Today, Venezuela is used as a horror story by right-wingers and reactionaries, who hold it up as an example of why “socialism never works”. In fact, the Venezuelan Revolution was an inspiring episode in recent history, which showed the immense power of the masses and the potential of workers to run their workplaces without bosses. But it also demonstrated that you cannot have half a revolution: once the process has begun, it must end with the expropriation of capitalism and socialist reconstruction – as our comrade Luis Romero from Caracas explains!

We are publishing this appeal, signed by the Venezuelan section of the RCI amongst others, in solidarity with those arrested in protests after the official announcement of the election results. Add your signature, or that of your organisation to the appeal here.

Below, we publish a joint statement issued by Lucha de Clases(Venezuelan section of the RCI) and Junta Patriótica de Salvación, on the current political crisis in Venezuela. In this statement, we put forward a class position in the face of government authoritarianism and the false democratic disguise that the pro-imperialist right wing is trying to flaunt today.

The situation in Venezuela is developing very quickly after Sunday’s election. Monday morning dawned to the sound of cacerolazos (the banging of pots and pans) in protest against the declared victory of Nicolás Maduro. The cacerolazos in Caracas began in working-class and poor neighbourhoods; in Petare, in Catia, in 23 de Enero. Then they started to come down from the neighbourhoods la Dolorita, el Guarataro, Antímano, and the barriosto the east of Caracas.

With days to go before the presidential elections in Venezuela, the atmosphere is tense but relatively calm. These are far from normal elections. They are fraught with doubts and risks. Uncertainty is only increasing as the hours go by. The prevailing calm awaits the coming of a storm.

The following is the Resolution of Lucha de Clases – CMI Venezuela on the political and electoral situation, approved by its Central Committee. Future analyses will be published that add further detail to the position the resolution puts forward. We invite the most conscious layers of the workers’ and wider mass movement to read, analyse, circulate and discuss the content of the text. It is a contribution to the debate on what position consistent revolutionaries should take in the coming presidential elections and the kind of organisation we need to put the forces of the Venezuelan working people back on their feet.

On Sunday 3 December, a consultative public referendum, called by the National Assembly, on the territorial dispute over the Essequibo territory in Guyana, was held in Venezuela. The escalating conflict over this territory has deeply reactionary implications for both peoples. It is imperative that communists adopt an internationalist position.

Lucha de Clases – the Venezuelan section of the International Marxist Tendency – expresses its firm opposition to the recent attack on the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), orchestrated by the leadership of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and carried out by the judiciary. This manoeuvre has stripped the PCV’s membership and the legitimate leadership of the party of legal control of its name, symbols and legal identity.

The Venezuelan Communist Party is facing a campaign of attacks, slanders, and a coup to usurp its legal and electoral registration from its democratically elected leadership, carried out by the PSUV and the government. The following statement of solidarity was approved unanimously by the leadership of the International Marxist Tendency at a meeting of its International Executive Committee this week. The sections and groups represented (from 30 countries) are listed at the end.

The leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the governing party in Venezuela, is moving towards the decisive phase of its plan to undermine the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV). On 21 May, a group of hired agents held a fraudulent ‘Extraordinary Congress of PCV branches’ in Caracas, usurping the acronym and symbols of the Communist Party and preparing the ground for future attacks on the party by the state.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Hugo Chávez. To honour the legacy of this courageous class fighter, we republish below an obituary, written by Alan Woods at the time of his passing. The article offers a detailed analysis of the role of the Venezuelan president in the Bolivarian Revolution, as well as his relationship with the masses. For a deeper understanding, we would also like to draw readers’ attention to Permanent Revolution in Latin America, published in 2018 by Wellred Books. The book presents a history of the revolutionary movements in Venezuela, as well as Cuba and

We publish here a video message by Alan Woods, along with a statement by the Venezuelan section of the IMT, in solidarity with the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV), which is faced with an attack by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), aimed at taking away the electoral registration from the PCV’s democratically elected leadership.

On 29 July, attempts made to recover 31 tonnes of gold worth over $1bn from a foreign central bank (that is supposed to mind the gold for safekeeping) by a democratically elected leader were repudiated by a foreign court. The sovereignty of a country’s highest judicial institution has been swept to one side by another country's ruling.

The rerun of the election for the governor of the State of Barinas – home state of the late Hugo Chávez – produced an apparently surprising result: the defeat of the PSUV and the victory of the reactionary opposition candidate Sergio Garrido, of the Democratic Union Table (MUD) – the pro-imperialist, coup-plotting opposition that represents the old oligarchy.

For years the massive mobilisation of the Venezuelan masses cast aside the repression of the state apparatus. However, the failure to complete the socialist revolution has created economic chaos. As the Maduro government has attempted to make workers pay for the crisis and the bureaucracy has become bolder in asserting its own interests, it has met the resistance of working-class activists with increasing state repression, arrests, and victimisation.