The Worker, Vol. 40, Number 2
Contents:
I. Executive Summary: The Trajectory of the Subjective Factor
II. Venezuela's Defense of Sovereignty: Venezuela for the People, Not the Monopolies
I. Executive Summary: The Trajectory of the Subjective Factor
II. Venezuela's Defense of Sovereignty: Venezuela for the People, Not the Monopolies
Note from the editor:
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Executive Summary: The Trajectory of the Subjective Factor
The central thesis of the coming era will be that while the objective conditions for the collapse of capitalism have fully matured—manifesting in unresolvable economic crises and naked imperialist aggression—the transformation of society will not occur spontaneously. The decisive variable will be the creation of the subjective conditions: the consciousness, organization, and independent political initiative of the working class.
I. The Diagnosis: The Inevitable Intensification of Antagonisms
The fundamental contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation has reached its bursting point. The monopoly capitalist class, unable to solve this internal crisis, will attempt to step up its momentum for imposing retrogression on society.
• The Anti-Social Agenda: The ruling class will pour more capital and effort into stripping away all pretenses of social responsibility. They will implement a program of starvation as statecraft abroad (as seen in Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela) and austerity at home, reflecting the fact that unlimited political power functions solely as a mechanism to transfer public wealth into private hands.
• The War of Terror on Consciousness: To maintain control, the bourgeoisie will continue waging a psychological war aimed at forcing the workers to forget their own positive collective experience. They will promote a "free market" mythology that will blame the poor and most vulnerable for systemic poverty and insist that there is "no alternative" to the barbarism of maintaining the status quo.
II. The Strategic Mandate: Transforming the Class-in-Itself to Class-for-Itself
The working class will no longer remain a passive object of history. To survive, it will be compelled by necessity to come out into the political arena as a class-for-itself — a conscious political force that understands its historic mission.
• Breaking the Blockade of Silence: The vanguard organization will break the ideological blockade by creating a new political culture. It will establish spaces (forums, the mass publications) where the workers will sum up their experience and recognize the objective truth that solidarity means an injury to one is a collective class injury.
III. The Independent Political Program
The revolutionary movement will not preach abstract dogmas but will organize around a concrete Independent Program that will contend with the bourgeoisie for the direction of society.
• Campaign for Economic Rights: The workers will assert that livelihood, healthcare, and education are inalienable rights, not privileges. This demand will directly challenge the prerogatives of private property and expose the unwillingness of the capitalist system to provide for human needs.
• Democratic Renewal: The people will demand a fundamental restructuring of the political system to break the monopoly of the two parties. They will fight for mechanisms that empower the masses to participate directly in governance, moving beyond the sham of "representative" democracy.
• Democratic Foreign Policy: In the face of imperialist kidnapping and tanker seizures, the domestic movement will unite with the international front. It will demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and an end to interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations, recognizing that the "weaker powers" (oppressed nations) will be the revolutionary force that weakens the common enemy.
IV. The Prognosis: From Retreat to the New High Tide
The current period, characterized as a partial retreat of revolution, will be understood as temporary. The strategy will focus on "accumulating forces" during this defensive phase to prepare for the coming counter-offensive.
Through even wider unity in action in partial struggles (strikes, anti-war protests), the party will further accumulate the quantitative strength of organization and conviction.
These accumulated forces reach towards a nodal point. The consciousness of the masses will align with the objective rot of the system, and when this happens the current retreat will transform into a New High Tide of Revolution. At this juncture, the working class will not merely protest; it will move to burst the integument of the capitalist state and establish a new political power.
Thus, for the 2026 bisesquincentennial, the guiding principle will be: The objective conditions will pose the problem; the subjective conditions will provide the solution.
I. The Diagnosis: The Inevitable Intensification of Antagonisms
The fundamental contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation has reached its bursting point. The monopoly capitalist class, unable to solve this internal crisis, will attempt to step up its momentum for imposing retrogression on society.
• The Anti-Social Agenda: The ruling class will pour more capital and effort into stripping away all pretenses of social responsibility. They will implement a program of starvation as statecraft abroad (as seen in Iraq, Cuba, and Venezuela) and austerity at home, reflecting the fact that unlimited political power functions solely as a mechanism to transfer public wealth into private hands.
• The War of Terror on Consciousness: To maintain control, the bourgeoisie will continue waging a psychological war aimed at forcing the workers to forget their own positive collective experience. They will promote a "free market" mythology that will blame the poor and most vulnerable for systemic poverty and insist that there is "no alternative" to the barbarism of maintaining the status quo.
II. The Strategic Mandate: Transforming the Class-in-Itself to Class-for-Itself
The working class will no longer remain a passive object of history. To survive, it will be compelled by necessity to come out into the political arena as a class-for-itself — a conscious political force that understands its historic mission.
• Breaking the Blockade of Silence: The vanguard organization will break the ideological blockade by creating a new political culture. It will establish spaces (forums, the mass publications) where the workers will sum up their experience and recognize the objective truth that solidarity means an injury to one is a collective class injury.
III. The Independent Political Program
The revolutionary movement will not preach abstract dogmas but will organize around a concrete Independent Program that will contend with the bourgeoisie for the direction of society.
• Campaign for Economic Rights: The workers will assert that livelihood, healthcare, and education are inalienable rights, not privileges. This demand will directly challenge the prerogatives of private property and expose the unwillingness of the capitalist system to provide for human needs.
• Democratic Renewal: The people will demand a fundamental restructuring of the political system to break the monopoly of the two parties. They will fight for mechanisms that empower the masses to participate directly in governance, moving beyond the sham of "representative" democracy.
• Democratic Foreign Policy: In the face of imperialist kidnapping and tanker seizures, the domestic movement will unite with the international front. It will demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and an end to interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations, recognizing that the "weaker powers" (oppressed nations) will be the revolutionary force that weakens the common enemy.
IV. The Prognosis: From Retreat to the New High Tide
The current period, characterized as a partial retreat of revolution, will be understood as temporary. The strategy will focus on "accumulating forces" during this defensive phase to prepare for the coming counter-offensive.
Through even wider unity in action in partial struggles (strikes, anti-war protests), the party will further accumulate the quantitative strength of organization and conviction.
These accumulated forces reach towards a nodal point. The consciousness of the masses will align with the objective rot of the system, and when this happens the current retreat will transform into a New High Tide of Revolution. At this juncture, the working class will not merely protest; it will move to burst the integument of the capitalist state and establish a new political power.
Thus, for the 2026 bisesquincentennial, the guiding principle will be: The objective conditions will pose the problem; the subjective conditions will provide the solution.
Venezuela's Defense of Sovereignty: Venezuela for the People, Not the Monopolies
Following U.S. imperialism’s "Operation Absolute Resolve"—the violent abduction of President Maduro—global denunciations are mounting against what many term a brazen act of "brigandry."
These are directed against the Washington-led assault, battery and abduction of President Maduro, bombing of medical facilities, and the long-standing hostile targeting of the country by the U.S. Congress. Far more than diplomatic protest, this is a defense of the inalienable right of a nation to use its wealth for the economy of its people.
The conflict represents a sharp collision between the vital interests of the working masses and the vital interests of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. Grassroots sectors in Venezuela are declaring that the Pentagon would have to kill “more than 8 million combatants” to seize Venezuela’s petroleum industry permanently as threatened.
For years, the U.S. Congress systematically justified targeting Venezuela by enacting a web of legislation, such as the Venezuela Defense, Human Rights, and Civil Society Act and the VAROL Act, which framed the Bolivarian government of Venezuela not as a sovereign entity but as a nexus of "narco-terrorism" and economic “failures” requiring collective punishment.
By authorizing the use of military force against designated "foreign terrorist organizations," codifying violation of third country sovereignty, enforcing suffocating sanctions against the Venezuelan central bank, oil industry and other locally owned businesses, the legislative branch reinforced a series of U.S. Presidents’ executive designations of the country as an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. security. This bipartisan campaign to criminalize the Venezuelan state and delegitimize its leadership provided the political and legal architecture that culminated in the brazen U.S. military raid to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro, and the aggressive maritime interdictions that resulted in the killing of fishermen near the Venezuelan coast, and the growing tally of oil tankers privateered by U.S. naval forces.
For decades, U.S. imperialism treated Venezuelan minds and muscles, vast oil reserves, and fertile soil as its own property, draining the national wealth into the vaults of far away banks, while leaving the population in poverty. The Bolivarian process of Venezuelan self-determination reversed this logic. By rejecting the privatization of industry and asserting local control, the government has directed revenues toward doubling expenditures on public education, eliminating tuition, establishing free health care, and subsidizing free nutrition drives for the poor.
The U.S. response has been to accelerate weaponization of finance and foreign-flagged trade, and to force through its desired militarization of the situation. The recent U.S. seizure of Venezuela-linked oil tankers and the arrogant declaration by U.S. officials that they will now capture the proceeds of Venezuelan oil sales, confirms that Trump’s intensified blockade is a mechanism of the ongoing collective punishment organized by Washington for years and aimed at shattering the country’s social infrastructure.
These are directed against the Washington-led assault, battery and abduction of President Maduro, bombing of medical facilities, and the long-standing hostile targeting of the country by the U.S. Congress. Far more than diplomatic protest, this is a defense of the inalienable right of a nation to use its wealth for the economy of its people.
The conflict represents a sharp collision between the vital interests of the working masses and the vital interests of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class. Grassroots sectors in Venezuela are declaring that the Pentagon would have to kill “more than 8 million combatants” to seize Venezuela’s petroleum industry permanently as threatened.
For years, the U.S. Congress systematically justified targeting Venezuela by enacting a web of legislation, such as the Venezuela Defense, Human Rights, and Civil Society Act and the VAROL Act, which framed the Bolivarian government of Venezuela not as a sovereign entity but as a nexus of "narco-terrorism" and economic “failures” requiring collective punishment.
By authorizing the use of military force against designated "foreign terrorist organizations," codifying violation of third country sovereignty, enforcing suffocating sanctions against the Venezuelan central bank, oil industry and other locally owned businesses, the legislative branch reinforced a series of U.S. Presidents’ executive designations of the country as an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. security. This bipartisan campaign to criminalize the Venezuelan state and delegitimize its leadership provided the political and legal architecture that culminated in the brazen U.S. military raid to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro, and the aggressive maritime interdictions that resulted in the killing of fishermen near the Venezuelan coast, and the growing tally of oil tankers privateered by U.S. naval forces.
For decades, U.S. imperialism treated Venezuelan minds and muscles, vast oil reserves, and fertile soil as its own property, draining the national wealth into the vaults of far away banks, while leaving the population in poverty. The Bolivarian process of Venezuelan self-determination reversed this logic. By rejecting the privatization of industry and asserting local control, the government has directed revenues toward doubling expenditures on public education, eliminating tuition, establishing free health care, and subsidizing free nutrition drives for the poor.
The U.S. response has been to accelerate weaponization of finance and foreign-flagged trade, and to force through its desired militarization of the situation. The recent U.S. seizure of Venezuela-linked oil tankers and the arrogant declaration by U.S. officials that they will now capture the proceeds of Venezuelan oil sales, confirms that Trump’s intensified blockade is a mechanism of the ongoing collective punishment organized by Washington for years and aimed at shattering the country’s social infrastructure.