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Venezuela: Political Manifesto of the Popular Revolutionary Alternative.

PCV / Lucha de Clases

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Political Manifesto of the Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR)

11 August, 2021

[Spanish original: https://luchadeclases.org.ve/?p=9762]

The document published below is the proposed Political Manifesto of the Popular Revolutionary Alternative, drafted by the congressional commission and approved by the national political commission as a draft manifesto of this political platform, to be discussed, modified and/or approved by the local nuclei of the APR and subsequently by the national congress of the platform.

The Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR) is a coalition of progressive and anti-imperialist parties, movements and organisations, grouped under the interest of building a new political reference at the service of the workers', peasants', communal and popular struggle. This initiative arose from numerous coincidences reached between a group of left organisations, in order to resist the imperialist aggression against Venezuela and the new pact between the traditional bourgeoisie and the national government, which is expressed in opulence and privileges for the old and new rich, and in misery, hunger and dispossession for the vast majority of the people.

Those of us who make up the RPA believe in the importance of taking stock of the national and international context that surrounds us, which calls us to raise our voices to accompany the various signs of popular resistance and to build, hand in hand with the people, a political proposal that aims at the revolutionary overcoming of the crisis of the capitalist system.

International context

Since the outbreak of the 2008 crisis of capitalist overproduction, which manifested itself under the guise of a "financial crash", the world has entered a spiral of economic stagnation and decline from which it has not been able to recover. The reason for this is the structural nature of the crisis, which has exposed the historical limits of the capitalist mode of production. Today, this system not only shows that it is powerless to solve the great scourges afflicting humanity, but its tendency is to deepen them as it concentrates the enormous social wealth in the hands of an ever smaller handful of entrepreneurs, bankers and landowners.

While numerous governments allocated ambitious financial packages to bail out the banks and private companies, the working masses saw their jobs, gains and fundamental rights being lost. The capitalist governments took it upon themselves to unload the full weight of the crisis on the shoulders of the workers, through aggressive policies of public spending cuts, hikes in utility rates, measures of labour flexibilisation and casualisation, increases in the minimum retirement age, reduction of pensions and subsidies, as well as a general assault on democratic rights in many countries.

This neoliberal offensive led to an escalation of the class struggle, expressed in countless mobilisations and popular uprisings around the world. Such a climate of tensions emerged in the run-up to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although at first these popular uprisings were calmed down by the health emergency and the resulting containment measures, from the end of 2020 onwards we can observe the resumption of broad mobilisations and social struggles, but now enhanced by the effects of the pandemic on the precariousness of living conditions. 

For their part, the global pandemic, while deepening the capitalist crisis, is being exploited by the bourgeois and imperialist elites to further increase their wealth. An example of this is the business of the Covid-19 vaccines (despite the fact that most of them were financed with public funds) and the lucrative activity of the multinational pharmaceutical companies, which refuse to cede the intellectual property rights for the production of doses in new laboratories. The individual capitalist profit motive has prevailed over the general interest of saving the lives of the world's population.

On the other hand, the gigantic financial rescue packages implemented by the governments mean that sooner or later the capitalist elites of all countries will want to burden the workers. Such a reality will exacerbate the climate of social tension and class struggle worldwide.

As we can see, the crisis of capitalism is far from being solved. The international organisation of the workers is imperative in order to find a revolutionary way out of the crisis of the decaying capitalist social order. The APR in Venezuela is called to play a role in this process at the national and Latin American level.

The Venezuelan national process

In Venezuela, since the beginning of oil extractivism at the beginning of the 20th century, a national form of capital accumulation governed by oil rent has been established. The enormous weight of this rent in the economic dynamics of our country has a determining influence on the levels of national backwardness and dependence. The Creole bourgeoisie and the foreign capitals that have operated in the country are only driven by the parasitic eagerness to increase their own value through the appropriation of the oil rent, hence their historical inability to lead a process of national industrialisation.

100 years of rent-seeking and bourgeois management in Venezuela have resulted in a de-industrialised economy, the abandonment of agricultural activity, dependence on imports, fraudulent capital flight and a high level of administrative corruption.

This form of backward and dependent capitalism has condemned the historically oppressed majority to survive on low wages, unemployment, poverty and exclusion. Although during the economic history of oil-producing Venezuela there have been periods of bonanza, which have led to slight improvements in the living standards of the working people, these have always been followed by periods of deep and prolonged crisis, in which the gains achieved are pulverised and the levels of misery expand again. This was the case of the boom of the late 1970s, which gave way to the crisis of the 80s and 90s of the previous century, and the imposition of the anti-worker and anti-popular recipe book of the International Monetary Fund.

From that process of neoliberal adjustment came the popular outbreak of the Caracazo in 1989, and the subsequent breakdown of the fourth-republican bipartisanship in the political system. It was in this context that the figure of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías emerged as an expression of the patriotic and progressive military forces that opposed the anti-popular and repressive policies of the governments of the time. Hugo Chávez's leadership was able to unify the broad popular movement that had been fighting for decades for profound changes in a country hard hit by poverty, misery and social inequality.

The triumph of the patriotic and progressive forces in the 1998 presidential elections made it possible to initiate a process of progressive changes based on a fairer distribution of oil revenues. This led to policies to increase social spending, re-establish labour rights, expand public services (especially the health and education systems), programmes to distribute food at affordable prices and measures to combat large estates, all of which had a positive impact on the living conditions of the population and reduced poverty rates.

The character of the current crisis

Despite the numerous advances achieved by the Bolivarian process in the fields of law, demands and the development of new forms of popular organisation, these changes took place within the limits of dependent and rentier capitalism. In little more than 20 years of the Bolivarian process, the rentier economic model, far from undergoing changes, advanced towards its most extreme forms. Hence the incredible indicators of foreign indebtedness, capital flight, dependence on imports, dismantling of national production, inflation rate and deterioration of the national currency.

By 2014, when international oil prices fell and foreign debt commitments began to expire, the Venezuelan state's income collapsed, starting the new episode of structural crisis of Venezuelan capitalism, which is still in force. This scenario worsened with the collapse of oil production and later with the application of the first illegal foreign sanctions in 2017.

The government of President Nicolás Maduro is in charge of personifying the anti-popular adjustment in the face of the abrupt fall in oil revenues. The punctual payment of the foreign debt, which meant the disbursement of 110 billion dollars during the period 2014-2017, and the agreements with the most concentrated national and foreign private capital to guarantee them the allocation of available foreign currency, marked the beginning of an adjustment plan applied progressively. The immediate effects were manifested in acute shortages of food, medicines and essential consumer goods, hyperinflation, business closures, falling wages, dismantling of social gains and increasing deterioration of public services.

In addition to the above, US imperialism has promoted a significant number of financial and trade sanctions against the Venezuelan state, which have had a brutal impact on the accelerated decline of the economy and the living conditions of the population. There is no doubt that the aim of the imperialist aggression is to economically suffocate the Venezuelan government, in order to create the conditions for a political change favourable to the US plans of domination. 

In this direction, the White House has not ceased its systematic attack seeking to generate internal destabilisation, promoting coup conspiracies and even the recognition of a parallel (fictitious) government, through its puppet Juan Guaidó.

The new pact of the elites

The capitalist approach to the crisis and the effects of imperialist sanctions, was consolidated with a pact of elites, between the government-PSUV with various right-wing parties, FEDECAMARAS and other business associations, with a view to stimulating and favouring profits for the bosses' sectors. In this sense, government policy in recent years has done nothing more than make the workers of the countryside and the city pay for the crisis.

Thus, all kinds of anti-worker and anti-popular measures have been applied, such as: bonuses and wage restraint, the imposition of Memorandum 2792, the liberalisation of prices, measures to facilitate the process of informal dollarisation of the economy, the privatisation of public companies, the intention to surrender our national sovereignty with the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and the Anti-Blockade Law, the conservative turn in gender policies and impunity for violence against women, among others. Likewise, in the Venezuelan countryside, the recomposition of landowners and large landowners has been carried out through intimidation, persecution and assassination of rural leaders and workers.

The implementation of this neo-liberal policy has been accompanied by an increase in the repressive and arbitrary tendencies of the state, by curtailing trade union rights, criminalising protests, criminalising different workers' and popular fighters, taking away electoral cards and violating the political rights and democratic freedoms of the working class.

The deep corruption in the state apparatus and the looting of the public treasury has given way to the formation of a layer of nouveau riche, who not only dabble in business, industry and commerce, but also comprise a community of interests that increasingly influence the course of the national government's economic policy. This can be seen in the way these new capitalists benefit from price liberalisation policies, tax exemptions on imports and privatisation policies or the transfer of public enterprises.

After internalising the failure of the policy of "cessation of usurpation, transitional government and free elections" and given the full willingness shown by the Maduro government to build a broad national agreement to push forward its programme of capitalist adjustment, today the traditional oligarchy is more willing to negotiate with the government than in the past. In general terms, the bourgeoisie agrees with Maduro's economic and legislative programme. Their differences lie in the unequal way in which these measures benefit to a greater extent the so-called "revolutionary bourgeoisie" because of their preferential links with the government, so they demand greater openness and guarantees for the private sector they represent.

In short, the government, the right wing and imperialism are sitting down to negotiate the future of Venezuela, at a table where the interests of the workers and the popular sectors are excluded. The severe impact of the economic crisis on the living conditions of the working people, as well as the criminalisation and judicialisation of workers' and popular struggles, have led to the development of a process of demobilisation, depoliticisation and social apathy.

Faced with this complex situation, the organisations that make up the RPA express our deepest repudiation of the interventionist and punitive measures promoted by US imperialism against our country. We also reject the surrender and neoliberal policy of the national government, which, while it generates concessions and advantages of various kinds for private capital, tries to continue to make the working people pay the bills for the crisis.

Organising the resistance struggle of the workers', peasants', communal and popular forces against the capitalist adjustment implemented by the new pact of elites is a necessary and vital task. The RPA must play a fundamental role in bringing together the forces fighting against the neo-liberal offensive on the social gains of the Venezuelan people. We are called to build the Alternative that will open channels for the political, economic and social changes that are indispensable to overcome the dependent and rentier economic model, and move towards the construction of socialism.

The Popular Revolutionary Alternative on a fighting footing

The Popular Revolutionary Alternative has emerged as a historical necessity. It is the crystallisation of years of debate within the left about the need for its independence. Although we emerged in the midst of an electoral juncture (the 2020 parliamentary elections), we understand that only the organisation and mobilisation of the working, peasant and popular majorities will open the way to a better tomorrow. It is necessary to direct all our efforts to increase the capacity of organisation and mobilisation of the exploited and oppressed of society, in the midst of a context that aims at the depoliticisation of the majorities.

Our aim is to build a free, just, united and egalitarian society. Our aim is to achieve a socialist society, but not the "socialism" of the rich and nouveau riche allied with the government, which is in reality a savage and predatory capitalism. We want to build a socialism in which the economy is planned in the interests of the people, in which the scourge of corruption is definitively extirpated and in which education, health and social security are a priority.

We want our children to have quality education in schools, a liberating education that awakens in them the ability to think critically and to intervene in political affairs. We want our grandfathers and grandmothers to be able to have a dignified old age, with pensions that cover their needs. We want to have access to truly public services, of quality and for all. We want one job to be enough to cover our needs, with stability and social security. We want a society of truly equal people, regardless of their gender identity, ethnicity or religion. A society where women can live free from violence.

In the face of imperialist aggression, the pact of elites and the neoliberal adjustment against the Venezuelan people, the political forces grouped around the RPA say to the Venezuelan people: Yes, there is an alternative!

Let's continue to build hope!

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Source: https://luchadeclases.org.ve/?p=9762

*Please translate into your language and disseminate widely, but link to the source.