Oppose War with Venezuela!

Editorial

This year’s Thanksgiving day speech by the ultra-reactionary chief of US imperialism included the announcement that attacks against land targets in Venezuela will be taking place “very soon.” The threat of escalated armed intervention against the oppressed nation comes under the flimsy disguise of “the war on drugs,” which in reality is nothing but a maneuver to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and install a more dependable lackey of US imperialism.

This takes place amid the deepening general economic crisis of imperialism, in which the US seeks to preserve its sole-hegemony over the world by tightening its control in South America and the Caribbean, to gain control over the world’s largest oil reserves (Venezuela) and position themselves for exclusive control over rare earth minerals in the region necessary to maintain the bloated US imperialist military apparatus.

Venezuela, similar to Ukraine, is headed by a dubious and weak leadership, comprised of representatives of the big landlords, bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and servants of foreign imperialism, who, in spite of willingness to capitulate to all perceived demands of the US intermittently, have been unable to stave off the war of aggression US imperialism brings to their shores. At the same time, Maduro courts Russian imperialism and offers to sell out his homeland to this imperialist superpower in the name of “protection.”

The masses of Venezuela have entered the militia en masse, and comprise a mighty armed force far more committed that the leaders of the old-state to energetically crush and defeat the pending invasion. The masses are the real heroes, and they have not taken it lightly that for months the US imperialists have illegally murdered fisherman—who the US imperialists slander as drug traffickers without evidence.

The workers of the US share the class interests of their siblings in Venezuela, and contain the very same potential energy which has found kinetic expression among the Venezuelan workers and peasants. The enemy of our working class in the US is the very same monopolies which foam at the mouth to economically, politically, and militarily subjugate oppressed nations.

The rhetoric of the US monopolists and finance capitalists cannot deceive the masses of American workers, as the alluring but phony promises of bringing back industry to impoverished regions of the US never come to fruition. This is because the mass of consumer commodities will not be produced in the US; instead, only a highly automated production which offers fewer jobs will be constructed around technology and weapons sectors, and the trend of domestic production relocating to the South to avoid labor laws will continue. As workers brace for a long fight against the very same monopolists on this front, their spontaneous opposition to unjust war must be augmented by taking firm positions of anti-imperialism.

The involvement, mobilization, and leadership of the working class in the pending but inevitable anti-war movement will determine its character and its ability to fight in ways that make solidarity a weapon against imperialism. All efforts must be made from the onset to secure the active leadership of this class, and to prevent the intellectual and small propertied classes as well as the aristocrats within labor from castrating the movement and casting it into the bogs of pacifism, domesticity, and surrender.

War is always paid for by the working class, as social programs are gutted and austerity is implemented, real wages decline and the cost of everything goes up. The further tightening of the belt compelled by yet another long-term war presents a volatile situation in which the increasingly class conscious masses are likely to explode.

The US “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan murdered millions of people while costing workers in the US over $8 trillion—money that could have been used to fund programs for workers and the poor are instead funneled to fatten capital through the murder of workers and peasants abroad. During that time, inflation in the US increased by over 30% while military and oil monopolies reaped windfall profits. The strengthening of capital through predatory wars increases their ability to exploit workers abroad and in the US, making working conditions worse while having more resources to counteract workers’ resistance.

It is the duty of all honest people to oppose not only armed intervention in Venezuela but to defend the right of the oppressed nations to throw off the yoke of US imperialism, linking this to the fight against the same monopolist exploiters at home. Revolutionaries have not been faced with such fertile ground among the masses as they are now; they must forge themselves among them in combative struggle, acting as a lever, a leader. To do this, they must learn from the masses in order to teach them.

Image: US Marines in the Caribbean, November 18, US Marine Corps Photo.

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