by Eugene Gogol

Protest in Venezuela against the electoral fraud, July 30. Photo: Voz de América, PDM 1.0

The obviously fraudulent election results in Venezuela show how bankrupt President Nicolás Maduro’s corrupt rule has been, especially combined with the onerous U.S.-directed sanctions, which harmed the population, not the government. Tabulated results from poor and working-class polling areas show how decisively they rejected another presidential term for Maduro. The fact that some eight million Venezuelans felt compelled to flee the dire economic-political situation in the country, signals the impasse, if not dead end, that the decades-long call for “21st Century Socialism” has reached.

Here is not the place to analyze Hugo Chávez’s dramatic call and attempts to implement such a program, except to note two contradictory facts: 1) The Venezuelan masses were certainly supportive of Chávez’s ideas in the early years and wanted to take part. 2) But far from truly eliciting their full decision-making support from below, Chávez’s 21st Century Socialism relied heavily on decision-making from above, including from the military brass. Of course, we cannot forget that the U.S. imposed terrible economic pain that also made progress difficult. (See “The Revolutionary Process in Venezuela—Advances, Contradictions, Questions” in my Utopia and the Dialectic in Latin American Liberation, Haymarket Press, 2017.)

It is sad to see some “Leftist” intellectuals accept Maduro’s electoral fraud. But others are resisting his bankrupt claims. How to begin anew on building authentic socialism based on Marx’s Marxism remains the difficult, but necessary pathway to work out.