Social Emergency, Climate Change, Capitalism, and Class Struggle in Bolivarian Venezuela

Our stomach turns when we do a visual count of the damages caused by the merciless rains of recent days. It’s just that figures alone don’t allow for a full comprehension of the catastrophe’s characteristics – in figures there is a cold rational that isn’t understood until one sees concrete faces, the faces of little kids scared and searching for answers amongst such despair. Wrinkles and colors of our People, the poor, asking ourselves how damn long will we be the everlasting protagonists of natural disasters? And while the answer is simple, it is urgent that we promote ideological literacy at this precise moment, at the center of this crisis, and expose the great unmasked guilty party in front of cameras and in front of consciousnesses. The guilt lies with capitalism, the accursed, with all its predatory voracity, with its announcement of its apocalyptic hegemonic presence. Capitalism is no longer satisfied with just exploiting the workforce, excluding and marginalizing millions of women, men and children based on gender, age, ethnicity, color, territorial or positional origin with respect to ownership of the means of production. No, now it threatens, it decomposes the seasons, breaks time’s cycles with great cruelty, contaminates the atmosphere, causes desertification, global warming, melts the poles.

The alarms are sounding for all of humanity, from La Guaira to Moscow, from La Guajira to Tierra del Fuego… the planet is dying and we, her crew, along with her. The culprit is there, distracted and smiling, trying to wade its way through the structural crisis – the crisis of capital restoring and resetting global hegemonies. Capital’s quest for greater accumulation and reproduction does not take into account humanities, or far off futures. It suffers from the inescapable instinct of a suicidal assassin, an instinct that can only be stopped by the rebellious and insurgent actions of the poor of the world.

Amidst our tragedies, the rains and landslides, the deaths, the refugees, the thousands of acres of food crops destroyed, amidst all this, the Venezuelan rich and their media of showbiz dramatization continue with their sensational Saturdays and their vulgar Colombian soap operas. This media seeks only to ensure that the consumer-driven month of December works out for Sambil [Venezuelan shopping mall chain], maintaining high levels of toxicity that lives within an alienation strictly imposed by the old dominating oligarchic bourgeoisie. This alienation symbolizes the social fragmentation and the atomization of the (inter) national collective that has been produced by capitalism. And it is precisely this alienation that our liberating process seeks to revert by means of an historical project that aspires and requires “national unity” if it is to become a reality.

Bolivarian Socialism, the leadership of Commander in Chief Hugo Chávez, and the “Simón Bolívar” National Project come together to edify an indestructible mass that is grounded in a collective identity raised by the Bolivarian Revolution – from its historic past up into our currently complex search of today. This is the great attempt to build, finally, a nation, and it is to be built within a framework of the continent, Latin Americanism, and revolutionary internationalism.

Class struggle, brothers and sisters, is also expressed in these dimensions of historical and social reality. It will not be from elitist tribunals, nor from flavored (though highly repetitive) “theoretical courses”, that our people – the poor, workers, peasants, marginalized, and excluded – will gain consciousness “for themselves.” It is from the “stubborn” reality, from down below where we live and coexist, where those of us from the “Current” and millions of historical actors and collectives live, from the place in which keys surge to decrypt the present, keys that provide answers not only for “the resistance” but for a decisive, uninterrupted offensive. These are the keys that allow us to construct, in a unified, articulated and directed manner, the path toward national liberation and socialism.

Obviously, the social praxis of our People – the poor – has a theoretical matrix that is nourished by Marxism as a tool of analysis and comprehension of a historical reality. It was the old Marx who discovered capitalism’s great secrets, its structural behavior, identifying surplus value as the element of capital’s reproduction and expansion. We also recognize in Liberation Theology an ethical matrix, in the culture and ancient wisdom of our indigenous peoples we find a spiritual synchronization and, finally, we find ideas based on the contributions of [Simón] Bolívar, of Simón Rodríguez, of [Ezequiel] Zamora and the reference for all of them – Francisco de Miranda.

It is worth noting that our commander in chief and president, Hugo Chávez, has been the great synthesizer of the ideas, of the history, of the strategy and tactics, the great teacher that has inspired the march of our People. The degrees of consciousness acquired by our People have been in large part enhanced by the role of this leader, leadership that is born of history only every so many years. To deepen our reading of reality, we ascribe to his symbolism. We do this with no interest in patenting our truths – unlike the opportunism of those who consider themselves the owners of the “revolutionary franchise.” We are not looking to brown-nose, nor do we seek positions within the bureaucratic state apparatus. No, we are a handful of women and men, of poor people, people who believe fervently in a society of equals, a society of “freely associated producers and consumers,” in that society of “to each according to their need, to each according to their work,” until we reach the stadium of justice that allows us to affirm, “to each according to their capacity…”

WITH BOLÍVAR AND ZAMORA WE AFFIRM, ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!

WITH CHAVEZ, NATIONAL UNITY AND POPULAR PROTAGONISM!!!

FOR THE DEMOCRATIC RADICALIZATION OF THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION!!!

IN THIS REVOLUTION WHAT WE NEED TO DO IS… DO!!!

SOCIALIST HOMELAND OR DEATH, WE WILL OVERCOME!!!

Translated by Venezuelanalysis.com