Esperanza Guevara
In Venezuela as in some other countries of Latin America we are experiencing a bourgeois-democratic process, with patriotic, nationalist governments that say they are “anti-imperialist,” which is only expressed in being anti-Yankee. We communists know that these bourgeois-democratic processes do not go beyond reforms within the framework of capitalism. But we also understand that historically these processes allow us to advance up to a certain point, to prepare ourselves, accumulate and organize the forces for the crucial struggles, to create the necessary conditions that allow us to organize the working class and its allies for the seizure of political power, thus advancing towards the real social revolution, the proletarian revolution.
These bourgeois-democratic processes are being interpreted by the opportunist, revisionist currents, representatives of the government bureaucracy, as the “Transition to 20th Century Socialism,” as the synthesis of the best of all the revolutions carried out in the world, as a “modern expression” of the road to a “new socialism” corresponding to this historic moment. This thesis defends building socialism by the “peaceful road,” without class confrontation, without touching the fundamental element that sustains capitalism and imperialism, private ownership of the means of production. Therefore they proclaim that one has to develop other means of production with new relations of production that “little by little” in a “gradual” way would displace the capitalist relations of production, or that would “hegemonize” over capitalist relations, that is, to create a kind of competition between one “model of social production” as they define it and the model of the bourgeoisie, or even to create a hybrid economy. In this way they try to show the “democratic” character of the State, in which bourgeois exploitation and workers self-management coexist, hoping that this will arouse the good will and sympathy of the pro-imperialist bourgeoisie given the exploitation to which it subjects the working class every day.
Thus, the opportunists and revisionists deny the class struggle, deny that the historical subject of the revolution is the proletariat, in order to put in its place the so-called social movements, which represent people’s power and thus deny the organization of the working class, deny and refuse to accept the fundamental role of the unions and even more, the highest organization of the proletarian class, the vanguard party of the working class. They speak about the working class to give themselves a touch of radical leftism to their revisionism before the masses. This is what the working class is to them; in their speeches they specially emphasize that violent revolutions have passed from history, and have given way to peaceful revolutions that hold up peace among the citizens, that they can achieve peaceful coexistence between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, making the bourgeoisie fulfill some laws that provide certain benefits to the working class so that it can improve its conditions of life and avoid confrontations.
The elements described above form part of the state bureaucracy, they assume that the electoral struggle is enough to eliminate reaction, but such naiveté of the petty bourgeoisie and opportunism is revealed in its vacillating attitude to the difficult situations or electoral reverses in the process of struggle. Others who call themselves communists, but are no more than fossilized revisionists, overcome by the diversions and laziness caused by the comforts they have achieved throughout their history, accustomed to live vegetating; they also accommodate their theses of “alliance with the bourgeoisie to develop the productive forces and to advance to socialism, without obstacles or clashes between classes or sectors.”
These theses, which are deprived of all objectivity and are anti-scientific, devoid of dialectical and materialist vision of historical reality, are not new, they have not been born now in the light of these processes. The theses that these currents proclaim were raised centuries ago, by the reformist social-democrats (mainly Bernstein) and the revisionists of the Second International, and later by other currents harmful to the international workers movement. They claim the absurd merit that they are creating the theory of a new socialism, but we communists know that similar speculations can only come from opportunist, petty-bourgeois tendencies. These theses were very well refuted from the theoretical point of view, and taken apart in practice by comrade Lenin who denounced before the proletariat their mistaken and diverted vision of the historical development of the society and its outcomes.
These revisionist, reformist postulates and petty-bourgeois conceptions hide the fear that the working class will organize itself into a powerful instrument, to undertake the fight to demolish the existing state of things. We Marxist-Leninists must be clear in the fight against these tendencies that only confuse, demobilize and hold back the fight of the proletariat. Thus, for example, today in Venezuela this struggle is being waged ideologically and politically, and our Party is advancing firm in the orientation and the leadership of the working class, the peasants, the youths, students and women, for the conquest of political power, knowing that within the framework of this nationalist and patriotic government, we can advance up to a certain point which we mentioned in the beginning, in the winning of some demands. But we are clear that this is not enough, we work firm in our principles, with a clear political line, with the most correct tactics and in realization of our strategic objective, the seizure of political power. The Venezuelan proletariat needs to subject the minority to the majority, to be able to impose its will, the will of the majority that is nothing other than the building of a just society, towards a society without classes, without the exploitation of some men by others. This is obtained by eliminating the privileges of the minorities (putting an end to private ownership of the means of production), overcoming the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of the appropriation of wealth generated by the workers’ labor power.
Let us advance without hesitation, taking advantage to the maximum of the conditions of this bourgeois democracy, to raise the levels of organization, education and combativeness of the proletariat.
Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Venezuela
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