Notwithstanding nationalisations of oil, telecommunications, electricity and public services, the main levers of the economy still remained in the hands of the capitalists. In addition, a new layer of state bureaucrats and managers – the so-called Bolibourgeoisie – enriched themselves in this period and acted as a brake on the revolutionary process.
Certainly, and despite the complicity of the corporate media—which for the most part has chosen to ignore the massive protests in Caracas in favor of Maduro’s release—it is a fact that Maduro’s fall did not mean the fall of his regime, the Chavista bureaucracy, or Chavismo itself. As some analysts have pointed out, this amounts to capturing the king without delivering checkmate.
Centuries of colonial conquest and imperialist domination have brought nothing but misery to the masses of Latin America. Trump’s new colonial adventure in Venezuela is another chapter in this horrendous history—the working class, the poor and oppressed must build a continent-wide revolutionary movement that breaks the stranglehold of imperialist and capitalist domination and exploitation.
