Gantry 5

 

The situation in Venezuela must be understood in the context of inter-imperialist conflicts around the world.

On January 3, 2026, the United States of America perpetrated an imperialist aggression against Venezuela, bombing the city of Caracas and other areas in the center of the country, and kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Our party had, on the same day, published a statement unequivocally condemning the aggression and carefully avoiding, unlike some left-wing organizations with little anti-colonialism, equating the US leaders with those of the attacked country.

We subsequently wrote on several occasions to explain the reasons for the dominant imperialism and described the evolving situation in Venezuela, a consequence of the growing control and recolonization of Venezuela by the US. From the outset, we questioned the possibility of such an act without complicity at the highest level. The publication of an interview with the Cuban ambassador to France in the daily newspaper La Marseillaise shed light on the events surrounding Maduro's kidnapping. The ambassador revealed that the 32 Cuban soldiers responsible for protecting the Venezuelan president held out for over an hour against 200 US soldiers. This raised, and continues to raise, several questions. What did the Venezuelan army do during this period of more than an hour? What did the militias linked to the PSUV, the ruling party, do? The US aggressors certainly suffered injuries, perhaps even deaths; how was it possible for them to evacuate without difficulty?
From the very first days following the aggression, a number of decisions made by the triumvirate now leading Venezuela—Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, her brother Jorge, the President of the National Assembly, and Diosdado Cabello, Minister of the Interior and Secretary-General of the PSUV—suggested that they were implementing the roadmap decided upon by US leaders, who quickly abandoned the drug trafficking narrative to focus on the real issue: oil. US Vice President James David Vance didn't mince words: "  About twenty years ago, Venezuela expropriated American oil properties and, until recently, used these stolen assets to enrich itself  ." This rhetoric, equating nationalizations with theft, is frequently used by US leaders and their ideological mouthpieces, but was primarily a constant among South American reactionaries. Thus, during his first press conference after the fascist coup in September 1973, when asked about the future of the copper mines, Pinochet replied: "  They will be returned to their rightful owners  ."
 
Yet, many "left-wing" activists, admirers of the Bolivarian regime, dismissed the arguments or questions of those who suspected internal complicity, referring to a "retreat position," a kind of weathering of the storm, asserting that the "Bolivarian Revolution" was continuing its course. However, all the elements were there. On January 6, three days after the attack and kidnapping, we wrote: "  In order to advance toward tighter control of Venezuelan politics, the United States urgently needed to alter the internal balance of power in the country by seeking interlocutors more inclined to listen to US demands and/or more capable of imposing them on the Venezuelan people. The elimination of Maduro through methods of international banditry served this purpose." It doesn't matter, as far as US leaders are concerned, who is running Venezuela, as long as their demand for control of oil by their multinationals is met. A ground invasion would be far riskier than this kidnapping and the pressure being put on Venezuela's current leaders.  [ 1] What the die-hard proponents of a supposedly ongoing "revolution" perhaps failed to see was the approach of the US leaders.
Because while oil is an important motive, it doesn't explain everything. The same is true for the imperialist aggression against Iran, even though it failed. Behind oil lies the strategy of US leaders regarding global supremacy at the imperialist stage. Vance himself says much the same thing: "  Should we stand idly by and let a communist country plunder our resources in our hemisphere?  " As we wrote in the same article cited above concerning the document on US Defense Strategy published by the White House: "  With regard to the American continent, the document is perfectly explicit. It aims, renewing the Monroe Doctrine, for exclusive domination of the continent, weakening the Chinese presence there through significant acquisitions of interests in terms of investment, trade, and control of strategic distribution centers for commerce." Thus, recently, under pressure from the United States, Panama ended its participation in the Belt and  Road Initiative , a central pillar of China's strategy to increase its influence abroad and secure its supplies . In a previous article, we extracted the essence of the vision of US leaders: "  What this document reveals is the reality and the perception that the balance of power established after the Second World War is changing. US supremacy, already asserted after the First World War, emerged as the leading capitalist power while the socialist bloc expanded. All of this is changing, causing seismic shocks of unprecedented intensity.  " [2]
 
The US Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) published a document at the end of January entitled "  Establishing Peace Through Strength for a New Golden Age of America,  " a program in itself, following on from the document on the US National Security Strategy. We also analyzed this document in a February 2026 article, and we can glean the following: "  The document on the US National Security Strategy poses the fundamental question from the perspective of the American monopoly bourgeoisie. It  reinforces our analysis of the nature of the confrontations within an imperialist system  witnessing the emergence of new forces, China and Asia, with the decline of Europe, which in the 19th century was the  center of the struggles for global domination. What this document reveals is the reality and the perception that the balance of power established after the Second World War is shifting." The United States' supremacy, already established after the First World War, emerged as the leading capitalist power while the socialist bloc expanded. All of this is now changing, triggering seismic shifts of unprecedented intensity. The U.S. National Defense Strategy 2026 appears as the military component of the fundamental objectives the United States has set for itself in order to maintain its current supremacy. The document marks a break after thirty years of post-Cold War, during which the United States linked its numerous interventions to the construction of a capitalist order accompanied by a veneer of morality. Here, the message is crystal clear: America no longer fights "everywhere, for everything, for everyone"; it prioritizes threats according to their direct impact on the security, freedom, and prosperity of Americans. It renounces "doing good" on a global scale, but reserves the right to act brutally when its vital interests are at stake.  [ 3]
 
The rapidly evolving situation in Venezuela reinforces our analysis.   As early as January 27, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Venezuela challenged the leaders in power following the kidnapping regarding the visit to Venezuela of CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who was received by Delcy Rodriguez on January 15: “  The presence of the highest-ranking CIA representative in Venezuela testifies to the changes underway to guarantee the interests of big capital and American imperialism. Apparently, his visit is closely linked to the military operation of January 3, the aggression against our country, and the assassination of a significant number of Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers. This presence has not been explained to the Venezuelan people […] just like the agreements concluded with Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. The Venezuelan people need to know the truth, and the Communist Party of Venezuela demands that those currently governing the Venezuelan state disclose, with full transparency, the agreements they are making with imperialism and big capital. ”
Since then, although a handful of diehards continue to defend the current comprador government of Venezuela, the facts, undeniably stubborn, have opened the eyes of many Chavismo supporters in France, and that's all for the better. The situation is dire, to say the least. Rodriguez and his clique have relinquished control and production of oil to Washington, no longer refer to the release of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, cut off supplies to Cuba, opened their doors to the genocidal Zionist occupation army, and are going to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Zionist entity. They even went so far as to condemn Iran and arrest and hand over to the United States the former minister close to Maduro, Alex Saab. It is even rumored that they ordered those who wanted to fight on the night of January 3rd to return home. Finally, to top it all off, the major capitalist Mathieu Pigasse, a man of the "left" who talks with the Socialist Party, the Greens, La France Insoumise, and even the general secretary of the CGT union, Sophie Binet, has been appointed to restructure Venezuela's debt in conjunction with Trump and Delcy Rodriguez. The Venezuelan government has signed a contract for a colossal commission from Pigasse for this debt restructuring—a commission reportedly higher than what he received for the same dirty work in Greece.
 
Clearly, only an analysis of the current stage of imperialism, such as we systematically strive to undertake, allows us to understand what is happening and what is at stake. The strategy of US leaders stems from a single motivation: the absolute defense of the interests of their multinational corporations. This is true in Venezuela, but also in Iran. The enemy is China; the US is working hard to drive it out of trade with South America, and would have liked to do the same in the Middle East. Alas, Iran is not Venezuela; its government and people have demonstrated their will to resist no matter what. This analysis allows us to dispel two misconceptions: first, that the US launched its aggression against Iran to serve the Zionists. It is the fable of ritual inversion that makes the Zionists the masters of the USA, not what they actually are: an extension of it, an important card, certainly, in their game. All of this is explained by an analysis in terms of lobbies, not class relations, and absolutely not the current stage of imperialism. While this idea may help to rally many people against the war in the USA, where an understanding of the political and economic stakes is not exactly widespread, it remains nonetheless false. As for the other misconception, we debunked it in a recent article; the actions of US imperialists are not Trump's whims but rather necessities for US multinationals.  It is fashionable on television sets, as in the media in general, not to mention salons, especially those on the left, to judge US policy by the whims of its President, Donald Trump. This personalized approach has the advantage, for the apologists of the capitalist system, of ignoring an essential fact: the policy of the largest capitalist power, vying for hegemony within the imperialist system with the rising power of China and its allies in the emerging Euro-Asian bloc, does not originate in Trump's mind but rather in the demands of the capitalist monopolies that brought him to power. This brief reminder is to say that what ultimately determines the policy of capitalist powers in their confrontations within the imperialist system for control of raw materials and technologies, communication routes, and the workforce is the valorization of capital through profit rates and, consequently, the accumulation of capital.  [ 4]
 
Finally, all of this allows us to say a word about the strategy of the Latin American left since the early 2000s, which has proven to be a complete fiasco. Highly respectable activists, such as the towering Pepe Mujica in Uruguay, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Hugo Chávez himself, decided to abandon armed struggle and focus solely on gaining power through elections, perhaps forgetting that playing the game of bourgeois democracy means losing elections. Others, primarily from social-democratic backgrounds, followed suit. The most rebellious were ousted: Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009 by a US-backed military coup; former bishop Fernando Lugo in Paraguay in 2012 by a constitutional coup; Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2019 by a fascist coup with military complicity; and Pedro Castillo in Peru in 2022 by a constitutional coup. But for all the others, the bourgeois elections brought about the return of traditional right-wing parties (2019 in Uruguay, 2021 in Ecuador, after the presidency of Rafael Correa's former vice-president, who was decidedly more right-wing, and Paz in Bolivia) or the rise of fascist-leaning leaders (Milei in Argentina, Katz in Chile, Fujimori's daughter in Peru, Astura in Honduras, after the return of the left with Xomara Castro, and De la Espriella in Colombia). The same thing could well happen to Lula in Brazil and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. Electoral fraud has been frequently invoked, and the former Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega understood the maneuver and established strict rules for controlling elections and voters. Nevertheless, if we set aside Bolivia, where the popular masses continue to resist the government of Rodrigo Paz, supported by a still-active Morales, it is clear that the legitimization of the electoral process of bourgeois democracy, the view of this means as the only way to achieve power, and policies often less progressive than expected have led the Latin American "left," electoral fraud or not, coup d'état or not, to disaster. The overthrow of the government in Venezuela is just another episode in this sad state of affairs. All these leaders, apart from Evo Morales, have distanced themselves from the revolutionary perspective, or have always been distanced from it, or have participated in coalitions that effectively prevent measures truly capable of changing the game. This abandonment, or this failure to take into account, or even this setting aside of the class struggle proved fatal to them.
 
Faced with capitalism in its imperialist stage, it is extremely damaging to forget class criteria and an understanding of the capitalist system. This is the harsh lesson taught to the Latin American "left" in general and to the Bolivarian movement in particular. We reaffirm our solidarity with the workers of all these countries, struggling for their emancipation, especially those of Bolivia and their revolutionary workers' parties, particularly the Communist Party of Venezuela.