Venezuela Failed Dialogue Foreign Threats and the Challenges Facing the Bolivari

Marxist Theory · 2018-04-22

Core Argument

The article argues that the Bolivarian Revolution faces a dual crisis — external imperialist aggression and internal capitalist sabotage — and that the Maduro government's strategy of seeking dialogue and offering concessions to the bourgeoisie has been a strategic dead end. The central thesis is that survival of the revolution depends not on electoral manoeuvres or diplomatic accords, but on breaking decisively with capitalist logic: nationalising the financial sector, assuming full state control over imports, and empowering workers' councils and communes as the material basis for socialist defence. The claim is that the economic war waged by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie is not a side-effect of the crisis but its central mechanism, and that only by removing economic power from the class that wages it can the revolution endure.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on a classical Marxist understanding of the parasitic intermediary bourgeoisie, explicitly citing Frantz Fanon's characterisation of the national bourgeoisie in underdeveloped countries as a class "completely canalised into activities of the intermediary type" — neither productive nor inventive, but living off the rent extracted from the primary export sector. This situates the Venezuelan bourgeoisie not as a dynamic capitalist class but as a comprador stratum whose interests are fundamentally opposed to national development and whose political loyalty lies with imperialism.

The article also engages with the Marxist debate on the transition to socialism, particularly the question of whether state ownership alone is sufficient. It argues that "state control is not enough" and that genuine worker control through communes is necessary to create "territorial archipelagos where the social relations are not (fully) of a capitalist nature". This positions the analysis within the tradition that stresses the qualitative difference between nationalisation under a capitalist state and the socialisation of production under working-class power — a distinction central to Trotsky's critique of Stalinist nationalisation and to the broader Marxist literature on the transition period.

The rejection of reformism is implicit throughout: the article treats dialogue with the bourgeoisie not as a tactical option that failed, but as a strategy that was theoretically doomed from the start, because the class interests of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie are irreconcilable with the survival of the revolution.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written in February 2018, a moment of acute crisis and political flux. The Constituent Assembly had succeeded in restoring a degree of political stability after the violent opposition protests of 2017, and Chavismo had won regional and municipal elections. Yet the economic situation remained catastrophic: shortages worsening, prices skyrocketing, salary increases unable to keep pace, and episodes of looting. The government had just launched the Petro cryptocurrency and overhauled currency controls, but these were acknowledged as short-term measures.

The immediate conjuncture was defined by the failed Dominican Republic dialogue, where the opposition MUD refused to sign an agreement that the government had already signed, and the subsequent calling of presidential elections for 22 April 2018. The article correctly identifies the US strategy: not to win elections, but to pre-emptively declare them invalid, escalate sanctions, and pursue the "Chilean model" — a coup by economic strangulation. It names specific actors: Rex Tillerson, Marco Rubio, Luis Almagro, and notes the military drills and troop movements in Brazil and Colombia.

The article also registers a worrying internal dynamic: legal roadblocks against commune leaders, security forces siding with landowners in land disputes, and the arrest of critical trade unionists. This is not presented as a secondary concern but as evidence that the more radical elements of the revolution are being stifled precisely when they are most needed.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves open several questions that subsequent IDOM analysis would take up. The most pressing is the outcome of the April 2018 elections — Maduro won, but the opposition boycotted and the US escalated sanctions. The article's warning about the "Chilean model" would be vindicated by the intensification of the economic blockade, culminating in the 2019 oil sanctions and the Juan Guaidó episode. The argument about the necessity of worker control and communes would be developed in later IDOM articles on the Venezuelan crisis, particularly those analysing the role of the communes in surviving the blockade and the political debates within Chavismo between the "radical" and "pragmatic" wings.

The article also gestures towards a broader theoretical question it does not fully resolve: under what conditions can a state that is still capitalist in its economic base — despite revolutionary rhetoric — successfully defend itself against imperialism? This question would be taken up in IDOM's analyses of the "dual power" dynamic in Venezuela and the limits of Bonapartist solutions.

Connections

The article should be read alongside:

• Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth — the direct source for the characterisation of the intermediary bourgeoisie.
• Trotsky's writings on the transition period — particularly the distinction between nationalisation and socialisation.
• IDOM articles on the Venezuelan crisis from 2017-2020 — which track the evolution of the economic war, the sanctions regime, and the commune movement.
• Against the Stream episodes on Latin America — which contextualise Venezuela within the broader regional shift to the right after the "pink tide".
• Marxist analyses of the "Chilean model" — the 1973 coup as a template for US strategy in the region.

Key Quotes

1. "The strategy of offering some concessions to capitalists and calling for dialogue has clearly not worked. It has been met with increasing hostility and crippling sanctions, while the bourgeoisie has constantly sabotaged the distribution chain as a way to attack Chavismo."

2. "The state needs to assume all control over imports, nationalise the financial sector and all companies involved in the economic war, so that dollars are no longer squandered or shipped to tax havens. But state control is not enough, overall there needs to be an increased worker control over the economy, especially through the communes."

3. "In the long run companies under workers' control and communes have the potential to form territorial archipelagos where the social relations are not (fully) of a capitalist nature, which are thus more immune to the economic war."

4. "The Venezuelan bourgeoisie has historically been the poster child of the parasitic intermediary bourgeoisie, living off the oil rent to establish monopolies in the distribution of imported goods."

5. "The fact that the US is hell-bent on removing Maduro does not mean that everything he does is a step towards socialism. The logic works the other way around."

6. "The mobilisation of the workers and the reinforcement of popular self-defence units are the best defence against a coup. For all the natural resources in Venezuela, its most powerful asset is still a mobilised people."