[The following statement was made by the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) concerning the development of class struggle in Venezuela and internal struggle within the Bolivarian movement. The PCV sums up their achievements in the recent National Assembly of the Workers’ and Trade Union Movement, and draws clear lines between its own, revolutionary line, and that arising out of economistic trade unionism and bureaucrat-capitalism within the Bolivarian movement, reaffirming the primary need to pursue the countrywide liberation of the proletariat and a fundamental change in the economic system, rather than relegating their concerns only to the short-term interests of workers in particular sectors. We unite with this analysis, and want to emphasize its general truth. Capitulation to trade union consciousness has long been a fundamental problem in the International Communist Movement, particularly in the First World. This statement was originally published in Spanish by Tribuna Popular, the official media organ of the PCV, and has been made available here in English for the purposes of study and struggle.]

The Politburo of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) hailed the successful completion of the 9th National Assembly of the Workers’ and Trade Union Movement, carried out by the National Front for the Struggle of the Working Class (FNLCT) on July 7.



In the Assembly, a set of programmatic measures and a plan for struggle was adopted to transform the crisis of the Venezuelan people into a revolutionary one that promotes the largest and most widespread mobilization of workers in alliance with the popular movement and the peasantry.



Pedro Eusse, member of the Politburo of the PCV, stressed that “we cannot remain only in the partial, isolated, particular claim of each labor sector, only in the just requirement of wage increases and compliance with collective conditions, but altogether we must demand that economic policy be reoriented, that policies be adopted to defeat the power of the monopolies, destroy the mafias of commercialization, the financial mafias, the corporate black market, and act with forcefulness against the factors that harm and condemn to misery, poverty and hunger the whole Venezuelan people.”



For communists these problems can be defeated with a revolutionary policy and with the mobilization of the people, for this reason communists insist on the need for worker-peasant, communal and popular movement to assert control over all the processes of production, distribution and commercialization of goods and services.



Against the impunity of monopolies



The PCV again denounced the impunity with which monopolistic groups operate, particularly the group of Empresas Polar.



Eusse explained that this business group dominates a huge percentage of the consumer goods of the Venezuelan population, “almost all the articles of daily consumption of the Venezuelan people are under the dominion of that monopolistic group, and they get cover to increase prices in a vulgar and unpunished way, but also keep ten thousand workers in the street, not obeying orders of an administrative and judicial nature that order the re-enlistment of this staff.”



“The Empresas Polar group is an enemy of the Venezuelan people, so we have to face it and demand that the government adopt measures to bring this group to heel and not allow it to act against the Venezuelan people as it is doing,” Eusse said.



The Party of the Red Rooster reiterated its proposal of nationalization of the monopolies, “not under bureaucratic control but under workers’ and popular control”.



Congress of oil workers



The PCV welcomed the holding of the 2nd National Socialist Congress of oil, gas and petrochemical workers, convened for July 12 and 13 in the state of Zulia.



“We predict that this Congress will produce a set of conclusions that will allow us to move towards a strong oil workers movement that will fight for the oil industry to be strengthened, rescued and put at the service of the national interest through a new type of management model, under workers-popular leadership and of course of the national state,” said Eusse, while confirming the active participation of the Oil Workers Class Current “Jesús Faría”.



For the PCV, “sovereignty should be forced on the oil industry. We must not give in to the pretensions of private capital that is pressing to take more and more spaces in the oil sector, which they have achieved. These are warnings and complaints that the PCV has made, accompanying complaints from the workers of that industry,” Eusse said.



Peasant mobilization for a change in agrarian policy



The PCV ratified its active participation in the struggle of the peasantry against the landlords, the abandonment that exists in the countryside and the absence of policies for strong national production.



In that sense, Eusse reported that the PCV salutes the peasant march that begins on July 12, which will leave Guanare to the city of Caracas, as an initiative of the peasant struggle platform and in which the Peasant Class Current “Nicomedes Abreu” participates.



“This mobilization marks the beginning of a set of actions of the peasantry at the national level to adopt a change in agrarian policy, to face the unpunished action of civil and military landowners, and the repressive role played by the military in defending landowners in different parts of the country,” Eusse emphasized.



The whole working people, the communist leader pointed out, must join and support the struggles of the peasants and the demand for policies that provide for agricultural inputs, financing, technical support, and defense of the peasants against the landlords.