We want to publish an article, which we found on the homepage of the comrades of Partija Rada.
Regarding the question of what position to take in this situation, a revolutionary party and a movement in a concrete historical situation around Venezuela, when it is found in the vortex of the clash between imperialists and the imperialist attacks on individual states with the aim of enslaving the people, certain differences in thoughts in the revolutionary movements.
PR believes that unreserved support should be given in the defense of Venezuela, or its people, with all the means from the invasion of American imperialism. It is necessary to put aside the very character of the regime, whatever it was, if that regime is resisting that aggression and enslavement.
But we come to one situation that often arises because of the position of the revolutionary organization itself in a country that must at the same time lead an active struggle against the regime and the stance of other organizations of the world that proceed from these general and fundamental positions of struggle against imperialism. In doing so, the concrete situation and position of the mass, as well as the position of the organization and movements in these countries most often are not taken into account.
Let’s see our examples.
The position of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia was to break up bourgeois Yugoslavia as the dungeon of many nations, as a state of social and national oppression. However, under the threat of war and occupation from Hitler’s fascist hordes, the CPY changed its stance and invites all its members to defend the country. And when the country was occupied and the leading clique of the bourgeoisie fled, or supported the occupation, it called on the peoples of Yugoslavia for resistance and began a victorious armed struggle for the liberation of the country.
Another example is from a recent history is when the revisionist and multi-national Yugoslavia collapsed. From the very beginning, the Party of Labor stood on the standpoint that internal contradictions, in the first place, broke up Yugoslavia, and above all the power of the strongest greater-serbia nationalism that had the military and material power to speed up the breakup. The PR directed its critique against the nationalist regime in Belgrade, as the strongest and most militant. When the interests of the regime came into conflict with Western imperialism, on the issue of Kosovo and the struggle of the Albanian people for liberation, the PR supported the justified struggle of the Albanian people and even went further with its attitude – that NATO intervention was in the interests of the people in Ex-Yugoslavia. This stance came under the condemnation from the most of our movement, because they began from the general view that it was necessary to condemn NATO intervention anywhere in the world. In our opinion, they did not take into account several facts: that this miliraty intervention stopped the war among the people of Ex-Yugoslavia, which is in the interests of these people themselves, because no force was created by those nations that would lead the struggle against nationalism for the purpose of peace and to stop slaughter in inter-ethnic hatred ; Secondly, it was precisely this regime that, with its war against other Yugoslav nations, enabled its politics to bring the NATO troops to the territory of the former Yugoslavia; Thirdly, under the threat of NATO intervention, the regime continued with even more aggressive occupation and persecution of the Albanian people; And, fourthly, the NATO occupation of the Balkans creates the conditions for re-strengthening of the national-liberation aspirations of the peoples of the Balkans.
The PR took a position just like the CPY once – to firmly support the hideous criminal regime in Belgrade, if in the situation of NATO threats and interventions, it withdrew its troops from Kosovo and gave the Albanian people the right to self-determination. But that regime continued at those moments even worse with its politics of oppression and crimes against one nation. This is another reason why the PR participated in its demolition.
This case with the Albanian people is somewhat similar to that of the Kurdish movement today in Syria – when the interests of the nation’s liberation struggle are among the interests of various imperialists and the ruling regime of a state. With fact that in the start of the Albanian National Liberation Movement, the movement failed to preserve its own self-identity, nor did it get a revolutionary dimension and was put in the service of Western imperialism, while the situation with the Kurdish movement is quite different.
The PR always considered the policy of the Kurdish Movement to be right, regardless of all the criticisms that they came to abandon our positions, their “nationalism” and their “placing US imperialism in service.” Although the PR disagrees with some theoretical attitudes of the current leadership of the movement, the revolutionary process embedded in the Kurdish movement has a historical significance for the liberation of the people, the oppressed classes and womens of the Middle East and beyond and is a great incentive to fight for many of the liberation movements.
So, we believe that the revolutionaries in Venezuela must take a stand from the given circumstances and that they should now stand under the well-known Lenin parlor – “The land is in danger!” – because it is really in danger. This does not mean that the struggle for the victory of socialism in Venezuela and against the Maduro regime and its pact with various imperialists and the bourgeoisie should not continue. However, when this danger is real, with the even greater enslavement of the Venezuelan people, then the question of Maduro’s “socialism” and the regime’s agenda is not raised. It is left to the side, while at the same time they need to mobilize masses in defense of a Venezuelan people from the US imperialists. However, this mobilization must have in itself and that additional momentum – that the force of popular resistance is directed towards goals that the Maduro regime cannot, or don’t want to fulfill. And in that way the masses are separated to go with the forces under the control of the imperialists and have objective reasons to oppose the Maduro regime, as well as to strengthen those forces among Maduro’s supporters who want to go on to socialism. At the same time, Venezuelan comrades just need to use this situation and create their own armed force that at one point will be able, after the joint defense of Venezuela or during the defense itself, lead to the situation that the question of the destruction of the “dualism” between socialism and capitalism in Venezuela.
So – not decisively against Maduro because he is not in our ideological positions, but with all our hearts for Maduro, while strengthening revolutionary power to defend Venezuela and who will be able to strike on Maduro regime in the future.
We consider another moment very important. Throughout South America, there are marionette regimes in the service of the US imperialists, as well as revolutionary movements and a situation that is suitable for strengthening these movements. We therefore consider that the capitulating position as well as the tactics for the pragmatic needs and the influence of the Cuban regime are wrong and inflict enormous damage in this situation. Armed movements, especially in Colombia, would be extremely important at this moment if there is a wider war, because it is precisely this situation with Venezuela that opens the possibility of a new takeoff of the revolutionary movement on the American continent, especially in Mexico, Peru and even in the United States itself. Therefore, at the moment, when, due to the escalation of the struggle of American, Chinese and Russian imperialism in the territory of South America, any conciliatory policy towards US-led marionette regimes, disarmament negotiations, etc. is detrimental. The Cuban regime is responsible for this biggest mistake and short-sightedness because it is today pursuing politics in South America and revolutionary movements as the socialist imperialism of USSR had towards the struggle of the peoples of the world for its liberation, starting primarily from its own pragmatic interests. This policy is narrow and condemned to fail.
The defense of the Venezuelan people from direct invasion of American imperialism has a big incentive to strengthen the revolutionary movement in South America, and already gives a new quality in the anti-imperialist struggle for the liberation of the American people.