Build mass workers’ parties to challenge the capitalist system

Text of a Socialist Party leaflet distributed at protests on 5 January

In the days since Trump’s abduction and arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shocked the world, the motivation for and planning of this attack have become clearer. Maduro is being held in New York facing a ‘trial’ on drug and weapons charges.

All the rhetoric about ‘narco-terrorism’ won’t cover up the fact that Trump is seeking US access to the world’s biggest oil reserves in the hope that the promise of cheap fuel can cut across his rising unpopularity at home.

On 5 January, less than a year since his inauguration, the US president’s net approval rating is minus 17%. Only one US president has had worse polling at this stage in their term – and that was Trump the first time around! Rising unemployment, squeezed living standards, and attacks on democratic rights are the main factors.

This week has seen a 0.8% point rise in his approval ratings, reflecting a tiny hope that things can improve. Trump’s actions in Venezuela will not decisively change the situation facing workers, but they will fuel greater anger at his presidency. That will include across Latin America where his invocation of the Monroe Doctrine, US imperialism intervening in its so-called ‘backyard’ in pursuit of its interests, will arouse the anger and hatred of US imperialism.

Drill, baby, drill!

Trump has called for “billions of dollars” to be poured into Venezuelan oil extraction. The Financial Times (FT) has revealed that one energy management company issued a “$2 billion private placement memorandum” for Venezuelan oil projects back in December.

Trump said the US will ‘run Venezuela’ while accepting the appointment of interim President Delcy Rodríguez, clearly hoping she can be leant on to do US imperialism’s bidding. During the Biden administration, Rodríguez is reported to have “impressed executives with her pragmatism and grasp of detail when she led talks with international oil companies, including Chevron, which led to them being granted limited licences to operate in Venezuela”.

It is still to be seen what role different sections of the Venezuelan regime play as the situation unfolds, including the impact of pressure from movements of workers and youth that could develop.

An article in the FT says the US assault on Venezuela “marks a potential new era for the [oil] companies” and reminds us that “the last major opening of a country’s reserves was in 2009 in Iraq, where auctions for oilfields drew multibillion-dollar bids six years after the US invasion.” However, so far many oil bosses are expressing caution given the instability in the situation.

Trump is attempting to act in the interests of sections of US capitalism – as was George Bush in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 when he was supported by his loyal poodle Tony Blair, then Labour Prime Minister. Bush’s 2002 attempt to remove Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez was thwarted by a mass movement led by sections of the military.

This movement drove Chávez to undertake partial nationalisations and using oil revenue to introduce major social reforms. Unfortunately, despite his enormous popularity, Chávez excluded the masses from leadership. His failure to definitively break with capitalism resulted in the revolution reaching an impasse. Maduro has retreated from Chávez’s radical programme. Nonetheless Venezuela, like Cuba, is hated by US imperialism with sanctions a major factor in the crippling poverty. Lessons of those events are crucial for today to build, as Chávez called it, ‘socialism in the 21st century’.

Trump has said he expects the Cuban regime to be brought down, and threatened interventions in Colombia and Greenland. The workers and young people in Venezuela and all the threatened countries will not benefit and must build mass movements, not only to resist more coups but to fight for a socialist alternative.

Build new workers’ parties

Across the world protesters are taking to the streets and this movement is likely to grow as the reality of Trump’s plunder plan becomes clear. This movement must stand in solidarity with all the workers and young people facing oppression and exploitation as a result of these attacks. But to be effective, these movements need to build a challenge to the capitalist system defended by Trump and all the capitalist world leaders.

The rottenness of the world’s capitalist leaders has been confirmed by the rustle of mealy-mouthed responses to the Caracas attack, not least by human rights lawyer Keir Starmer. One after another they have made appeals to international law and failed to condemn Trump.

There can be no hope that capitalist international law and institutions will prevent this or further injustices on the workers and young people across the world, let alone the attacks they are carrying out in the interests of big business profits at home. The lesson of US imperialism’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 was that the international laws and bodies such as the UN were unable to prevent the slaughter and plunder of that country. They have always existed to defend capitalist interests.

Today, with the capitalist system in deep crisis, its institutions are also being shredded as governments desperately seek to defend the interests of their national capitalist class, with Trump to the fore. Trump’s latest outrage is designed to demonstrate the power of US imperialism to all its rivals. But it will also be another demonstration to the world’s working class of the brutal character of capitalism and the need for democratic socialism.

The anti-war movement today has two major tasks. To build the widest support in the trade unions, the six million-strong mass workers’ organisations. But also, to build a mass political alternative, a new workers’ party, to take on the pro-war, anti-working-class policies of Starmer and New Labour, and take forward the fight for a new socialist society, free from poverty, exploitation and war.