The left and Venezuela

The Morning Star on 16 January framed a statement by Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez statement calling for foreign oil investment as a radical departure from collaboration with the United States. They quote her as saying “a new policy is being formed”, without mentioning Rodriguez welcoming the head of the CIA for a meeting earlier the same week, or Venezuelan oil being sold under US government direction with revenues going to US-controlled bank accounts. The need to defend the record of the Maduristas has led the CPB into a world of fancy.

An article by former Labour MP (turned Your Party conference chair) Claudia Webbe went even further. Rubbishing “early claims [that] Rodriguez was co-operating with the US”, Webbe asserts that “the evident continuing popularity of the Bolivarian government and Maduro personally underscored Rodriguez’s show of strength”. Webbe also boasts that among the demonstrators in support of Maduro were “civilians carrying automatic weapons, many of them women”.

The RCG’s newspaper, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, cut out the middle man: instead of doing left apologetics for Rodriguez’s government, it simply republished the official statement of the Venezuelan government, with an extra article highlighting that “Venezuelans” are demanding the return of their “democratically elected president”. They ignore the fact that Maduro’s election has widely been recognised as entirely undemocratic, and critics of it include almost the entirety of the Venezuelan left, appear to be of no consequence here.

The RCP (formerly Socialist Appeal) have relaunched their long dormant “Hands Off Venezuela!” campaign, which in its high days made Socialist Appeal only a publicity agency in Britain for the Chavez regime (which was, to be sure, better than the Maduro sequel it generated, but still left-military rather than working-class in any sense). The campaign aims to “educate workers and young people on the reality of British imperialism, on the real legacy of the Bolivarian revolution, and how we can build a movement to overthrow imperialism”.

Some of Socialist Worker’s coverage has given too glowing a picture of Chavez, but Camilla Royle’s “In-Depth” article was well-researched and nuanced, with reasoned criticism of Chavez himself. Counterfire’s Chris Bambery has also produced an useful article, based on his firsthand experience on an SWP delegation to Venezuela in the 2000s: “The army was the thing that worked” in handing out reforms financed by the high oil revenues of the time.