduro’s tenure workers lost ground. Increasingly workers became impoverished and disappointed with his leadership. The sanctions imposed on the country by the USA accelerated – but they did not start – this worker alienation from the state. Indeed that began earlier as he disemboweled several workers rights. The rise in poverty after his government took office speaks volumes about Maduro’s priorities.

In the process he took advantage of Chinese aid. But surprisingly to some, he has also made renewed overtures to USA imperialism. He has moved definitively further away from the working class. That class did not, and rightly – will not forgive him.

Workers began to vote against him in general elections as in 2015. He squeeked by then. But this disillusionment has now culminated in the 2024 vote that may have gone against him. Astonishingly we still do not actually know.

In his latest gambit, in 2024 Maduro claimed to have “won” the recent 2024 General Elections. We will evaluate this claim. Without new information, currently it appears to us, as a fraud rubber-stamped by his own appointed Supreme Court.

At the time of writing, this refusal to transparently publish the electoral tallies, only opens a door to the most reactionary comprador capitalists. It re-invites the USA to reimpose their dominance. It may be especially difficult to close that door since Maduro had already opened it to Chevron in 2022.

Marxist-Leninists gave Chavez a qualified support against the manouevres of USA imperialism. But over the Maduro years, the Venezuelan working class has remained objectively – in the same situation as in 2004.

It would be quite incorrect of Marxist-Leninists to give Maduro a free pass now.
Instead the calls to voice should be along the following lines:

“Defend against USA imperialism!”
“Down with Venezuelan agents of the USA!”
“Publish the electoral polls!”
“Build the Marxist-Leninist Party to force real change for the working class!”

This article will outline the development of the oil industry and the post-Simon Bolivar national struggle:

We first examine a relevant historical summary of Venezuela up to the 20th century.
We then ask such questions as what is the current economic situation of Venezuela? and What is the factual content of the current election vote crisis?

Table of Contents

1. Historical Summary Spanish colony to national status

(i) Colonial status
(ii) National wars of liberation from Spain
(iii) Land tenure
(iv) Compradors in hock to England and Germany – the entry of USA into Venezuela
(v) Juan Vicente Gomez
(vi) Increasing industrial oil development in Venezuela – control by the foreign companies – Development of the ‘Dutch disease’
(vii) The major political parties in Venezuela at this time
(viii) A short relevant digression: Imperialists and their oil companies draw lessons from the Bolivian and Mexican Path
(ix) Selling the famous 50:50 mask of coopting the national bourgeoisie
(x) The 1948 Rule of Perez-Jimenez
(xi) The IMF Precipitated Crisis
(xii) The Chavez Era: Chavez and the Fifth Republic Movement
(xiii) After his election Chavez faced huge obstacles:
(xiv) Chavez and oil

Table 1: Presidents of Venezuela 1908-2024
Table 2: Some main oil developments up to 1945

2. The Chavez Era: Chavez and the Fifth Republic Movement

(i) After his election Chavez faced huge obstacles
(ii) Chavez and oil
(iii) Land Reform
(iv) Failure to diagnose the ills of the economy
(v) Left swings under the pressure to resist right wing forces
(vi) Refusing to launch a full-on Chavez walks the tight rope
(vii) Grabbing the Chinese rope

3. Chavez’s Inspirations and main accomplishments

(i) Early influences
(ii) What is Hugo Chavez’s “21st century socialism”?
(iii) Chavez and Istvan Meszaros 

4. The government of Nicolas Maduro        

(i) Coming to power          
(ii) Early opposition to Maduro
(iii) Maduro clamps down on working-class organising rights
(iv) The illegal 2019 “Interim President” Juan Guaido plays the open USA card
(v) Maduro Chavistas move to a fraction of the less overtly pro-USA bourgeoisie
(vi) The fragmented bourgeois opposition to the PSUV
(vii) Relations with the USA
(viii) Arrest of Oil Minister El Assami                                          

5. Today’s Economy

Figure 1: GDP 1990-2023
Figure 2: GDP across Latin America
Figure 3 Percentage of households in poverty and extreme poverty in Venezuela from 2002 to 2021;
Figure 4: GINI coefficient in Venezuela from 2014-2022

An increasing dependence upon Chinese and other “lifelines”

6. The 2024 disputed elections

(i) Previous 2015 recourse to the National Electoral Council (CNE)
(ii) Many working-class parties were disbarred from standing                                     
(iii) So what choices did the working class have at the poll?                                             
(iv) Both poles – Gonzalez and Maduro – ultimately seek USA endorsement           
(v) The exact election results remain unclear                                                                   
(vi)  Aftermath of the elections                                                                                                   
(vii) The claims of web-hacking                                                                                         
(viii) The reaction of the USA government and the oil companies                                   
(ix) Division on the international Marxist left on support or not for Maduro               
(x) Some conclusions on the Maduro Government

_______________________________________________________________________

1. HISTORICAL SUMMARY UP TO CHAVEZ

Spanish colony to national status

i) Colonial status

Venezuela was ruled by a slave-owning landowners as a colony of Spain. The large land holdings, or latifundia, were owned by criollos or Creoles (South American born Spanish whites); but run by African slaves and indigenous Indians. Because Venezuela unlike other South American colonies was devoid of silver and gold, the Spanish treated it as a backwater. Only in 1776 did the Spanish create governing Venezuelan bodies, such as the Real Audiencia de Caracas.                                                                                         Michelena JAS ‘The Illusion of Democracy in Dependent Nations”; Cambridge Mass; 1971; p. 36.

Given a lack of any central rule, rural power bases grew up around the landlords. Their main crops were cocoa, coffee and indigo. Local militia were paid by Spain to maintain order, and these developed into local strong men Caudillos. These caudillos were given privileges by the Spanish. Later after Independence, they grew into a considerable power. But at first the caudillos were subordinate to the criollos.

Inevitably the criollo latifundia-owners came to resist the rule of the Spanish Bourbon monarchs. Initially the masses resisted the criollas because:

“Most blacks recognized that any improvements in their condition had occurred … had come principally from Spain and Spanish official, not from the Creole landlords who so jealously guarded their privileges.”
Editors JD Martz, DJ Myers “Venezuela – the Democratic Experience”; p. 10-11; New York; 1986.

An example of such patronage by Spanish authorities was the law “Gracias al Sacar” whereby pardos (of black-white mixed descent, also known as mulatos) could become designated as legally white by payment of a sum of money (Michelena; p.40). Simon Bolivar overcame this reluctance of blacks to engage in anti-Spanish rebellion.

ii) National wars of liberation from Spain

Simon Bolivar led a war for a republican constitution between 1810-19. After the Independence movements as led by Simon Bolivar, San Martin and Antonio Jose de Sucre, Spain was ejected from South America in 1824. This led to the First Republic, and a small period of true independence.

However in the meantime the war of independence had disrupted and fragmented the latifundia. In their fight against Bolivar’s armies, the Spanish colonists had fomented the pardos to rise against their criolla white overlords. During that process some lands were seized, starting a small scale primitive land reform.

Ultimately, it had been only the Bolivarian false promises of land that had brought the masses into the Independence struggle as soldiers. The Bolivarian independence forces promised land reform, and issued “land bonds” to the recruited soldiers. These promsies however were not honoured. Over the period up to 1908, the peasantry never actually got land – only promises of it. That peasantry would become the backbone of the armies of rival caudillos. But undoubtedly Bolivar’s campaigns led to progressive measures including freeing of all slaves who joined the army:

“a number of decisions taken by Bolívar helped win over the non-white population to his side. At the outset of the Third Republic, in the city of Carúpano, he decreed the liberty of slaves who joined his army. His Law of Distribution of National Property as Compensation to Officers and Soldiers in 1817, which turned over the land and possessions of Spanish loyalists to his troops, also favored nonprivileged sectors with the aim of shoring up the military.”
Steve Ellner, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; Boston 2008; p. 26

Bolivar’s campaign removed Spanish rule, but the proclaimed republican constitution was only a veneer for landed rule, and the slave economy. In fact the Criollo distrust of the masses is reflected in Bolivar’s Constitution. [See Bolivar].

Hugo Chavez’s statements on Bolivar are simply laudatory. Many later leftists in widely popular books, follow his genuflection and show an unquestioning praise of Bolivar (See Richard Gott; “Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution”; London 2011; and “in the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venzuela” London 2000). Steve Ellner is rather more measured and historically appropriate in his statements.

In 1811 the First Republic was established. Owing to the counter-revolutions, Bolivar had to reinstall two other republics. Bolivar died by 1830, having directed the liberation from Spain of several states including Venezuela.

In Venezuela by the mid-end of the 19th century, the age of ‘Caudilloism’ had begun. Very soon after Bolivar’s victory, regional vigilante elements, originally local Caudillos and their militiamen became fierce rivals for power. Venezuela was in a period of intense flux. Eventually one regional section would win over the others, and ultimately the ‘caudillo’ was transformed into the ‘president’. The term President replaced the term ‘caudillo’. Later President Juan Gomez would call his own regime “Democratic Caeserism” [Lindqvist S; Land and Power in South America; Harmondsworth 1973; p.139], exemplifying a grandiose modernization of the term ‘caudillo’.

Table 1: Presidents of Venezuela 1908-2024
This simply outlines the Presidents by year up to Maduro. We will not discuss each Presidential period, instead we focus upon nodal points of change.
Table 1
1908-1935 General Juan Vicente Gomerz
1936-1941 General Eleazar Lopez Contreras
1941-1945 General Isias Medina Angarita
1945-1948 Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierna Presided over by Romulo Betancourt
1948 Romulo Gallegos
1948-1950 General Marcos Perez Jimenez
1958-1959 General Marcos Perez Jimenez
1959 Military-civilian junta (Presided over by Rear Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal
1959-1964 Romulo Betancourt
1964-1969 Raul Leoni
1969-1974 Rafael Caldera
1974-1979 Carlos Andres Perez
1979-1984 Luis Herrara Campins
1984-1989 Jaime Luscinchi
1989-1993 Carlos Andres Perez
1993-1994 Ramon Velasquez
1994-1998 Rafael Caldera
1998 Hugo Chavez
Drawn from Fernando Coronil, “The Magical State. Nature, money and modernity in Venezuela”; Chicago 1997; p. vxii

iii) Land tenure

Post independence, most of the rural population lived as conuqueros – or switheners, or migratory squatters. They obtained a meager living by subsistence farming on the burnt-off forest lands. As a renewed land concentration took hold, most were driven into servitude and corvee labour. Payment was in the form of indentured land, or in sugar-cane spirit. Around latifundia holdings, sometimes so-called minfundia (small or medium sized farms that supported a peasant family) existed. These were only few, and in any case were too small to generate more than a purely subsistence level of life [Herman DL “Agriculture”: In Martz & Meyers Ibid; p. 329].

Moreover as land concentration got more intense, the minfundia became absorbed by the rich, into their renewed latifundia. In total, any land holdings were regressive:

“This type of land tenure system is an obstacle to development. Economically the land is not used efficiently because the latifundia are either excessively labor-intensive or modern technology is practically non-existent. Furthermore the average agricultural tenant and laborer have so little money income that they have almost no purchasing power and cannot contribute to the consumer market. Socially the system gives rise to rigid social stratification… Culturally the peasants comprise a subculture dependent upon the protection of the latifundistas.”
Herman Ibid p. 330.

Immediately post-independence, agriculture concentrated upon the export of only one crop – coffee. During this period:

“Landowners pledged their properties to commercial houses in exchange for the credit they needed to produce the coffee… Those supplying credit had little interest in Venezuela except for the planter’s ability to pay his debts and provide sufficient quantities of coffee”:
Martz and Meyers Ibid; Ibid; p. 14.

The inefficient latifundia production still generated some profits. But the international coffee market crashed around 1840, with an over-production in the colonies. This immediately affected Venezuela:

“Venezuela… controlled neither the terms not the conditions of its participation in North American trade. When a shift in the world commodity market in the later 1930’s-40’s brought the price of coffee down, Venezuelan coffee growers often found themselves unable to pay their debts or escape from the consequences of their over-extension… the local elite serving as intermediaries for international trade found itself enforcing foreclosures and debt procedures… as in the landowning elite”; Martz & Meyers; Ibid p. 15.

Civil war erupted following which fewer remaining Caudillos took control. Under the rule of one of them, Antonio Guzman Blanco (1863-1889), the comprador commercial classes attempted to consolidate a more efficient latifundia economy. This was mainly directed at trade with England and Germany. He was followed by Cipriano Castro:

“The year 1899 promised to usher in an era of transformation in
Venezuela… An army of sixty men led by Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez invaded Venezuela from Colombia under the slogan “New Men, New Ideals, New Methods.” Castro governed until 1908, when he was betrayed and overthrown by Gómez, who in turn ruled until his death in 1935.
The Castro and Gómez governments failed to fulfill expectations in
favor of electoral democracy, but to their credit they promoted far-reaching changes, the most important of which was the creation of national institutions essential to stability and centralization. As a result, the Castro and Gómez regimes put an end to the nineteenth-century tradition of civil wars led by regional caudillos.”
Steve Ellner, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics“: Boulder Co 2010; p.34

Of such “national institutions” ensuring a “stability”, Ellner largely refers to the standing army, and the Treasury.

iv) Compradors in hock to England and Germany – the entry of USA into Venezuela

By 1902 a comprador trading relationship with Germany and Britain had developed, based upon the coffee trade. But the state consistently reneged on its debts amounting to 21,421,798 bolivars of a total fiscal state income of 31,650,000 bolivars in 1901 [cited Michelena Ibid p. 51]. This had already led to British seizing in 1899 Guyana and then La Guajira (part of Venenezulan territory). In farcical court proceedings a USA Supreme Court judge supposedly represented Venezuela [Michelena Ibid p. 52].

But a much more serious portent for the future came in 1908, when the Caudillo (President Cipriano Castro) was faced with a joint British and German naval expedition creating a blockade off the coast. Italy later joined this also. Britain, Germany and Itlay wanted to use the loan repayment to establish firmer colonial penetrations.

Castro appealed to Theodore Roosevelt to intercede, and the USA navy enforced the Monroe Doctrine. Originally promulgated in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine had stated that no European power had any jurisdiction in South America. Using this crisis, the USA warned off the European powers. Naturally this was in order to ensure the powers became their pro-USA comprador forces.

Ellner portrays Castro as being a nationalist who was cornered by the USA despite his best intents. Nonetheless a dependency was created to the USA. From now for many years, the path to Venezuela became led by a comprador bourgeoisie in hock to the USA. This was duly continued in the Presidency of Juan Vicente Gomez.

Despite intense repression, there were a series of movements and risings that fought for democratic rights were led in both the Castro and later the Gomez era. These include amongst others Arévalo Cedeño a latifundist who resented the Gomez monopoly on landed interests (led several armed revolts in 1914), José Rafael Gabaldón (who, led an uprising in 1928 in the state of Portuguesa), Pedro Pérez Delgado (“Maisanta,” “Chávez’s great-grandfather, who was the son of Pedro Pérez Pérez who had fought with Zamora”), and Gustavo Machado and Salvador de la Plaza (later leading members of the Communist Party) (Steve Ellner, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; Boulder Co, 2010; p.37).

(v) Juan Vicente Gomez

When Juan Vicente Gomez came to power in 1908, latifundia concentration was further intensified. His presidency lasted until his death in 1935. Venezuela had been up till this point, ruled by latifundia-landed oligarchs. These oligarchs became largely transformed into a comprador bourgeoisie in the next 30 odd years.

Gomez was immensely avaricious, as was his small elite who also enriched themselves. By his death he had acquired more than 8 million hectares (larger than Holland and Denmark together) [Lindqvist Ibid; p. 140]. His family and henchmen followed suit:

“Land concentration occurred swiftly and reached fantastic proportions. About 5% of Venezuela’s landowners acquired 78% of the land, while only 10% of the rural population owned any at all.”
Lindqvist Ibid p. 140.

These land holdings were increasingly traded into concessions for oil to overseas companies.

In 1935, land holdings were concentrated into either ‘Government’ lands of Gomez, or openly private hands. Credit offered by the government agency – the Agricultural and Livestock Bank (BAP) established in 1928 accentuated the impoverishment of the minfundistas. Any land in the Government agencies books, was eventually transferred to the latifundistas:

“The first national Agricultural Census of 1937 indicated that 4.4 % of the latifundistas held 78% of the land and 95% of the minifundistas held 22%… Due to a high percentage of foreclosures, the government became a major landowner holding approximately 25% of the arable land by 1945. By the end of the Gomez period, the latifundistas and cattle ranchers of the Llanos dominated the rural area.”
Herman Ibid p. 331-332.

At the same time, it was increasingly clearer that the land was now largely “un-productive” – (or actually un-profitable), so long as it was harnessed for agriculture. An intensifying dependence on oil , had rapidly become more profitable.

Consequently revenues from oil enabled the latifundist landed oligarchy to transform themselves into urban sector and financial “diversified conglomerates”. For example President Gomez himself:

“became the largest landowner in Venezuela and one of the wealthiest men in the continent. He took “exclusive contol of the soap, paper, cotton, milk, butter and match industries; he became the only meat supplier for the port of Puerto Cabello and other urban markets and was the major shareholder of the Compania Anonima Venezolana de Navegacion.”
Fernando Coronil, “The Magical State. Nature, money and modernity in Venezuela”; Chicago1997; p. 82

Gomez ruled as a complete autocrat, who:

“decided all key appointments, and “distributed rewards and punishments, and came to exercise personal control over every branch of his government”.
Coronil, 1997; ibid; p. 82

Land as concession lots for oil drilling became highly valued. An inevitable corruption ensued as:

“thousands of concession lots were acquired by more than a hundred companies through an intermediary system. Gomez granted leases to his favourite, probably for a “consideration” – and the favourites then sold them to the companies at exorbitant profits”.                                        
Coronil, 1997; ibid; p. 82

Meanwhile by the the late 1930’s the rural poor formed a mass of landless indentured labour. By 1940 there were 500 peasant syndicates with 100,000 members. They presented a call for “Land to those who till it” [Lindqvist Ibid p. 141]. Moreover a growing working class centered on oil – especially in the region of Zulia – was angered at the foreign oil companies and their arrogances:

“the petroleum company practice of creating parallel towns for their work force alongside existing ones generated conflict and unleashed nationalist passions on the part of local residents in the oil state of Zulia.”
Steve Ellner; “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; 2010 Ibid p. 39

(vi) Increasing industrial oil development in Venezuela – control by the foreign companies – Development of the ‘Dutch disease’

In the closing years of the 19th century several Venezuelan governments tried to attract foreign investments to modernize industry and develop resources.

The story of Venezuelan oil and the state, from herein on becomes key to Venezuela’s history. The state becomes the key to development rather than any private land or industrial-capitalist concerns. Oil extraction and processing are “extremely capital-intensive and highly productive” capitalist forms (Wolfgang Hein, Ibid). The extraction and processing companies were generally first established by foreign companies, which form predominant links to the state machinery. That becomes the source of capital accumulation – not agiculture or local industry. A situation develops where:

“Because of the oil revenues… the state – and the state alone – disposes of effective financial means to support an internal process of accumulation… even the other economic sectors do not mainly accumulate through the normal capitalist process of squeezing surplus value from their workers, but accumulate in one way or another through the transfer of resources from the oil sector itself.”
Wolfgang Hein, Chapter 11. “Oil and the Venezuelan State”; in Ed Petter Nore and Terisa Turner; “Oil and Class Struggle”; 1980; London; p.229.

“The caudillist state as the owner of oilfields, acts like latifundists who have no interest in intensifying the exploitation of their lands because they cannot consume a higher income than they already earn. In contrast an incipient bourgeoisie will immediately start pressing the state to maximise the revenue available to support internal accumulation by asserting its power as a capitalist landowner. Economically this means that surpus profits are to a degree transformed into differential rent and appropriated by the state… Thus through the development of the oil sector itself, the oil companies lost one of their main allies within the country – the agricultural oligarchy – and left their other ally, the commercial bourgeoisie, in a somewhat ambiguous position.”
Wolfgang Hein, Chapter 11. “Oil and the Venezuelan State”; in Ed Petter Nore and Terisa Turner; “Oil and Class Struggle”; 1980; London; p.232

This transforms the nature of the antagonistic class relations that have built up.
A struggle arose between two main leading classes, and the coalitions they could build. These leading classes were wary that the developing working class, remained subservient and not independent. What were the two dominant classes?

First a comprador grouping, consisting of the conservative landed oligarchy, with foreign imperialists (first British, then American) and native business strata dependent on imperialism. But this becomes increasingly transformed into an oil based ecomy and land rent is based no longer on agriculture – but on oil. The landed oligarchy is transformed into a oil-dependent secondary industrial layer. Still wholly comprador.

The second was a modernizing national bourgeoisie. But this was a very weak bourgeoisie, and it was repetitively brought off. All its representatives in Venezuela would take the route of becoming collaborators of USA imperialism up to Hugo Chavez. In a series of flip-flops that ensued, the national bourgeoisis largely got bribed off and did not move to full nationalisation of oil.

Moreover another problem arose from the dominance of oil in the ecnomy where 90% of state revenue was from oil. Namely it impeded the development of other industrial branches. This is termed “the Dutch disease”:

“A fundamental feature of societies analyzed.. (by) “the mineral theory of growth” is that the income generated by mineral commodites is largely unrelated to the domestic productity of labour, and its high level, particularly during boom periods, has the “perverse” effect of inhibiting its dvelopment… often referred to as the “Dutch disease”… In Venezuela… one of the most vocal critics has been Arturo Uslar Pietri who as early as 1936 expressed concern that the nation might become a parasite of petroleum… and Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso.”
Coronil; 1997; Ibid; p.44

The term “Dutch Disease” arose as follows:

“The term was coined in 1977 by The Economist to describe the decline of the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands after the discovery of the large Gronigen naturla gas field in 1959. The presumed mechanism is that while revenues increase in a growing sector (or inflows of foreign aid), the given economy’s currency becomes stronger (appreciates) compared to foreign currencies (manifested in the exchange rate). This results in the country’s other exports becoming more expensive for other countries to buy, while imports become cheaper, altogether rendering those sectors less competitive.”
Wikipedia accessed 7 September 2024.

Below we outline key events in the development of the Venezuelan oil industry.

Oil was long known to the indigeneous Indians who used it medicinally (Fernando Coronil, “The Magical State. Nature, money and modernity in Venezuela”; Chicago1997; p.75). But by 1839 studies of its further economic potential were made in Venezuela.

An international interest in oil developed after the 1859 development of oil in Pennsylvania. The first potentially exploitable use in Venezuela of its reserves was by Dr Gonzalez Bona, in La Alquitrania, from its form as a tar. He formed Petrolia del Tachira, with General Baldo and Gonzalez Rincon, which collapsed in 1912 for lack of funds. Asphalt was then produced from the Guanoco Well by the New York and Bermudez Company by concession, who also produced oil illegally.

But quickly Venezuela’s potential began to intensify foreign interest. Because of the USA’s support against the English-German navies, the USA was already in pole position. Coffee remained the main export until 1925.

President Gomez rapidly developed the oil economy. But he had converted the state apparatus into his own personal fiefdom and giant cash cow. He did this by granting concessions to foreign companies and by waiving all duties on imports and exports.

First benefits went to John D Rockefeller’s New Jersey based ‘Standard Oil’. But an early rival to the USA in South America was the Royal Dutch Shell. Led by Sir Henry Deterding it bought up 51 per cent of the shares of the Caribbean Petroleum Company. (p.21 Betancourt Ibid) Deterding called it “our biggest deal” (Coronil p.80). By 1939 Standard Oil and Shell would control 85% of oil extracted in Venezuela (Fernando Coronil, “The Magical State. Nature, money and modernity in Venezuela”; Chicago1997; p. 76).

Under the Mining Law of 1909, the companies were given unlimited access for a minimal tax of Bs 2 per ton of oil and Bs per hectare of land (Coronil Ibid p. 78).

But while Venezuela’s comprador-landed oligarchy, and foreign imperialists controlled the economy and the division of petro-profits, the working poor descended further and further into poverty, misery, and squalor.

Even in its earliest days, some sections of the Gomez government wished to challenge the companies. In 1917 Gumersindo Torres, as Minister of Development, began to point out how in the USA, rising land rents had enabled USA landowners to negotiate against the USA oil companies. Torres tried to introduce a new law to reduce future exploitation by placing a maximum of 30 years on oil-land concessions. Torres also tried to annul the concessions of the Caribbean Petroleum Company and concessions to Rafael Max Valladares for the Venezuelan Oil Concession Company.

In 1920 laws established only an average of 9% royalty on the oil being exported. As Torres phrased it:

“The companies exploited the petroleum and the government paid them for carrying it away”;                                                                                     Coronil; Ibid; p. 82.

Gomez placated the companies, as we saw – since he derived considerable personal revenue from the deals. Since Torres was not popular with the oil companies – he had to go:

“As a result of pressure from the oil companies and from the British and US embassies, particularly the latter then in the hands of the very aggressive
Mr. McGoodwin, Gumersindo Torres was removed from office.”
Romulo Betancourt; “Venezuela, Oil and Politics; Chapter 1 in “The Venezuelanization of Oil”; Boston 1978; p.19

The Petroleum Law of 1920-22 was drawn up by three USA oil firms to ensure their control. However, a small but determined national bourgeoisie for decades continued to struggle against USA hegemony. Until they also were brought off.

By the first quarter of the twentieth century, Venezuela was the world’s largest oil-exporting nation and industrialization and modernization continued apace. Cheaper Venezuelan oil (than Mexican drilled) was even being imported into Mexico for refining. (Daniel Yergin, “The Prize”; Ibid; p. 255).

A major development took place in 1923, when the Compania Venezolana de Petroleo SA (CVP) was created. It now monopolised all sales of land concessions, removing this right from individual landowners. This siphoned even more into Gomez’s coffers. But at the same time it created a single entity that was state controlled, which became a source of revenue for all future governments to control. Thus developed the sought after goal of all future governments – who would gain from the profits of oil?

In 1928 oil production took off, with 100 million barrels of crude oil being exported. Now the prior main agricultural exports – coffee and cocoa – fell off.

All political parties that had expressed any disagreement with Gomez were banned, persecuted with its leaders jailed or driven into exile.

But – finally Gomez died in 1936. This set various factions of the thus far suppressed national bourgeoisie, and the communists – free from overt suppression.

Many exiles returned after the death of Gomez.

(vii) The major political parties in Venezuela at this time

Before proceeding, we discuss the major relevant parties. We outline these as follows, starting with the parties of the bourgeoisie including the FEDECAMARAS (Venezuelan Federation of Chambers and Associations of Commerce and Production).

We spend a little more space on the working class party that was initially the role of the Communist Party.

Parties of the national bourgeoisie at their foundation
The national bourgeoise had found the reimbursements from the oil companies too low and wanted more. They were organised as parties or movements as follows.

Union Republicana Democritica (URD) was a small social democratic party.

It was later eclipsed by AD (See below). Most representatives of the national bourgeoisie were organised out of the so-called ‘Generation of 28’ who had in 1928 organised a resistance against Gomez, and were arrested or banned from university. They went on to form in 1936 in the following three organisations:

The ORVE (Movimiento de Organizacion Venezuela);
The Bloque Nacional Democratico (BND) was founded in Maracaibo – a center of the oil industry – by members of the ORVE.
In 1941 – the BND went on to form the Accion Democratica (AD).

Both BND and AD were led by Romulo Betancourt.
During his exile Betancourt had been a leading member of the Communist Party in Costa Rica.

These representatives of national bourgeois capital, became bribed off by higher revenues and never moved to nationalise the oil companies.

Openly Comprador Parties
Christian Democrats – or COPEI (Comite de Organizacion Politica Electoral Independente).
This was formed by elements close to the Church, and its original statement of principles was “inspired by the social teaching of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and embraced democracy, pluralism and social reform.” (Wikipedia Sep 7 2024).
This became abundantly clear after their victory in the 1978 election of President Luis Herrara Campins. He invited the large USA auto companies into Venezuela and undermined the developing infant of the Andean pact (Coronil p.276-7). It was the COPEI President Rafael Caldera who much later pardoned and released Hugo Chavez from jail, enabling his election in 1998.

FEDECAMARAS (Venezuelan Federation of Chambers and Associations of Commerce and Production

The working class at its foundation
The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) represented in its early years, the working class. As revisionism took a hold of the party, it came in time to represent the national capitalist class.

But it had been illegal since 1931 under Gomez. According to a special commission of the Central Committee of the PCV, headed by Eduardo Gallegos Mancera it was only founded in 1937. However that view minimises its pre-history:

“Eleven years of struggle against the tyranny of Juan Vicente Gómez, the participation of Venezuelan communists in the VI Congress of the Comintern (1928), in the First Latin American Communist Conference and the Latin American Trade Union Congress (both in 1929), the attempt to form the PCV with the help of the Comintern delegation in 1931, and even the participation of Venezuelan delegates in the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935 and the admission of the PCV to the Third International by this Congress. The cell of Venezuelan communists (the Continental Revolutionary Group) born in exile had a lot of influence within the Venezuelan Revolutionary Party and maintained strong links with the Communist Parties of Mexico, Cuba, the United States, the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas and the Comintern”
Victor Jeifets, Lazar Jeifets; “International insertion of the Communist Party of Venezuela, 1943-1990”; ‘Izquierdas’; Santiago; Issue 52 (Apr 2023): 1-34.

Under the war-time government of President Medina Angarita the persecution of the communists was suspended, which allowed many Communist exiles to return for a period:

“The Medina Angarita government suspended the persecution against trade union militants and allowed the return of the exiles deported in 1937, established diplomatic relations with the USSR, joined the coalition of the Allies against the Axis countries, finally repealed the constitutional amendment that did not allow communist activities, thus opening the way to legalize the PCV.“                                
Victor Jeifets, Lazar Jeifets; Izquierdas; 2023 Ibid

There were prior splits with the formation of ‘Partido Communist Venezolano Unitario (PC VU)’ under the Macado Brothers (Gustvo and Eduardo). However this is not within the scope of this article.

But it is relevant to note the wartime proposals of the revisionist Earl Browder of the CPUSA. The PCV fell quickly under Browder’s influence, and proposed its own liquidation into a broader liberal party. This was under the eladership of Juan Bautista Fuenmajor and Ricardo Martinez:

“Venezuelan Browderist Ricardo Martínez called on the PCV to understand the “difficult situation of President [Isaías] Medina [Angarita]” and proposed the slogan “With Medina against reaction”, and even proposed dissolving the party to help the head of the executive power.”
Victor Jeifets, Lazar Jeifets; Izquierdas; 2023 Ibid

“In Venezuela, Fuenmayor advanced Browderist concepts in his pamphlet, “The Role of the Working Class and Communists in the Current Era,” in which he proposed the formation of “party of a new type.” Since Medina had promised the Communists legal status, the underground PCV should transform itself into a loosely-knit socialist party”.
Steve Ellner; “Factionalism in the Venezuelan Communist Movement, 1937-1948”; Science & Society , Spring, 1981, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 52-70

Charges that this was at the behest of “Stalin” the CPSU(B) are incorrect:

“This approach was later harshly criticized by the Argentinian communist Victorio Codovilla, considered to be the voice of Moscow within Latin American communism.”
Victor Jeifets, Lazar Jeifets; Izquierdas; 2023 Ibid

In fact this was the ‘Browderist’ perspective, emanating from Earl Browder General Secretary of the CPUSA, who took the step to dissolve the CPUSA into a ‘People’s Front’. Such steps were actually endorsed by the Cuban Communist Party which had an influence over the PVC.

What had Earl Browder suggested in 1944? As Bill Bland outlined:

“In 1944, the leader of the Communist Party of the United States of America, Earl Browder, initiated the adoption by the Party of a totally revisionist programme. He presented the agreement between the Soviet Union and the Western imperialist powers at Teheran as an indication that interclass antagonisms had been eliminated, and that American capitalism could be peacefully transformed into socialism by class collaboration through the institutions of “American democracy”. Browder further put forward the view that:
” . . . the two-party system provides adequate channels for the basic democratic rights”,

so that the existence of the Communist Party had become an obstacle to national unity!

Under Browder’s leadership, the 10th Convention of the CPUSA in May 1944 dissolved the Party and reconstituted it as the ‘Communist Political Association’, the aim of which was to carry on ‘political education’ to make the public understand that the peaceful transition to ‘socialism’, through the nationalisation of monopolistic enterprises, was socially desirable.”
Bland W.B.Bland “Georgi Dimitrov: Tool Of Imperialism”; for Compass Mar. 1994 No. 112; Communist League; citing Earl Browder, in: Philip J. Jaffe: ‘The Rise and Fall of Earl Browder’, in: ‘Survey’, Volume 18, No, 2 (Spring 1972); p. 50).

Jaques Declos (“French revisionist politician (1896-1975); Secretary, FCP (1931-64); Vice-President, National Assembly (1936-40); Senator (1959-79)“ published what came to be called his “letter” – attacking Browder for revisionism:

“In the April 1945 issue of ‘Cahiers du Communisme’ (Notebooks of Communism), the theoretical journal of the French Communist Party there appeared, under the title ‘On the Dissolution of the Communist Party of the USA’, an article attributed to the leading French communist Jacques Duclos* and highly critical of Browderism. The main points of his criticism were:
“Earl Browder declared, in effect, that at Teheran capitalism and socialism had begun to find the means of peaceful . . . collaboration in the framework of one and the same world. . . . Earl Browder drew political conclusions . . . that the,principal problems of internal politics of the US must in future be solved exclusively by means of reforms, for the expectation of unlimited inner conflict threatens also the perspective of international unity held forth at Teheran”.
(Jacques Duclos: ‘On the Dissolution of the Communist Party of the USA’, Bland “Georgi Dimitrov: Tool Of Imperialism”; for Compass Mar. 1994  No. 112; Communist League. 

However, it was not something that had been written by Duclos. Bland points out that:

“Although the article bore Duclos’s signature, it was in fact written in Moscow, almost certainly under the guidance of Andrey Zhdanov”.
Bland Ibid; citing Philip J. Jaffe: ‘The Rise and Fall of Earl Browder’, in: ‘Survey’, Volume 18, No, 2 (Spring 1972); p. 59

Modern research corroborates this view:

“It had been drafted in the OMI (Dept of International Infomrational od the CC of the CPSU(B)… part of the Central Committee of the CPSU(B)”
Alexander Dallin and F.I.Firsov; “Dimitrov and Stalin 1934-1943. Letters from the Soviet Archives”;Yale 2000; p.258

Underlining that “Duclos’ Letter” had not been written by him, the French CP under Duclos reversed themselves. Under his leadership, the French CP had joined with the Italian CP in taking dissolutionist steps. Bland described how the Cominform was initially set up to expose the entire Browderite trends in the formerly Marxist-Leninist parties. In fact:

“A main political content of the first conference of the Cominform was a strong criticism of the revisionism of the French and Italian Communist Parties.
“The conference served largely as a platform from which issued forth vigorous, scathing criticism of opportunism, legalism, bourgeois parliamentarism and other such ailments with which the French and Italian Communist Parties were said to be afflicted”.
(Eugenio Reale: ‘The Founding of the Cominform’, in: Milorad M. Drachkovitch & Branko Lazitch (Eds.): ‘The Comintern: Historical Highlights: Essays, Recollections, Documents’; Stanford (USA); 1966; p. 26; p.254; Cited at W.B.Bland, “The Cominform Fights Revisionism “ ca. 1998)

“In his final speech to the conference, representative of the French Communist Party Jacques Duclos admitted:
“There was opportunism, legalitarianism and parliamentary illusions. . . If we courageously carry out this self-criticism before the Party, we shall arouse among the masses a state of mind favourable for the fight. The French people must be mobilised against American imperialism”.
Jacques Duclos: Statement at Cominform Meeting (September 1947), in: Philip J. Jaffe: ‘The Rise and Fall of Earl Browder’, in: ‘Survey’, Volume 18, No. 12 (Spring 1972); p. 57. Cited Bland Ibid

In Venezuela, the PCV had in fact rejected the Duclos letter of April 1945, published as an article in the Cahiers du Communisme. Thus the PCV was defending Browderism:

“Aquí Estai (Journal of the PCV- Ed) published statements of the Cuban and Colombian Parties, which censured Duclos and denied that his article had any relevance for Latin America. In an underdeveloped nation, they asserted, Communists formed an “anti-imperialist alliance” with the national bourgeoisie. Such a situation could never occur in the U.S., where the bourgeoisie and imperialists were one and the same. Thus although Venezuelan and U.S. Communists had both extolled their respective Presidents, the two cases were of an entirely different
different nature: Medina, unlike Roosevelt, represented a liberal bourgeoisie which was historically destined to strike heavy blows against imperialism.”
Ellner S, “Factionalism“; 1981; Ibid.

Moreover the PCV had an extremely optimistic view of the Medina government:

“The Venezuelan Communist Party debated whether or not publicly to denounce the Duclos article. The PCVistas feared that the article would abet the various schismatic Communist groups which existed throughout the hemisphere, and would encourage those reactionaries who accused the party of receiving direction from abroad. Also, by attacking Browder publicly Duclos had created an emotional climate before the former had a chance to meet the charges leveled against him. Aquí Estai published statements of the Cuban and Colombian Parties, which censured Duclos and denied that his article had any relevance for Latin America. In an underdeveloped nation, they asserted, Communists formed an “anti-imperialist alliance” with the national bourgeoisie. Such a situation could never occur in the U.S., where the bourgeoisie and imperialists were one and the same. Thus although Venezuelan and U.S. Communists had both extolled their respective Presidents, the two cases were of an entirely different nature: Medina, unlike Roosevelt, represented a liberal bourgeoisie which was historically destined to strike heavy blows against imperialism.”
Steve Ellner; “Factionalism..”; Science & Society ,1981, Ibid.

“The PCV characterized Medina as a representative of the “progressive
bourgeoisie,” which favored democracy and clashed with foreign
capital. The PCV’s support for Medina generated a split within its ranks
with nearly half of its members (known as the “Black Communists”)
leaving to form the rival United Venezuelan Communist Party (PCVU).”
Ellner S, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; Boulder Co 2010; p. 41

But just how progressive Medina – or the “progressive bourgeoisie” – were in fact, will be seen. Their approach to the USA government is discussed below in relation to the famous 50:50 agreement.

After the fall of the Medina Government, the various factions of the PCV joined in a Unity Congress to face the Accion Democritica’s coup. The Unity Congress took place in July 1946. But there in the presence of Cuban CP leader Blas Rocha:

“A minority bloc of militants headed by Rodolfo Quintero insisted that the re-constituted party bar from its membership the “Browderists” of the old PCV leadership… In an impassioned speech at the conference, Quintero hotly declared: “We have been fed the excrement of Browderism from Cuba.”
Steve Ellner; “Factionalism..”; Science & Society ,1981, Ibid.

By this stage it was becoming evident that the PCV leadership had become a pro-USA comprador class – shown by their own acceptance of the 50:50 rule – without pushing for complete nationalisation of the oil industry:

“The dissidents fervently denounced a profit-remittance plan which the old PCVistas had attempted to incorporate into the new party’s platform. The proposal required foreign investors to divert fifty percent of their Venezuelan profits to native businesses, under government supervision. The Quintero group warned that by channeling oil money into diverse enterprises, the scheme would only intensify foreign control of the economy – even though the government that administered the plan was anti-imperialist.”
Steve Ellner; “Factionalism..”; Science & Society ,1981, Ibid.

We will discuss the 50:50 rule and its true origin as being from within USA capitalism below. In the meantime the AD was busy plotting with military elements to take power:

“One of the most active segments was the “Democratic Action” party formed in 1941 by the former member of the same PCV and the CP of Costa Rica Rómulo Betancourt. On October 18, 1945 (less than a week after the legalization of the communists), the Political-Military Union (which had previously sealed an alliance with Betancourt) carried out a coup d’etat. The main achievement of the change of power was the convening of free elections.”                                  
Victor Jeifets, Lazar Jeifets; Izquierdas; 2023 Ibid

The Quintero faction of the PCV maintained correctly, that the:

“the inchoate bourgeoisie [since 1945] has not developed on its own, but in close dependence on foreign capital, and along with the latifundia class, cannot be considered a consequential factor in the struggle against imperialism.”
The dissidents maintained that the Venezuelan CP now gave its allegiance to the AD government. According to them Acción Democrática, in spite of the revolutionary that it inherited from the PDN, was doing the bidding American capitalists.”
Steve Ellner; “Factionalism..”; Science & Society, 1981, Ibid.

The PCV argued that the “progressive national bourgeoisie” continued to hold power in the government after the October 1945 coup.

The Quintero faction left the PCV founding the Partido Resista (Comunista) [PRP]. However they became extremely sectarian thereafter and disrupted the trade union movement also.

By 1950 the PCV and other Communist fractions were banned in the country:

“On May 14, 1950, the PCV was banned and several communist leaders were imprisoned or deported from the country, among other prisoners, we should highlight Jesús Faria, the oil leader and member of the Secretariat of the CC of the PCV (in 1951 he was elected President of the Communist Party (without being present at the party event), who spent eight years in jail.”                        
Victor Jeifets, Lazar Jeifets; Izquierdas; 2023 Ibid

No faction up to the time of the 1990s seems to have been clearly a MList embryo party.

(viii) A short relevant digression: Imperialists and their oil companies draw lessons from the Bolivian and Mexican Path

The experience of other nationalist oil-producing countries who had struggled with the USA oil companies, was watched carefully in Venezuela. It merits a brief digression. In Bolivia and Mexico, both countries had nationalised the oil companies in 1937-8. But the ensuing battles had made the Venezuelan bourgeoisie wary of entering such a fray.

Interestingly the USA and its oil companies had also learnt some lessons from the Mexico experience. In retrospect they were wary of repeating their own costly, intransigence in Venezuela.

In truth the USA government had become less fearful of nationalisation in many countries of Latin America. Because the USA learnt that enabling nationalisations – by a docile bourgeoisie – was a strategy by which the USA could defang the nationalists. It would also persuade the working classes of that country to more readily accept restrictions on its wage demands. This strategy was coupled with bribing of key nationalist politicians, enabling control over the raw material (in this case oil) needed for imperialist super-profits.

For example the first such nationalisation was in Bolivia, where George Philip described the “official USA reaction to an earlier nationalisation”:

“of Standard Oil of Bolivia in 1937. Here the expropriation was of symbolic importance only, since the properties taken over were worth very little indeed to Jersey Standard. In this case, as with Mexico, a policy of simple defence of US property could not easily be reconciled with a further objective of Washington’s foreign policy which became increasingly important towards the end of the 1930s: the elimination as far as possible of Fascist influence within Latin America. A hard line against Bolivia, it was feared, risked driving it into the arms of Nazi Germany. Consequently, the US intial response to the Bolivian seizure was mild, limited mainly to an expression of regret and hope that friendly discussion would resolve the issue. The Department of State did not question the legality of the seizure decree and the subsequent decisions of the courts, nor did it pass on the company’s claims or insist on any specific means of settlement. The department did, however, take the position that the company was entitled to some form of compensation. “
George Philip, “Oil & Politics in Latin America”; Cambridge 1982; p. 57

However it was in Mexico that the oil companies and the US Government underwent a swift learning curve. At first they were very antagonistic to notions of Mexico nationalising oil.

This antagonism was first directed against the 1917 Constitution by President Venustiano Carranza (1917-1920). Because of this, the relevant article was stalled. It was only enacted in 1938 under President Lazaro Cardenas (1934—40):

“After a gap of 21 years the 1917 Constitutional article that had been adopted by the revolutionary Mexican government under President Venustiano Carranza, was finally achieved. Namely the nationalisation of the oil industry under President Cardenas (which)… did much to institutionalise the Mexican Revolution as Lazaro Cardenas looked for support beyond the small secular elite which had triumphed under Carranza. He organised the Mexican working class and peasantry and incorporated his supporters into the Revolutionary Party. The oil nationalisation of 18 March 1938 was one of the high points of his programme and Mexican politics subsequently evolved in a far more conservative direction…
The framing of the 1917 Constitution whose Article 27 claimed national ownership of the Mexican subsoil and first embodied the Mexican perspective which lay behind the eventual expropriation…
The radical provisions of Article 27 became part of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, no Mexican president before Cardenas proved willing to confront the oil companies, although Carranza himself went close to the brink. “
George Philip, Ibid; p. 201; 204

Why had there been such a delay of 21 years?

Initially the oil companies hostility was supported by the USA government. They fought against nationalisation. They supported the comprador Alvaro Obregon Salido (President 1920-1924) in his putch. In 1923 Obregon signed the Bucareli Treaty giving the U.S.A significant oil rights.

However he was assassinated. General Francisco Plutarco Elfas Calles became President (1924-1928). Nationalist sentiments remained staunch:

“In 1919 Carranza did make an effort to translate Article 27 into law, but he faced determined opposition from the companies and the USA and appeared to draw back from confrontation. Before the situation could develop further, Carranza was overthrown by Obregon, who showed far less interest in pursuing the oil question. However, when General Elfas Calles came to power at the end of 1924, he appeared ready to radicalise the Mexican Revolution.”
George Philip, Ibid p. 204

But Calles also ‘balanced’ other views:

“Calles had to balance his administration between a pro-US and national
development wing led by Pani and a more nationalist wing led by Morones. “
George Philip, Ibid p. 205

Calles himself admitted that:

“the Government of Mexico had never wanted to confiscate any property, least of all did they want to confiscate the oil properties; that they needed the revenues, and obviously ‘they did not want to commit suicide’, that the act of 1925 was a most necessary piece of legislation at the time because the country was in considerable disorder and there was an extreme radical wing whose interests had to be met in that legislation, that he had thought the grant of the 50-year old right as good as a perpetual right to take out the oil, and that such a grant would satisfy every practical purpose, but that the oil companies had not co-operated with him at all, but in fact their representatives had boasted all over Mexico that they did not need to obey the laws of Mexico”…
It is a striking fact that the us oil companies seriously considered financing Calles in his conflict with Cardenas in 1935.”
George Philip, Ibid p.205, 208

While Calles vacillated – and was likely bribed by the USA – the pressure for nationalisation grew:

“figures like Joaquin Santaella, Vasquez Schaffino, Aquiles Elourduy, Gonzales Roa and Manuel de la Pena, active in the Technical Commission set up by Carranza in 1915 … demanded stricter control over the exploitation of oil. Voicing their opinions through the Boletin del Petroleo…
The strength of this view increased as it became more and more clear that the oil companies were switching their interest to lower-cost Venezuela. In fact, Mexican oil production, which had increased sharply between 1916 and 1921, fell back subsequently despite continuing foreign investment activity and declined sharply after 1926. By 1931 Mexican oil exports had effectively lost all international importance. “
George Philip, Ibid p. 210

This set-back of Mexican oil, fueled attempts to diversify as the growing national bourgeoisie searched for opportunites to profit:

“The period following 1924 saw in Mexico a deliberate attempt to foster domestic industrialisation. As a consequence, there grew up something of an industrial bourgeoisie, which in many cases stemmed directly from the revolutionary political elite.“
George Philip, Ibid p.213

Like Calles, his sucessor Cardenas was not so keen to nationalise the oil companies. Cardenas simply wanted more control and revenue from them. But he contended with more determined nationalists than he himself was, including Lombardo Toledano, of the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM):

“There is clear evidence that Cardenas was interested in exerting state
control over the oil industry, but it is equally apparent that he would have preferred to do so gradually and quietly; it is likely that he would have been satisfied with establishing effective government control while stopping short of outright expulsion of the foreign companies… Some of Cardenas’s advisers, notably General Miigica and almost certainly Lombardo Toledano, were more radical in oil (and indeed other) matters than Cardenas himself; in the eyes of the British, Miigica ‘was in violent opposition to all of the companies’. “
George Philip, Ibid p. 215

Now the oil workers entered onto the scales. But the oil companies became even more rigid as trade unions entered the fray. An increasingly vocal trade union opposition to the companies, demanded higher wages. Opposition to the oil companies mounted:

“By 1934 there were some 10,000 oil-workers grouped together in 19 different unions. Under Cardenas, however, determined efforts were made to federate oil-workers into the STPRM (Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros de la República Mexicana) and thence into the CTM which had been set up in 1936 under the leadership of the pro-Communist Lombardo Toledano. The original aim of the organisation was to strengthen the position of Cardenas in his conflict with Calles. Following the defeat of Calles, however, the CTM continued to be important… there is no doubt that the CTM and Lombardo himself came to play key roles during the Cardenas presidency. “
George Philip, Ibid p. 215

But the companies dug in. They confronted and insultingly rejected Mexican calls for reasonable pay scales for workers. Even when Cardenas attempted face-saving compromises:

“In September 1937 the US government made its first diplomatic representation on behalf of its oil companies. Moreover, it became increasingly apparent during the course of 1937 that the oil-workers were no longer (if they ever had been) under effective political control…
The militant labour activity of 1936 had led to a withdrawal of investment and the Mexican balance of payments position had become discouraging. In 1936 the government began efforts to get a loan from New York and future financing of this kind naturally required an accommodation with the oil companies. This was a further argument against confrontation. In late 1937, therefore, several attempts at compromise appeared to come from Cardenas himself.”
George Philip, Ibid p. 220-221

Cardenas nationalised the companies.

The USA government learnt from this experience, that it would be easier and in the long run wiser to appear to cooperate with the ultimately pliable, and buy-able national bourgeoisise.

Even the British Foreign Office understood that the oil companies had been unhelpful, bullying and corrupt:

“In 1926 a British Foreign Office official complained that the oil companies’ ‘main idea of negotiation appears to be bluff, with graft if bluff fails’; sunce then they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Under these circumstances, expropriation was the only way in which national sovereignty could be defended. The Mexican nationalisation resulted above all from the claim to effective national sovereignty.“
George Philip Ibid; p.225

The situation became non-negotiable and Cardenas proceeded with nationalisation.

All antagonists in the fight – the USA government, the oil companies – and other nationalist governments – learnt various tricks through the Mexican experience.

What had the oil companies and the USA government learnt?

i) Their first choice remained to have a comprador bourgeoisise that was completely subservient to the USA. But given the likely development of a national bourgeoisie that would challenge them, they needed other tactics.
ii) Remaining openly obstinate and hostile to the national bourgeois representatives was not a viable solution in the longer term;
iii) At worse for themselves, they could ‘tame’ a national bourgeoisie by the use of corruption; which might provide a barrier to its need to deal with the growing working class of that dependent nation.
iv) Ultimately despite the noise they might make, the national bourgeoisie could be turned into an ally by adequate finance and bribes.

What had the national bourgeoisie of other countries seen?

The main lesson was to frame goals as being a restraint on oil industry – rather than as an out-and-out “nationalisation. This would be better tolerated by imperialists. The Venezuelan nascent national bourgeoisie learnt these lessons very well. By 1936, oil was dominant in the Venezuelan economy. Yet says Romulo Betancourt:

“There was no talk at that time of applying in Venezuela the courageously nationalistic methods of Lazaro Cardenas who in 1938 had nationalized Mexico’s oil.”
Betancourt Ibid; p.30

(ix) Selling the famous 50:50 mask of coopting the national bourgeoisie

We saw above that the oil boom of the 1920’s completed the transformation of the landlord class into a comprador bourgeoisie; and turned many peasants and most residual slaves into a proletariat.

Gomez had put in place a National Congress, and ensured who were the members. It was that body that elected Eleazar López Contreras president in 1936. Only a place-holder by and large, he was replaced by the National Congress five years later. Many exiles were allowed return.

In 1941, the Minister of war, Isaías Medina Angarita, was elected as the president. A well known novelist Rómulo Gallegos – was nominated as president by the PND (Precursor of the AD) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) – but failed.

During the Second World War, the military government of General Medina Angarita was supported by the Communist Party. Medina moved to obtaining concessions from foreign oil companies, which demanded a clampdown on oil workers. Strikes were forbidden.

Romulo Betancourt and Romulo Gallegos for the Accion Democratica, (Democratic Action AD; predecessor Partido Democratico Nacional (PDN) launched a joint military-civilian coup in 1944. They were joined by the COPEI and the UND.

Immediately after the war, the key oil event in Venezuela itself was the Petroleum Act of 12 November of 1948. This agreed to a 50-50 split of oil profits on the oil companies. Half of the profits would be go to the state. This is usually presented a great victory for the nationalists of Venezuela. However how this formula came about was not as various texts make out. That includes the writings of Romulo Betancourt himself.

Betancourt and most writers make the story one of a victory for Venezuelan nationalists who – forced the agreement out of the oil companies. In sharp contrast however, this strategy was devised by USA government ‘consultants’. The Venezuelan government had been referred to them by the high authority of President Roosevelt and his undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. It was they who engineered this agreement:

“All the main players – the Venezuelan and American governments, Jersey and Shell – wanted to work things out. To help facilitate matters, the US Undersecretary of State, Sumner Welles, took the unprecedented step of recommending to the Venezuelan Government the names of independent consultants, including Herbert Hoover Jr, son of the former President, who could help Venezuela to improve its bargaining position vis-à-vis the companies. Welles also pressed the British government to ensure that the Royal Dutch Shell went along. With the assistance of the consultants, a settlement was hammered out based on the new principal of “fity-fifty”, It was a landmark event in the history of the oil industry. According to this concept, the various royalites and taxes would be raised to the point at thich the government’s take would be about equal to the companies’ net profits in Venezuela. The two sides would in effect, become equal partners.”
Daniel Yergin; “The Prize”; The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power”; New York; 2009; p.417

Furthermore, these discussions “facilitated” by the USA had begun with the Medina Agarita government – and not by the self-glorifying government of Betancourt and Gallegos:

“the government of Medina Angarita (1941—5) decided not to continue bilateral negotiations. Instead, it turned to Washington and asked for assistance. The State Department proved helpful. For the Department, ‘the issue was the avoidance of any conflict between Venezuela and the oil companies that would limit or diminish the production of petroleum in wartime… the Department of State felt that it could not simply be a bystander when Venezuela and the oil companies appeared to be on the way to a repetition of the Mexican experience’.
Moreover, ‘the controversy was of nearly vital importance because Great Britain was at this time obtaining the major part of its oil requirements from Venezuela… at the insistence of President Medina, who refused to negotiate with Jersey Standard, Washington began to put pressure on the company, precipitating an internal crisis and a subsequent transformation of policy…
perceptions had been modified by the Mexican experience… Jersey Standard was willing to give the State Department a major role in helping to negotiate a settlement, and the other companies followed suit. Moreover, the final agreement, voted into law in Venezuela in 1943, according to US Under Secretary Welles, ‘went a good deal further than the oil companies had earlier believed to be necessary…
The ease with which the companies accepted these later changes may appear surprising after the internal conflicts surrounding the far milder provisions of the 1943 law; having strained at the gnat, the companies appear to have swallowed the camel. A part of the reason for this lay in the fact that profits taxes levied by Venezuela could be deducted by the companies from taxes paid to the us government, so that they were in fact little worse off.”
Philip George Ibid; p. 63-65

In the meantime General Medina’s government was brought down by the coup of the Accion Democracia (AD) acting in concert with elements of the army. Hence the negotiations with the US government were then completed and signed by the AD Government.

It is very likely that the US government was involved with this, since they wished to attempt to limit the degree of conessions being made to the Venezuelan national bourgeoisie. They knew their man. Romulo Betancourt later openly revealed that outright nationalisation was not deemed possible:

“There was no talk at that time of applying in Venezuela the courageously nationalistic methods of Lazaro Cardenas who in 1938 had nationalized Mexico’s oil.”
Philip George Ibid; Ibid.

The first full elections in 1947 led to the liberal writer – Romulo Gallegos – becoming President, in alliance with Romulo Betancourt. Their social-democratic party was verbally aimed against the comprador oil interests and the foreign owners.

Presenting this 50:50 solution to the people of Brazil was facilitated by the social-democratic government that was now placed into power. The Minister of Development, and later Minister of Oil – Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso committed to the prior “50:50” negotiations with the oil companies. Namely the ‘solution’ that had been suggested by the USA “consultant”. This was as we saw above, none other than Herbert Hoover Jr.

Looming in the background was an increasing class militancy of the oil-workers. Naturally the AD fended off the PCV trade union influence:

“Arthur Proudfitt took over in Venezuela as head of Creole (the Jersey subsidiary) in 1945 and immediately set himself the aim of reaching a long-term accommodation with AD… worked hard to increase the employment of Venezuelan nationals in skilled and managerial jobs; at the end of 1948 out of a total workforce of 20,500, 19,000 were Venezuelans and the company wages bill was proportionately lower… Proudfitt’s most important moves, however, came in his relations with the workforce. Following the Mexican nationalisation, labour relations had become a particularly sensitive matter for the companies. The Communist Party after 1945 worked hard to try to stir up labour militancy in the oil industry throughout Latin America as part of a coherent anti-American programme and was fairly well placed in the Venezuelan workforce. However, AD were major trade union rivals of the Communists and had the advantage of controlling the government as well as a rival union of oil-workers. Consequently, after some initial hesitation, Creole worked with Shell and the AD government to eliminate Communist influence by building up their opponents. “
Philip George Ibid; p. 65

Unsurprisingly the Gallegos government was very helpful to big oil:

“According to Fortune, the new (AD) government encouraged the formation of a federation of some forty oilworkers unions, which included a flock of Communist-inspired demands that were frighteningly reminiscent of the [Lombardo] Toledano expropriation programme in Mexico. Creole, as the chief bargainer on the industry’s side of the table, responded by offering unexpectedly liberal wage and benefit gains while firmly rejecting all demands involving an invasion of management prerogatives. In the showdown the government backed Creole’s position, and the workers came out with 1946 and 1948 contracts granting total wage and benefit gains of 86%, but no seat in the board room.”
Philip George Ibid; p.66

By this time, 65% of the state revenue was derived from oil.

However a mere 12 days after the 50:50 bill was published – on the 24 November 1948 – a coup overthrew Gallegos’ administration. That government had lasted only three years. The military leaders who had allied with the AD civilians, and the USA – had obtained what they needed. That is to say the nationalist sentiment in the country was satisfactorily assuaged by this ‘victory’ of the AD government. The workers had been temporarily appeased. The compradors could more openly take the saddle again.

(x) The 1948 Rule of Perez-Jimenez

Now General Marcos Perez-Jimenez came to power, in alliance with Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez.

Civil liberties were suspended, and political parties and trade unions were banned, and wide-sweeping arrests made.

Betancourt, Perez Alfonso and Gallegos were arrested and sent again into exile.

In 1950 Chalbaud was murdered. Perez-Jimenez became dominant, and then the President. His military government represented the open comprador oligarchy and the United States, from 1948 to 1958.

During this period, the oil companies won further international victories against “oil nationalists”. In 1952, Iran’s Prime Minister Muhammed Mussadiq nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1952. But this was reversed when in 1953, Mussadiq was deposed by the Shah Pahlavi of Iran supported by the USA and UK.

As to be expected, foreign ownership of the Venezuelan economy remained firmly rooted. In 1956 and added 8,217 square kilometers were given as consessions to US and Anglo-Dutch companies – for $685 million a year; and in 1957 an added 5,188 squre kilometers for $370 million (Pierre Terzian,“OPEC: The Inside Story”; London 1985; p.75).

US investors accounted for 65% of foreign investment in Venezuela, and owned more than three-fifths of the petroleum industry, all of the iron-mining industry, and leading sections of local manufacture, commerce, banking, utilities and insurance.

A wave of large protests swept across the country. The AD and the PCV continued to develop democratic movements in opposition to the Perez-Jimenez government.

When the oil workers came on strike in 1957, Perez-Jimenz was under siege.

(xii). The AD Betancourt Government

The overthrow of Perez-Jimenez, took place at the hands of a rival military cabal – representing national capital. The “Patriotic Junta” (Junta Patriótica) in 1957 – the United Front of the AD, the PCV and URD and COPEI – took control.

By this stage, it should be clear that it was no longer possible to accept that the AD were the representatives of the national bourgeoisie. They had already participated with the USA government in obtaining the 50:50 agreement. In reality rather than the myth it was sold as, it was a major concession to the USA.

Admiral Wolfgang Larrazabal Commander in Chief of the Navy led a coup forcing Perez Jimenez to flee to the USA. He promised to hand over power to whoever won new elections.

Together the AD, the COPEI and the URD (Democratic Republican Union) undertook the Punto-Fijo Agreement to respect the elected president. Commitments were made in the Agreement to consult with the leaders of the church, the business organization FEDECAMARAS, and the armed forces – before decisions concerning them were made. Indeed the USA was represented in these conisderatiosn since:

“the multinational oil companies joined the business organization in 1959.”
Ellner S; Rethinking…” Ibid p. 61.

However Betancourt in secret insisted on barring the PCV from the Punto-Fijo Agreement. The AD intent was made apparent:

“The AD wanted a rapprochement with the US… at least a way of reassuring the oil companies and the bourgeoisie who tended to see Betancourt and Perez Alfonso as “reds hungry for nationalisations”.
Pierre Terzian “OPEC” 1985; Ibid; p. 77

It is interesting that Hugo Chavez praised not only the Medina Government but also the Perez-Jimenez government. Ellner argues this is because Chavez is himself from the military:

“Chávez.. and writers associated with his government, laud Medina and condemn the 1945 coup. Looming behind these contrasting assessments are distinct attitudes toward the Venezuelan military. AD always identified itself with the civilian movement dating back to 1928 that confronted military rule. Chávez, on the other hand, whose cornerstone strategy is a “civilian-military alliance,” has had positive words for various military rulers including General Pérez Jiménez.”
Ellner S, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics“: Ibid p. 40

The Punto Fijo Agreement inaugurated two decades of pro-USA comprador policy presided over by the re-elected Accion Democratica, (Democratic Action AD) under President Romulo Betancourt (1959-1964). In what Chavez labelled as “the Fourth Republic” of Betancourt and his successors, Venezuela became a major pro-USA force.

Betancourt had essentially switched sides, he was now a comprador representative for the USA. By 1976, he and his successors had left the Venezuelan oil industry in complete ownership of the USA companies.

Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso again became Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons. He moved in the second AD cabinet, to largely create OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). But already the USA strategy of quietly “enabling compliant oil-nationalists” to take control had taken root. In 1960, “oil nationalists” were hijacked by stooges of the USA including the Shah of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Betancourt did not support the Minister of Oil – Perez Alfonso, who wished to go further. Perez Alfonso resigned his government post.

Naturally the USA received Betancourt into the bosom of Washignton:

“Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had praised Venezuelan
dictator Pérez Jiménez and his openness toward foreign capital, predicting that if followed by the rest of the continent “the danger of communism in South America . . . will gradually disappear”. 

In August 1958, Eisenhower drew considerable attention in Latin America when he enthusiastically received the new Venezuelan ambassador and for the first time explicitly called for the establishment of representative governments in the continent. Subsequently, Dulles’s replacement, Christian Herter, committed Washington to “all of the public support we can give” to the recently elected president Rómulo Betancourt, whom he had admittedly once considered to be a “leftist”. Relations between the two nations became even closer under President John F. Kennedy, who developed a personal friendship with Betancourt and visited Venezuela in December 1961. Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger Jr. –  that many in the administration considered Venezuela “a model for Latin American progressive democracy.”
Steve Ellner; “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid; p.51

Betancourt’s policies were later – by and large – followed also by President Carlos Andrés Pérez (AD 1974–1979), Luis Herrera Campins (COPEI 1979–1984), and Jaime Lusinchi (AD1984–1989). US academics fell over themselves to praise Betancourt for:

“isolating Cuba from the Latin American community of nations including his proposal for Organization of American States–imposed economic sanctions.” (and his) “hard line against the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), which influenced it to take up arms against the government in 1962… The PCV’s increasing isolation… demonstrating “the degree to which a government of the democratic left . . . can undercut the bases of a Communist Party”… (and the) AD’s moderate economic reforms, including government intervention in the economy, high tariffs, and land distribution with compensation… the AD government had become the “major experimental center” for social-democratic policies in Latin America..”
Steve Ellner; “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p.52

Indeed Betancourt sabotaged Fidel Castro’s participation at the Organization of American States (OAS) at the foreign ministers’ conference at Punta del Este in Uruguay in January 1962. Opposed to the democratic governments of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile – which resisted USA pressure – Venezuela became Kennedy’s prime Latin American spearhead against Castro. Soon after a manufactured “find” of arms on an isolated beach in Falcon, “triggered the exit of the left-leaning URD from the coalition government.” (Ellner Ibid; p. 62).

Revenues of the state from oil increased, even though the revenues were a pittance compared to the profits of the imperialist companies. Betancourt made sure that the Oil companies would not be threatened, even if a new State oil compnay was started:

“Washington insisted on the system of import quotas on oil and
refused to provide Venezuelan petroleum a preferential or “hemispheric”
treatment, as was proposed by Betancourt’s minister of mines Juan
Pablo Pérez Alfonzo….
Betancourt ruled out the possibility that the state-owned Venezuelan
Petroleum Corporation (CVP), which he founded in 1960, would compete
with private capital, adding that “the very modesty of working capital
assigned to it indicates how limited its objectives are.” In order to
calm the fears of the World Bank regarding government intentions to
develop an independent productive capacity, the CVP signed service
contracts with foreign oil companies for the exploitation of its oil fields,
while its principal objectives centered on fiscal activity.”
Ellner Ibid p. 61

While Perez Alfonso swallowed his disagreements, other AD ministers were also in disagreement including CVP president Rubén Sáder Pérez. Under Betancourt’s virulent anti-communism a faction of AD split off to form a “Fidelista faction of AD” becoming the “Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) in 1960.

But the economic boom benefited the privileged, as over 85% of Venezuela’s population sank below the poverty level.

Much vaunted Land Reforms were certainly well received – by the landed; and human rights violations rocketed:

“Norman Gall, … in 1973, Gall argued that the… land reform of 1960.. benefited not so much the peasants as the landowners, who received the lion’s share of the two billion dollars spent on the program…
human rights violations … graphically impact(ed) public consciousness. Flagrant cases spanned the entire post-1958 democratic period: during the guerrilla years of the 1960s; the decade of the 1970s…
The Minimum Program, which was the sequel to the Punto Fijo Pact, recognized the right of the church to set policies for its own schools, the property rights of landowners in the countryside, and the “primordial function” of the private sector in the economy…
As president, Betancourt faced insurgencies spearheaded first by
pro–Pérez Jiménez officers in 1960 and 1961 and then the PCV and MIR on the left. Leftist-inspired military uprisings in Carúpano and Puerto Cabello in early 1962 signaled the beginning of a guerrilla movement that spanned most of the decade. Betancourt’s repressive policies were reflected in the phrase “Shoot first and ask questions later,” attributed to his interior minister Carlos Andrés Pérez.”
Cited Ellner Ibid p. 56; 59-60

Policies of his successors may have alleviated some repressions. Caldera (COPEI) Administration in particular took a different tack. Notably Caldera amnestied leftist guerrillas and legalized the PCV in 1969 and the MIR in 1973. Just as importantly he re-began tentative anti-USA oil company steps:

“Caldera’s oil policy, which paved the way for nationalization, also invited criticism from the oil companies. Most important, COPEI congressmen voted in favor of the MEP-sponsored Reversion Law, which gave the state control of all petroleum company assets in anticipation of the expiration of oil concessions in 1983. Caldera also nationalized the gas industry and established reference prices in which the government set official export prices for oil and iron. In addition, under Caldera Venezuela became a member of the Andean Pact in 1973 over FEDECAMARAS’s objections. The private sector feared that the move would discourage foreign investments, undermine trade agreements with the United States, and place the nation at a disadvantage because of its higher salaries and overvalued currency. Finally, Caldera, who earlier in the decade had adamantly opposed diplomatic recognition of the nations of the socialist bloc, established relations with Hungary in 1969 and the Soviet Union the following year.”
Ellner Ibid: p. 69

(xiii) Carlos Andres Perez

In the first Government of Carlos Andrés Pérez (AD 1974–1979), he moved left to calm the waters. AD’s Carlos Andres Perez was elected in 1973 pledging to ‘nationalize’ the oil industry:

“Pérez’s assumption of the presidency coincided with the sharp rise in oil prices triggered by the Arab oil boycott. Pérez in 1974… requested emergency powers… to “transform the economic structure of the nation.” The breadth of the Pérez government’s state interventionism in the economy in the form of social programs, promotion of economic development, and measures inspired by economic nationalism had no equivalent in the post-1958 period. … Pérez announced the nationalization of the oil industry, whose concessions were due to expire in 1983… he also made known his policy of “full employment”… introducing legislation providing all workers with severance payment benefits and establishing tripartite commissions to determine the causes of layoffs in an attempt to enhance job security and seniority. Finally, the Fifth Plan of the Nation… encompassed massive public investments in the steel, aluminium, and electricity sectors in the Guayana region under the direction of the state-run Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG).”
Ellner; Ibid; p.72

Indeed the oil industry was nationalised in 1976, but with generous compensations. Crucially all marketing was left with the foreign companies. Moreover, Perez began ‘inducing’ foreign capital to invest in ‘downstream’ sectors of the economy. But Perez backed down ultimately:

“Pérez accepted the incorporation of article 5 in the oil nationalization law, which opened the possibility of mixed companies consisting of private and state capital as long as PDVSA had the controlling share. Support for article 5 came from conservative sectors, including Betancourt, who argued that “we are in an interrelated world and no one can strive for exclusively national decisions”.
Ellner Ibid p. 74

The social-democratic (AD) President Jaime Lusinchi tried to severely cut back on already meager social services. But urban unrest and rising labor militancy pushed back.

Table 2: Some main oil developments up to 1945

(xiv) The IMF Precipitated Crisis

The oil boom ended in the early 1980s, and world oil prices plummeted, especially in 1986. Now the true meaning of the massively disproportionate emphasis on oil revenue – to drive the economy – started to become clear.

This left Venezuela facing a decline in real wages of 40%, and a huge foreign interest on debts load of 25 billion in 1984-1988 (80% of the total foreign debt of 30-32 billion).

In the second Carlos Andrés Pérez government (1989-1993), the high debt incurred by prior governments spurred IMF’s demands”. In 1989, the IMF forced an “austerity” program to guarantee the repayment of Venezuela’s national debt. Perez performed his “el gran viraje, ‘the great U-turn”. In this he violated his prior promises not to bow to the IMF.  In 1992, Pérez moved the Privatization Law, which allowed privatization of key industries, and:

“The Pérez government also removed restrictions on foreign investments in Venezuela, resulting in multinational penetration of diverse sectors such as financial institutions, gasoline retail, and fast-food restaurants.” Elmer “Rethinking”: Ibid p.92.

Bowing to the IMF, petrol prices and other commodities soared. As costs of bus tickets dramatically rose, rage erupted in the “Caracazo” – or Caracas rebellion.

To stop massive street demonstrations martial law was imposed, and at least 2,000 protestors and dissidents were killed. A civilian group “Patriotic Front” is led by Luis Miqilena of the busdrivers union. They made contacts with disaffected military members including Chavez. Elements in the army belonging to the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement–200 (MBR-200), formed by Hugo Chavez in 1982, were repelled by the instructions to suppress the February 27 disturbances by heavy-handed force.

Hugo Chavez was then a graduate of the national military academy, and already organising a conspiracy in the army for a populist coup. He made contacts with civilian leftists, but bided time. Rising to the rank of Colonel in the paratroop corps, in 1992 he attempted to overthrow the corrupt Perez regime. The attempt was quashed and Chavez served two years of jail sentence for subversion.

While in prison, Admiral Herman Gruber Odrema, launched a second coup attempt. That was also quashed. But this clearly showed a split in Venezuelan ruling circles, some realising the need for changes. Perez was forced out of office on corruption charges, and convicted and jailed for fraud, graft, and influence peddling.

In 1995, interim president Ramon Jose Velazquez handed over power to elected president Rafael Caldera. Heading a multi-party government including the AD and the MAS – Caldera failed to prevent foreign take-overs of banks and prosecute 322 Venezuelan bankers who stole bank capital and the Caldera bailout money – fleeing to the USA (Ellner “Rethinking..” Ibid p. 101).

Caldera’s plan then also swerved to implement IMF plans of austerity. Coming to an accomodation with the IMF the:

“President permitted the foreign takeover of Venezuela’s vulnerable banking institutions in accordance with the recently passed General Law of Banks, which lifted restrictions on, and discriminatory treatment against, foreign capital…. the government… privatized the steel company (SIDOR), attempted to privatize the aluminium industry, and sold the state’s remaining share of the telephone company (CANTV)… he deepened the partial privatization of the oil industry, known as the “Oil Opening,”.. In 1995, however, Caldera sought congressional approval for a new Oil Opening program known as “Shared Profits”… turning over to mixed associations of private and public capital the unexploited fields that had not been thoroughly explored by PDVSA. The state’s share of ownership in these companies was limited to between 1 and 35 percent, thus raising fears of loss of national control…
In 1996, the Caldera administration adopted orthodox economic
policies known as the “Venezuela Agenda,” a turnabout that facilitated
an agreement with the IMF… adopting plans for the rapid expansion of the oil industry.. (while).. failing to comply with OPEC-imposed production quotas.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p. 100-102.

All this met with the approval of the excutives of the national oil company PDVSA:

“PDVSA executive … Caldera-appointed president of PDVSA, Luis
Giusti, called for the sale of minority stock in his company to the private
sector. .. an eight-page advertisement in Time published on July 21, 1997, was entitled “Opening the Door to Foreign Investors: The Venezuelan Oil Opening.” Assuring… that the plans for the foreign exploration of reserves and the private ownership of gas stations and petrochemical operations would bring positive results and pave the way for the private sector’s takeover of the entire oil industry, thus constituting the “backdoor route to privatization.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p. 103.

Caldera pardoned Chavez in 1995, who in 1998 announced his candidacy for president. In 1998, Chavez was then elected to the Venezuelan presidency on a reform platform with 56% of the vote.

2. The Chavez Era: Chavez and the Fifth Republic Movement

Chavez proclaimed himself and his movement – the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), as the modern-day descendants of Simon Bolivar. Moreover Chavez publicly announced his support and admiration for the government of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Chavez’s reform agenda attracted the working class, urban poor, organized labor. His formula combined a populist appeal with nationalist and democratic demands. Chavez won the election by a huge margin.

His domestic program included a new Constitution, and significant oil industry reforms; and the state expropriation of large landed estates and unproductive agricultural lands, which targeted the remaining Venezuelan landed oligarchy:

“Chávez and his Fifth Republic Movement party (MVR) from the outset of the
presidential campaign presented the Bolivarian Alternative Agenda (in response to Caldera’s Venezuela Agenda), which defended state intervention in the economy, state control of the oil industry and other basic industries, and a negotiated moratorium on the foreign debt. Nevertheless, during the 1998 campaign and particularly after the moderate MAS endorsed his candidacy, Chávez increasingly emphasized the holding of a constituent assembly.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; p.105

Naming his campaign the ‘Movement for the Fifth Republic,’ Chavez promised sweeping reforms, and an end to administrative corruption. He accused previous rulers as having squandered Venezuela’s oil wealth in the service of foreign imperialism.

His opponents joined in a United Front for the elections of 1998 that faced his own united front:

“Venezuelan politics became polarized between the government coalition Patriotic Pole, consisting of the MVR, MAS, Homeland for All (PPT), and the PCV, and the opposition led by AD, COPEI, Project Venezuela, and the newly founded Primero Justicia party. One feature of polarization during the Chávez presidency was the unity of the parties of the opposition and the submergence of differences between them. Polarization dated back to the 1998 presidential elections when Project Venezuela’s Salas Römer and AD’s candidate Luis Alfaro Ucero concentrated their attacks on Chávez.”
Ellner S; “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid; p.111.

(i) After his election Chavez faced huge obstacles:

The opposition certainly did not die down after his electoral victory:

“Few elected governments… faced such sharp confrontation and polarization over such a prolonged period, or met with such a multitude of powerful and hostile forces. The adversar¬ies include Venezuela’s major corporations and business groups, the U.S. government and the Organization of American States (OAS), the Catholic Church hierarchy, university authorities, and the news media, in addi¬tion to the traditional political establishment and labor unions. A brief list of hostile actions includes an attempted coup in 2002, promoted by business interests and backed by the United States; a two-month national lockout in 2002–03; waves of paramilitary urban violence from 2002 to the present; and the refusal of the opposition and its allies to recognize official electoral results, even those certified by international observers.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro
Monthly Review / October 2017; p.1-14

However despite this, Chavez survived in power. Not only that but he made some significant forward steps for the working and toiling classes – short of revolutionary change:

“In November 2001 when the government enacted a package of forty-nine special laws, which was designed to reverse the neoliberal trends of the 1990s and which signaled a radicalization of the Chavista movement. The two most important laws dealt with the oil industry and agrarian reform. The Organic Hydrocarbons Law established majority government ownership of all mixed companies in charge of primary oil operations in order to reverse the neo-liberal inspired Oil Opening program of the previous Caldera administration. Under the Lands Law, idle land was subject to expropriation (article 42) while owners of underutilized land were given two years to grow crops in accordance with a national plan and were obliged to pay a special tax.”
Ellner, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics“; Ibid; p.111-112

The trade union, the Workers’ Confederation of Venezuela (CTV) had from 1961, taken an increasingly right wing position. They took common positions with FEDECAMARAS – of the business elite:

“The prolonged alliance between FEDECAMARAS, the CTV, and the parties of the opposition was unprecedented in Venezuelan history… The radical content of the forty-nine laws spurred FEDECAMARAS into breaking with this tradition. Like the Lands Law of 2001, agrarian reforms in 1945 and 1948 preceded military coups by just a few months. Indeed, the expropriation provision of all three laws placed in doubt the sacredness of private property rights and was thus a basic source of concern for the business sector in general (Collier and Collier 1991, 198). The Organic Hydrocarbons Law, which reversed the privatization of the oil industry promoted by top PDVSA leaders, also undermined the interests of powerful economic groups.”
Ellner, “Rethinking Venezuelan Politics“; Ibid; p.114

Opposition to the newly-elected Chavez continued. Members of the military, the oligarchy, and comprador bourgeoisie accused Chavez of leading Venezuela down a “Cuban-style” path. The reactionary backlash became earnest when President Chavez announced plans for land reform in November 2001. Large street protests demanding the resignation of Chavez appeared in Caracas.

From the Spring of 2002 onwards, violent street clashes between Chavez supporters and opponents were a daily event. Several military plots to overthrow Chavez were uncovered and foiled. But the bourgeois opposition remained firm in its demand that the Venezuelan president resign.

The crescendo of opposition peaked on April 12, 2002 in a military coup which temporarily unseated Chavez. Chavez was arrested by the military led by a reactionary wing, which was however opposed by many of the younger officers. The coup leaders appointed a ‘Transitional Government’ under the civilian Pedro Carmona.

However, a mass upsurge of grass-roots popular support turned out to battle the putsch. The poor and the people of the barrios’ came out to restore Chavez power.

After a tense two days, on April 14, Chavez was returned to power and the conspiracy was quashed. In the succeeding months, attempts at a ‘negotiated solution’ including one spearheaded by Jimmy Carter – failed.

The opposition called a nation-wide call to boycott income taxes. Meanwhile, the street confrontations continued. Venezuela’s working class and poor adamant in their support of Chavez, the bourgeoisie and oligarchy equally insistent on his ouster. Chavez, for his part remained firm that he would not surrender his mandate until, as per the nation’s constitution, a referendum. His rule from August of 2003 was supported in the elections.

Chavez was re-elected in elections of 2000, 2004 (being a ‘recall election” launched by the opposition) 2006, and 2012. Each time his portion of votes was over 50% – in 2006 being 63%. This support progressively later “emboldened Chavez”:

“By 2004 Chávez began to declare his government “anti-imperialist,” and by the following year he called for the definition and construction of a novel brand of “socialism for the twenty-first century.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p. 122.

Repeated waves of opposition included attacks on security forces sometimes with the aid of prior leftists including the Bandera Roja. (Ellner; “Rethinking…”; Ibid; p. 120).

But these outrages, as well as the more ‘discreet’ ones in the halls of government – also had the effect of propelling Chavez forward to adopt “more revolutionary phases”:

“economic elites in Venezuela have thus far made it through Venezuelan ‘Twenty-First Century Socialism’ relatively unscathed, thanks to a global rise in the price of oil (brought about in part by Chavez’s resuscitation of OPEC in 1998–2000). The ire of the elites, Wilpert argues, was triggered more by Chavez’s political and structural moves than by any ‘socialist’ economic policies. Bucking tradition, he refused to appoint industry-representatives to chair corresponding cabinet- and regulatory-commissions. Even worse for the oligarchs, the 1999 constitutional assembly resulted in potentially deep, if still ambiguous, changes to the state-structure of Venezuela. Two key examples were particularly damaging to the clientelist party-machines of the Venezuela’s ancien regime. The national assembly became a unicameral body, reducing access to lucrative government-seats in the legislative branch. Perhaps worse, the introduction of recall-measures for all elected officials introduced a degree of accountability considered dangerous in times of intense discontent with the established political class. These sorts of institutional reforms, Wilpert contends, enraged the right-wing opposition in Venezuela whose subsequent actions in turn propelled the political trajectory of the Chavez government from its roughly ‘populist’ origins through increasingly revolutionary phases along the road to ‘socialism for the twenty-first century’.
Donald V. Kingsbury; “Review Articles; “Review Articles”; Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 151–163 brill.nl/hima

These “revolutionary phases” however did not achieve full expropriation. Furthermore, he made – as even his supporters note – several “concessions”:

“the Venezuelan experience has demonstrated the need for socialists who reach power by electoral means to walk a tactical tight¬rope. On one side, in the name of pragmatism and in the face of ruthless adversaries, Chavista governments have found it necessary to make con¬cessions: tactical alliances with business leaders – whose support has of¬ten proved self-serving – and populist policies, including generous social spending, some of which have fostered corruption and squandered vital resources.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro
Monthly Review / October2017; p.1-14

Some commentators have even argued that it was in this time that Chavez began to visualise the need to “form a new bourgeoise”:

“The coup d’état of 2002 broke the ties of Chavismo with the “nationalist” or “progressive” bourgeois sectors that had gathered around Chavismo in the period 1994-2001, of which Miquelena was the emblematic figure. In a country with a rentier accumulation model, based largely on imports, overpricing, tax and tariff exemptions, access to preferential currencies and the various corruption mechanisms required by a bourgeois class with a commercial vocation (around imports), financial (legitimization of capital and expansion of usury and surplus value) and assembly (import of parts and inputs), this break with sectors of the “traditional bourgeoisie” left a vacuum that had to be filled quickly.                                                                                                                 This generated the “need” to form a new bourgeoisie that was structurally linked to the political project of the Fifth Republic, assuming for itself the accumulation model of the old bourgeoisie; this was the beginning of the decline of the radical nature of the Bolivarian project. This process, known as the economic project of the revolution, generated between 2002-2013 a new bourgeoisie, opposed to the old bourgeoisie due to its class interests.”
Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024: 

(ii) Chavez and oil

When Chavez took power, he was of course dealing with the long comprador legacy. He aimed initially to first restore state nationalisations, and defend some of the steps that Perez had taken:

“actions and programs such as the nationalization of gas, iron, and oil and the strengthening of state control of the aluminum industry in the 1970s were not completely reversed in the 1980s but rather had a long-term impact. Indeed, the anti-neo-liberalism of the Chávez government after 1998 was at first defined as the defense of many of the measures taken under Pérez’s first government and targeted for elimination by the neoliberals in the 1990s. Chávez’s policies along these lines included the maintenance of state control of the oil and aluminium sectors as well as the restoration of social security benefits, particularly the system of severance payments enacted under Pérez in 1974. Then, beginning in 2002, the government’s anti-neoliberal thrust led it to go beyond the original objectives of the 1976 nationalization of oil by consolidating the Ministry of Mines’ control over PDVSA and formulating new goals for the industry. Indeed, Alvaro Silva Calderón, Chávez’s minister of energy and mines, who was one of the architects of the industry’s nationalization in the 1970s, called the Law of Nationalization of 1975 “a crucial landmark in the process of nationalization” but one that awaited additional measures to deepen the transformation.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p. 85

But in February 2002, Chavez tried to reorganize the nation’s oil industry by appointing a new board of directors to the state-run enterprise.

The Venezuelan state oil company, Petroleros de Venezuela (PDV) was publically owned. But the computer system that runs and maintains the automated industry was not, being in the hands of a mixed public/private firm named Intesa. Its main branch was a multi-national computing consortium named the Science Application International Corporation(SAIC). The board of directors of SAIC included former CIA Directors John Deutsch and Robert Gates, former US Secretaries of Defense William Perry and Melvin Laird, ex-US National Security Council members Jasper Welch, Admiral Robert Ray Inman, and General Wayne Downing.

The incumbent oil executives had been appointed by Perez and baulked at Chavez’s proposed changes. They called for a ‘strike’ of oil industry managers. In reality this was a lock-out, and not a strike, but even with an eight week lock-out, it was unsuccessful:

“Although a majority of the unionized petroleum workers, including the president of the Federation of Petroleum Workers (FEDEPETROL) and several smaller oil-worker federations, refused to go along with the strike, it was supported by most of the industry’s upper-level employees. At a mass rally several days into the strike, when petroleum production had virtually come to a halt, Chávez declared “the hour has arrived to wage the great battle for oil” and he went on to attack the PDVSA executives who masterminded the shutdown saying that “the oil belongs to the entire nation, not just an elite.”
The shutdown in the rest of the economy was tantamount to a lockout, in that company owners closed their doors, making employee support largely irrelevant. In contrast, the foreign-owned steel company, SIDOR, and the state-run heavy industries of the Guayana region stayed open and thus the attitude of their workers was put to the test. Production in those companies continued as usual as the vast majority of workers rejected the strike call.”
Ellner; “Rethinking…” Ibid p. 119

The managers and ruling classes had wanted to force an enforced loss of wages on the working-class to push them into a revolt against Chavez. Producing some three million barrels a day of crude, oil was 50% of all Venezuelan state revenues. Of the total amount of oil produced, Venezuela exported 75%. Venezuelan oil made up then 13% of the total US oil supply.

Furthermore, progress was achieved in the policy of increased state “control” of certain key industries:

“Chávez advocated the assertion of state control over strategic sectors of the economy, including the nationalization of companies that had been privatized during the previous decade. Shortly thereafter, the government bought the controlling shares of the telephone company CANTV (from Verizon) and the electricity firm Electricidad de Caracas (from the AES Corporation). While the former company had been privatized in 1991, the latter had always been in private hands. Both AES and Verizon are US corporations, unlike the Latin American consortium consisting mainly of Argentine and Brazilian capital, which owns another key “strategic” company, the steel producer SIDOR, which the state had sold off in 1997. Significantly, the Chávez government did not target SIDOR for takeover in 2007, possibly to avoid friction with allies to the south. The Venezuelan government also assumed greater control over the oil industry by further reversing the neo-liberal inspired Oil Opening policies of the 1990s. Not only were foreign interests forced to accept the Venezuelan state’s 60 percent ownership of mixed companies founded in the 1990s, but their employees were transferred to PDVSA’s payroll.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p.128.

But at the same time, these areas were deemed exempt from control by workers and democratic communes from below:

“groups such as Marea Socialista argued for worker management of the new industries, but that’s not what happened. Instead, the government sought to manage them centrally, through the state, with the Labour Ministry hostile to the trade unions taking control of those nationalized sectors.”
Julia Buxton NLR 99; p.10; And see also Ellner p.129.

Moreover the nationalisation approach was not underpinned by a conscious industrialisation strategy to circumvent need for imports:

“after the election of 2006, the government moved into a third phase, characterized by growing state intervention in the economy and greater intolerance of internal ideological pluralism. The Chavista project became much more focused on nationalization, and far more dependent on oil-export revenues. Any pretence of building up the non-oil sector of the economy was abandoned. The nationalization process initially focused on key sectors of the economy, such as elec¬tricity and telecommunications, but then became more sporadic and ad hoc. The government never really had a strategy for managing the newly nationalized industries and distribution chains, or the huge liabilities it was taking on.”
Julia Buxton; NLR 99 Ibid; p.10

(iii) Land Reform

A progressive path continued in other ways, for example in land reform:

“In January 2005, on the anniversary of the death of nineteenth-century peasant leader Ezequiel Zamora, Chávez announced the initiation of an all-out war on latifundismo, thus signaling the opening of a new front in the revolutionary process. In doing so, Chávez invoked the 1999 Constitution, whose article 307 declares the system “contrary to social interests” and grants peasants and other agricultural producers “property rights.” In subsequent months, the government moved to break up large estates, some of which were owned by powerful Venezuelan and foreign capitalist groups. Far from being chosen arbitrarily or “from above,” these estates were targeted for land distribution in response to occupations by peasants who were
encouraged by article 307 and the subsequent Lands Law. In April 2005 a reform of the Lands Law authorized the National Land Institute (INTI) to proceed with land takeovers even while cases are in the courts..” ;
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p. 125

“the government’s negotiating strategy differs from the forceful agrarian breakup of revolutionary governments in Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba. The INTI has used a carrot-and stick approach in its negotiations with landowners. On the one hand, the Lands Law provides the government with the means to pressure latifundistas into cultivating idle land and turning over some of it to the agricultural work force. Thus the INTI invokes article 107 of the law, which defines latifundios as estates with less than 80 percent productivity and subjects “idle estates” to expropriation depending on their size and the quality of the land. … On the other hand, the INTI has demonstrated a degree of flexibility. The exact amount of land to be taken over and its location, as well as the amount of indemnification, depends on the landowner’s willingness to reach an agreement.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p. 125

By 2007 Chavez had converted the Chavista front into the single “United Socialist Party of Venzuela (PSUV). But some organisations did not join this party – including Podemos, the PPT, and the PCV.

(iv) Failure to diagnose the ills of the economy

Marxist-Leninists place much emphasis on the need for any economy aspiring towards socialism – to develop independent heavy and diversifed industries. Indeed this would be the key to independence from imperialism. And also, the key to avoiding the so-called “Dutch disease” that we discussed earlier.

Apparently the disease had metastasised and infected Venezuela. But Chavez and his allies failed to diagnose it – thinking that with “Chinese help” they were somehow immune:

“There was no serious critique of the Venezuelan economy, which is fundamentally a rentier economy based on oil…
Chávez and key figures in PDVSA and the energy ministry began to argue that the whole notion of a ‘resource curse’ was a myth: how could it possibly be a curse to have such abundant commodity resources? They thought they could use OPEC to lift oil prices and keep them sustainably high. Nobody anticipated then the huge increase in us domestic energy capacity, which has made it effectively self-sufficient, or the slowdown in the Chinese economy.
Julia Buxton Ibid; NLR p.11-12

“Venezuela’s economy… nonetheless remains characterised by the ‘Dutch disease’ and an over-reliance on imports for key necessities. Key steps toward the transformation of the Venezuelan economy have been made with an increase in the number of nationalisations (usually triggered by the demands of organised labour) in a few key sectors.”
Donald V. Kingsbury; “Review Articles; “Review Articles”; Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 151–163 brill.nl/hima

But those key steps were not solidified.

(v) Left swings under the pressure to resist right wing forces

Many observers have made the point that at the start of his presidency Chavez was no more than a social-democrat:

“When Chávez first came to power in 1999, he saw himself as very much a ‘Third Way’ leader: there was an orientation towards figures like Tony Blair and Anthony Giddens.”
Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May- June 2016 p. 8

Indeed, that is how Chavez painted himself in the interview with Tariq Ali cited in the Introduction. Chavez moved left as he and his allies began to see the depth of the opposition to their reformist positions.

“The government realized that it had underestimated the virulence of the opposition, and began to invest more time, effort and money in consolidating its support among the popular classes. That turn coincided with a strong increase in the oil price after 2004, so the Chavistas were well positioned to deliver real benefits to their core bloc of supporters.”
Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May- June 2016 p. 9

“Wilpert argues the hubris of the Venezuelan opposition lies behind the steady radicalisation of Chavez, following a strange dialectic of counter-revolution and revolt… the Bolivarian Revolution has faced reaction as a preventive phenomenon. The result, in Wilpert’s estimation, has been the transformation of Chavez from a nationalist reformer to a self-proclaimed social (and socialist) revolutionary.”
Donald V. Kingsbury; “Review Articles; “Review Articles”; Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 151–163 brill.nl/hima

(vi) Refusing to launch a full revolution Chavez walks the tight rope

Because ultimately, he refused to move to full expropriation and launch a full-blown revolution – he had to walk a tight-rope. Instead, Chavez opted to try to break the unity of the bourgeois forces:

“Chávez followed a tacit and at times explicit policy of giving preferential treatment to those businesspeople who had defied the traditional bourgeoisie by refusing to participate in the two-month shutdown. In doing so, he weakened the traditional bourgeoisie that had played the leading role in ongoing efforts to undermine the government.
The government’s distinction between the hostile traditional bourgeoi¬sie and a “friendly” emerging one has remained largely unchanged under Maduro. The former, grouped in Fedecámaras, the Venezuelan chamber of commerce has …. even negotiated with the Maduro government at a time when the opposition refused to do so … Fedecámaras has been any¬thing but impartial. Not only did it join the opposition to denounce and boycott the government’s election to select delegates to a Constituent Assembly this past July; it also indirectly supported opposition-called general strikes during the preceding weeks. As a show of solidarity with the opposition, member companies of Fedecámaras excused their employees from work during the “strike.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro
Monthly Review / October 2017; p.1-14

Compounding his problems was that corruption remained in high places of the Chavista ranks themselves posing a problem:

“In 2009, after insiders began to manipulate several financial institutions resulting in a banking crisis, Chávez or¬dered the arrest of several dozen of them. Ricardo Fernández Barrueco, the richest pro-Chavista business executive, and Arné Chacón, brother of Chávez’s right-hand man, and a veteran of the abortive 1992 coup linked to Chávez, spent three years in jail as a result.
But unethical behavior in Venezuela hardly came to a halt. One of Chávez’s most trusted ministers, Jorge Giordani, revealed in 2013 that $20 billion had been sold the previous year at the preferential exchange rate to finance bogus imports. Maduro failed to act on the allegation, despite promises to the contrary. But under his presidency, a Chavista governor, a mayor of the city of Valencia, and a president of a major state company were arrested on charges of corruption, and in 2017 several executives from the state oil company, PDVSA, in eastern Venezuela faced a similar fate. In early 2017 the ex-governor received an eighteen-year jail sentence.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro
Monthly Review / October2017; p.1-14

“Chávez and Maduro both promised to launch anti-corruption drives, but nothing was really done… great plans were drawn up, and money paid, for houses, hotels and factories that were never delivered. There was a vast haemorrhage of resources from every pore of the Venezuelan state, because there was no oversight or accountability. “
Julia Buxton Ibid; p. 13

Even some Chavistas criticised the lack of more concerted moves. But interestingly the PCV was not one of those. In fact the PCV saw Chavez as undergoing a “necessary stage of a truce” with the bourgeoisie:

“Luis Bilbao, a supporter of both Chavista governments, has expressed scepticism toward what Chávez called a “strategic alliance” with the private sector… Bilbao particularly criticized the “stage-based” approach of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV). According to Bilbao, the PCV sees the government’s alliance with supposedly non-monopolistic businesspeople as a necessary stage designed to achieve a “truce” with the bourgeoisie prior to moving ahead with socialist construction.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro
Monthly Review / October 2017; p.1-14

On the other hand, other Chavistas called for even more privatisation:

“leftists who favor closer ties with the bourgeoisie… Víctor Alvarez, a former Minister of Basic Industry and Mining, is among the most prominent advocates of prioritizing national private production by limiting imports and downsizing the state sector. Alvarez decried Maduro’s removal in 2016 of Miguel Pérez Abad as Industry and Commerce Minister, the only businessman in the cabinet, claiming that Pérez Abad irritated Chavista “dogmatists” by calling for the privatization of expropriated firms that incur heavy losses.”
Steve Ellner “Fragile Revolution” Monthly Review 2017 Ibid.

As Julia Buxton points out:

“A small group of very wealthy families have dominated Venezuela for the last century, and they did a remarkably good job of insulating themselves from the Bolivarian Revolution. Some of their property was nationalized, but for the most part it was the assets of foreign investors that were targeted. That social layer is so dominant that you either have to reach an accommodation with them or else nationalize—you can’t take a middle path, which is what Chávez and later Maduro effectively did.”
Julia Buxton NLR 99; Ibid p.12

(vii) Grabbing the Chinese rope

“China and Russia were reach¬ing out to new international trading partners; and left-leaning presidents began taking power elsewhere in Latin America—Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador. Chávez became far more active on the international stage, realizing that Venezuela needed to insulate itself from us pressure and forge regional alliances. Thanks to the oil price, they were able to create new organizations such as PetroCaribe and alba and fund regional initiatives like Telesur and Banco de Sur….
(Chavez saw) possibilities, with the oil price, the grow¬ing relationship with China and the perceived decline of us power.”
Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May 2016 p. 9; 11

He died in 2013 after having handed over his government to Maduro as became ill with cancer.

3. Chavez’s Inspirations and main accomplishments

(i) Early influences

We noted that Chavez had repeatedly cited Simon Bolivar as his driving inspiration. Chavez explicitly named his own campaign “Bolivarianism”. He also often cited other 19th century recolutionary nationalists like Simon Rodriguez (Samuel Robinson) and Esequiel Zamora.

But in addition, Chavez had also made links with several left-wing groupings and the trade unions, and was influenced by them. Indeed they may even have moved Chavez towards Bolivar himself:

“Figures such as Douglas Bravo and Nelson Sanchez introduced a young Hugo Chavez to Marxist-Leninism and encouraged him to pursue the political thought of Simon Bolivar as a means to conceptualise and organise national-liberation struggles in the context of the ostensibly ‘democratic’ puntofijo-system. Just as important in the decades-long process were the social and trade-union movements, whose opposition to the government predated (and were ramped up by) the caracazo in 1989.”
Donald V. Kingsbury; “Review Articles; “Review Articles”; Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 151–163 brill.nl/hima

Some of these forces had themselves had come out of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). Some had left as early as in the period of the Second World War, objecting to the influence of Browderism and class collaboration:

“In the USA General Secretary Earl Browder sought to replace his organisation’s revolutionary image with a patriotic non-combative one. He viewed the Teheran Conference in 1943 as signalling a period of reconciliation between Communist and capitalist nations. On that basis he revised the notion that the United States was an imperialist colossus bent on waging war and exploiting under-developed nations. As a way of dramatizing his new political approach, Browder dissolved the CPUSA and created the more innocuous-sounding “Communist Political Association.” Party Chairman William Z. Foster denounced Browder ‘s ideas within the organization’s National Committee, though the controversy did not filter down to the party’s lower ranks until April 1945. In Venezuela, Juan Fuenmayor (Secretary General of PCV ) advanced Browderist concepts in his pamphlet “The Role of the Working Class and Communists in the Current Era,” in which he proposed the formation of “party of a new type.” Since General Medina had promised the Communists legal status, in which he proposed the underground PCV should transform itself into a “party of a new type” – a loosely-knit socialist party”.
Steve Ellner; “Factionalism in the Venezuelan Communist Movement, 1937-1948”; Science & Society, Spring, 1981, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 52-70

The main objectors to this Browderist influence, left the party and were named the “Machamiques,” after Eduardo Machado and Luis Miqui. By 1998 after the Sino-Soviet split, many later splits from the PVC had developed into La Causa R founded by Alfred Maneiro. The Movieniento Al Socialismo (MAS) formed by Theodore Petkoff, also began as a split away from the PCV in 1970. (Gott 2011; p.126-7) Douglas Bravo in 1969 then produced the title of “Marxism-Leninism-Bolivarianism (Gott 2011; p. 94).

Many of these forces later coalesed to create a Popular Front called “Patria Para Todos (PPT) (“Fatherland for Everyone”” – itself a predecessor of Chavez’s own Patriotic Front of 1989 (Gott 2011, p.77-80). Many of these forces were to join the Chavista movements. Chavez had established links with many of them.

But other than Bolivar and other 19th century nationalists like– the main influence on Chavez was the revisionist 20th century philosopher Istvan Meszaros.

(ii) What is Hugo Chavez’s “21st century socialism”?

Chavez last re-election was in 2012, and quickly afterwards he he was calling for a “communal state”. He announced this in an October 2012 famous speech known as “El Golpe de Timón (“Strike at the Helm”) months before his death:

“Chávez surprised even some of his strongest supporters by his insistence on… “the communal state.” This was to accelerate the shift of power to the population that had begun with the formation of the communal councils (groupings of families involved in self-governance projects – in densely populated urban areas, 200-400 families; in rural areas, 50-100 families). The main aim in the new revolutionary cycle, he insisted, was to speed up the registration of communes, the key structure of the communal state. In the communes, residents in geographical areas smaller than a city unite in a number of community councils with the object of self-governance through a communal parliament, constructed on participatory principles. The communes are political-economic-cultural structures engaged in such areas as food production, food security, housing, communications, culture, communal exchange, community banking, and justice systems. All of this had been legally constituted by the passage of the Organic Laws of Popular Power in 2010, including, most notably, the Organic Law of the Communes and the Organic Law of the Communal Economic System.”
John Bellamy Foster, “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela”; Monthly Review; New York; 2015 Vol 66; Issue 11; 1-17.

Chavez now thought the communes were fundamental to the Bolivarian Revolution:

“What made the communes so important was that “Socialism Cannot Be Made By Decree.” The formation of socialism, Chávez stated, “is about creating, as Mészáros says, a coordinated combination of parallel systems and from there the regionalization, the initiative districts. But we still haven’t created a single one, and we have the law, we have our decree, but it was just a decree, and inside the initiative districts are the communes.”                                                                                                        How then to create the communes?
“A similar, integrated approach was to be directed at other areas of the Bolivarian Revolution. Chávez insisted “we must implant social property with the spirit of socialism…
But the core of the new cycle of revolutionary transition, Chávez insisted, was to be the creation of the communes upon which the future of the Bolivarian Revolution depended: “either the commune or nothing.””
John Bellamy Foster, “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela”; Monthly Review; New York; 2015 Vol 66; Issue 11; 1-17.

Recently we placed Karyn Pomerantz’s article (originally from Unity Blog) at MLRG.online. This extensively examines the commune movement launched by Chavez, and we do not need to re-address this. Here we merely cite what we consider as one of its main point:

“Venezuela Analysis described the communes as:
“democratic, assembly-based, self-government organisations in the territory with the long-term goal of assuming ownership of means of production and public services.”…
In 2009, Chavez Council told Council members:
“The commune should be the space from which we give birth to socialism,” we have to build the commune as a revolutionary entity, as a territorial, social, political, moral base…the commune is the space from where we are going to generate and give birth to socialism.” Socialism, he emphasized, could not be created from the office of the president or other institutions in the existing capitalist state. “It has to be created at the grassroots level,” he said. “It’s a creation of the people. It’s a creation of the masses. It’s a creation of the nation (MRonline).”

Comments Pomerantz:

“While it is critical that the working-class institutes socialism, there is no mention of revolution and the seizure of power. Venezuela still had capitalist industries. No capitalist has ever surrendered power and wealth.“ Karyn Pomerantz, “Workers Never Ruled Venezuela”;
The Multiracial Unity Blog; 8-25-2024; and MLRG.online

That Chavez often employed a high rhetoric to overcome scepticism about how to get to socialism is well known. Indeed he optimistically claimed that his view of socialism was as follows:

“Chávez declared that Venezuelan social¬ism was based on the principle of “to each according to their needs.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro Monthly Review / October2017; p.1-14

Left rose-coloured views of Chavez have viewed his movement as:

“a “sui generis revolution.” [‘one of a kind’ – editor].
Marta Harnecker, “Venezuela: A Sul Generis Revolution,” September 16, 2003, http://venezuelanalysis.com

Yet shortly after the commune movement was rolled out it seemed that not all was going well:

“More than any other program under Chávez, the balance sheet for
the new worker cooperatives is mixed. The cooperatives are heavily
dependent on the state. Government incentives include generous
amounts of credit with lenient terms of payment and exemption from all
taxes. The failure of mass numbers of state-financed cooperatives—due
to improvisation or, worse yet, misuse of government funds—has translated itself into the loss of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. While many cooperatives never got off the ground, in other cases cooperative members ended up pocketing the money received from loans or the down payments for contracts prior to the initiation of work.”
Ellner “Re-thinking Venezuelan Politics”; Ibid p.130

One Chavista when asked about the state of the communes today responded with:

“What is the current state of the communes?
Unfortunately, they are very weak in terms of participation, according to figures from the Ministry of Communes. Data on its website indicates that last year, only 20% of [the 3641 registered] communes had registered their Communal Parliament. That means the figure for other bodies, such as the executive, the economics committee, the planning committee, all those other structures generated by this space of self-government, is even less.”
Gerardo Rojas & Frederico Fuentes; “The end of Venezuela’s Bolivarian process? An interview with community activist Gerardo Rojas”; “Links” 9 September, 2024;

Rather than reiterating Chavez’s refusal to go towards taking state power further, we will move to consider from whom did Chavez draw further inspiration?

(iii) Chavez and Istvan Meszaros

Chavez placed much faith in István Mészáros’s “Beyond Capital”:

“Hugo Chávez referred to Meszaros as the “pathfinder” of twenty-first century socialism.”
John Bellamy Foster ;“Mészáros and the Critique of the Capital System, Foreword to The Necessity of Social Control”; Monthly Review, New York; Dec 01, 2014

“Chávez commenced by referring to István Mészáros’s Beyond Capital, not only in order to lay down certain basic principles, but also with the aim of once again urging those engaged in the Bolivarian Revolution to study Mészáros’s analysis, as the most developed and strategic theory of socialist transition:
Chavez: “Here I have a [book written by] István Mészáros, chapter XIX called “The Communal System and the Law of Value.” There is a sentence that I underlined a while ago, I am going to read it to you, ministers and vice president, speaking of the economy, of economic development, speaking of the social impulses of the revolution: “The yardstick,” says Mészáros, “of socialist achievements is the extent to which the adopted measures and policies actively contribute to the constitution and deep-rooted consolidation of a substantively democratic… mode of overall social control and self-management.” John Bellamy Foster, “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela”; Monthly Review; New York; 2015 Vol 66; Issue 11; 1-17.

John Bellamy Foster – Editor of ‘Monthly Review’ – tries to present Chavez’ path as flowing from Marx directly:

“Presenting an age-old principle of revolutionary theory, associated most famously with Marx, Chávez argued: “It must always be this way: first the political revolution, political liberation and then economic revolution. We must maintain political liberation and from that point the political battle is a permanent one, the cultural battle, the social battle.” The problem of a transition to socialism was then, first of all, a political one: creating an alternative popular, participatory, protagonist base. Only then could changes in economics, production, and property take place.”
John Bellamy Foster, “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela”; Monthly Review; New York; 2015 Vol 66; Issue 11; 1-17.

“This new popular base of power had to have equivalent power in the organization of what Mészáros called the necessary “social metabolic reproduction” to that of capital itself, displacing the latter. It needed, in Chávez’s words, to “form part of a systematic plan, of something new, like a network… a network that works like a gigantic spider’s web covering the new territory.” Indeed, “if it didn’t work this way,” he insisted, “it would all be doomed to fail; it would be absorbed by the old system, which would swallow it up, because capitalism is an enormous amoeba, it is a monster.”
John Bellamy Foster, “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela”; Monthly Review; New York; 2015 Vol 66; Issue 11; 1-17.

Bellamy Foster has written many articles on Meszaros, which in this author’s view, essentially contain a hero-worship of the revisionist. But Bellamy Foster does go on to make the point that Meszaros was explictly against the socialism represented by the USSR up to 1953, under Stalin. This view was certainly the view followed by Chavez:

“Chávez’s analysis was clearly rooted in Mészáros’s concept of “social metabolic reproduction.” The capital system, in this view, was an overall system of reproduction, a kind of organic metabolism… To create a genuine socialist political economy thus required instituting an alternative communal state, as the basis of social production and exchange; one that would have an organic metabolism that was as vital (indeed more vital since unalienated) as capitalism itself, basing itself on the power of protagonist democracy. As Chávez insisted in his “Strike at the Helm” speech, such a democratic-communal political organization, as an absolute necessity of socialism, stood in sharp contrast to the practice that emerged in the Soviet Union where “there was never democracy, there wasn’t socialism, it was diverted.” Hence, the goal in the transition to twenty-first-century socialism, he said, was to create “a new democratic hegemony which obliges us not to impose, but rather to convince.”
John Bellamy Foster, “Chávez and the Communal State: On the Transition to Socialism in Venezuela”; Monthly Review; New York; 2015 Vol 66; Issue 11; 1-17.

To summarise, Hugo Chavez was certainly not a Marxist. It is the case that he was a revolutionary bourgeois representative. As such he was to be supported by Marxist-Leninists, who however do so, also should point to his evident refusal to move the revolution forward to full expropriation of the bourgeoisie; and to the full state power of the working class.

4. The government of Nicolas Maduro

(i) Coming to power

Maduro grew up in a middle class family that was part of the labour movement. He went Cuba and learnt trade union organization. Returning to Caracas he worked initally as bus driver. As a member of the Transit Workers Union, he climbed its hierarchy.

In Chavez’s 1992 coup failed, and Maduro and his partner Cilia Flores, campaigned for his release. In 1999 Maduro became a member of the National Constituen Assembly and its’ lower house – the Chamber of Deputies. He became the National Assembley’s president until 2006. Then he was foreign minister.

In 2011, Chavez fell ill with cancer. In 2012 Maduro became vice-president.
Cilia Flores became Attorney-General. Chavez left for surgery in Cuba in December 2012, Maduro was at that stage his named political heir. Just before Chavez’s death in 2013, he named Maduro to follow him.

There were rival factions in the Chavez PSUV. One main one was led by a wing favouring the military (Diosbado Cabello) and the other a more pro-Castro wing represented by Maduro:

“His principal rival for power within the chavismo movement was the president of the National Assembly at that time, Diosdado Cabello, who was widely perceived as the favorite of the military, whereas Maduro was seen as having the support of Chávez’s pivotal ally the Castro regime in Cuba.”
Encyclopedia Britannica Maduro;  accessed August 2024

However an election narrowly confirmed his Presidential position later that year against Capriles. Although he soon faced the same right-wnig opposition that had greeted Chavez taking of the Presidency.

(ii) Early opposition to Maduro

The barrio (shanty-town) population stood by Maduro. The head of the opposition then was Leopoldo Lopez:

“During the first part of 2014 middle-class citizens in many Venezuelan cities took to the streets to protest his (i.e. Maduro’s -Ed) government. The country’s shantytown residents, however, stood with Maduro, and the military and police mobilized in support of him. By May the demonstrations ha waned. Even the imprisonment of Leopoldo López, the leader of the hard-line faction of the opposition, brought only limited protest. Emboldened, in July Maduro’s government incarcerated several high-profile critics.”
Michael Stott, Joe Daniels, and Vanessa Silva; “ How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; Financial Times March 5 2023 

Since then serious economic issues have forced cuts in living standards:

“The collapse in global oil prices has been devastating for Venezuela. Oil revenues account for approximately 95 per cent of export earnings, 60 per cent of budget revenues and 12 per cent of GDP. The country’s economy was thus overwhelmingly reliant on income from this sector, which the Chavistas had used to fund ambitious social programmes at a time when prices were consistently high in the mid 2000s. The fall in the oil price has been compounded by a decline in production levels; Venezuela’s oil export income fell by 40 per cent in 2015. The foreign-debt burden is substantial, having risen from $37 billion in 1998 to an estimated $123 billion in 2016, and the government is struggling to cover the cost of repayments. Drought has exacerbated problems linked to under-investment in the nationalized energy sector, causing severe blackouts and shortages in the country, which is dependent on hydro¬electric power for 70 per cent of its energy needs.”
Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May- June 2016 p. 7

The 2015 elections already showed an erosion of the popularity of the Chavez front:

“The Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) opposition front received 56 per cent of the popular vote, while the alliance led by the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) received 41 per cent. When that was trans¬lated into seats, however, the gap was much wider: 65 per cent to 33 per cent…
the PSUV appears to have lost a very important part of its core vote.”
Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May- June 2016 p. 5

It is quite evident that workers faced (and still do face) immense everyday problems:

“a system of exchange-rate and price controls that was originally imposed to deal with economic sabotage by the opposition in 2002–03 has remained in place and become pro¬foundly dysfunctional. The official three-tier exchange rate between the bolívar, Venezuela’s national currency, and the us dollar bears no relation to the black-market rate. Food, medicine and basic household goods are difficult to obtain at government-controlled prices; citizens must spend hours queuing, or resort to the black market, where the same goods can be obtained at a huge mark-up. The brunt of this crisis has been borne by the popular classes who supported Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in the past.”
Julia Buxton; “Venezuela After Chávez”; NLR 99; May- June 2016 p. 7

(iii) Maduro clamps down on working class organising rights

But thereafter Maduro claimed to continue Chavez’s path. Nonetheless, several parts of the Chavista united front have broken away:

“In recent months, as the nation’s political conflict has intensified, in¬creasing numbers of both Venezuelan leftists, such as the group Marea Socialista, which withdrew from the governing United Socialist Party (PSUV), and foreign observers have broken with the Chavista camp.”
Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro”:
Monthly Review / October 2017; p.1-14

This was undoubtedly at least in part due to the restrictions on the working class that Maduro brought forward. It seems these were in order to placate that wing of the bourgeoisie that Maduro was now wedded to. Overtures also began to the USA.

The restrictions on working class activity included Decree 2792 of 2018, which eliminates collective contracts and the right to strike, and the ONAPRE directive:

“In the second moment (2017-2024), the Maduro government strengthens and expands the processes of dialogue with the political right and the old bourgeoisie, but also, as is now known, opens a line of negotiation with the United States, at the same time as generating a set of measures that restrict the possibilities of influence of the working class and the subaltern classes in the correlations of forces. Decree 2792 of 2018, which eliminates collective contracts and the right to strike, the ONAPRE directive that ignores the acquired rights of a significant part of public employees, workers in education, health and other sectors, is part of a natural measure of containment and a sign of coincidences between the new and old bourgeoisie, to advance agreements with broad sectors of national capital and its political representatives. María Corina Machado and the bourgeois sector she represents seem to be… the sector of the old order that failed to fit into the 2018-2024 negotiation.”
Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024: accessed 10 Sep

Apparently, Maduro’s path still managed to win some approval at the 2018 elections, despite a record inflation rate of 14,000 percent. Those elections were denounced as a fraud. However as far as can be seen, full electoral polls were published at that time – just as legally required.

(iv) The illegal 2019 “Interim President” Juan Guaido plays open USA card

But even though Maduro was re-elected, conditions became even further difficult for the people as the USA under the Trump Presidency – and the EU – imposed severe sanctions:

“By 2018, Venezuela’s GDP had shrivelled to just $45bn, according to the IMF, making it one of the poorest countries in South America. Shortages of food, medicine and basic living items were widespread. Power cuts, water shortages and gang violence added to the misery. Despite inflation nearing 14,000 per cent, Maduro won re-election in 2018 in an election boycotted by the opposition and denounced by the US and the EU as a sham. President Trump imposed ever-tighter economic sanctions, cutting Venezuela off from the US financial system and banning US nationals from dealing with the state oil company PDVSA as part of a campaign of “maximum pressure”. Oil production nosedived. “
Michael Stott, et al “Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; Ibid; FT March 5 2023 

By January 2019, the opposition unilaterally, based in the National Assembly – declared an ”interim President” – Juan Guaido. While this was quite illegal, it was supported by the Trump USA administration:

“In January 2019, Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly launched a drastic intervention. It declared its head, Guaidó, to be Venezuela’s interim president, citing a constitutional clause allowing him to take power in the absence of a legitimate head of state. Guaidó’s slogan was “Yes we can” and his youthful telegenic appearance prompted comparisons with Barack Obama. He named an “interim government” and designated “ambassadors” overseas, as well as shadow boards to oversee billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets held abroad. The Trump administration, along with a host of right-leaning Latin American nations, swiftly recognised Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Maduro accused Washington of trying to stage a coup and broke off diplomatic relations. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets. Maduro’s days seemed numbered.”
Michael Stott, et al; “ How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; Ibid FT March 5 2023

Two failed confrontations later – Guaido had to be taken out of contention. First in February 2019, was a blockade of the bridge from Colombia where Maduro army forces prevented a US convoy (supposedly of ‘aid’). The second was a riot provocation accompanying Guaidó’s sudden appearance at a Caracas military base:

“Three Latin American presidents arrived to watch and Guaidó, now recognised as Venezuela’s interim leader by more than 50 countries, .. joined them. But Maduro’s forces had blocked the bridge with a shipping container and a tanker. As the trucks tried to advance, his forces launched tear gas. Protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and in the chaos, two trucks caught fire and scores of people were injured. The humanitarian operation was abandoned….
Two months later, Guaidó appeared outside a military base in Caracas calling for an uprising. Thousands of demonstrators came on to the streets but the military held firm, police cleared the protests with tear gas and the revolt quickly fizzled. It later emerged that the rebellion was part of a secret plan to induce several key figures in the Maduro government to switch sides. In the event, only the head of the secret police defected… Guaidó’s star waned. A botched attempt by a team of US mercenaries in May 2020 to invade Venezuela and kidnap Maduro added an air of farce. By last year, polls showed Guaidó was almost as unpopular as Maduro.”
Michael Stott, et al; “ How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; FT Ibid March 5 2023

In December 2022, a grouping of the opposition parties removed Guaidó as interim president, but chose a new figure to fill this role – Dinorah Figuera.
No doubt the opposition is fueled by the USA. It has orchestrated for example the use of social media:

“The traditional parties, AD and COPEI had effectively disintegrated, so the initiative passed to non-party forces, such as the media and the stu¬dent groups, to challenge the government. Student activists received generous funding from Washington through the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, in line with a general strategy to finance youth movements around the world. That has allowed some of the student groups to by-pass the stage of mobilizing and consulting … They were able to sustain activities and protests that wouldn’t have been pos¬sible without that external support. One of the big mistakes that the Chávez and Maduro administrations made was to ignore the social-media revolution. Venezuela has one of the highest rates of mobile-phone ownership in Latin America, but when things like WhatsApp and Twitter and Snapchat took off, the gov¬ernment just didn’t have a social-media strategy to counter.“
Julia Buxton Ibid NLR 99: p. 17

And Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo made open threats of “military options”:

“under President Trump, who has spoken casually of employing a “military option” against Maduro, newly appointed CIA director Mike Pompeo admitted to having worked with the governments of Mexico and Colombia to promote regime change in Venezuela.”
Ellner; Venezuela’s Fragile Revolution From Chávez to Maduro”; Monthly Review October 2017; archive.monthlyreview.org

(v) Maduro Chavistas move to a fraction of the less overtly pro-USA bourgeoisie

There seems to have been a general move by Maduro, to further “accommodate” the Venezuelan bourgeoisie. These go farther than even the steps we noted under Chavez. For example:

“The symbiosis between the private sector and the Bolivarian state has increased following a shift in President Maduro’s economic policies since 2018. After experiencing one of the world’s largest economic collapses without a war, followed by a series of sanctions by the United States, Venezuela’s authoritarian government has moved away from the “socialist” policies of Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and embraced a mild economic liberalization. This new approach has included the elimination of tariffs on several imported products, the lifting of price and exchange controls, and a de facto dollarization of the economy. Indeed, GDP grew again in 2022, before contracting slightly and stagnating again, and there was a small reduction in poverty according to the National Survey of Living Conditions (ENCOVI) prepared by the Andrés Bello Catholic University.”
Tony Frangie Mawad; “Opinion: Maduro, the elites and Venezuelan “perestroika”; June 2024; Nueva Sociedad.

In fact several reversals of nationalisation have taken place under Maduro’s rule, and less tense relationship with Fedecamaras has been noted:

“At least 48 companies created or expropriated during the Chavez government have been handed over to private companies in opaque concessions known as “strategic alliances,” according to the Venezuelan chapter of Transparency International. The return of Sambil, expropriated from the Cohens, is not the only case in which Maduro’s government has shown a friendlier attitude towards the “pre-Chavez” business sector: in July 2021, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez – who also serves as Minister of Economy, Finance and Foreign Trade – attended the Annual Assembly of Fedecámaras, the Venezuelan business chamber, for the first time”.
Tony Frangie Mawad; “Opinion: Maduro, the elites and Venezuelan “perestroika””; June 2024; Nueva Sociedad.

Portions of the local Venezuelan bourgeoisie have mobilised against the USA sanctions:

“These groups have also campaigned for the lifting of US sanctions against Venezuela. According to a survey by Fedecámaras, 81% of Venezuelan private companies say they suffer the effects of the sanctions, especially due to “overcompliance” due to fear of the consequences of their actions and the risk to their reputation. In fact, Adán Celis – the current president of Fedecámaras, who has referred to Rodríguez as “our beloved vice president” – began his term with an interview on one of the most listened to radio programs in the country, in which, in addition to calling Venezuelans in favor of sanctions “crazy,” he said: “ Obviously, the sanctions should be lifted. That has only impoverished the country. The idea is that by eliminating these sanctions we can have more fluid trade.”
Tony Frangie Mawad; “Opinion: Maduro, the elites and Venezuelan “perestroika””; June 2024; Nueva Sociedad.

Maduro increasingly reached out to this fraction and was less “timid” than Chavez’s attempts. Indeed as proposed by Luis Bonilla-Molina – It was a “test” that Maduro had to undergo. He had to “show the classic bourgeoise and the US” that he could control the workers movement:

“Maduro advanced in a line of work in which Chavez had been timid, agreements and pacts with the right. He strengthened the exponential division of the right and created back doors for dialogue with each of these factors, while promoting the return to their former landowners of lands confiscated by Chávez, suspended the policies of promoting recovered factories and created guarantees for financial capital, as a prelude to a bid to achieve meetings between the different bourgeois factions in dispute.
Maduro privileged dialogue with the right, progressively bringing the electoral left to its minimum expression, stripping it of its political instruments, thereby reducing its capacity for influence.
Maduro froze and rendered ineffective the progressive precepts of the Organic Law of Labor approved by Chávez, as a dual mechanism to stop the cycle of protests that began at the end of 2017 and, as a way of showing the classic bourgeoisie and the United States that he could achieve in terms of work, what the classic right could not guarantee.”
““Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024: at:

Not surprisingly, factions of the Chavista front have deeply criticised all this:

“The rapprochement has also generated criticism from sectors of dissident Chavismo and the radical left. The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), recently intervened by the Supreme Court of Justice, has accused Maduro’s government of being “neo-liberal” and “anti-worker.” “Maduro has undertaken a process that we call a new pact between elites with sectors of the newly rich, even with reactionary sectors of the right that have been the protagonists of episodes of violence in our country, such as Fedecámaras,” said Neirlay Andrade, part of the political bureau of the PCV. “The government is undergoing a process of negotiations that are not only political, but economic.”
Tony Frangie Mawad; “Opinion: Maduro, the elites and Venezuelan “perestroika””; June 2024; Nueva Sociedad

A view arises within the Chavista movment itself that:

“we have business chamber representatives as PSUV parliamentarians, and the head of the Caracas Stock Exchange saying the opposition represents instability (citing a website at Aporrea – ex-Chavistas – but controversial. For eg the CP Venezuela claims they are a “fifth column – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aporrea – Ed).
and suggesting it would be better to stick with what we have. When those are some of the spokespeople defending the continuity of Maduro’s government, it gives you some indication of the internal balance of forces and what the overriding political and economic tendency is within the government.
For these, and many other reasons, an important part of Chavismo no longer feels represented by this government.”
Gerardo Rojas & Frederico Fuentes; “The end of Venezuela’s Bolivarian process? An interview with community activist Gerardo Rojas”; “Links” 9 September, 2024; 

(vi) The fragmented bourgeois opposition to the PSUV

But in the elections of 2024 – “the opposition” was not simply that led by Maria Corina Machado – and Edmundo Gonzalez. Maduro had by this account come to an accommodation of some sorts with all – but Gonzalez and Machado:

“The candidates who are running under the opposition label are Daniel Ceballos (arepa digital) involved in the 2014 insurrection called “the exit” and pardoned by Maduro in 2018, Claudio Fermín (Solutions for Venezuela), a former militant of Democratic Action, who has acted in recent times with a political line associated with the interests of the government, Benjamín Rausseo Rodríguez (National Democratic Confederation – CONDE), comedian, who raises a program of market freedom, Luis Eduardo Martínez Hidalgo (AD, Red Flag -ex Maoists-, Republican Movement and National Electoral Union), Enrique Octavio Márquez Pérez (Centrados en la gente, REDES -ex chavista mayor Juan Barreto-, PCV) is a well-known opponent of Chavismo, linked to the MUD, Javier Bertucci (El Cambio) evangelical pastor who expresses Maduro’s new relations with the Protestant Christian sector, Antonio Ecarri (Alianza del Lápiz), who proposes a program of national adjustment and reconciliation and has held meetings in Miraflores with Maduro, José Brito (Primero Venezuela, Primero Justicia -intervened-, Unidad Visión Venezuela and Venezuela Unidad) who appears as a functional opponent of the government, Edmundo González Urrutia (PUD -without electoral card-, MUD and Nuevo Tiempo) is the candidate expressly supported by María Corina Machado
“Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024

(vii) Relations with the USA

We saw that Bonila-Molina suggested that Maduro was undergoing a test to display his worth to the USA. Thus not only has Maduro been playing footsie with the sections of capital that might be considered a part of the ‘national bourgeoisie’ – he, or his Oil Minister at least – have been making compacts with the USA. Despite the sanctions. Or perhaps precisely because of the sanctions.

There was an easing of sanctions under “General License 44” signed between Maduro and the USA in 2023, this was revoked in April 2024 (US Department of State (Office Of The Spokesperson, April 17, 2024. It is unclear as of yet, where this leaves the deal that was struck between the Venezuela national oil company PDVSA and the US giant Chevron. It seems that oil drilling by the USA company Chevron, that had been started back up continues till now – according to Chevron’s website and Bloomberg:

“Chevron Corp. restarted drilling in a pristine oil field in Venezuela in a bid to increase production…
Work has been under way at the heavy crude area of the Orinoco Belt since mid-February, people with knowledge of the situation said. The area represents Chevron’s best — and perhaps only — near-term opportunity to increase production in Venezuela as the other two oil fields operated by the company will start declining soon.
The work is part of a plan to drill as many as 30 new wells through 2025, the people said. The flow is expected to increase the overall production at Chevron’s three jointly run ventures with the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA by 35% to 250,000 bpd by 2025, leading to more supply shipped to the US…
The drilling is backed by a license issued to Chevron by the U.S. Treasury in 2022. … the license is seen as a layer of protection for Chevron and its Venezuelan suppliers. It gives the oil major an opportunity to raise production and continue exports to the US while prohibiting expansion to new fields…
Overall Venezuela oil exports to the US reached nearly 200,000 bpd in February, the highest level since November 2022, when the license was granted. Even so, the figure is half of what Venezuela exported to the U.S. before sanctions were first set in January of 2019.”
Chevron restarts drilling in Venezuelan oil field to increase production amidst looming sanctions
Fabiola Zerpa, Bloomberg March 07, 2024
Accessed 10 September 2024.

Surprisingly this was not to be accompanied by any fees or royalty to be paid by Chevron. It was signed by Tareck El Aissami – Venezuela’s Oil Minister under Maduro:

“Venezuela’s oil minister and top representatives of state-run company PDVSA on Friday signed contracts with U.S. oil firm Chevron Corp (CVX.N), opens new tab intended to help revive the nation’s oil output and expand operations.
The United States last week granted Chevron a six-month license authorizing it to take a broader role in existing projects in U.S.-sanctioned Venezuela, a move to encourage political talks between the government of President Nicolas Maduro and the country’s opposition towards elections.…
“This is an important step towards the right direction, but yet insufficient,” said oil minister Tareck El Aissami after the signing ceremony. “We demand the lifting of punishing measures that have hit our industry,” he added….
The license, which gave a green light to Chevron for trading Venezuelan crude in the United States, does not allow royalties or any other tax payments to Venezuela as a way to avoid proceeds from sales reaching Maduro’s coffers.”
Venezuela, Chevron formally sign oil contracts in Caracas
“Deisy Buitrago December 2, 2022; Reuters; Accessed 10 Sep 2024

(viii) Arrest of Oil Minister El Assami

But El Aissami – has been since then – “detained and accused of conspiring” with the USA:

“the Perdomo brothers – owners of the HP Construction Company, founded in 2012 – were arrested in March 2023 by the National Anti-Corruption Police after being linked by the Chavista Public Ministry to the so-called PDVSA-Crypto scam. This corruption scandal involving the “disappearance” of oil revenues handled by middlemen , which according to Transparency International and the consulting and research firm Ecoanalítica led to the loss of $16.6 billion , led to the arrest of more than65 officials and businessmen close to the once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was recently detained and accused, in addition, of conspiring with the opposition and the United States to overthrow Nicolás Maduro.”
Tony Frangie Mawad; “Opinion: Maduro, the elites and Venezuelan “perestroika””; June 2024; Nueva Sociedad; accessed 10 Sept 2024

It is possible that this was following a counter-attack of the most “hardline” opposition – led by Maria Corina Machado (MCM):

“But the rapprochement between Fedecámaras and the government was not well received by the hardline sectors of the opposition: María Corina Machado, at that time still critical of the electoral strategy and not yet converted into the most approved politician in the country, retweeted a consultant who claimed that ” in Nazi Germany, businessmen saw in their support for Hitler a way out of the economic and moral crisis that the country was experiencing after the heavy debt imposed on the Weimar Republic and increased by the crisis of 1929.” The comparison of Fedecámaras with Nazi collaborators was clear.”
Tony Frangie Mawad; “Opinion: Maduro, the elites and Venezuelan “perestroika””; June 2024; Nueva Sociedad.

Meanwhile the economy was tanking:

“In economic terms, the country lost 62 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2013 and 2019. In the same period, it went from being a limited democracy to an authoritarian regime. Mortality on a range of diseases skyrocketed, as did child and infant mortality (Page et al. 2019). Public services severely deteriorated, if not collapsed. Over 4 million people have fled the country in the past few years as a result of this crisis.”
Benedicte Bull; Antulio Rosales “The crisis in Venezuela: Drivers, transitions, and pathways”; European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe; No. 109 (2020): January-June, pp. 1-20; www.erlacs.org

5. Today’s Economy

An appropriate starting point in describing the economy might be from the view of the workers wages:

“Currently, the minimum wage in Venezuela is below five dollars per month and the average bonus salary barely exceeds 100 dollars per month.”
“Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024

All informed sources including both on the left and the right, agree that the GDP of Venezuela has fallen dramatically. The financial press as seen by the Financial Times (UK) shows this picture over the years form 2012 to 2020 for Venezuela – and comparative data from various other coutries in slighlty differing time periods as shown on the x-axis.
Values shown are as a function of a baseline for Veenzuela of 2013 as 100.

Figure 1: Real GDP, rebased to start of recession

Michael Stott, Joe Daniels, and Vanessa Silva; “ How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; FT Ibid March 5 2023 

No one disputes that there really is a problem in the state financing. Most sources agree that Chavez while in power was able to make reforms because of the high revenue of oil, but he made no provison for growth of other industry.

“Yet the nation’s finances were in a perilous position. Chávez had used an oil boom to fund a costly spending spree, embarking on giant construction projects in Venezuela and subsidising oil deliveries to woo Caribbean and Central American allies. Inflation was taking off. But instead of fixing the economy when he came to power, Maduro focused on shoring up his political base. From June 2014 the world price of oil, the backbone of the Venezuelan economy, fell sharply and the country plunged into recession. The government imported banknotes by the planeload, triggering hyperinflation.”
Michael Stott, Joe Daniels, and Vanessa Silva; “ How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; FT March 5 2023

In the process Venezuela has fallen from “one of the richest countries in Latin America to one of the poorest”:
Figure 2:

Michael Stott, Joe Daniels, and Vanessa Silva; “ How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the west”; Ft Ibid March 5 2023 

But this is of course across the whole economy. Let us return again to the start of this section – What has been the position of the poorest sections?

This is where you might hope and expect the working class to sit better thatn in the pre-Chavez era. There was indeed a fall in rates of poverty (poverty and extreme poverty) during the Chavez years – which held until about 2013. But since then the rise has been very severe, both the “poverty” and “Extreme poverty” as defined by the German data firm Statista.

Figure 3 Percentage of households in poverty and extreme poverty in Venezuela from 2002 to 2021; From Statista accessed August 2024

These figures are not at serious dispute. A similar picture comes from considering the “Gini coefficent”. This expresses the inequity in a society, and is a number that varies from 0 (indicating perfect equality) to 1 (indicating perfect inequality).

Figure 4: Acessed Statista 3 Sep 2024;

A Marxist commentator states similar reductions in poverty rate, but no meaningful shifts in Gini coefficients:

“Between 20033 and 2007, the national poverty-rate – measured in the purchasing power of a citizen’s cash-income – has been halved (from 54% of the population to 27.5%) and extreme poverty cut by two-thirds (from 25% to 7.6% of the population). Non-cash benefits, like access to free or heavily- subsidised health-care and education, can only be factored in implicitly. Rates of education enrolment have skyrocketed, up 86% in higher education since 1999, 54% in secondary and 10% in primary (primary-school enrolment was already at 91% in 1999). Employment has also increased with the expansion of the Venezuelan economy in the ten years of the Bolivarian Revolution, with 2 million formal economy jobs being created in the private sector and over 600,000 in the public sector.
However, social-welfare programmes alone do not socialism make…..
According to Venezuelan government statistics, the Gini coefficient – the economic rubric by which income inequality is measured, the closer to zero being the most equal distribution – has only shifted from 0.487 in 1998 to 0.420 in 2007 – making it nearly a statistical equal to the United States, …
UN Human Development Indexes offer less help, as their numbers are based on 2003 data, a year marked by economic collapse and recovery in the wake of the disastrous bosses’ lockout that stretched from December 2002 to February 2003. Nonetheless, the UN HDI finds Venezuela’s richest 10% received 35% of the national income, whereas the poorest 10% only 1%.8 In other words, in terms of raw economic data, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, while having made inroads, still has work to do in order to achieve its stated goals of social justice and the elimination of poverty. …”
Donald V. Kingsbury; “Review Articles”; Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 151–163 brill.nl/hima

The same source reminds us of the reluctance of Chavez to move beyond the “luxury” of oil income, and his refusal to “expropriate the expropriators”:

“a glut of oil-money has allowed the Chávez-government a luxurious amount of elbow-room to initiate its programmes – it has been able to democratise consumption without expropriating the expropriators, a point often repeated by the most radical currents of the Bolivarian movement. (For example, Marea Socialista, a radical tendency within the PSUV, has repeatedly called for the formation of workers’ councils to augment the role of the communal councils in the struggle for a ‘Socialismo PaBuCo’ – Socialism without Bosses, Bureaucrats or Corruption.” website, <http://mareasocialista.com> (in Spanish)“.
Donald V. Kingsbury; “Review Articles”; Historical Materialism 18 (2010) 151–163 brill.nl/hima

(ii) An increasing dependence upon Chinese and other “lifelines”

If not the USA; and if not “expropriate the expropriator” – to where did the Venezuelan leadership go for support?

“For the Maduro regime, Russia represents a crucial lifeline in terms of credit and symbolic willingness for transborder defence. Russia has both geopolitical and commercial interests in Venezuela (Blank & Kim 2015).”
Benedicte Bull; Antulio Rosales “The crisis in Venezuela..” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean 2020; Ibid. www.erlacs.org

Even the most pro-Chavez leftists – including the proponent of the ‘sui generis’ Chavez socialism – Marta Harnecker – acknowledges this.

“Closer Economic Relations with China:                                                                               Given China’s growing need for raw materials and the fact that Latin America has plenty of them, relations between the two have become closer. China has become one of the main trading partners of countries such as Peru, Chile, and Brazil. It has begun to form strategic alliances with several countries in the region, especially with Venezuela.
According to a study by Diego Sánchez Ancochea, an economics professor at Saint Anthony’s College, Oxford, between 2004 and 2005 China signed close to one hundred agreements and public commitments with several South American countries, including a free trade agreement with Chile in November 2005.4 Brazil’s exports to China increased from $382 million in 1990 to $6,830 million in 2005. Argentina and Chile experienced similar increases, going from $241 million and $34 million in 1990 to $3,100 million and $3,200 million, respectively, in 2004. China has become one of the biggest trading partners, not only of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) countries, but also of other South American countries. It is Peru’s second biggest trading partner, Chile and Brazil’s third, and Argentina and Uruguay’s fourth.
In recent years, the Chinese presence in our continent has grown. Alicia Bárcena, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), acknowledged this on May 27, 2009, when she said that investments in the region “had grown significantly,” especially in more measurable areas such as hydrocarbons, mining, and the automobile industry. The amount, however, is still small compared to the large amounts the United States invests.6 Let us look at just two examples.
On May 19, 2009, China and Brazil signed thirteen agreements for cooperation in the energy field. China thus became Brazil’s biggest trading partner. A few days before, Lula had suggested that the two countries should use their own currencies instead of the U.S. dollar for trading purposes. [In two succeeding “BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India, China) conferences, plans have advanced to conduct trade among themselves without using the U.S. dollar.]
In the last few months of 2009, trade and economic relations between China and Venezuela grew closer. Agreements have been signed in agricultural, energy, and industrial areas. An agreement has also been reached to increase the capital of the China-Venezuela Development Fund, doubling, to $12 billion, the amount originally decided. This is the biggest credit given by China to any country since 1949.
Sánchez Ancochea says that this has generated new resources and new opportunities for Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries. However, they also create serious risks and threats, including a steep rise in the trade deficit with China, a reinforcement of “the traditional way Latin America, especially the Andean countries and those of the Southern Cone, participate in the world economy,” and a heavy blow to labor intensive sectors, such as textiles. Thus, these agreements put the survival of a large number of small and medium-size economies at risk of being edged out by the high relative productivity and low real wages in China.”
Marta Harnecker Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes”: Chapter 1; Venezuela Analysis July 29, 2010

Other observers make the same points:

“During high oil prices, the government engaged in profuse borrowing from both bond markets and allies, especially China, through commodity-backed loans. There are important ruptures in the Bolivarian model of rentierism that, despite longlasting structural conditions, modified the structure of the Venezuelan rentier state. First, the government managed to do away with PDVSA’s autonomy, something that previous governments had chosen not to do or failed with in their pursuit. This “subservient” company allowed the government to utilize PDVSA to carry out alternative social programs, finance the government directly without oversight and accountability. PDVSA’s spending largesse turned out to be costly for the company’s capacity to extract oil once financial markets closed to the country and oil prices declined. Second, the government built new alliances and connections rooted on a transformation of the global economy and state-capital nexuses that significantly impacted the energy market. Until approximately 2012, the government was able to exert higher control and extract increasing rents from companies without jeopardizing investments.”
Benedicte Bull; Antulio Rosales “The crisis in Venezuela..” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean 2020; Ibid. www.erlacs.org

“Neither the opposition nor the government is willing to contemplate a default on the national debt. Venezuela is heavily indebted to China, and the Chinese would not want to see them default; it would also shut the country out of international lending markets for years to come. The nature of Venezuela’s consolidated debt is quite complicated, so one of the major concerns is that, in the event of a default, there would be moves by debt holders to secure a freeze of Venezuelan assets abroad, which would be a big problem for the oil sector in particular. We have no clear figures for how much is being paid out in interest payments, because of the lack of proper national statistics, but international reserves amount to $13 billion, with $20 billion in debt repayments coming up, on top of the $5 billion owed by PDVSA.”
Buxton Ibid NLR p. 21

Here is not the place to discuss more the evolving picture of the so-called “multi-polar” competition to divide up the world. We have discussed this previously. We expect to return to this topic for South America in more detail.

Here it is only necessary to point out that the USA is unwilling to ‘cede’ South America, or even merely Venezuela to China. It therefore has its own vested interests to make accommodation in Venezuela – to the forces that can do two things.

Namely First to “control” the working class; and,
Second to provide the best camouflage to cover up for the USA’s interests.

A person like Maduro is possibly better placed to do both those than Maria Machado and her proteges.

6. The 2024 disputed elections

i) Previous 2015 recourse to the National Electoral Council (CNE):

In the 2015 elections as we saw, Maduro had already been accused of claiming a fraudulent victory. However he was on that occasion able to cite a convincing authority – the Consejo Nacional Electoral CNE:

“For his part, Maduro issued a statement claiming that there would be no referendum, which undermined the authority of the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE). The opposition claims that the CNE is just a govern¬ment mouthpiece, but in fact it is probably one of the few remaining independent vestiges of the Venezuelan state, with a good record of supervising elections and a high level of technical competence.”
Buxton Ibid p. 22

ii) Many working class parties were disbarred from standing

The first thing to say is that there was no working class party able to stand at the polls for the electorate:

“The 2024 presidential elections have been preceded by the disappearance of some left-wing parties that did not achieve the minimum vote for their legal permanence and the judicialization of the remaining ones. There is currently no legalized left-wing party in Venezuela that can autonomously raise a presidential candidacy and the support that appears on the electoral ballot for Maduro is the result of this situation of intervention by political instruments that belonged to the political left.
The PSUV has never been a party in classical terms, deliberative and autonomous from the government, but rather a political instrument to build social viability for government plans. The sectors that responded exclusively to Chávez’s leadership have been removed from the party structure after the death of the historic leader of the Bolivarian process and many of them are in different forms of opposition to Maduro’s government. The PSUV is today a monolithic multi-class party, without significant fissures, however, the deepening of the salary and economic crisis has been eroding. “
“Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024

Not even revisionist forces, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela were allowed to participate. They point out that the litany of attacks launched by Maduro’s government on the working class includes this list, which includes many that have been already noted in this article:

“The essence of the neoliberal adjustment of the Venezuelan government has nothing to do with sovereign positions, much less anti-imperialist ones. Its defenders are doing nothing other than justifying an all-out offensive of capital against the Venezuelan working class:
– Privatization of important sectors of strategic industries, including oil, mines, gasand core industries.
– Granting of extraction licenses to multinational companies such as Chevron (USA), Repsol(Spain), ENI (Italy) and Maurel & Prom (France), under conditions disadvantageous to national sovereignty.
– Liberalization and dollarization of prices of all goods, excluding workers’ wages.
– Dollarization of economic activity.
– Creation of Special Economic Zones – where labour, environmental and tax laws do not apply- to attract the investment of large transnational capital.
– Subsidies to the private sector through the weekly injection of millions of dollars from the State to the currency exchange system (more than $15 billion between 2021- 2024 according tothe Central Bank of Venezuela).
– The per capita income of the richest group in society is 70 times more than that of the poorest group. Venezuela is the most unequal country in the continent.
– Corruption goes unpunished – Tareck El Aissami (former oil minister and member of the PSUV national leadership) stole $23 billion.
– Social investment (health, education, etc.) has been reduced, paving the way for a progressive privatization process.
– The minimum monthly wage and pension have been frozen for two and a half years at the equivalent of $3.50.
– The policy of de-salarising workers’ income has meant that 97% of the payments received by workers are bonuses, which are not taken into account when calculating social benefits,vacations, services, savings, and other benefits contemplated in the collective bargaining agreements.
– The basic family basket of goods is estimated at $550 per month, which forces millions of workers to hold down several jobs, work longer hours, emigrate from the country or engage inillicit businesses in order to survive.
– More than 7 million Venezuelans have been forced to migrate out of the country in search of better conditions for the sale of their labor force.
– The rights won by workers in collective bargaining agreements have been eliminated.
– The right to unionize is restricted. Class-conscious unions are prevented from registering and most of the unions have expired because they are not allowed to organize their elections. Thispolicy prevents workers from fighting for new collective bargaining agreements.
– Increasing persecution of labor union struggles. More than 30 union leaders and activists have been persecuted. Workers demanding their rights are illegally tried in “anti-terror” courts for
alleged “hate” crimes.
– The right to strike is prohibited.
– The Communist Party of Venezuela was attacked by the courts and its right to partake in elections all but outlawed in August 2023 to disarm the working class of its main instrument for political struggle.”
By the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV); August 2024
“The Neo-liberal Turn of Maduro’s Government in Venezuela
Re-Posted by MLToday ; Sep 9, 2024

(iii) So what choices did the working class have at the poll?

It is true that in the July 28 2024 elections there was quite a field as we saw earlier. But the key poles were Maduro and Edmundo Gonzalez:

“July 28 saw a very significant portion of the electorate vote for arguably the farthest-right presidential candidacy in Venezuelan democratic history. Though María Corina Machado was not on the ballot, she was openly pulling the the actual candidate Edmundo González.
Machado needs no introduction. A faithful US ally since the George W. Bush era, her rap sheet includes support for virtually every previous coup attempt of the past quarter of a century, enthusiastic endorsement of US-led sanctions and even calls for a foreign invasion, for which she was only banned from holding public office.
Machado’s program is unfettered neo-liberalism – including selling off strategic state enterprises like PDVSA – coupled with pledges to “eradicate socialism,” all but promising a dirty war against Chavismo.”
Ricardo Vaz 25/08/2024, 10:39 Not Losing Sight of Imperialism – Venezuelanalysis 

As Bonilla-Molina argues, neither the Maduro or any of the opposition were inclined to put any concession putting the working class to the fore in the elections:

“All the candidates, from the government and the opposition, with different nuances, represent a project to get out of the political crisis that ignores the interests of the working class and all the subaltern classes. None of them proposes a program to recover the right to strike, collective bargaining, a decent and sufficient salary, but rather they call for the sacrifice of the working class to recover the country, while they defend the elimination of taxes on large capitals and talk about liberating the forces of the market, entrepreneurship and productivity, which are nothing other than the strongest deregulation in the making.”
“Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024

The real differences between the two poles of Gonzalez and Maduro are described here:

“The candidacy of Edmundo González represents the program of structural adjustment, privatizations and destruction of the social agenda that libertarians like Milei (Newly elected leader in Argentina- Ed) and company embody today; while the rest of the opposition candidates express nuances of government programs that place the interests of capital above those of labor. Maduro’s candidacy represents the continuation of a structural adjustment program applied between 2017-2024, in a context of a blockade by the United States and European imperialist nations on Venezuela, which has placed the weight of the economic crisis on the working class, while the bourgeoisie (old and new) grows richer.”
Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024; Ibid.

Given that the Maduro government has already de-nationalised 47 concerns (See above), it is legitimate to query just how much difference there was in reality between these two poles?

(iv) Both poles – Gonzalez and Maduro – ultimatley seek USA endorsement

Both poles contending in the election seek to gain the legitimacy of an endorsement by the USA:

“All the candidacies seek to improve relations with the United States, while Maduro’s is developing a parallel strategy of rapprochement with China, Russia and Turkey (countries where democratic freedoms are restricted and where the orientation is competitive capitalism) focused on aspects of economic gain; despite Maduro complaining about the veto on the capital’s social networks, they have not even managed to get the Chinese social network tik-tok to modify the algorithm to make his candidacy more visible than González’s and the activities of MCM; This shows China’s colonial perspective, while it seeks an extractivist and capitalist relationship with Venezuela, it ignores its ally in electoral trouble because what it is interested in is showing the apparent neutrality of its capital.”
Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024; Ibid.

We do not need to believe the propaganda of the Gonzalez team. Nonetheless, they had certainly honed a message to a severely disillusioned working class:

“In this campaign, especially the sector led by MCM-Edmundo González has abandoned the ideological and confrontational discourse, to tune into and appropriate the most basic desires of the Venezuelan population today: a) return of migrants (the opposition estimates them at 7 million) because each family has at least one of its members in that condition (parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, nephews, siblings), b) family reunification based on the improvement of economic conditions, especially by increasing productivity (taking care not to clarify how to improve the salary issue). The basic calculation that a good part of the population makes is, “if the cause of the economic deterioration is the disputes with the United States and the economic sanctions, what we have to do is elect a president who does not fight with the United States and with that the entire economy will improve, including salaries and purchasing power, allowing family reunification to be long-lasting,” c) the privatization of public property as a path to prosperity, something that national history and regional experience deny.”
Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024. Ibid.

(v) The exact election results remain unclear

The results of the election have been contested. Both sides claimed victory. Due legal process was not however followed. Contrary to the elections of 2015, the CNE or National Electoral Council did not publish full results. The President of the CNE – Elvis Amoroso – did declare very quickly, that Maduro had won:

“In Venezuela, the Sunday, July 28, presidential elections closed normally. The president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, announced the results at 12:13 a.m. on July 29: Nicolás Maduro obtained 5,150,092 votes (51.20%) and Edmundo González, the main opposition candidate, obtained 4,445,978 votes (44.2%).”
Luigino Bracci Roa, Venezuelanalysis August 5, 2024; Cybersecurity Expert on Fraud Claims and Voting Safeguards in Venezuela’s Presidential Election;”

However Amoroso also declared that normal procedures of publication in full of the tallies “booth-by-booth” would be made available quickly:

“electoral council head Elvis Amoroso, when announcing the first official bulletin in the early hours of July 29. He said: “The booth-by-booth results will be available on the website of the National Electoral Council in the next few hours, as has traditionally occurred, thanks to the automated voting system. Likewise, the results will be handed over to political organisations on a CD, in accordance with the law.”
Reinaldo Iturriza and Federico Fuentes; “Venezuela’s presidential elections: Attempted coup or fraud? An interview”; 28 August 2024; 

When this publication was delayed, Amoroso declared this was due to a “cyberattack”. In the ensuing gap the forces of Gonzalez posted various voting machine tallies on the web, claiming a very different result. Namely, they claimed that Gonzalez had won:

“Amoroso reported that there was a cyberattack against the data transmission system, which caused delays…
2. Throughout the night, the supporters of González and María Corina Machado were posting photos of voting machine tallies on social media, claiming they had won, and rejecting the announcement of Maduro’s victory.
The next day, Machado and González announced that they had a large number of tally sheets (initially 40% of the total, then 70%, then 80%) and eventually provided their own results, which currently stand at 7,156,462 votes for Edmundo González (67%) and 3,241,461 votes for Nicolás Maduro (30%).”
Luigino Bracci Roa, August 5, 2024; Venezuelanalysis “Cybersecurity Expert on Fraud Claims and Voting Safeguards in Venezuela’s Presidential Election;”

After claims of fraud went up, Maduro asked the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), to examine the situation.

All of the candidates were summoned – all appeared – except for Edmundo González.

The supreme Court ruled that Maduro had won. But the CNE tallies are still not published.

(vi) Aftermath of the elections

There is no dispute voiced, that the working classes erupted onto the streets after the election, both for and against the declared results that the Maduro Presidency had been re-elected:

“Venezuelans held demonstrations both in support and against the Nicolás Maduro government this Saturday.
The country remains in a tense aftermath following the July 28 presidential elections. On Sunday night, the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared Maduro as the winner. In a second bulletin published on Friday, the CNE had the president with 51.95 percent of the vote, compared to 43.18 percent for US-backed opposition candidate Edmundo González.
However, the CNE has yet to publish the detailed results by voting center, prompting transparency demands from both national and international actors.
For its part, the hardline opposition proclaimed González as president-elect, spurring protests and in some cases violent clashes with police. It published a set of purported polling station records to back the victory claim on Wednesday.”            Ricardo Vaz;” Venezuela: Government, Opposition Supporters Take to the Streets in Post-Electoral Scene”; August 4, 2024 Venezuelanalaysis 

United Front of the left (Frente Democrático Popula) including the PCV, issued attacks on the government forces of army and police for crushing dissent on the streets:

“Popular Tribune.- On Tuesday, August 20, the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) denounced the repression against popular sectors after the presidential elections of July 28.
In a press conference at the headquarters of the National Union of Workers of the Central University of Venezuela, the organizations that make up the FDP warned that “there are many public complaints of arbitrary arrests by police or military, without a court order or while in flagrante delicto.”
“The detained persons are prevented from appointing private lawyers and are forced to appoint public defenders who do not guarantee adequate legal defense. The presentation hearings have been carried out collectively, without a clear individualization of the charges,” they added in a statement read by journalist Manuel Isidro Molina, spokesman for the FDP.
The front demanded “that the Public Ministry cease the charges with null or weak elements of conviction, based on political motivations.”
The statement was signed by The Other Campaign, the Communist Party of Venezuela, Centrados en la Gente, Voces Antiimperialistas, the Alternative Popular Movement, the Popular Historical Bloc, the National Front of Struggle of the Working Class, EnComún, PPT/APR and the Committee of Relatives and Friends for the Freedom of Imprisoned Workers.”
Frente Democrático Popular denuncia patrones de represión contra sectores populares tras las elecciones”; 20 August 2024;

The poorest sections of the barrios came to the streets:

“On 29 July, after the announcement of the election results that declared President Nicolás Maduro victorious, a wave of protests broke out in the barrios and poor neighborhoods of Caracas and many other cities across the country. Convinced that electoral fraud had taken place – given the facts surrounding the announcement, and especially the untimely official proclamation of the ‘winner’ a few hours later, without finalizing the vote count, without audits or evidence of any kind – thousands took to the streets to express their rejection.
The overwhelming popular protest was quelled by a brutally repressive response. From the afternoon of Monday 29 onwards, the government imposed its order. Squads of state security forces (police and parts of the Armed Forces, such as the National Guard) together with armed paramilitary groups, violently repressed the demonstrations. Their occupation of the gates to the neighborhoods and innumerable house raids have completed the offensive.”
Venezuelans Against Repression; “United campaign: against repression in Venezuela! Freedom to those arrested for protesting!”; September 3, 2024; New Politics 

“1. Doubts about the official result of the elections, announced by the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, on 29.07.24, continue to grow since our last pronouncement. The CNE continues to fail to comply with its constitutional obligation to carry out the audits provided for in the electoral chronogram in the terms stipulated in the LOPRE, keeps its offices closed, does not make public statements on the alleged computer attacks (instead, the Executive makes them), and still does not publish the results broken down table by table (as it has done for almost two decades), nor does it provide this information to the organisations participating in the process. In other words, the electoral process has not been completed. However, the CNE is absent from its constitutional obligations and is keeping the 12.5 million voters who participated and all Venezuelans in suspense. For its part, the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice does nothing more than contribute to the opacity of the process, assuming the CNE’s own functions, without giving the presidential candidates and their organisations access to information. The peace of the Republic continues to be threatened by these institutions that carry out a continuous violation of the political rights of the Venezuelan people.
2. The enormous popular mobilisation for the defence of political rights continues to be responded to with a systematic policy of human rights violations, combining selective repression, based on arbitrary arrests of opposition political leaders, journalists, members of social organisations and priests, with massive repression, fundamentally against inhabitants of the popular sectors who mobilised against the official announcement of results.”
Segunda Declaración del Frente Democrático Popular. “Represión Y Derechos Humanos En Venezuela”; 20 August 2024; 

We saw that the CNE did not pubish the electoral tallies as they had done previously. As we discussed, Maduro had asked the Supreme Court to deliberate on the matter. But while the Supreme Court named Maduro the electoral victor, it also said the “the CNE should publish the “defintiive results” by August 28 in the National Gazette:

“The Venezuelan Supreme Court (TSJ) has concluded its review of the July 28 presidential elections in the Caribbean country.
On Thursday, Venezuela’s maximum judicial authority ratified President Nicolás Maduro’s victory to secure a third term that will run from January 10, 2025, to January 10, 2031.
In a press conference with state officials, diplomatic representatives and reporters, TSJ President Caryslia Rodríguez began by reaffirming the court’s jurisdiction and recalling recent electoral processes in Brazil, Mexico and the United States that were ultimately settled by judicial rulings. The magistrate then proceeded to read the verdict.
“We certify in an unobjectionable way that the examined electoral evidence confirms the results proclaimed by the National Electoral Council (CNE) which saw Nicolás Maduro reelected as president,” she said.
The CNE declared Maduro the winner with 52 percent of the vote, compared to 43 percent for US-backed opposition candidate Edmundo González…. The TSJ president, who also heads the body’s electoral branch, additionally stressed that the CNE should publish the “definitive results” in the National Gazette before an August 28 deadline.”
Ricardo Vaz; Venezuela: Supreme Court Delivers Electoral Review Verdict, Confirms Maduro Victory”; Venezuelaanalysis; August 22, 2024

Maduro’s government denounced at “blatant lies” – remarks by the Carter Center’s observation mission. And supporting the Government,  a delegation from the US’ National Lawyers Guild (NLG) affirmed in a statement that its members “witnessed no instances of fraud or serious irregularities and found overall voter satisfaction with the electoral process.”

And yet, the CNE did not publish the electoral tally:

“The CNE has also failed to live up to the promise it made on election night that the “results will be handed over to political organisations on a CD, in accordance with the law.”                                                                                                        https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=843063901105470; Cited at Marxmail Message Fred Fuentes, Sep 6 #32046

Even pro-Chavista forces, like Venezuelanalysis have found this publishing omission strange and difficult to justify:

“the election’s results have been surrounded by questions, even by people who have been sympathetic to the Bolivarian Revolution, as the National Electoral Council (CNE) has not published detailed tallies by voting center. In the past, these publicly available totals have dispelled all doubts about the process and exposed the absolute lack of evidence behind the opposition’s perennial “fraud” allegations. Instead, the CNE’s silence has allowed the opposition and its media backers to make victory claims based on a dubiously parallel results page.”
Ricardo Vaz 25/08/2024, 10:39 Not Losing Sight of Imperialism – Venezuelanalysis

(vii) The claims of web-hacking

This following Chavista organiser insists that to not publish in a timely manner is against a “basic principle of the Boilivarian revolution”:

“What are your thoughts on the fact the National Electoral Council (CNE) has still not published the final results more than a month after the presidential election?
To us it is crazy. This is the first time in Venezuela’s recent history that, 38 days after an election, we still do not have verifiable results broken down by polling booths. [This interview was completed on September 4 and, at the time of publication, no results have been released.] Traditionally, on election night or at the very latest the next day, we would go to the CNE webpage and look at the results, booth by booth, to verify what had occurred in our community and compare the results with the previous election. We did this because we believe that participation and legitimacy is key and fundamental to any democracy, and should not only be left to political parties but involve the community. That was our tradition: meetings to evaluate, compare results between polling centres and draw up a balance sheet. These results are basic ingredients for a vibrant and active democracy, which is the democracy we defend. As important as the total results are, they do not tell you everything you need to know about an election.
Publishing the results is not just a legal obligation, it is a basic principle of the Bolivarian Revolution. In an editorial that we published as Tatuy TV, we said that [the results] have always been our instrument of struggle and defence in the community, including in those places where [the Chavista movement] did not win, because in some working-class areas the vote was sometimes either very close or we lost.”
Gerardo Rojas & Frederico Fuentes; “The end of Venezuela’s Bolivarian process? An interview with community activist Gerardo Rojas”; “Links” 9 September, 2024;

Professor Víctor Theoktisto of Department of Computing and Information Technology at Simón Bolívar University (USB), was previously an expert auditor asked by the CNE in 2021 and 2024 about the safety and security of procedures.

“Professor Theoktisto explained that the security measures are “ridiculously exaggerated,” particularly those used for transmission, which include algorithms such as SHA-256 and AES in three or four layers. To decrypt or modify the information transmitted through these layers, someone would need to run extremely powerful computers for some 400 years. He explains, as a result, that there are no reports of data being modified or altered during transmission.”
Luigino Bracci Roa, Venezuelanalysis August 5, 2024 Cybersecurity Expert on Fraud Claims and Voting Safeguards in Venezuela’s Presidential Election;”

However despite that, it appears true that there was a storm of web attacks in the ensuing days:

“Theoktisto explains that, days before the elections, the site received denial of service attacks (DDoS), where an attacker coordinates hundreds or thousands of computers on the internet to send traffic and requests to a specific address. This overwhelms the website trying to handle all the requests, making it impossible for legitimate users to access the site, resulting in error messages.
Theoktisto argued that the CNE website received several types of DDoS attacks (there are about 25 different types of DDoS attacks in total), “at a volume that we simply cannot combat in the country.” He also mentioned that some of the attackers were in Venezuela…. “We expected the attack, but not on such a massive scale,” he stated. The professor believes that “a governmental actor is indispensable,” meaning a hostile government was involved in the attack. Alternatively, several private bot services might have been hired to conduct this attack against the CNE website.”
Luigino Bracci Roa, August 5, 2024 Cybersecurity Expert on Fraud Claims and Voting Safeguards in Venezuela’s Presidential Election;”
Ibid.

What can one say – other than Maduro could and should publish in other ways including the CD format the CNE had proposed before. It is the only way to retain any credibility. 

(viii) The reaction of the USA government and the oil companies

Nonetheless according to the Wall St Journal both Chevron and the USA government – for now – are still allowing oil to flow:

“Days after Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro declared electoral victory and began cracking down on dissenters, Chevron offered U.S. officials its stance: It is critical Chevron be allowed to continue pumping oil there.
Two years ago, the Biden administration scaled down Trump-era sanctions to let Chevron resume operations in Venezuela as part of an effort to persuade Maduro’s authoritarian government to hold free and fair elections. As chaos erupted on the streets of Caracas following this year’s election, the State Department said all evidence showed Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, had won by a landslide.
In meetings with White House and State Department officials days after the election, Chevron executives said its presence in Venezuela bolsters global oil supplies and U.S. energy security, according to people familiar with the talks. The executives said Chevron also serves U.S. interests as a bulwark there against geopolitical adversaries gaining additional footholds in the country….
Chevron plays an outsize role in Venezuela’s sanctions-hit economy. The company’s business in Venezuela generates about 20% of national crude exports and 31% of the government’s total oil income, said Asdrúbal Oliveros, head of the Venezuelan financial consulting firm Ecoanalítica. It is one of the few avenues for Caracas to reap full market price for its crude, much of which is sold on the black market at steep discounts, he said.”
Collin Eaton, Patricia Garip, Jenny Strasburg
As Crackdown Deepens in Venezuela, Chevron Says Keep the Oil Flowing”; Wall St J 5 September 2024;

Meanwhile both poles, end at the same goal. To try to convince the USA that they are the best option as the USA compradors in Venezuela:

“All presidential candidates in the June 28 elections are trying hard to show that they are the best option for the US. While the Machado-González duo renews their vows of loyalty built in the past, especially in the Bush administration, the Maduro government is accelerating negotiations with the United States and even showing its sympathies for President Biden – explicitly by renouncing the Democratic candidacy – while guaranteeing the flow of oil to the north under neocolonial negotiation conditions.
A local inter-bourgeois agreement is of no use if the approval of Washington and the US State Department is not achieved. All speculations about a strategic agreement between the Maduro government and China or Russia are just nonsense, because as we saw when the US oil trade with Venezuela returned, China decided to distance itself to allow a North American-Venezuelan agreement, especially because contrary to what the international bourgeois press shows us, more and more strategic commercial agreements are being made between the Asian giant and North America. Russia, for its part, is more interested in consolidating its interests in Africa than weakening itself in an uncertain dispute in Latin America around Venezuela.
The US is the arbiter of a neocolonial situation in Venezuela, playing its cards with the calm of someone who tries to make the end as favorable as possible. This situation will open a pending debate on the left about Venezuela’s relations with the North Americans, within the framework of progressive governments or a postcolonial transition with the gringos, but that is the subject of another article.
“Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024:

(ix) Division on the international Marxist left on support or not – to Maduro

The left wing arguments made to defend Maduro hinge on:

a) preventing Gonzalez and his virulent partner Maria Machado from coming to power. It is argued that this allows these extreme right-wing compradors to open the path to restore USA hegemony. In particular over the national oil company PDVSA.
b) It is also argued that Maduro represents the Chavist legacy and to not support him now leads to a renunciation of the revolutionary road.

The left wing rebuttal to the above points are:
a) That it is Maduro himself who has already reneged on any progressive content of the original Chavist movement; and that he has taken a counter-revolutionary position.
b) That Maduro himself has already been negotiating deals with the USA and has ensured cooperation with Chevron
c) Maduro and his government have not only suppressed civil liberties but have attacked working class organisations and basic organising rights.
d) Maduro is at the center of a new layer of the bourgeoisie who has enriched themselves out of the PDVSA national oil company.

(x) Some conclusions on the Maduro Government

At minimum a demand for full publishing of the electoral tallies by the CNE is needed.

The authors of this piece believe that Maduro does not represent the views or hopes and needs of the Venezuelan working people.

The longer this period continues without publication, the flimsier is any faith to be placed on it or the Maduro government.

Some argue that Maduro should accept the proposal that comes from Brazil’s President Lula da Silva and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro for a mediated negotiation between the forces of Gonzalez and Maduro. Even then – at best this is temporising step that cannot be of long term duration.

If this most current crisis is to be turned into any potential advantage for the working class – a Marxist-Leninist party – should mobilise the workers against Maduro.
Only in this manner could Marxist-Leninists retain any credibility with the masses.

Some slogans that might apply best perhaps include these:

“Defend against USA imperialism”!
“Down with Venezuelan agents of the USA!”
“Publish the electoral polls!”
“Build the Marxist-Leninist Party to force real change for the working class!”