Trump is going for regime change we say hands off Venezuela

Marxist Theory · 2019-01-29

Core Argument¶

The article argues that the US-backed attempt to install Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela in January 2019 was not a spontaneous democratic uprising but a meticulously planned imperialist coup, directed from Washington and coordinated with regional right-wing governments. The central claim is that this operation aims to reverse the remaining gains of the Bolivarian Revolution, seize control of Venezuela's oil reserves for US capital, and install a neoliberal puppet regime that will privatise state assets and crush working-class resistance. The article insists that the coup can only be defeated not by concessions or diplomacy, but by bold revolutionary measures: expropriation of US multinationals, arming the workers and peasants, and establishing revolutionary committees within the army.

Theoretical Grounding¶

The analysis is grounded in the Leninist theory of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, where the state acts as the executive committee of monopoly capital. The article treats the US state not as a neutral arbiter of democracy but as the organised political instrument of American corporate interests, particularly the oil industry. John Bolton's explicit reference to US oil companies is presented as the unmasking of this relationship.

The article also draws on the Marxist critique of "half revolutions" — the theoretical position that partial state intervention within the limits of capitalism cannot resolve the contradictions of the system. Venezuela's crisis is analysed not as a failure of socialism (as the bourgeois press claims) but as the inevitable result of attempting to regulate capitalism while leaving key economic levers in private hands. This situates the argument within the Trotskyist tradition's insistence that the only consistent anti-capitalist programme is the revolutionary overthrow of bourgeois property relations, not reformist management of them.

The piece also reflects the classical Marxist position on the state: that the existing Venezuelan state apparatus, including the army, is a bourgeois state whose loyalty to Maduro is contingent on material interests and the balance of forces, not principle. The call to arm the workers and establish revolutionary committees within the army is a direct application of the Leninist theory of dual power.

Conjunctural Relevance¶

The article was published on 29 January 2019, at the height of the Guaidó challenge. The conjuncture was defined by several factors:

The economic crisis in Venezuela: Four years of recession triggered by the 2014 oil price collapse, compounded by US sanctions, hyperinflation, and shortages. The article identifies this as the objective condition that weakened the Maduro government and created the window of opportunity for imperialism.
The regional political shift: Right-wing governments in Colombia (Duque), Brazil (Bolsonaro, inaugurated 1 January 2019), Argentina (Macri), and Chile (Piñera) provided a coordinated bloc of support for Guaidó, reversing the Pink Tide of the 2000s.
The Trump administration's escalation: The direct involvement of Pence, Pompeo, Bolton, and Rubio, and the appointment of Elliott Abrams — a figure convicted in the Iran-Contra affair and implicated in Central American death squads — signalled a qualitative escalation of US intervention.
The seizure of assets: The US and UK had already frozen Venezuelan state assets and transferred control of CITGO (the US-based subsidiary of PDVSA) to Guaidó's representatives, demonstrating that the coup was not merely rhetorical but operational.

The article correctly predicted that the imperialist offensive would intensify, and that the Venezuelan army's loyalty could not be taken for granted if the balance of forces shifted. Subsequent events — including the failed 30 April 2019 uprising attempt, the continued tightening of sanctions, and the gradual erosion of Maduro's international support — confirmed the trajectory the article identified.

Where the Argument Continues¶

The article leaves several questions open that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus:

The nature of the Venezuelan state: The article treats the Maduro government as a bourgeois state that can be pushed in a revolutionary direction, but does not fully develop the analysis of whether the Bolivarian process has created any genuinely workers' state features. This is taken up in later IDOM articles on the "bureaucratic degeneration" of the Venezuelan revolution and the need for a revolutionary party.
The strategy for building dual power: The call for "revolutionary committees within the army" and "arming the workers" is stated but not elaborated. Later articles and Against the Stream episodes discuss the concrete experience of the círculos bolivarianos, the communal councils, and why these did not develop into organs of workers' power.
The international solidarity movement: The article calls for a "powerful, international, anti-imperialist solidarity movement" but does not analyse the actual state of such movements in 2019, which were significantly weaker than during the 2002 coup. Subsequent IDOM pieces examine the failure of the Latin American left to build effective solidarity and the lessons for future struggles.
The trajectory of the crisis: The article does not predict the long-term outcome — the survival of the Maduro government through 2024 despite sanctions, the collapse of Guaidó's movement, and the continued economic devastation. Later analyses in the corpus address the question of "what comes after Maduro" and the need for a revolutionary alternative to both the bureaucracy and the opposition.

Connections¶

Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed: The theoretical framework for understanding how a revolutionary movement can be captured by a bureaucratic layer that preserves capitalist property relations while using revolutionary rhetoric.
Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: The methodological basis for analysing US intervention as driven by the logic of capital accumulation, not democratic concern.
IDOM articles on the 2002 Venezuelan coup: The article implicitly references this earlier episode; reading them together shows the continuity of US strategy and the lessons not learned by the Chavista leadership.
IDOM analyses of Bolivia (2019) and Brazil (2016): The same framework of imperialist-backed "democratic" coups against left governments is applied to the ouster of Dilma Rousseff and the Morales coup, providing a comparative perspective on the Pink Tide's defeat.
Mariátegui's writings on anti-imperialist struggle: For the broader Latin American tradition of revolutionary anti-imperialism that the article draws on.

Key Quotes¶

"John Bolton put it bluntly in an interview with Fox News: 'We're in conversation with major American companies now… It would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela.'"
"If Venezuela shows one thing it is not the 'failure of socialism' but rather the impossibility of regulating capitalism, and the disaster of policies of state intervention within the limits of capitalism."
"The only way to defeat the coup is to rely on the revolutionary masses of workers and peasants, who have on every occasion risen to the challenge and saved the Bolivarian Revolution. This can only be done by, at the same time, addressing their most pressing needs in terms of wages, food supply, living standards."
"The continuation of concessions and compromises to the ruling class, which have already led the Bolivarian movement to a cul-de-sac, would be suicidal and pave the road for defeat."
"All capitalists, bankers and landowners involved in the coup should be expropriated under workers' control. The workers and peasants need to be armed to defend the revolution in the face of a foreign military intervention."