EDITORIAL
Maduro must expropriate the Venezuelan bourgeoisie
The imperialist offensive against Venezuela puts the need for radical measures on the agenda: only the expropriation of the bourgeoisie can unify the country
The seizure of Venezuelan ships and cargo by US forces is not a diplomatic “incident” or an additional “sanction” in the series of imperialist crimes. It is piracy in the literal sense: an assault carried out with warships, outside any law, against an oppressed country. The Caribbean Sea is not the property of the United States, and the claim to patrol it as if it were their backyard once again exposes the criminal nature of imperialism.
US President Donald Trump is carrying out a policy that goes back a long way and will continue, with or without him, as long as imperialism maintains its world dictatorship. The economic siege, the blockade and the permanent attempt to suffocate Venezuela are part of a state orientation of the world’s main imperialist country. Governments change, the packaging changes, the aggression remains.
Imperialist aggression is based above all on the submission of governments and political leaderships around the world. The rule is to adapt to the blackmail of imperialism, whether it is presented in a “democratic” veneer or when it appears without disguise. The question, therefore, is not to choose which face is “worse”, but to understand that imperialism is always violent, always anti-democratic, always genocidal and always criminal.
Faced with this offensive, the Venezuelan government’s correct response was to call for popular mobilization. The huge demonstrations and the call for millions to go to the defense structures show an elementary fact: Venezuela can only resist because it relies on the intervention of the masses. This mobilization alone dismantles the farce of the pro-imperialist Venezuelan right, which dreams of taking power from the hands off imperialism and not from the people. The policy of figures like María Corina Machado is the open policy of handing over national wealth to foreign plunder.
But popular mobilization, to be carried through to the end, requires a decisive measure. In a war situation, the national bourgeoisie is not “neutral”: it is the internal party of imperialism. That’s why Maduro must expropriate the Venezuelan bourgeoisie. This is the only measure capable of unifying the country consistently in the anti-imperialist struggle. Any capitalist, any company that works against the resistance effort must be expropriated. And in the Venezuelan case, the entire bourgeoisie is objectively in the camp of the enemy.
History clearly demonstrates this. The Cuban Revolution was not born, in the initial program of its leadership, as a process of general expropriation of capital. There were attempts at conciliation, accommodation with bourgeois sectors, and even the appointment of figures linked to the big bourgeoisie to positions of command. It was the direct pressure of imperialism – and the reaction of the masses – that pushed the revolution towards a break: in the face of aggression, expropriation became a condition for survival. The defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion is not explained by diplomatic manoeuvres, but by the political leap produced by popular mobilization and the arming of the people.
Venezuela is facing a similar dilemma. If millions of workers are called upon to defend the nation, if the people are called upon to sustain the resistance, then power tends to shift. The boss who sabotages, the businessman who bets on invasion, the bourgeois sector that organizes boycotts and conspiracies becomes, in practice, a direct target of the action of the masses.
In Brazil, this problem is exacerbated because the Lula government acts as a brake. Its stance of silence, combined with interventions that sow confusion – such as proposals for a “referendum” in the midst of an escalation of threats – is collaboration with the imperialist offensive. There is no such thing as neutrality when a world dictatorship attacks an oppressed country. To claim to be neutral is, in practice, to align oneself with imperialism and help politically disarm those who could mobilize to defend Venezuela.
The task, therefore, is twofold and urgent. In Venezuela, to move forward from the mobilization to the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, consolidating national unity against the external and internal enemy. In Brazil, to break the passivity imposed by the government’s policy and organize active solidarity: actions, a permanent campaign and real mobilization in defence of Venezuela.
