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The US empire has been making warlike noises about the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela since Trump’s first term in office – no surprise, considering the reported lithium wealth under the country, its vast oil reserves, and the powerful interests of Venezuelan and Cuban exiles on the empire’s right-fascist governing party. Major figures of the US ruling class, from Elon Musk to Marco Rubio, have been screaming for the blood of the Venezuelan social revolution, and today their war-hungry chief proxy (who campaigned on peace and an end to foreign interventions) has unleashed a nightmare on the people of Venezuela.
In the weeks leading up to the confrontation, Venezuela armed its entire working class, distributing guns and calling up its militias to repel a threatened US invasion. On January 3, US war planes bombed the capital of Caracas. Shortly thereafter, clown-president Trump announced on his personal social media app that President Maduro and his wife were kidnapped and removed from the country.
This flagrant violation of international law comes just days after US vassal-state, israel, announced its diplomatic recognition of a breakaway region of the Republic of Somalia as “Somaliland,” the only country to do so since its split from Somalia in 1991. This has been trumpeted in imperial mouthpieces like The Telegraph, applauding genocidaire Netanyahu for a “tactical masterstroke” and likening this breach of international law to a “powerful riposte to the West’s recognition of Palestine.”
This is, of course, the way the US empire and its crony-states have always handled themselves on the world stage: the bullies of the international community, using bombs and terror to impose their will on the peripheral countries and ensure their continued compliance with the “international order” — or, in other words, with the interests of American capital.
In the days following the US invasion of Caracas, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn into office by Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice as acting-president. Trump and his cronies have already begun to lick their chops and demand the re-entry of American capital into Venezuela to seize the country’s oil-wealth, but the Bolivarian Revolution is not beaten yet. The colectivos and workers’ militias continue to patrol the streets and seize pro-American agents on the ground. Colombia’s ELN has pledged to resist Yankee imperialism in Venezuela with armed force, and Cuba has promised to do the same.
Trump’s meeting with Yankee oil executives in Washington this week wasn’t promising for the aging imperialist mouthpiece. The big oil firms expressed their disinterest in investing in Venezuelan production because of its “commercial frameworks, legal system, and hydrocarbon laws” in the words of Exxon CEO Darren Woods. However, the oil ghouls did hold out a path for Trump to win their investment in his geopolitical play: breaking the Bolivarian Revolution.
He won’t find it easy. We must make it even harder by organizing real friction here in the imperialist center and physically opposing government policy with material opposition. As always, the predicate to that opposition must be the establishment of real organizations capable of formulating strategy and tactics and analyzing the results. We have half a century of examples of mindless “action” to warn us of the danger of unorganized opposition. Indeed, the Red Clarion just published “A Structureless Movement,” in which solidarity actions taken in an unorganized fashion in the Pacific Northwest were analyzed and the same conclusion drawn. We urge all readers who do not have a robust, Marxist local organization to use this as an opportunity to establish one. Agitate around the Bolivarian Revolution and the possibility of increasing imperialist friction through action; draw in potential members, educate them, and then act.
It falls to us. No one is coming to do the hard work of organizing for us, and we cannot rely on any of the organizations we have inherited. We have an obligation, not only to act, but to organize!
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