10. As August 15th approaches: Why we are fighting for a “No” next Sunday¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter, written on the eve of the 2004 Venezuelan presidential recall referendum, is a polemical call to arms. Its core argument is that the referendum is not a technical democratic exercise but a decisive battle in an ongoing class war. The text insists that a vote to remove Hugo Chávez would be a victory for US imperialism and the Venezuelan oligarchy, reversing progressive measures and plunging the working class and peasantry back into servitude. Conversely, a “No” vote is a necessary defensive action to keep the counter-revolution at bay.
The chapter draws a stark, Manichaean line between the contending social forces. On one side is the opposition, the Coordinadora Democratica, which is characterised as a coalition of all that is “rotten, retrograde and corrupt”: landlords, bankers, corrupt PDVSA managers, bought trade union bureaucrats, the millionaire press, and the Catholic hierarchy who backed the 2002 coup. The text uses the example of former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, who called for a violent overthrow and a five-year dictatorship, to argue that the opposition’s talk of “democracy” is a sham. The US, under George Bush, is condemned for backing the 2002 coup “with indecent haste.” On the other side is Chávez, supported by the working class, peasants, unemployed, women, youth, and the “true heirs of Bolivar, Marti and Che Guevara.”
The chapter’s theoretical context is explicitly Leninist and Trotskyist. It frames the struggle for socialist transformation as a series of partial battles, where revolutionary Marxists must fight alongside the masses while pushing them toward a complete socialist revolution. The text argues that even a victory on August 15th will not save the revolution; the enemy will immediately launch a new offensive. Therefore, the committees built for the referendum must be kept, broadened, democratised, and—crucially—armed. The only defence for a revolution is to go on the attack and destroy the economic and political power of the oligarchy permanently.
The polemic is directed against several targets. It attacks the opposition’s fraudulent use of the recall mechanism, noting the “miracle” of dead people appearing on petition lists. It also polemicises against those within the Bolivarian Movement who believed accepting the referendum would satisfy imperialism. The chapter concludes with a warning against the “futile attempts to negotiate and compromise with the enemy” that had wasted previous victories, calling instead for the revolution to be carried through to the end in Venezuela and across Latin America.